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FDA Fast-Tracks RSV mRNA ‘Vaccine’

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 3, 2021

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) — a respiratory virus that causes typically mild cold-like symptoms — has apparently been selected as the next invisible boogey man. Most children have been exposed to RSV by their second birthday.

The fact that most children survive past the age of 2 tells you something about the risks involved. That said, in very rare cases, RSV can progress to pneumonia or bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways of the lungs).

RSV Emerges Out of Season Around the World

According to reports, RSV is now raging around the world, from New Zealand1 to Japan2 and the U.S.,3 where it hit so hard in June 2021 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an emergency alert4 for parts of the southern United States.

The CDC encouraged testing for RSV among patients who tested negative for COVID-19 but had “acute respiratory illness” symptoms. They also advised health care personnel, child care providers and staff of long-term care facilities to stay home from work if they had respiratory symptoms, even if they test negative for COVID, as they might have RSV.

In New Zealand, health officials said there were few cases of RSV in 2020 during the pandemic and, while it’s normally a winter disease, it’s now making a comeback off-season in 2021. According to Stuff.co.nz,5 the outbreak “was more than twofold greater than the historical average from 2014 to 2019 for this time of year.”

Similar reports have been published in Japan where, in early July 2021, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases warned of RSV infections outside the normal peak period. According to the Japan Times :6

“… the number of RSV patients per medical institution was 3.87 in the week ending June 27 — the highest number of cases since 2019. In 2018, the year the counting system was changed, the infection count peaked in September at 2.46, and it reached 3.45 patients per medical institution a year later.”

August 3, 2021, U.S. health officials reported that RSV had started to taper off by midsummer, but a resurgence is now seen, with a “record-breaking 563 new RSV cases” reported in the week before August 3.7

FDA Fast-Tracks mRNA Shot Against RSV

That same day, August 3, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration granted fast-track designation to Moderna for an mRNA-based injection against this common cold virus. As reported in a Moderna press release:8

“… the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for mRNA-1345, its investigational single-dose mRNA vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in adults older than 60 years of age.

‘We are pursuing an mRNA RSV vaccine to protect the most vulnerable populations — young children and older adults,’ said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna.

‘We are studying mRNA-1345 in these populations in an ongoing clinical trial and we look forward to sharing data when available … We have accelerated research and development of our infectious disease therapeutic area and we will continue to advance our mRNA vaccines into new areas of high unmet need.'”

Moderna’s press release correctly points out that there’s no approved vaccine available for RSV. What they don’t mention is why. The reason there’s no RSV vaccine on the market is the same reason why there has never been a coronavirus vaccine, and that is because none of them were able to pass trials.

As with coronavirus, previous efforts to develop an RSV vaccine have met with failure as test subjects have a pesky tendency to die or become seriously ill when exposed to the wild virus, thanks to paradoxical immune enhancement (PIE), also known as antibody dependent enhancement (ADE).9

RSV Shot Builds on COVID Jab

Moderna’s RSV shot uses the same lipid nanoparticle as its COVID-19 injection. The primary difference between the two shots is the coding of the mRNA. In the RSV shot, the mRNA encodes for a prefusion F glycoprotein.

Prefusion F protein is a protein that mediates the RSV virus’ entry into your cells and is known to elicit a neutralizing antibody response.10 Under normal circumstances, it’s hard to imagine an RSV vaccine built on a novel mRNA platform getting fast-tracked, but we’re no longer in normal times.

The rollout of mRNA COVID shots have, as predicted, paved the way for any number of new mRNA-based injections going straight to human trials. So, should you ever feel like your body lacks in synthetic mRNA, fear not. This is just the beginning. Those who embrace vaccine passports will surely find themselves called to the nearest vaccine center several times a year for mandatory refills.

Are We Creating a Public Health Disaster?

The decision to fast-track yet another mRNA injection fails to take into consideration the possibility that we might already be creating an avalanche of ADE-related illness from the COVID shot. Adding another injection for a respiratory virus that has historically been associated with ADE could be extremely risky.

As noted in a September 9, 2020, Nature Microbiology paper titled “Antibody-Dependent Enhancement and SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines and Therapies”:11

“Data from the study of SARS-CoV and other respiratory viruses suggest that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies could exacerbate COVID-19 through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Previous respiratory syncytial virus and dengue virus vaccine studies revealed human clinical safety risks related to ADE, resulting in failed vaccine trials …

ADE can increase the severity of multiple viral infections, including other respiratory viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and measles.

ADE in respiratory infections is included in a broader category named enhanced respiratory disease (ERD), which also includes non-antibody-based mechanisms such as cytokine cascades and cell-mediated immunopathology …

Furthermore, ADE and ERD has been reported for SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV both in vitro and in vivo … ADE pathways can occur when non-neutralizing antibodies or antibodies at sub-neutralizing levels bind to viral antigens without blocking or clearing infection …

ADE has been observed in SARS, MERS and other human respiratory virus infections including RSV and measles, which suggests a real risk of ADE for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and antibody-based interventions …

Going forwards, it will be crucial to evaluate animal and clinical datasets for signs of ADE, and to balance ADE-related safety risks against intervention efficacy if clinical ADE is observed.”

In case you missed it, the authors specifically point out that ADE can worsen the severity of RSV. Theoretically then, if you get the COVID shot and end up with ADE, then contracting RSV could turn into a far more serious problem than it would otherwise.

Have COVID Policies Weakened Immune Systems?

While the COVID shot could play a role if we start seeing severe RSV in adults, it’s unlikely to be part of the equation when it comes to children, as the shot is still not authorized for children under the age of 12. More than likely, the out-of-season rise in RSV among children is related to the easing of restrictions after not being exposed to normal pathogens for extended periods of time.

During the past 18 months, as most of the world has been masked up, locked down and otherwise distanced from one another, children and adults have not been exposed to viruses and bacteria as they normally would.

On the one hand, there has been a significant reduction in the number of people reporting colds, flu and other infectious diseases. On the other hand, some health experts are questioning if this lack of exposure may have increased the risk for some to experience more illnesses as children reenter school and adults reenter the workforce.12

The two main parts of your immune system are your innate immune system, which you were born with, and your adaptive immune system, which is developed as you’re exposed to pathogens.13 A healthy immune system keeps a record of every pathogen to which it has been exposed so that it can quickly recognize it if exposed again. Your immune system is activated when you’re exposed to a protein it doesn’t recognize, called an antigen.

Since the system is so complex, there are several potential ways in which things can go wrong. If your immune system doesn’t work correctly it can result in immunodeficiency diseases, resulting in more and longer-lasting sickness.

Some health experts are concerned that children may have experienced greater harm to their immune system than adults since they have spent the better part of the last 18 months isolated from nearly every exposure.14

From what researchers are now finding, it is infants and children who may have the most detrimental response to social distancing.15 Since the beginning of 2020, doctors and hospitals have noticed a significant reduction in the number of bacterial and viral infections children have been contracting. This includes bronchiolitis, measles, varicella, RSV and pertussis.

A paper16 published in August 2021, from the Pediatric Infectious Disease Group postulated nonpharmaceutical interventions imposed during 2020 could result in larger epidemics of infectious diseases once these interventions are lifted.

Rising Number of Infants With RSV Related to Immunity Debt

Some experts are calling a rising number of RSV infections in babies a “debt of immunity” created because infants born during 2020 had a lack of exposure to normal pathogens.17 Once infants and children are introduced to these environmental pathogens en masse, it can instigate a precipitous rise in cases.

According to The Guardian,18 New Zealand reported a 99.9% reduction in flu and 98% reduction in RSV during 2020. This nearly eliminated the spike of deaths that happens during the winter months from flu and RSV. In the short-term, it may have prevented an overload of the health care system while others were being treated for COVID-19.

However, in the long run, it may have created an additional problem in infants and children. When the immune system is not challenged at an early age, it can lead to larger outbreaks, which again taxes the health care system. As of early July 2021, New Zealand had reported nearly 1,000 cases of RSV over five weeks. The usual number reported is 1,743 over 29 weeks.

Doctors are hoping this doesn’t necessarily mean there will be more RSV cases, only that they are occurring in more rapid succession early in the season. The current outbreak has stretched the resources in New Zealand and Australia, which is also experiencing a surge in cases. New Zealand’s director general of health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield commented to a reporter from The Guardian saying he was:19

“… certainly concerned about the sharp surge in RSV cases … There’s some speculation that [the current outbreak] may be partly exacerbated by the fact we didn’t have any last year and so there is a bigger pool of children who are susceptible to it.”

In Canada, Wellington-based epidemiologist Michael Baker warns that his country may also see a similar trend in cases of RSV in the next year, warning that babies who were born prematurely are most at risk.20

That said, while Canada may see a rebound in RSV infections, Baker does not think that a lack of exposure to pathogens at an early age will have “in any way impeded the development of a healthy immune system.”

Is a Fast-Tracked RSV Shot the Answer?

Considering the multitude of problems associated with the gene-based COVID shots, I’m not optimistic about the development of a fast-tracked mRNA “vaccine” against RSV. The risks are numerous. Already, we’re seeing trends that could signal that ADE is at play in older people who got the jab (but not younger people).

In the U.K., as of August 15, 2021, 68% of COVID patients admitted to hospital who were over the age of 50 had received one or two COVID injections. Mortality statistics reveal the exact same trend. In the over-50 group, 70% of COVID deaths were either partially or fully “vaccinated.”21

Could this be because older people are developing ADE and therefore suffer more serious infection when exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus? In the under-50 category, the unvaccinated make up a majority of hospitalizations and deaths in the U.K., so perhaps the shot affects different age groups differently.

Older people are also the target group of the RSV shot, and infants and young children are a target for both COVID shots and RSV shots. Time will tell what the ramifications of programming the bodies of the very young and the very old to produce more than one antigen might be. But my guess is it won’t be good.

Sources and References

September 3, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

How (and why) Israel changed what “fully vaccinated” means

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | September 3, 2021

Israel has been at the forefront of the vaccination push ever since November 2020, when they signed agreements with Pfizer to run what were essentially medical experiments on their civilian population.

They were the first country to roll out the Pfizer vaccine. They were the first country to try out the (since abandoned) “Green passes” system of medical segregation. And now they’re the first country to change the terms of the “get vaccinated and get your freedom back” contract.

That’s right. Just as “three weeks to flatten the curve” turned into around 18-months (and counting), “double jabbed” is now evolving into “triple jabbed”.

To quote Dr Salman Zarka, Israel’s “coronavirus czar”:

We are updating what it means to be vaccinated,”

So, there you have it. In Israel, officially, those who have been injected with two doses of Pfizer’s so-called vaccine are no longer counted as vaccinated.

What does this mean?

Well, first of all, it means all those “vaccinated” people can kiss their recently acquired freedoms goodbye, unless they’re willing to get at least one more booster.

According to the Wall Street Journal [paywalled article]:

Holders of Israel’s vaccine passports must get a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine within six months of their second dose, or lose the so-called green pass that allows them more freedom.”

It should also be noted that the third booster is not considered the last. The Israeli Ministry of Health “has not ruled out further boosters in the future” and the third shot will only extend the “vaccinated” status for six months, not permanently.

So, essentially, the precedent has been set that your freedoms are the state’s to take away on a whim. And, if you comply, they will simply use your compliance as an excuse to take even greater liberties (pun very much intended).

Israel has been the Petri dish for this since the beginning. If it works there, expect the “booster shot requirement” to be instituted in other countries all over the world fairly quickly.

To all the people who have taken the vaccine, and are now realising they may have done something foolish. Sorry, but we did try to warn you this would happen.

Financially speaking, this is yet another boon in a golden year for Pfizer, who can now ship even more doses of their experimental and unnecessary gene therapy to people who are literally legally obliged to use it. If you don’t want to take the jab, just take some of Pfizer’s new magic anti-Covid pills instead.

So don’t worry about the death of freedom and democracy in the name of an almost-completely-harmless disease. At least the Pfizer shareholders can afford that second private island and golden costumes for their human chess sets.

However, the predictable seizure of freedoms, and obvious financial motives behind it, aren’t even the worst part.

The potentially far more cynical part comes later. In three months or so, when the flu season hits, and the elderly and infirm start dying, as they do every winter.

It won’t be called “flu season”, of course. It will be all be classified as “Covid”. Combined with this new definition of “vaccinated”, the “fourth wave” or the “sigma variant” (or whatever they call it) could now be used to produce a whole new manipulated statistic.

Think about it: Every Israeli citizen who gets sick and/or dies, after being double jabbed but not triple jabbed, will be officially labelled “not fully vaccinated”.

They could therefore claim that Covid is primarily affecting “unvaccinated people”, even if the majority of people getting sick have had two doses of Pfizers mRNA cocktail.

Just as they used linguistic tricks to turn “deaths from any cause” into “Covid deaths”, and “asymptomatic positive tests” into “Covid cases”, they have now created a loophole to turn “vaccinated people” who get sick into “unvaccinated people”.

Worse still, it’s possible that, over the coming winter, people who have been “vaccinated” may die at an even greater rate than normal.

If the theory that the mRNA vaccines may cause antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) proves correct, a lot of people could be killed by viruses this winter as a direct result of being “vaccinated”… and then be used as evidence to prop up the idea of “vaccine effectiveness”.

In twenty months of obvious scientific malpractice, data manipulation, statistical dishonesty, and full-on linguistic reversal… we may be about to see the worst lie of all.

This is all supposition at this point, of course. But for anyone out there thinking “they would never do that”, I remind you that a man was counted as Covid death after shooting himself in the head. There is literally no bar so low that the powers-that-be couldn’t limbo under it.

Even if time proves my theory wrong, the solid, admitted reality of the booster-shot system is bad enough. Freedom forever under a dangling sword of Damocles, and yet another assault on language as part of a years-long campaign to rob our very words of meaning.

And while all this may seem incredibly cynical, if you haven’t become incredibly cynical in the last two years, then you weren’t paying attention.

September 3, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Putin doesn’t have online accounts & thinks there are better uses of his time than posting on Twitter or Facebook

RT | September 2, 2021

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin isn’t active online because he doesn’t have enough time to post, scroll and click, the Kremlin has revealed, saying he has rejected the idea of having an aide manage public profiles on his behalf.

Speaking to journalists at the Eastern Economic Forum on Thursday, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, revealed the Russian leader thinks there are better uses of his time than setting up an account on Twitter or Facebook. “Putin himself does not use social networks,” the Kremlin official said, chalking the decision up to pressures on his diary.

However, there is apparently no question about deputizing the job to an adviser. “He does not want anyone to do it for him,” Peskov said. “He considers it wrong.”

In 2017, taking questions at a meeting with especially-gifted children, Putin said there was no slot in his day for social media. “My working days are so busy and finish so late at night that I am not in the mood for Instagram,” he said. “All I think about is to get to bed to sleep,” the president added.

However, he warned that there are numerous satirical and fake accounts set up in his name. “I have nothing to do with any of them. Just beware of that. So, everything that is written on my behalf is not me,” Putin said.

A prolific social media user, Former President Donald Trump is estimated to have tweeted more than 25,000 times during his presidency, before tech giants, including Twitter, banned him from the service in the wake of protesters storming Washington’s Capitol building in January.

September 2, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

North Korea turns away 3mn doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine – UNICEF

RT | September 2, 2021

North Korea has rejected a shipment of three million doses of the Chinese-made Sinovac Covid vaccine from the international COVAX scheme, asking UNICEF to redirect them to worse-hit countries, the UN said on Thursday.

The Asian nation was among the first to introduce strict Covid restrictions as the pandemic began to spread in early 2020, locking down its border to prevent transmission from neighboring China. Pyongyang has claimed that it has not yet detected any cases of Covid within the country.

A spokesperson for UN agency UNICEF said that North Korea had rejected roughly around three million doses of a Covid vaccine, requesting that the COVAX scheme give them to poorer nations, which have reported greater case numbers during the pandemic.

The North Korean Public Health Ministry confirmed in a statement that it had rejected the doses, saying that the vaccines are being “relocated to severely affected countries in view of the limited global supply of Covid-19 vaccines and recurrent surge in some countries.” However, the country’s officials said they would “continue to communicate” with the COVAX scheme over receiving a shipment of doses “in the coming months.”

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) weekly report released on August 27 confirmed that “no case of Covid-19 has been reported” within North Korea, although 37,291 people have been tested with flu-like symptoms, returning negative coronavirus tests.

While North Korea claims it hasn’t had an outbreak of cases, it has suffered an economic and “food crisis” due to border restrictions, which have affected trade and travel with the reclusive country’s neighbors.

The decision to reject the Chinese Sinovac doses comes months after a South Korean think tank, the Institute for National Security Strategy, claimed that North Korea had refused a shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines over fears about potential side effects.

September 2, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Top Misinformation Article Attributed to Chicago Tribune

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 2, 2021

According to Facebook’s content transparency report for the first quarter of 2021, released in mid-August 2021, the most popular article shared on the platform between January 2021 and March 2021 was about a 56-year-old Miami, Florida, obstetrician who died two weeks after his first Pfizer injection.1

The story initially ran in the South Florida Sun Sentinel 2 April 8, 2021, and was republished by the Chicago Tribune that same day.3 The doctor, Dr. Gregory Michael, received his first dose December 18, 2020.

Three days later, he developed small spots on his hands and feet, which prompted him to go to the emergency room, where they found he had an abnormally low blood count. Platelets stop bleeding by clotting, and when platelets drop too low, internal bleeding can occur, resulting in what looks like blood blisters on the skin.

Michael remained in intensive care for two weeks, but no matter what they did, his platelet count refused to budge. During the night of January 3, 2021, he died of a massive stroke. According to the coroner, the COVID injection could not be ruled out as a contributing or causative factor.

In a Facebook post, Michael’s widow stated he’d been “very healthy” and that he’d been a COVID-19 vaccine advocate. His death caused her to question the safety of the shot, however.

“I believe that people should be aware that side effects can happen, that the vaccine is not good for everyone and in this case destroyed a beautiful life, a perfect family and has affected so many people in this community.” she wrote. “Please do not let his death be in vain please save more lives my making this information news.”4

Even Viral Content Has Minor Reach

According to The New York Times,5 Facebook held off on publishing the first-quarter report for fear the findings might “look bad for the company.” Executives decided they wanted to make some “key fixes to the system” before releasing it. That’s why it wasn’t published until August.

Interestingly, the report reveals that even when something goes viral, the total number of views is still a tiny fraction of the overall content. Even the biggest accounts make up but a small portion of overall content views. Combined, the top 20 accounts with the most views during the first quarter — which included UNICEF, The Dodo and LADbible — accounted for only 1.18% of all U.S. content views.

As noted in the report, this “shows that, even though it may seem like a page or post has extensive reach on the platform, that isn’t the case when measured against the total amount of content available on the platform.”

Facebook Calls Out CCDH for Manufacturing ‘Faulty Narrative’

As you may know, an obscure one-man organization funded by dark money called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has published several reports, including “The Anti-Vaxx Playbook,”6 “The Disinformation Dozen”7 and “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel,”8 in which the founder, Imran Ahmed — an unregistered foreign agent — claims to have identified the top most influential “anti-vaxxers” in the U.S.

In a completely unexpected turn of events, Facebook is now calling out the CCDH for having manufactured a faulty narrative without evidence against the 12 individuals targeted in its reports (myself included).9

This is important, seeing how the CCDH reports have been the primary “reference” source of authority used by media and government officials to smear, threaten and infringe on American citizens’ right to free speech.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security even lists promulgating “false narratives” around COVID-19 as a top national security threat, which basically puts a “domestic terrorist” target on the backs of those of us who have been identified by the CCDH as the most prolific “superspreaders” of COVID misinformation.

As reported by GreenMed Info :10

“Google now shows an astounding 84,700 search results for CCDH’s defamatory phrase ‘disinformation dozen. ’Amazingly, this includes 16,000 news stories within the international press, approximately 100% of which are word-for-word amplifications of CCDH’s claims/defamatory statements and reported uncritically as fact.

In addition, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and president Biden all used CCDH’s report as the sole source for their own defamatory accusations, reaching a dangerous rhetorical climax on July 20th when Biden stated that these 12 individuals are literally “killing people” [by spreading misinformation].”

No Evidence to Support ‘Misinfo Superspreader’ Claim

In an August 18, 2021, Facebook report, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, sets the record straight, and in the process, demolishes the CCDH’s claims:11

“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …

That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.

We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others. We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.

The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.

In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”

It’s worth restating the key point in this quote: Combined, the top 12 individuals and organizations identified by the CCDH as being responsible for a whopping 73% of vaccine misinformation on Facebook, are in fact only responsible for 0.05% of vaccine-related content — 1,460 times lower than the CCDH’s outrageous claim. That’s no small discrepancy.

CCDH Claims Blasted as Unjustified and Biased

Bickert goes on to refer directly to the CCDH report “The Disinformation Dozen,”12 stating:

“The report13 upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users.

They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.

Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”

CCDH Meets Definition of ‘Hateful Extremists’

Ironically, while the CCDH claims to “counter hate” online, and Ahmed sits on the Steering Committee of the U.K. Commission on Countering Extremism, CCDH itself actually meets the Commission’s definition of hateful extremists.14 In the 2019 Commission document, “Challenging Hateful Extremism,” the term is defined as:15

“Behaviours that can incite and amplify hate, or engage in persistent hatred, or equivocate about and make the moral case for violence; And that draw on hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group; And that cause, or are likely to cause, harm to individuals, communities or wider society.”

In addition, in the forward of the report, lead commissioner Sara Khan notes that “Hateful extremists seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country.”

All of these definitions and clarifications of what hateful extremism is fit the CCDH to a T. Ahmed manufactured data to create a false narrative that 12 individuals pose a threat to the well-being and survival of the whole world, and then used that narrative to incite hate against us and curtail our freedom of speech.

Who Fact Checks the Fact Checkers?

In related news, the self-appointed arbiter of factual truths, NewsGuard, has had to backpedal in recent months and issue dozens of corrections to “fact checks” in which they’ve labeled the Wuhan lab leak theory as a debunked conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, NewsGuard has wrongly down-rated 225 websites for articles mentioning the lab leak theory.16 In reality, there’s far more evidence to support the lab leak theory than any other theory, but it took over a year before the weight of this evidence became too obvious for the media to ignore.

NewsGuard’s erroneous fact checks were recently highlighted in an August 11, 2021, report by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).17

AIER decided to take a closer look at NewsGuard after receiving a request for comments on a NewsGuard fact check article regarding AIER and the Great Barrington Declaration — a statement written by public health experts from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford that calls on government to implement focused protection rather than lockdowns and self-isolation. AIERS investigation found that:18

“… NewsGuard falls far short of the very same criteria for accuracy and transparency that it claims to apply to other websites. Most of the company’s fact checkers lack basic qualifications in the scientific and social-scientific fields that they purport to arbitrate.

NewsGuard’s own track record of commentary — particularly on the Covid-19 pandemic — reveals a pattern of unreliable and misleading claims that required subsequent corrections, and analysis that regularly conflates fact with opinion journalism in rendering a judgement on a website’s content.

Furthermore, the company’s own practices fall far short of the transparency and disclosure standards it regularly applies to other websites … NewsGuard’s staff primarily evaluates scientific claims by appealing to the authority of public figures who they designate as ‘experts’ on the subject in question.

Their approach generally avoids direct examination of the evidence surrounding contested claims, and instead cherry-picks a figure to treat as an authoritative final word … many of their preferred authorities are political officeholders rather than persons trained in scientific or social-scientific methods.

By selectively curating cherry-picked political authorities rather than evaluating evidence directly, NewsGuard’s approach to fact-checking effectively sidesteps the scientific method. This strategy is rendered even more problematic by the general lack of scientific expertise within NewsGuard’s team of writers.

We examined the educational credentials, including the highest degree listed, for 28 publicly identified staff members on NewsGuard’s website. The company’s staff page reveals shockingly little expertise in either the hard sciences such as medicine or social sciences such as public policy, economics, and related fields …

Most NewsGuard articles on Covid-19 topics and policies are written by [NewsGuard Deputy Editor for Health, John] Gregory, whose only identified qualification is a bachelor’s degree in Media Arts … Gregory would not qualify as an expert in most of the fields he is responsible for fact-checking …

Of course, non-experts have every right to offer opinions on scientific and social-scientific matters. Whether or not they should be taken seriously as fact checkers or act as arbiters of scientific disputes is another question entirely.”

NewsGuard Staff by Field and Highest Degree Attained

newsguard graph

NewsGuard Apologizes for Erroneous Fact Checks

After being confronted about its erroneous fact checks on the lab leak theory, NewsGuard offered the following apology in a statement sent to AIER:19

“NewsGuard either mischaracterized the sites’ claims about the lab leak theory, referred to the lab leak as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ or wrongly grouped together unproven claims about the lab leak with the separate, false claim that the COVID-19 virus was man-made without explaining that one claim was unsubstantiated, and the other was false.

NewsGuard apologizes for these errors. We have made the appropriate correction on each of the 21 labels.”

AIER commented on the apology:20

“Gregory and his colleagues appear to have simply decided that their own premature dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis equated to ‘fact’ and proceeded to penalize other sites not for factual errors, but rather for diverging from NewsGuard’s own editorial position on the same subject.

When this position turned out to be mistaken, NewsGuard pivoted to remove the errors — albeit in non-transparent ways that downplay the significance or pervasiveness of their mistake.”

NewsGuard Fails to Fulfill Its Own Credibility Criteria

In their report, AIER goes on to apply the criteria NewsGuard uses to evaluate a website’s credibility to NewsGuard itself. It’s ranking? A paltry 36.25 out of 100. According to AIER:21

“This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards, and should be used with extreme caution as a source for verifying the reliability of the websites it purports to rate …

When we see fact checkers like NewsGuard, who not only fail to uphold their high-sounding principles but even publicly encourage working with the government to suppress speech, we should raise red flags.”

The NewsGuard ratings are meant to influence the reader, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. That it would serve as the thought police of the technocratic establishment that seeks to silence dissent and bury information that doesn’t help move the Great Reset agenda forward is no surprise.

Especially considering its primary startup capital came from Publicis Groupe,22 a PR group that represents most of Big Pharma, including vaccine makers, and Big Tech. NewsGuard is also backed by Microsoft23 and Google.

The Publicis Groupe has been manipulating what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, this advertising and communications firm bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet.

With revenue avenues secured, Publicis’ clients and partners built a global presence that dominated the advertising world. Be it tobacco or sugar, Publicis Groupe found a way to promote and strengthen big industries. Publicis was recently sued24 for its deadly and illegal marketing of Purdue Pharma’s opioid products.

When you consider that Publicis describes its business model approach as putting clients and their needs and objectives at the center of all they do so their clients can “win and grow,” it’s easy to see what’s driving NewsGuard.

Overall, NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competitors and analysts who empower you with information that runs counter to any given industry’s agenda.

If you’re as disturbed by censorship as I am, be sure to contact your local library today to find out if they’re one of the more than 700 libraries using NewsGuard. If they are, then ask them if they’re aware of NewsGuard’s censorship of truthful news that is now encroaching on scientific freedom and threatening the very roots of our democracy.

If your local library is using NewsGuard, it would be helpful to start a campaign to get it removed. Contact your neighbors and let them know what is happening so they can kick out this public health threat. Likewise, whenever you see someone referencing reports by the CCDH, call them out on it.

Sources and References

September 2, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Research Resources You Should Know About – #SolutionsWatch

Corbett • 08/31/2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Did you know there’s a searchable archive of the last 12 years of tv news? Or that every moment of all of the major news network’s broadcasts from the week of 9/11 are available for free online? Well, you do now! Go forth and research!

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES:
Really Simple Syndication – #SolutionsWatch

Research Tools You Should Know About – #SolutionsWatch

How to Access the Library of Alexandria – #SolutionsWatch

Television Archive

Understanding 9/11 – A television news archive

Television Archive resources

September 2, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Supporting Doctors’ Rights To Speak, Free From Censorship

doctors4covidethics.org

Dr. Paul Oosterhuis is an Australian anaesthetist with over thirty years experience, including in critical care and resuscitation, who urgently needs your support.

He is facing a hearing by the Medical Board of NSW for posting information on social media regarding COVID-19. His posts related to early treatment and prophylaxis, PCR tests, and risk-benefit calculations regarding COVID-19 vaccination and lockdowns (scroll down for details). His hearing is on September 3rd. Please help him by signing and sharing this petition.

We are practicing doctors and allied health professionals and/or scientists and academics and/or members of the public and/or represent professional organisations. We support the right of Dr Oosterhuis, and that of all doctors, to offer informed medical opinions on COVID-19 and to discuss the available evidence on COVID-19 interventions.

As doctors we too have advised and continue to advise  patients and the general public about the medical management of COVID-19 disease and vaccination on the basis of good science. As members of the public we reserve the right to receive honest information, opinion and advice from our doctors, free from government interference.

From Dr Oosterhuis:

Dear colleagues and concerned citizens,

Thank you for taking the time to read this petition.

My name is Dr Paul Oosterhuis. I am an anaesthetist from Australia. I have been called before the NSW Medical Board for a hearing on September 3rd 2021 following anonymous complaints about my social media posts on Facebook regarding COVID-19. I have been advised by the Medical Council that:

“The Medical Council of NSW received two anonymous notifications regarding your activity on social media.

Due to the concerns outlined in the notifications the Council has resolved to convene proceedings under section 150 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (NSW) to consider whether any action is required for the protection of the health and safety of the public or in the public interest.”

Ahead of the hearing I am seeking signatures from my medical and scientific colleagues and members of the public to help me defend my own and all doctors’ rights to offer our informed medical opinions, share our expertise, and engage in open discussion regarding COVID-19.

I am a Sydney University trained medical graduate. I undertook my internship and residency at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, followed by postgraduate training in Anaesthesia at The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. I have more than 30 years of practice, the first 20 years involving hands-on critical care and resuscitation, and the last 10-plus years as a senior Visiting Medical Officer working in the Sydney Local Health District.

In the social media posts for which I face a Medical Board hearing, I discussed issues such as early treatment and prophylaxis against COVID-19, evidence for government measures such as lockdowns and PCR tests, and evidence regarding risk-benefit analyses of COVID-19 vaccines.

For example:

“I wish you could just add EARLY TREATMENT and drug PROPHYLAXIS …..Tell everyone to take Vit D, Zinc, and EARLY TREATMENT with IVM/ HCQ as evidence based medicine alternatives.”

I provided a link to a presentation by Dr Paul Marik on prophylaxis in support of the post, highlighting a chart of vitamin D versus risk of COVID from Dr Marik’s presentation, to illuminate the low hanging fruit of prophylaxis.

In other posts I questioned the evidence base for the government’s policies of lockdowns and mask mandates, and pointed out that there is evidence of vaccines having low effectiveness and real risks and harms (which are being suppressed), along with harms from the totalitarian lockdowns causing massive damage society-wide.

The risk of Antibody Dependent enhancement of disease, predicted by Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, driven by immune escape from the selective evolutionary pressure of vaccinating with a non sterilising agent is a real and present danger and needs to be discussed. The danger to millions is distressing to me, and discussing that danger is, I believe, unarguably in the public interest.

Early in 2020, I was active in criticising my medical administrators for failure to prepare for an outbreak such as COVID-19 when it was apparent that PPE was being rationed (P95’s were in short supply). I urged my colleagues to perform quantitative fit testing of our available P95 masks in early 2020 during which we found a surprising number of staff failed quantitative fit testing with the hospital issued PPE. This was something I had hypothesised after looking at the number of healthcare workers in Northern Italy catching the disease.

I withdrew from clinical practice last year out of concerns about the increasing incompetence of the health administrators and the rapidly reduced autonomy of doctors to just be able to be a doctor.

Over the last 18 months I have been increasingly concerned about the misinformation and censorship creeping into science and medicine. Fellow physicians were saving lives with early treatment and medication/supplement approaches to prevention but it was THIS that was attacked and censored! People like Dr Paul Marik, Dr Pierre Kory of the FLCCC Alliance, Dr Robert Malone, Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, Dr Michael Yeadon, Dr Vlad Zelenko, Dr Chris Martensen, Dr Eric Weinstein and others are making credible and serious warnings about the gene therapy being coerced upon our populations.

Censoring their work, and the research of experts like Dr Tess Lawrie, Dr Peter McCullough, Dr Sucharit Bhakdi and America’s Frontline Doctors is dangerous.

The Medical Board of NSW is now using intimidation, threatening doctors like myself, who share data which questions the official narrative. I don’t believe that censorship is compatible with good science and good medicine, and I believe that it needs to stop now, in the name of public health and public interest.

I would be very grateful if you could help to support me in my effort to inform as many as possible about their true health choices. My hearing is in a matter of days.

While I wish I did not have to defend my right to speak truthfully as a doctor, the song and video below captures my attitude to fighting for that right. I hope you enjoy it.

With my most sincere thanks,

Dr Paul Oosterhuis

Australia

See also:

NZ Doctors Speaking Out with Science (petition)

September 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

The optimal diet for longevity and weight loss?

By Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | August 29, 2021

It started with an experiment on locusts in 1991. David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson, two zoologists who were at the time doing research at Oxford University, wanted to know what would happen to locusts if they varied the relative proportions of protein and carbohydrate in their diets. They therefore conducted an experiment in which they fed locusts pellets containing varying proportions of protein and carbohydrate, and the results astounded them so much that they ended up determining the course of their research over the next thirty years, which they’ve chronicled in their book, Eat like the animals.

What Raubenheimer and Simpson found was that the locusts were not eating until they’d satisfied their overall need for calories. Rather they ate until they’d satisfied their need for protein, so that overall, all the locusts were consuming the same total amount of protein. This meant that the locusts on the high protein diet were consuming much less food overall than the locusts on the low protein diet. Consequently, the locusts on the high protein diet became extremely lean, while the locusts on the low protein diet became fat (which they describe in their book as equivalent to an overweight knight squeezing in to a suit of armour that is a few sizes too small).

This led Raubenheimer and Simpson to conclude that protein is the dominant macronutrient in terms of determining how much we eat – At least if we’re locusts. They wanted to see if the same pattern would be seen in other species. They started off with flies, and the results were similar, which was encouraging. But flies and locusts are relatively closely related, at least in the sense that they’re both insects. What Raubenheimer and Simpson really wanted to know was whether they’d stumbled on a general dietary principle, that could be applied to all animals.

For reasons of practicality, they next chose mice. Unlike locusts and flies, which subsist pretty much entirely on protein and carbs, mice also eat fat, so in order to get a full understanding of how macronutrients impact body composition, this variable also needed to be part of the experiment. Additionally, Raubenheimer and Simpson wanted to increase the scope of their research, to look not just at the effect of various macronutrient combinations on body composition, but also on longevity. They were also curious to see what effect differing levels of dietary fibre would have on the mice.

The experiment took five years to carry out. 856 mice were sorted in to 25 different groups, that were fed identical pellets but with varying compositions of protein, fat, carbs, and fibre. They were followed from birth to death. In terms of body composition, the results were largely as expected. The mice fed a high protein diet all became lean and muscular. When it came to the mice fed a high carb diet, however, there was more variation. Those on a high carb diet that was low in fibre grew fat, while those on a high carb diet that was high in fibre remained slim.

The fact that fibre mattered so much to the body composition of the mice on a high carb diet is interesting. It provides a reasonable explanation for why people in traditional agrarian societies usually aren’t fat, even though their diets are very high in carbohydrates, and for why the current obesity epidemic coincided with a massive increase in intake of processed foods that were rich in carbs but lacking in fibre. It also provides an explanation for why people are able to lose weight both on a paleo/carnivore/keto diet that is low in carbs, and on a vegan diet that is high in carbs but also high in fibre. Fibre appears to provide a kind of “get out of jail free” card that lets you consume lots of carbs without becoming fat.

What about fat? Fat was found to be neutral in terms of it’s effect on how much the mice ate. In other words, fat intake didn’t have any limiting effect on appetite, so the mice on a high fat low protein diet grew fat, just like the mice on a high carb low protein diet that was low in fibre. If this result were to apply also to humans (which is, of course, not necessarily the case), it would suggest that LCHF/keto diets don’t work because people are replacing carbs with fat, but rather because they’re replacing carbs with protein.

Ok, so we know how the various macronutrient combinations affected body composition. What about the effect on life span? Here, the results as presented in Eat like the animals surprised me. Alot. The longest lived mice, according to Raubenheimer and Simpson, were the ones following a high carb low protein diet. Whether they ate a high or low fibre diet didn’t seem to matter. So the fat high carb mice were actually living longer than the lean, muscular high protein mice!

Baffled by these results, I decided to go and take a look at the data, to confirm that they weren’t just trying to pull a fast one, as nutrition researchers so often do when presenting their research. Hidden away in the supplement to the published study, is this table:

Two things immediately jump out at me. The first is that the group with the longest median lifespan was on a 42% protein diet. Hardly low protein!

If instead of looking at the median lifespan, we look at the maximum, we get a different picture. We see that the extremely low protein mice did best. But their median lifespans were far more average. The authors have obviously based the claims in their book, and in their published research article, on the maximum lifespan, rather than the median. That is something I find very odd.

Personally, I assume I’m going to live an average amount of time for people like me, following my type of lifestyle. I don’t assume I’m going to be the outlier who lives to 120! The median provides a much better picture of the effect of a diet on a group than the maximum lifespan seen in a few individuals.

Apart from that, they’ve chosen an odd definition of maximum life span. They’ve defined it as the top 10% with the longest life span in each group. Which is suspicious. Why the top 10% rather than just the top individual, which would be the more common way to define “maximum”? And why not the top 20%? Or top 30%? The definition really seems to have been chosen specifically because it gave the desired result, which is what is usually referred to as “torturing the data”.

I can only imagine that they chose to base their claims on their odd definition of the maximum rather than on the more appropriate median because the maximum showed a picture more in line with their own biases, possibly shaped by an environmental or animal rights agenda, or by the fact that it’s easier to get research published if it feeds in to the dominant dogmas.

The second thing that jumps out from the table is that the mice eating a high fibre diet (i.e. with a low energy density) lived much shorter lives than the other mice. That is by far the biggest difference, much bigger than any difference induced by varying protein or carb concentrations. Does this mean fibre is deadly and should be avoided it like the plague?

Well, no. The pellets that the mice were fed only contained one fibre, cellulose, which is hardly representative of the full spectrum of fibres that exist in real food. So it’s impossible to draw any conclusions from this about the effects of fibre on longevity. What we can say is that cellulose appears to be toxic to mice.

Next, I took the data from the table and re-tabulated it in a form that would allow for easier analysis of the data, which you can see here:

So what we see is that the low protein mice do appear to live the longest, but the differences between the groups are small and hardly linear. The difference between the 5% protein mice and the 42% protein mice is only 2 weeks, equivalent to about a year and a half if translated to a human lifetime. Since there’s no evidence of a linear relationship between protein intake and life expectancy, it’s hard to say that that result isn’t just caused by chance.

If we move on to carbs, then it again isn’t clear that the high carb diet leads to a longer life. The longest lived group is actually the one consuming a moderate 29% carbs, and again, there is no evidence of a linear relationship. The same is also true for fats.

So overall, the claims the authors make about a high carb low protein diet resulting in the longest life expectancy don’t hold up to close inspection. They’ve tortured the data until they’ve gotten the result they want.

What can we conclude?

If you want to be lean, muscular, and beautiful, then you should eat a high protein diet. If you just want to lose weight and be slim, then you can either go high protein or high fiber, or do a combination of both.

Well, as long as you’re a lab mouse, that is. Whether all of this also applies to humans is harder to say for certain. The results from the experiments mentioned here and others have led Raubenheimer and Simpson to develop the “protein leverage hypothesis” of obesity, which basically states that the modern obesity epidemic is due to the fact that modern diets are lacking in protein and fibre. This has come to be one of three main hypotheses that try to explain the rise in obesity. The other two are the “carbohydrate-insulin model”, which argues that the rise in obesity is due to the high consumption of carbohydrates and their downstream effects on insulin levels and thus body fat storage, and the traditional “calories in vs calories out model”, which argues that the rise of obesity is due to the fact that modern foods taste too good and are too readily available while our lifestyles have become too sedentary. From my perspective, Raubenheimers and Simpson’s hypothesis is the one of the three that fits the known facts the best. Their book, Eat like the animals, is therefore well worth a read, even though the claims they make about diet and longevity are unsupported by the evidence they present.

September 1, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Americans have long claimed Afghanistan helped end ‘Soviet empire’ – now it’s their turn?

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | August 31, 2021

Wise men in Washington have claimed for years that defeat in Afghanistan is what pushed the Soviet Union to collapse. Now that the US has done much worse, the world is about to see whether their theories hold water.

The last US military flight out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) took off on Monday, a minute before the clocks struck midnight in Kabul. The 20-year war had come to an end, and the Taliban lit up the night skies with celebratory gunfire.

To hear President Joe Biden tell it, “the largest airlift in US history” was an “unparalleled” success, executed by the US military, diplomats, veterans and volunteers “with unmatched courage, professionalism, and resolve.”

In the minds of just about everyone else who could watch the events unfold over the past two weeks, it was a mad scramble to evacuate over 100,000 Afghans eager to emigrate, with fewer than 6,000 Americans making the flights – and several hundred being left behind for diplomats to try and save.

In fact, while 82nd Airborne Division commander General Christopher Donahue and US ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson were the last two people to step on the last plane, no American civilians were on board the last five flights out of Kabul. This was the startling admission by General Kenneth McKenzie of CENTCOM to Pentagon reporters on Monday evening.

“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” McKenzie said.

Compare that to the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, which ended in February 1989. The USSR took nine months to draw down over 100,000 troops. The last man across the Bridge of Friendship into present-day Uzbekistan was General Boris V. Gromov, who turned to a TV crew and said, “There is not a single Soviet soldier or officer left behind me.”

The government of Dr. Najibullah, whom the Soviets intervened to support against the US-backed Islamists a decade earlier, fought on for three more years – collapsing only after the USSR itself imploded and stopped sending aid. By contrast, the US-backed government in Kabul vanished into thin air before the US withdrawal was even complete.

President Ashraf Ghani flew out of Kabul on August 14, letting the Taliban take over without firing a shot. The Afghan National Army, which Biden himself touted as 300,000-strong and equipped with some of the best US weaponry, simply surrendered and melted away, all that equipment taken by Taliban as trophies. The Taliban then surrounded HKIA with checkpoints, leaving the 6,000 or so US troops there to keep out desperate Afghan civilians. There were no more disturbing images of men stuck in airplane wheels – or falling to their deaths after clinging onto planes as they took off – but something worse was yet to come.

Last Thursday, a suicide bomber allegedly belonging to the ISIS-K terrorist group made it all the way to the line of US troops before blowing himself up – killing up to 200 Afghan civilians as well as 14 US troops in the process.

Biden’s response was to order two drone strikes. One reportedly killed unspecified ISIS-K leaders in another province, while another was said to have stopped a car bomb in Kabul. Except the Afghans said it killed ten civilians, seven of them children, instead.

Yet the only member of the US military sacked during this fiasco has been the Marine colonel who spoke out publicly and demanded accountability. The leadership at the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, and the White House that got just about everything wrong when it came to Afghanistan, remains in place.

While the Biden administration is now claiming credit for ending the 20-year war, it’s clear that its grip on the narrative – both at home and abroad – has been shaken, perhaps fatally.

For years it was thought that the US aided the Islamist mujahideen in Afghanistan only after the Soviets intervened. Until January 1998, that is, when former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told a French publication that Washington’s support started months earlier, as part of his own plan to “give the USSR its Vietnam war.” Brzezinski outright boasted that the resulting conflict “brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” Many US scholars agreed.

Fast forward to the present day, and it’s the American empire that’s facing demoralization, including a political and economic crisis at home. Biden was inaugurated with 25,000 troops lining the empty streets of Washington, and declared the alleged “extremism” of his political opponents as the greatest threat to the country, now rebranded as Our Democracy. He pitched the retreat from Afghanistan to the American public as a heroic decision to end the endless war before anyone else gets hurt. It was supposed to be a feather in his cap.

With the US now exiting Afghanistan after a 20-year nation-building effort and absolutely nothing to show for it but “complete disgrace and total humiliation” – as one commentator put it – Brzezinski’s theory is about to be put to a test.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Telegram @TheNebulator.

August 31, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

T-Cells Really Are The Superstars In Fighting COVID-19

British Medical Journal | Septmber 17, 2020

Thank you to Dr Doshi for raising the profile of T-cells. Incidentally, German researchers found that a staggering 81 percent of individuals had pre-existing T-cells that cross-react with SARS-CoV-2 epitopes [1].

This fits with modelling in May by Imperial College’s Professor Friston, a world authority in mathematical modelling of complex dynamic biological systems, indicating that around 80% and 50% of the German and UK populations, respectively, are resistant to COVID-19: https://unherd.com/2020/06/karl-friston-up-to-80-not-even-susceptible-to…

Antibodies can only latch onto and help destroy pathogens outside cells and may also occasionally, paradoxically, enhance a pathogen’s ability to infect cell instead by antibody dependent ”enhancement” or ADE. It is only the T-cell that can cleverly sense and destroy pathogens inside infected cells using “sensors” which detect foreign protein fragments.

In the late 60’s the Lancet described a case of a child with agammaglobulinemia, a condition in which absence of B cells prevent them from producing antibodies, who overcame a measles infection quite normally and did not become re-infected thereafter. We now know that, although this condition can compromise immunity, in that particular case the rest of the immune functions, including T-cells, must have been perfectly up to the job of clearing infection and establishing immune memory without help from antibodies.

The importance of T-cells in fighting SARS-CoV-1 and establishing immune memory has also been well documented and discussed in a number of pre-COVID papers from 2017 and earlier [2].

Then, early in April, it was reported that two patients with agammaglobulinemia overcame COVID-19 infections without requiring ventilation [3], prompting the Italian authors to write: “This observation suggests that T‐cell response is probably important for immune protection against the virus, while B‐cell response might be unessential”.

All this should have shifted the focus of efforts towards T-cells at an early stage – the real question is why mainstream media and others continued to focus efforts and narrative on antibodies. Is it because vaccines are good at provoking antibody responses but not so great at generating T-cells? Some of the vaccines presently under trial do elicit some T-cells but it seems that neither the quantity nor variety are hugely impressive.

Does this matter? Apparently so: Research establishments including Yale found that in mild or asymptomatic cases, many T-cells are produced. These were highly varied, responding not just to parts of the Spike, S protein or Receptor Binding Domain but to many other parts of the virus [1, 4-6]. Notably, in these mild cases there were few or no detectable antibodies.

Conversely, the severely ill produced few T-cells with less variety but had plenty of antibodies. What is also of interest is that men produced fewer T-cells than women, and unlike women, their T-cell response reduced with age [7].

So why are some people unable to mount a good protective T-cell response? The key to this question might be a 10-year-old Danish study led by Carsten Geisler, head of the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen [8].

Geisler noted that “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,”, and if there is an inadequate vitamin D level, “they won’t even begin to mobilize.” In other words, adequate vitamin D is critically important for the activation of T-cells from their inactive naïve state.

The question of whether T-cells might also need a continuing supply of vitamin D to prevent the T-cell exhaustion and apoptosis observed in some serious COVID-19 cases [9] deserves further research.

High levels of vitamin D are also critical for first line immune defences including physical mucosal defences, human antiviral production, modulating cytokines, reducing blood clotting and a whole host of other important immune system functions [10]. The obese, diabetics and people of BAME origin are far more deficient in vitamin D and men have lower levels than women [10].

Another intriguing clue is that Japan has the highest proportion of elderly on the planet but despite lack of lockdowns, little mask wearing and high population densities in cities, it escaped with few COVID deaths. Could this, at least in part, be because of extraordinarily high vitamin D levels of over 30 ng/ml in 95% of the active elderly [11]? By comparison, UK average levels are below 20ng/ml [10].

Vitamin D is made in the skin from the action of UV sunlight, food usually being a poor source, but the Japanese diet includes unusually high levels. Sunny countries near the equator (e.g. Nigeria, Singapore, Sri Lanka) also have very low COVID related deaths.

The results of the first vitamin D intervention double blind RCT for COVID was published on 29 August by researchers in Córdoba, Spain. This very well conducted study produced spectacular outcomes for the vitamin D group (n=50), virtually eliminating the need for ICU (reducing it by 96%) and eliminating deaths (8% in the n=26 control group). Although this was a small trial, the ICU results are so dramatic that they are statistically highly significant [12].

Substantially more vitamin D is required for optimal immune function than for bone health. It seems Dr Fauci is not ignorant of this, having apparently confirmed on TV and by email that he takes 6,000 IU daily! (see Dr John Campbell on YouTube Vitamin D and pandemic science, 16 September 2020). Meanwhile the US’s health body continues to recommend only 600-800 IU and the UK’s, only 400 IU.

It is high time for joined up solid scientific rationale to overthrow mainstream narratives based on an alternative “science” controlled by industry interests/politics. Beda M Stadler, the former Director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Bern, a biologist and Professor Emeritus, certainly appears to think so (see Ivor Cummins Ep91 Emeritus Professor of Immunology… Reveals Crucial Viral Immunity Reality on YouTube, 28 July 2020).

In the same way that prior infections protect us against future infections by means of cross-reacting T-cells, overcoming COVID-19 naturally offers potential for greater protection against future coronaviruses. Vaccines have their place but so do our amazingly complex, sophisticated, highly effective immune systems which have evolved over millennia to protect us from a world teeming with trillions of pathogens.

References

  1. Annika Nelde, Tatjana Bilich, Jonas S. Heitmann et al. SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T-cell recognition, 16 June 2020, Research Square https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1%20
  2. William J.Liuabc et al. T-cell immunity of SARS-CoV: Implications for vaccine development against MERS-CoV.Antiviral Research. Volume 137, January 2017, Pages 82-92 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2016.11.006
  3. Soresina, A, Moratto, D, Chiarini, M, et al. Two X‐linked agammaglobulinemia patients develop pneumonia as COVID‐19 manifestation but recover. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2020; 31: 565– 569. https://doi.org/10.1111/pai.13263
  4. Avraham Unterman, et al. Single-Cell Omics Reveals Dyssynchrony of the Innate and Adaptive Immune System in Progressive COVID-19. medRxiv 2020.07.16.20153437; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.16.20153437
  5. Leticia Kuri-Cervantes, et al. Immunologic perturbations in severe COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 infection. bioRxiv 2020.05.18.101717; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.18.101717
  6. Floriane Gallais, Aurelie Velay, Marie-Josee Wendling, Charlotte Nazon, Marialuisa Partisani, Jean Sibilia, Sophie Candon, Samira Fafi-Kremer. Intrafamilial Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 Induces Cellular Immune Response without Seroconversion. medRxiv 2020.06.21.20132449; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.21.20132449
  7. Takahashi T, Wong P, Ellingson M, et al. Sex differences in immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 that underlie disease outcomes. Preprint. medRxiv. 2020;2020.06.06.20123414. Published 2020 Jun 9. doi:10.1101/2020.06.06.20123414
  8. Von Essen MR, Kongsbak M, Schjerling P, Olgaard K, Odum N, Geisler C. Vitamin D controls T cell antigen receptor signaling and activation of human T cells. Nat Immunol. 2010;11(4):344-349. doi:10.1038/ni.1851
  9. Diao B, Wang C, Tan Y, et al. Reduction and Functional Exhaustion of T Cells in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Front Immunol. 2020;11:827. Published 2020 May 1. doi:10.3389/fimmu.2020.00827
  10. King, E.. The Role of Vitamin D deficiency in COVID-19 related deaths in BAME, Obese and Other High-risk Categories. 2020, June 17. https://doi.org/10.31232/osf.io/73whx
  11. Nakamura K. Vitamin D insufficiency in Japanese populations: from the viewpoint of the prevention of osteoporosis. J Bone Miner Metab. 2006;24(1):1-6. doi:10.1007/s00774-005-0637-0
  12. Marta Entrenas Castillo et al. Effect of calcifediol treatment and best available therapy versus best available therapy on intensive care unit admission and mortality among patients hospitalized for COVID-19: A pilot randomized clinical study. The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Volume 203, October 2020, 105751. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2020.105751

August 31, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

15-year-old Palestinian boy brutally attacked by Israeli settlers

Defence for Children Palestine | August 27, 2021

15-year-old Tareq was brutally attacked by Israeli settlers and survived to share his story.

August 31, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Who would kill children to save the planet?

A new eco-movement would sacrifice millions of lives

BY TOM CHIVERS | UNHERD | AUGUST 13, 2021

Two things. First, economic growth saves children’s lives. That is one of the most basic, starkest facts about the modern world.

Second, there is a thing called the “degrowth movement”, which wants to stop economic growth. And, yes, this would lead almost inevitably to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of children a day.

Let’s deal with that first point first. For most of history, somewhere around a third of children died before their fifth birthday. That awful number has dropped enormously, but even now, it’s nearly one child in 25.

As child mortality has gone down, so has global poverty — while global economic output has increased. Correlation is not causation, of course – but this isn’t just true at a global level, but at a country-by-country level. Nowadays, if your country is rich, your children are more likely to live. That is amazingly obvious on this chart. If you live in the rich Iceland, for example, your child is 60 or 70 times less likely to die before its fifth birthday than if you live in the poor Central African Republic or Democratic Republic of Congo, where about one child in every 10 dies in its first five years.

And on that second point: some people really think that that economic growth should stop, right now. Jason Hickel is an anthropologist and one of the key voices in what is known as the “degrowth” movement. He argues that — in rich countries, at least1 — we ought to stop aiming for economic growth immediately. He thinks that “green” growth, the idea that we can grow our economies while reducing carbon emissions, is a chimera, or at least that it cannot happen fast enough to avoid disastrous outcomes from climate change.

Hickel, of course, denies that economic growth saves lives. In fact, he doubly denies it. First, he denies that global poverty has gone down as a result of economic growth. In 2019, he argued that all those famous charts showing a huge decline in global poverty are false, because they focus on very extreme poverty — people living on the equivalent of $1.90 a day or less. If you look at some more reasonable threshold of “poverty”, he says, such as $15 a day, the decline disappears.

This is straightforwardly untrue, for the record. Whatever threshold you use, people are getting richer. People have generally shifted from lower incomes to higher incomes, and as a result fewer children are dying.

And secondly, Hickel denies that economic growth does save children’s lives: or, rather, that it does beyond a certain, quite low level. “Past a certain point, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down or becomes irrelevant,” he says. “After that, what matters is distribution and access to public services.”

But this doesn’t seem to be true either. If it were, you’d see that very poor countries have consistently high child mortality, but that as you reach the middle-income and rich countries, it would be much more mixed. But in fact there’s still a strong relationship, and middle-income countries like China and Brazil have much higher infant mortality than rich countries like the UK and Japan. If you live in Brazil, there’s about a one in 60 chance that your child will die before its fifth birthday. In China, one in 100. In the UK, it’s way down at one in 250-ish.

You could look at the reduction in child mortality over time, as the world has become richer, as one of the great success stories of our time. In a way you’d be right to do so, but it is a hugely unfinished story. Children are still dying at an awful, unacceptable rate of about 14,000 a day — Max Roser of Our World In Data describes it as “equivalent to a crash of a jumbo jet with only children on board, every hour of every day of the year”.

Nonetheless, it is true that economic growth appears to have saved millions of children’s lives. That 14,000 a day would be something more like 100,000 a day, if children were dying at the rate they used to.

Also note that “economic growth” doesn’t necessarily mean “free-market capitalism”. As Noah Smith points out, a lot of the reduction in global poverty has been about smart government action (especially in Latin America), or China’s complicated industrial and economic reform, not simply free-market policies – although at the very least it’s fair to say that global capitalism hasn’t got in the way.

But this broadly positive story is a closed book to Hickel and the degrowth movement. It’s instinctively difficult to understand why anyone would want to deny it, but I have two theories.

One is that it’s very hard to acknowledge that things can get better without being good. It’s a common problem. It is, for instance, almost certainly true that the UK is much less racist and sexist than it used to be. But it’s also clearly true that there are real problems that continue to exist. It is extremely hard to say “the UK has become better with regards to racism and sexism” without people hearing “the UK is not racist or sexist”.

If you’re Jason Hickel, you might see people arguing that poverty has decreased, and assume that they mean “and therefore global poverty is no longer a problem”. That is, of course, absolutely not the case.

The second hypothesis is a more complicated one — and has to do with something called “prevalence-induced concept change”. Imagine that you have dedicated your life to some problem: say, reducing littering in a local park. You work really hard. You set up a charity and solicit donations; you put together a workforce. And, bit by bit, you successfully reduce the problem. The park becomes a bit less litter-filled. What do you do? Do you say to your charity’s staff, “The park is doing a bit better now, we probably don’t need so many of you. And we should probably reduce our demands for donations, as well”?

Human nature being what it is, probably not. More likely (and as happens in laboratory settings), you will simply start focusing on smaller and smaller things. Before, you had shopping trolleys in the pond and a dead sheep in the playground, and you focused on them. But now that they’ve gone, your attention will focus on the crisp packets and fag butts. Partly that’s because you now have the attention to spare, because the bigger problems have been solved; but it’s also partly because, if you start saying “actually the situation is a bit better now”, it will be harder to rally support for your cause.

I think this is a really important driver of human behaviour. It is very hard to ever admit things are getting better along any axis, because if you do, it feels like you’re saying: “So you can stop working hard to fix this problem.”

Similarly, if you’re Jason Hickel and you’ve dedicated your life to fighting global poverty (and to saying that global poverty is all because of capitalism and colonialism and that economic growth is bad), then it will be really inconvenient if someone says: “Actually, global poverty has decreased significantly, that reduction seems to be correlated with economic growth, and it has had amazing positive outcomes such as a huge reduction in child mortality.” It will be very tempting to find ways of ignoring that reality.

I worry, though, that it is counterproductive to tell people that all their hard work improving some situation has had no effect. If all those decades of buying low-energy lightbulbs and reducing flights and eating less meat have not improved the climate, then why shouldn’t I just stop bothering? If all those anti-racism campaigns and hate-speech laws and so on made no difference, what’s the point? And in the case of poverty, if economic growth doesn’t reduce global poverty, then it does indeed make sense to give up on growth altogether. But in reality, economic growth does reduce global poverty, and reduced poverty saves children’s lives.

But the degrowth movement is right, in one sense. Growth almost certainly can’t carry on forever. If the economy grows at 2% a year every year, which it roughly has for the last century or so, then it doubles in size every 35 years.

That’s not sustainable in the long term. In 8,250 years — as Holden Karnofsky of the Open Philanthropy Project points out — the economy would have grown to 3*1070 (that is, a 3 followed by 70 zeroes) times its current size. There are, for context, about one-third that many atoms in our galaxy. And 8,250 years isn’t very long: there are cities which have been around for longer.

Perhaps growth will continue into the far future. I could imagine some weird universe of simulated worlds and uploaded humans — and indeed others have. But probably, the more likely outcome is that growth slows or stops or reverses in the next few centuries.

The question, of course, is when it should stop. I, for one, would rather wait until the children stop dying so much. Hickel and the degrowth movement think it should be sooner. But if they want to make that case honestly, they should admit the reality of all the dead children.

FOOTNOTES

  1. It’s worth noting that Hickel doesn’t think we should stop aiming for growth everywhere: just in rich countries. But rich countries that buy much of the goods produced in poor countries, driving their growth, so that would be a very difficult needle to thread.

August 30, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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