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When Ben Bradlee and James Angleton Obstructed Justice

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 5, 2021

On October 12, 1964, a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer was brutally shot and killed while walking along the C&O Canal Trail near the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. The police charged a black man named Ray Crump, Jr., with the crime. Since the murder took place in the nation’s capital, the trial was in a federal district court.

Meyer had been married for 13 years to a high CIA official named Cord Meyer. In 1958, they divorced.

Crump vehemently professed his innocence of the crime. Convinced of his innocence, a renowned Washington, D.C., criminal-defense attorney named Dovey Roundtree agreed to represent him for free.

At Crump’s trial, the federal prosecutor summoned a man named Ben Bradlee to the witness stand as the prosecution’s first witness. At the time, Bradlee was serving as the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek. He would later go on to become executive editor of the Washington Post. Bradlee’s wife was Mary Meyer’s sister.

After Bradlee took the witness stand, the prosecutor, Alfred Hantman, asked him the following question: “Now besides the usual articles of Mrs. Meyer’s avocation, did you find there any other articles of her personal property?” Bradlee replied, “There was a pocketbook there,” adding that it contained “keys, a wallet, cosmetics, and pencils.”

It was lie, or, more precisely, it was what is called a “half-truth,” which is actually worse than a lie because it uses the truth as a way to deceive. What Bradlee failed to reveal in response to the prosecutor’s question was a secret that he was determined to protect: that he had also found the personal diary of Mary Meyer.

Unbeknownst to the prosecutor or to Crump’s defense attorney was that on the night of the murder, Bradlee had gone to Meyer’s home to retrieve her diary. When he arrived there, he encountered a man named James Jesus Angleton burglarizing the home in his own attempt to retrieve Meyer’s diary.

Angleton was head of counter-intelligence for the CIA. His wife and Meyer had been good friends. Bradlee found the diary and turned it over to Angleton, who then proceeded to destroy it.

Both Bradlee and Angleton had to have known that they were obstructing justice and destroying evidence in a criminal case. They both had a legal and a moral duty to immediately turn that diary over to the police. After all, the diary could very well have contained clues as to who the real murderer was.

Suppose, for example, that Meyer had seen someone following her and had put that information and the description of the stalker into her diary. That would have been important information that the police could have followed up on.

As it turned out, Meyer had been having a secret affair with President John F. Kennedy in the months prior to his assassination. By all accounts it was an extremely intimate affair, one in which Kennedy appears to have actually fallen in love with Meyer, who had been a longtime peace activist. Given that Kennedy had thrown down the gauntlet before the U.S. national-security establishment with his famous Peace Speech at American University in June 1963 in which he declared an end to the Cold War, it is entirely possible, even likely, that Kennedy was talking to Meyer about the vicious war in which he was engaged with the U.S. national-security establishment. Meyer might well have included Kennedy’s sentiments in her diary.

In fact, Meyer alluded to this possibility in a telephone call after the Kennedy assassination to LSD guru Timothy Leary, with whom she was friends, in which she sobbingly and fearfully stated, “They couldn’t control him any more. He was changing too fast… They’ve covered everything up.”

As Peter Janney detailed in Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace, an excellent book that I highly recommend, Mary’s murder had all the characteristics of a highly professional hit job along with a very sophisticated frame-up of an innocent man.

By the time the secrets surrounding the discovery and the destruction of Meyer’s diary were disclosed, the statute of limitations had presumably run on such crimes as obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, perjury, and conspiracies to commit these crimes.

Prosecutor Hantman later stated that he had been “totally unaware of who Mary Meyer was or what her connections were,” and that having that knowledge “could have changed everything.”

D.C. Police Detective Bernie Crooke later stated, “I’d have been very upset at the time if I’d known that the deceased’s diary had been destroyed.”

Wikipedia states, “In her 2009 autobiography, Justice Older than the Law (reissued in 2019 as Mighty Justice), defense counsel Dovey Roundtree expressed shock at learning of the diary’s significance from Bradlee’s book. ‘How differently my line of cross-examination would have run had I been aware, on July 20, 1965, of the story Mr. Bradlee told thirty years later in his autobiography… James Angleton’s awareness of the diary’s existence and his interest in finding it, reading it, and destroying it – all of that unsettled me deeply when I read Mr. Bradlee’s 1995 account, as did his insistence that the diary was a private document… Had I been aware of it, I would have felt compelled to pursue it.’”

On July 29, 1965, the jury found Ray Crump, Jr., not guilty.

In a deathbed interview in February 2001, Cord Meyer was asked who he believed had murdered his ex-wife. Recanting an earlier statement that he had made in a 1980 book he had written that pointed to a “sexually motivated assault by a single individual,” Meyer responded, “The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy.”

March 6, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Believing in impossible things – and COVID19

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | March 6, 2021

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

1: ‘The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity Is Deadly and Dangerous’ https://www.self.com/story/coronavirus-herd-immunity

Since COVID19 first hurtled over the horizon, before landing upon us all with great force, I find that I have been asked to believe in many impossible things. First, I was told that attempting to create herd immunity was not achievable. It would also be extremely dangerous and would inevitably result in many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

Then the vaccines arrived at fantastical speed and I was told that mass vaccination, by creating herd immunity, would be the factor that would allow us to conquer COVID19 and return to normal life. I am not entirely sure which of these things is impossible, but one of them must be.

2: ‘Vaccines, on the other hand, are believed to induce stronger and longer lasting immunity.’ https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/does-the-vaccine-give-better-protection-than-having-fought-off-the-virus_uk_601c0663c5b62bf30754c563

I was then told the vaccine would provide greater immunity than being infected with COVID19. Which was interesting. I am not sure if this is actually impossible, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could make such statements after about three hundred people had actually been studied, and just two months had passed.

At the time I was aware of two people proven to have been re-infected with COVID19, out of about ten million cases. So, getting infected certainly seemed to provide a pretty good degree of immunity. A re-infection rate of 0.00005%

I also know that vaccinations can only ever really create an attenuated response. Whereas a full-blown infection triggers a full-blown immune response. So, I think it is pretty close to impossible that vaccination can provide greater protection than that from getting the actual disease. Which is why I think it is utterly bonkers we are actually vaccinating people who have circulating antibodies in their blood.

3: ‘Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates.’ https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/universal-mask-use-could-save-130000-lives-by-the-end-of-february-new-modeling-study-says/

I am also being asked to believe that face masks are essential to stop the spread of COVID19 and prevent millions of deaths worldwide. The use of masks to prevent viral spread is something I actually researched in depth before COVID19 arrived (for various reasons), as did the WHO. They looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions for prevention of influenza, and produced a hefty report, which covered the use of masks.

Yes, I agree, influenza is not exactly the same as COVID19. But it is pretty much the same size of virus, and it is thought to spread in much the same way. Anyway, the WHO reported their views on masks in 2019, using data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – the gold standard.

‘Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.’ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1

Since then, there has only been one RCT done on COVID19 transmission, in Denmark. It did not find any significant benefit from masks in reducing spread. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/

Never has a trial been subjected to such immediate and hostile reporting. Fact-checkers (whoever exactly they might be, or what understanding they have of medical research) immediately attacked it. One such, called PolitiFact, made the following judgement, which amused me.

“Social media posts claim, “The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.”

The study concluded that wearing masks did not offer a very high level of personal protection to mask wearers in communities where wearing masks was not common practice. The study noted, however, that the data suggested masks provided some degree of self-protection.

We rate this claim Mostly False. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/”

So, according to PolitiFact, masks provided self-protection, but not personal protection. An interesting concept. Note to self, try to find out the difference between these two things.

In fact, this was just one of hundreds of critical articles, with self-anointed fact checkers clearly desperate to pull it to pieces. Yes, we have now entered a world when political fact checkers feel free to attack and contradict the findings of scientific papers, using such scientific terms as ‘Mostly false.’ Maybe they should have called it ‘very unique’ at the same time. Or, like the curate’s egg, that was good in parts.

Ignoring the modern-day Spanish Inquisition, and their ill-informed criticisms, I will simply call this study. More evidence that face masks don’t work. Perhaps someone will come along with a study proving that face masks work. So far … nada. Another impossible thing.

4: As of the 2nd March 2021 there have been 122,953 deaths from COVID19 in the UK.

Unlike many people I have actually written COVID19 on death certificates. Mostly they have been educated guesses. On at least five of them, early last year, there had been no positive swab to go on. So, I was just going on probable symptoms. As were many other doctors at the time.

Which means that you can take five off that number for starters. Although, of course, once written, that is very much, that … when it comes to death certificates. In fact, early on in the pandemic, we were probably underdiagnosing as often as over diagnosing deaths from COVID19. Although no-one will ever know. With no positive swab – and few swabs were being done – and almost no post-mortems – you were simply guessing.

As for now … NOW we have the very strange concept that any death within twenty-eight days of a positive COVID19 swab is recorded as a COVID19 death. Simultaneously, I am told that if I have a positive test at work, and then take some time off work (I can never remember the latest guidance). I am not to have another swab for ninety days.

How so? Because it now seems (I actually knew this a long time ago), that swabs can remain positive for months after the infection has been and gone [or was maybe never there to begin with]. Or to put this another way, you can have a positive swab long after you have been infected – and recovered. There are just some bits of virus up your nose that can be magnified, through the wonders of the PCR test, into a positive result.

Which means that an elderly person, infected months ago, can be admitted to hospital for any reason whatsoever. The they can have a positive swab – everyone is swabbed. Then they can die, from whatever it was they were admitted for in the first place. Then, they will be recorded as a COVID19 death.

In truth, this is just the start of impossible things when it comes to the number of COVID19 deaths. Do not get me started on PCR cycle numbers, and false positives. We would be here all day.

Equally, how many people have truly died of COVID19, instead of simply with COVID19? If I painted a blue circle on your forehead, then you died, I would not say that you died of a blue circle painted on your forehead. I would say that you died with a blue circle painted on your forehead.

5: The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

This was actually the headline title from an article in TIME magazine. The article went on to state that ‘The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.’  https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Death and misery. Hmmmm, I might make this the title of my next book. Bound to be a best seller.

Yes, Sweden has been attacked from all sides with terrific venom, for holding out against imposing severe lockdown. How dare they… follow the WHO’s initial advice. That everyone else ignored.

So, have they done well with regard to COVID19 deaths? Not particularly. Have they done badly? Not particularly. On Worldometer they rank twenty fourth highest for deaths per million of the population. Which is pretty much bang on average for Western Europe.

One reason why they might not have appeared to do better is that, in the year 2019, they had their lowest rate of death for at least ten years. Three and a half thousand less in total than in 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ . In Norway, a country  used to beat Sweden with, due to their very low COVID19 deaths there was no difference in death rate between 2018 and 2019. To be blunt, the elderly population in Sweden had some catching up to do.

Once you factor this in, the much-lauded difference in deaths, between Norway and Sweden, kind of disappears.

‘Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic. Excess mortality from COVID-19 may be less pronounced than previously perceived in Sweden, and mortality displacement might explain part of the observed findings.’ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v1.full

In absolute figures. Sweden had

  • 92,185 deaths in 2018
  • 88,766 deaths in 2019
  • 97,941 deaths in 2020

A drop, then a rebound. Perhaps another way to look at the figures is to compare 2020 with a bad Swedish year in the past. In 2012, 91,938 people died. However, the population was lower at 9.5 million vs 10.2 million. So:

  • The absolute death rate in 2012 was 0.957%.
  • The absolute death rate in 2020 was 0.969%.

The difference between 2012 and 2020 is 0.012%. That is 120 extra deaths per million of the population, which is 1,224 people in population of 10.2 million. The statistics tell us that twelve thousand people died from COVID19 in Sweden. Maybe you can make all that add up. Frankly, I find it impossible.

6: Lockdowns have worked.

Before COVID19 came along, no country had ever attempted a lockdown – ever. So, no-one had any idea if such a thing could possibly work. There was no evidence, from anywhere, to support its use.

It was the Chinese who started it, and who claimed great success for their jackboot lockdown tactics. Well, they convinced me… not. Frankly, if I had to choose a country from which to obtain high quality, unbiased information, about anything, China would not feature in my top one hundred and ninety-four countries

But there you go, lockdown worked under the control of the kind and caring CCP. Hoorah, cheering all round, and the first person to stop cheering gets shot. Well, we don’t want any damned nay-sayers, do we? After that, according to almost everything I have read, everywhere, it worked for everyone else too. Remarkable.

Yes, it is certainly true you can find countries that locked down, closed their borders, and kept the rates low. That, however, is not proof of anything at all. The scientific method requires a little more rigour than this.

In fact, the main thing that scientific rigour requires is that you specifically do not go around looking for facts that support your hypothesis. Because that, I am afraid, is the exact opposite of science. What you need to do, instead, is to go around looking for facts that disprove your hypothesis. This is what Karl Popper called falsification.

For example, my hypothesis is that “all swans are white”. I seek, and find, only white swans. So, this makes my hypothesis is correct? No. What science requires you do is to hunt tirelessly for black swans. If you never find one, fine. However, you need to be aware that the moment you do, your hypothesis has just been disproven. In real life things are very rarely as simple as this, but that is the basic principle.

However, with lockdown (and I recognise that no two countries locked down in the same way) the hypothesis is that countries which did not lockdown will have higher rate of death for COVID19 than those that did.

So, let us look, first, at the countries with the highest rate of COVID19. Excluding very small countries e.g., San Marino, or Gibraltar, we have, in descending order of deaths per million of the population https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .

  • Czechia
  • Belgium
  • Slovenia
  • UK
  • Italy
  • Montenegro
  • Portugal
  • USA
  • Hungary
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • North Macedonia
  • Bulgaria
  • Spain
  • Mexico
  • Peru
  • Croatia
  • Slovakia
  • Panama
  • France

Every single country in this list carried out fairly strict lockdowns. The UK, apparently, has the strictest lockdown in the world, this winter.

Four countries that have been roundly criticized for having far less restrictive lockdowns are: Sweden, Japan, Belarus and Nicaragua (Realistically there are others, in poorer countries, where lockdowns have not happened – because they can’t afford it)

In these four ‘non-lockdowns’ countries, the death rate is, on average 391 per million.

In the top twenty ‘lockdown’ countries, the death rate is, on average 1,520 per million.

The only non-lockdown country in the top ninety for death rates is Sweden. It comes just below France, at number twenty-four.

Now, if the difference between lockdown and non-lockdown countries were ten per cent, or even fifty per cent, I would fully accept that there are many other variables that could explain such finding away. Although, of course, we should really look at a higher rate in the non-lockdown countries, not a lower rate.

Yet although this evidence is out there, I am being asked to believe that lockdowns work. At least the WHO agrees with me on this impossible thing. As Dr David Nabarro, the WHO special envoy on COVID19 said:

“We really do appeal to all world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary method of control,” he said.

“Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organization-coronavirus-lockdown-advice/12753688

Lockdowns, according to the WHO, in unguarded moments, have just one consequence. They make poor people an awful lot poorer.

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If this is granted all else follows.’

March 6, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

How do you Extinguish a Lithium Battery Fire?

By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | March 4, 2021

A few weeks ago I asked a fire fighter friend how they extinguish electric vehicle battery fires.

He said “Oh you mean like a Tesla or something? The answer is you can’t. You cordon off the area, and spray a fine mist of water on the fire to try to keep the temperature down until it finishes burning. Takes a few days until it is safe”.

The problem is, besides being highly flammable, lithium is literally the lightest metal. At atomic number 3, it is the first element in the periodic table which is a solid. The two previous elements, hydrogen and helium, are both gasses.

Lithium is so light, it floats on water (lithium density 0.543, half the density of water). Lithium is entirely happy to blaze away while sitting on the surface of a puddle of water.

So if you try to smother a lithium fire with sand, the sand sinks to the bottom, and the lithium floats on top.

Lithium melts at 180C / 356F, and burns at 2000C / 3632F – almost more than hot enough to melt steel, more than hot enough to destroy most composites and metals like aluminium.

The fumes from a burning lithium fire are highly toxic, capable of causing death or long term dementia like brain injuries – so you need to keep members of the public at a safe distance. Fire fighters need to wear respirators if they approach the flame.

There are chemical extinguishers, but my fire station friend didn’t seem to think much of them, at least not for large lithium fires.

I guess you might be able to smother a large lithium fire by dropping a Chernobyl style sarcophagus made of steel on top of it, or possibly made of some other material which could handle the heat. Then you could fill the sarcophagus with an inert gas like Argon, or just wait for the oxygen to run out. But equipping fire departments with a sarcophagus device large enough to smother an EV fire, and the equipment required to deploy it, would be an expensive exercise.

What does your fire department do when they have to extinguish a large lithium fire? I’d love to know, so I can tell Australian fire departments. Cordon off the area and spray a mist of water at the fire for a few days would be a serious inconvenience or worse, if the burning vehicle was say blocking an important road junction, on the high street, or in someone’s residential or workplace garage or workshop.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

The CDC’s Mask Mandate Study: Debunked

Paul E Alexander MSc PhD | AIER | March 4, 2021

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published a February 2020 MMWR report entitled “Decline in COVID-19 Hospitalization Growth Rates Associated with Statewide Mask Mandates — 10 States, March–October 2020.” This report focused on 10 sites that had been included in the Covid-19 Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network.

This CDC report described a decrease in hospitalization rates of growth of up to 5.6% in adults (18-65 years old) and attributed this to the use of masking and/or the introduction of mask mandates in the various sites. These rates were compared to those obtained from a 4-week period of time prior to the introduction of mask mandates. In so doing, and by way of regression analysis, the reduced rates of hospitalization were attributed to the introduction of statewide mask mandates.

Firstly, the initial publication by the CDC (February 5/February 12th, 2021) was plagued with important inaccuracies that were then fortunately addressed in an updated erratum (February 26th 2021). We applaud the CDC for taking the steps required to correct these errors. Reporting done by the CDC, which is generally considered as the premier public health agency in the US, must be of the highest quality, particularly since advice rendered by the CDC is also relied upon worldwide.

En face, CDC’s conclusion on mandates might appear to make sense unless one is familiar with the scientific data pertaining to the ineffectiveness of masking for prevention of the spread of Covid-19 (e.g. references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) in which case the findings in fact contradict most of what is now known. The CDC’s conclusion might have made more sense if the real-world evidence we have about mandates did not actually exist (e.g. references 1, 2, 3, 4).

Does the CDC really think that masks prevent the wearer from getting Covid, or from spreading it to others? The CDC admits that the scientific evidence is mixed, as their most recent report glosses over many unanswered scientific questions. But even if it were clear – or clear enough – as a scientific matter that masks properly used could reduce transmission, it is a leap to conclude that a governmental mandate to wear masks will do more good than harm, even as a strictly biological or epidemiological matter. Mask mandates may not be followed; masks worn as a result of a mandate may not be used properly; some mask practices like double masking can do harm, particularly to children; and even if a mask mandate results in some increased number of masks being worn and worn properly, the mandate and the associated publicity may reduce the public’s attention to other more effective safeguards, such as meticulous hygiene practices.

Thus, it is not surprising that the CDC’s own recent conclusion on the use of nonpharmaceutical measures such as face masks in pandemic influenza, warned that scientific “evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission…” Moreover, in the WHO’s 2019 guidance document on nonpharmaceutical public health measures in a pandemic, they reported as to face masks that “there is no evidence that this is effective in reducing transmission…” Similarly, in the fine print to a recent double-blind, double-masking simulation the CDC stated that “The findings of these simulations [supporting mask usage] should neither be generalized to the effectiveness … nor interpreted as being representative of the effectiveness of these masks when worn in real-world settings.”

Just look at the data from Jonas F. Ludvigsson that is emerging from Sweden in children 16 years old and under when preschools and schools were kept open and there were no face masks though social distancing was fostered. The result was zero (0) deaths from COVID-19 in 1.95 million Swedish children across the study period. The number of infections was exceedingly low, the number of hospitalizations was exceedingly low, and there were no deaths in children with COVID-19, all this despite not wearing masks due to no schoolwide mask mandate. Is this merely a perfunctory and legally prudent warning by the CDC that “your mileage may vary?” Or is it more like a hot mutual fund telling you that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” What is the CDC really trying to say about face masks and why so much confusion?

We have reservations about the methodology employed and conclusions drawn in the CDC double mask study which we will address in a separate discussion but again their disclaimer as noted above: “The findings of these simulations should neither be generalized to the effectiveness … nor interpreted as being representative of the effectiveness of these masks when worn in real-world settings” seeds thoughts of doubt in relation to the value of this report. Why then, would the CDC even bother to publicize these findings? What is the public health impact? What is the benefit?

Moreover, the CDC even indicated in the double mask study that there are harms e.g. impediments to breathing, due to double masking. Indeed, the harms (e.g. reference 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) are very real when face masks are used yet are often dismissed and not even discussed by the media medical establishment or government bureaucrats.

In relation to this, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID created appreciable confusion by initially suggesting and encouraging the use of double masks instead of one. Dr. Fauci then reversed his statements on the use of double masks. Dr. Fauci’s advisories took on a form of double peak which has an appearance of randomness or worse, capriciousness. This can only distort the desperately needed advice by the public at large; unsound advice can be very damaging on several levels. This random form of advice-giving was not reflective of a single event. For example, while touting vaccines as the only way for society to emerge back to normal from the pandemic, Dr. Fauci is now advising that in fact, even with vaccinations, people should still not attend public gatherings and restaurants, and that such restrictions could be in place until end of 2021. While changes in advice are required when new data emerge, we hold that this was definitely not the case with respect to masking (or vaccination for that matter).

Below are the main scientific shortcomings or analytical ambiguities in the CDC’s most recent MMWR report on mask mandates:

  1. The CDC’s main evidence, a regression study based on selected sites in ten states with masking mandates from March through October 2020, did not include the four-month period from November through February 2021 (which might have controlled for other possibly contributing factors such as sunlight and vitamin D) and did not appear to take into account the possible effects of such factors as school closures or changes in social distancing practices. We point out that during the period of March 22, 2020 to October 12, 2020 this is actually representative of the spring, summer and early fall seasons when outdoor activity increases. Of course, this leads to more exposure to sunlight with the attendant generation of active vitamin D metabolites, while at the same time there are marked reductions in confinement within enclosed spaces which would necessarily reduce the opportunities for transmission of disease. A more stringent approach to the analyses, including the use of all available data (i.e. not excluding a full 4-month period of time), might have led conceivably to a conclusion that there was in fact no significant effect of mask mandates on disease or case rates. And in concert with the CDC’s disclaimers noted above, the CDC indicated in their own report that the conclusions described in the study in favour of masking were, at best, only moderately reliable.
  2. The CDC analyzed changes in hospitalizations, but did not compare infection, disease, or death rates between states with and without masking mandates. Available evidence of that nature suggests that the course of the pandemic was not affected by state masking mandates.
  3. The CDC used a least squares fit regression analysis (OLS) (using “x” as mask wearing and the dependent/outcome to the “y” variable which is the number of Covid cases) despite the fact that simple regression is not the optimal approach and, we believe, should be replaced with Orthogonal Distance Regression (ODR) which would yield more reliable findings.
  4. Based on the reporting, it appears that the CDC’s regression analysis was based on data from limited sites within a state, and not the entire state.
  5. The CDC report failed to address/discuss recent potent research data based on high-quality case-controlled analyses, as well as a high-quality Danish randomized controlled trial study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine which found no statistically or clinically significant impact of mask-use in regard to the rate of infection with SARS CoV-2, or a recent NEJM publication (prospective cohort CHARM study) where researchers studied SARS-CoV-2 transmission among Marine recruits at Parris Island (n=1,848) who volunteered, underwent a 2-week quarantine at home that was followed by a second 2-week quarantine in a closed college campus setting. The predominant finding was that despite the very strict and enforced quarantine, including 2 full weeks of supervised confinement and then enforced social distancing and masking protocols, the rate of transmission was not reduced and in fact seemed to be higher than expected, despite the strong experimental design and the rigor associated with carrying out the study.
  6. The CDC report does not address and contextualize substantial “real world” experience showing that adding mandates where there is already substantial mask wearing has little effect, and that mask mandates that were followed can be correlated with increased case counts (e.g. references 1, 2, 3, 4). This obviously may not be cause and effect, but the same criticism can be levied against correlations or regressions going in the opposite direction.

Based on our assessment of this CDC mask mandate report, we find ourselves troubled by the study methods themselves and by extension, the conclusions drawn. The real-world evidence exists and indicates that in various countries and US states, when mask mandates were followed consistently, there was an inexorable increase in case counts. We have seen that in states and countries that already have a high frequency of mask wearing that adding mandates had little effect. There was no (zero) benefit of adding a mask mandate in Austria, Germany, France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy, and states like California, Hawaii, and Texas. Importantly, we do not ascribe a cause-effect relationship between the implementation of mask mandates and the rise in case rates, but we also demand the same approach when it comes to claiming some sort of causal relationship between the introduction of mask mandates and likely claims by the CDC that their findings could support their implementation countrywide.

We think that inclusion of such evidence on the failures of masks mandates globally and states within the US would have made for more balanced, comprehensive, and fully-informed reporting. Specifically, when we consider the evidence on mask mandates, “in states with a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 confirmed Covid-19 cases, which works out to an average of 27 cases per 100,000 people per day. When states didn’t have a statewide order—including states that never even had mandates, coupled with the period of time states with mandates still didn’t have a mandate in place—there were 5,781,716 cases, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day. In other words, protective-mask mandates have a poor track record insofar as fighting this pandemic. States with mandates in place produced an average of 10 more reported infections per 100,000 people per day than states without mandates.” The blind acceptance of the current unsupported dogma has become so entrenched that if cases do go up, the experts wedded to the universal use of masks then claim that this is good news and infer that the masking mandate prevented even more cases from occurring. This is a fine example of tautology and defies reason. We are very troubled by this type of scientific reporting and inference, for it is based on assumptions, supposition, and speculation.

Masks for the general population as they are currently used (surgical masks and the cloth masks), are ineffective (particularly when used without other mitigation) and the body of evidence (see AIER) is clear. A recent op-ed in the Washington Post spoke to mask wearing by everyone during the 1918 flu pandemic, with the conclusion that masks were useless. We embrace fully the contention by Klompas in the NEJM that “what is clear, however, is that universal masking alone is not a panacea. A mask will not protect providers caring for a patient with active Covid-19 if it’s not accompanied by meticulous hand hygiene, eye protection, gloves, and a gown. A mask alone will not prevent health care workers with early Covid-19 from contaminating their hands and spreading the virus to patients and colleagues. Focusing on universal masking alone could, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of Covid-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.” We are particularly alarmed by the harms of masking and the failure by top US agencies and leadership (as well as the media and ‘media’ medical experts) to discuss or highlight harms in any discourse on masking.

We end by imploring the CDC to take our critique in the spirit in which it was generated. We welcome continued, rigorous scientific examination of these important societal lockdowns, school closures, and masking and broader mask mandate issues by CDC and others. We are entirely willing to consider any evidence that contradicts what we have seen which suggests that societal lockdowns and school closures are not effective, and as presented here, suggests that mask mandates are ineffective. Most importantly, to maintain the validity of scientific research as a tool, and the public’s confidence in such research, reports on the results of such research should more comprehensively address the weakness or ambiguities that exist, as well as the conclusions the reporting agency supports.

Trusting the science means relying on the scientific process and method and not merely ‘following the leader.’ It is not the same as trusting, without verification, the conclusory statements of human beings simply because they have scientific training or credentials. This is especially so if their views and inquiry have become politicized. Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard’s Medical School has recently commented on the present Covid-19 scientific and research environment by stating, “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.”

Sadly, we must agree, that it’s not just that the age of enlightenment has come to an end, but indeed, that the science itself has been politicized and severely corrupted.

Contributing Authors

  • Paul E Alexander MSc PhD, McMaster University and GUIDE Research Methods Group, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada elias98_99@yahoo.com
  • Howard C. Tenenbaum DDS, Dip. Perio., PhD, FRCD(C) Centre for Advanced Dental Research and Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Ramin Oskoui, MD, CEO, Foxhall Cardiology, PC, Washington, DC  oskouimd@gmail.com
  • Dr. Parvez Dara, MD, MBA, daraparvez@gmail.com

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Tony Fauci and the Swine Flu hoax; betrayal of trust

By Jon Rappoport | NoMoreFakeNews | March 5, 2021

In my current series of articles, I’ve taken apart the Ebola and Zika hoaxes.

Now I take you back to the summer of 2009, when the CDC and the World Health Organization were hyping the “deadly H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic.”

They were, of course, also urging people to take the new Swine Flu vaccine. On that subject, here is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (3/27/20):

“For example, [Dr. Anthony] Fauci once shilled for the fast-tracked H1N1 influenza (‘swine flu’) vaccine on YouTube, reassuring viewers in 2009 that serious adverse events were ‘very, very, very rare.’ Shortly thereafter, the vaccine went on to wreak havoc in multiple countries, increasing miscarriage risks in pregnant women in the U.S., provoking a spike in adolescent narcolepsy in Scandinavia and causing febrile convulsions in one in every 110 vaccinated children in Australia—prompting the latter to suspend its influenza vaccination program in under-fives.”

However, that is only half the Swine Flu story. The other half—which involves an astounding hoax—was surely something Fauci was aware of at the time.

Fauci was, in fact, recommending a highly dangerous vaccine for protection against AN EPIDEMIC THAT DIDN’T EXIST AT ALL.

His friends and professional colleagues at the CDC were creating the hoax.

Let me run it down for you.

In the summer of 2009, the CDC was claiming there were thousands of Swine Flu cases in the US. But behind these statistics lay an unnerving secret. A major crime, considering the CDC’s mandate to report the truth to the American people:

Secretly, the CDC had stopped counting cases of Swine Flu.

What? Why?

CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, discovered the CDC secret; and she found out why.

The routine lab testing of tissue samples from the most likely Swine Flu patients was coming back, in the overwhelming percentage of cases, with: NO SIGN OF SWINE FLU OR ANY OTHER KIND OF FLU.

Attkisson wrote an article about this scandal, and it was published on the CBS News website. However, the next, bigger step—putting out the story on CBS television news—was waylaid. No deal. And CBS shut down any future investigation on the subject. Attkisson’s article died on the vine. No other major news outlet in the world picked up her article and ran with it deeper into the rabbit hole.

Here is what Attkisson told me when I interviewed her:

Rappoport: In 2009, you spearheaded coverage of the so-called Swine Flu pandemic. You discovered that, in the summer of 2009, the Centers for Disease Control, ignoring their federal mandate, [secretly] stopped counting Swine Flu cases in America. Yet they continued to stir up fear about the “pandemic,” without having any real measure of its impact. Wasn’t that another investigation of yours that was shut down? Wasn’t there more to find out?

Attkisson: The implications of the story were even worse than that. We discovered through our FOI efforts that before the CDC mysteriously stopped counting Swine Flu cases, they had learned that almost none of the cases they had counted as Swine Flu was, in fact, Swine Flu or any sort of flu at all! The interest in the story from one [CBS] executive was very enthusiastic. He said it was “the most original story” he’d seen on the whole Swine Flu epidemic. But others pushed to stop it [after it was published on the CBS News website] and, in the end, no [CBS television news] broadcast wanted to touch it. We aired numerous stories pumping up the idea of an epidemic, but not the one that would shed original, new light on all the hype. It was fair, accurate, legally approved and a heck of a story. With the CDC keeping the true Swine Flu stats secret, it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary.

So… fake pandemic, CDC crimes, and a damaging vaccine.

But that wasn’t end of it. The CDC wanted to commit another crime. About three weeks after Attkisson’s findings were published on the CBS News website, the CDC, obviously in a panic, decided to double down. If one lie is exposed, tell an even bigger one. A much bigger one.

Here, from a November 12, 2009, WebMD article is the CDC’s response:

“Shockingly, 14 million to 34 million U.S. residents — the CDC’s best guess is 22 million — came down with H1N1 swine flu by Oct. 17 [2009].” (“22 million cases of Swine Flu in US,” by Daniel J. DeNoon).

Are your eyeballs popping? They should be.

Fast forward to 2020. Who in his right mind, armed with a little history, would believe anything the CDC is saying about COVID-19? The discovery of a new coronavirus. The case and death numbers, the accuracy of the diagnostic tests, the need for lockdowns and economic devastation, the safety and importance of a vaccine, the fear porn? Who would believe any of it?

And who would believe anything coming out of the mouth of Dr. Anthony Fauci?

Only a fool.

SOURCES:

[1] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/03/02/ebola-the-new-fake-outbreak/

[1a] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/category/ebola/

[2] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/03/04/zika-was-a-warm-up-for-covid-it-didnt-fly/

[2a] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/category/zika/

[3] https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/dr-fauci-and-covid-19-priorities-therapeutics-now-or-vaccines-later/

[3a] https://web.archive.org/web/20200328080313/https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/dr-fauci-and-covid-19-priorities-therapeutics-now-or-vaccines-later/

[4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swine-flu-cases-overestimated/

[4a] https://web.archive.org/web/20140101163355/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swine-flu-cases-overestimated/

[5] https://www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/2009/t091009.htm

[6] https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20091112/over-22-million-in-us-had-h1n1-swine-flu#1

[6a] https://web.archive.org/web/20100105035212/https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20091112/over-22-million-in-us-had-h1n1-swine-flu

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Zika was a warm-up for COVID; it didn’t fly

By Jon Rappoport | NoMoreFakeNews | March 4, 2021

I covered the Zika outbreak extensively in 2016. It was yet another fraud, and it collapsed under the weight of warnings to women to avoid pregnancy. Women wouldn’t obey in great enough numbers.

Basically, the official position was: an outbreak of microcephaly was occurring, worldwide, starting in Brazil. Babies were being born with smaller heads and brain damage. The cause was the Zika virus, carried by mosquitoes.

When I was exposing the lies, in 2016, I wasn’t questioning the existence of the Zika virus. Now, in 2021, I would be demanding proof that the virus had actually been isolated.

Here are excerpts from the many articles I wrote during the “Zika crisis”. There is more, much more to the story, but what I’m publishing here is enough to reveal the standard pattern of pandemic ops: pretend the “medical condition” is entirely the result of a germ; fake the exact cause; cover up ongoing government/corporate crimes.

EXCERPT ONE, 2016: There is no convincing evidence the Zika virus causes the birth defect called microcephaly.

Basically, Brazilian researchers, in the heart of the purported “microcephaly epidemic,” decided to stop their own investigation and simply assert Zika was the culprit. At that point, they claimed that, out of 854 cases of microcephaly, only 97 showed “some relationship” to Zika.

You need to understand that these figures actually show evidence AGAINST the Zika virus as the cause. When researchers are trying to find the cause of a condition, they should be able to establish, as a first step, that the cause is present in all cases (or certainly an overwhelming percentage).

This never happened. The correlation between the presence of Zika virus and microcephaly was very, very weak.

As a second vital step, researchers should be able to show that the causative virus is, in every case, present in large amounts in the body. Otherwise, there is not enough of it to create harm. MERE PRESENCE OF THE VIRUS IS NOT ENOUGH. With Zika, proof it was present in microcephaly-babies in large amounts has never been established.

But researchers pressed on. A touted study in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed Zika infected brain cells in the lab. IRRELEVANT. Cells in labs are not human beings. The study also stated that Zika infected baby mice. IRRELEVANT. Mice are not humans. And these mice in the lab had been specially altered or bred to be “vulnerable to Zika.” USELESS AND IRRELEVANT.

EXCERPT TWO, 2016: Millions of bees have just died in South Carolina, because Dorchester County officials decided to attack Zika mosquitoes from the air, from planes, with a pesticide called Naled.

The Washington Post reports, in an article headlined: “‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes.”

“The county acknowledged the bee deaths Tuesday. ‘Dorchester County is aware that some beekeepers in the area that was sprayed on Sunday lost their beehives,’ Jason Ward, county administrator, said in a news release. He added, according to the Charleston Post and Courier, ‘I am not pleased that so many bees were killed.’”

That’s the highest degree of outrage County Administrator Ward can muster? He’s not pleased?

If you want to dig further, you can discover that, despite assurances to the contrary, Naled, like other toxic organophosphate pesticides, harms humans as well. Organophosphates are neurotoxins. The original research was done in Germany, in the hunt for nerve-agent weapons.

And how about this? The cure for the problem causes the problem…

Naled, the organophosphate pesticide now being sprayed on Miami to kill “Zika mosquitoes,” has dire effects.

Reference: a 2014 study, “Neurodevelopmental disorders and prenatal residential proximity to agricultural pesticides: the CHARGE study.” [Environmental Health Perspectives, 2014 Oct;122(10):1103-9.]

Key quotes from the study:

“Gestational exposure to several common agricultural pesticides can induce developmental neurotoxicity in humans, and has been associated with developmental delay and autism.” [Emphasis added]

“We evaluated whether residential proximity to agricultural pesticides during pregnancy is associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or developmental delay (DD)…”

“Approximately one-third of CHARGE study mothers lived, during pregnancy, within 1.5 km (just under 1 mile) of an agricultural pesticide application. Proximity to organophosphates at some point during gestation was associated with a 60% increased risk for ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorders], higher for third-trimester exposures… and second-trimester chlorpyrifos [an organophosphate pesticide] applications…”

“This study of ASD strengthens the evidence linking neurodevelopmental disorders with gestational pesticide exposures, particularly organophosphates…”

The pesticide spraying affects pregnant mothers by raising the risk of neurological damage to their babies.

EXCERPT THREE: Here’s an “oops” Zika revelation:

“New doubts on Zika as cause of microcephaly.” ScienceDaily, 24 June 2016.

Source: New England Complex Systems Institute

“Brazil’s microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery — if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in other countries also hit hard by the virus? In Brazil, the microcephaly rate soared with more than 1,500 confirmed cases. But in Colombia, a recent study of nearly 12,000 pregnant women infected with Zika found zero microcephaly cases. If Zika is to blame for microcephaly, where are the missing cases?”

FOUR: It makes far more sense to listen to what South American doctors are saying about the areas where birth defects are occurring. These would be doctors who actually care about what is destroying lives and the lives that are being destroyed.

We have such reports passed along to us, thanks to Claire Robinson of GM Watch. She is one of those people who still makes the profession of journalism mean something.

Here are quotes from her most recent article, “Argentine and Brazilian doctors name larvicide as potential cause of microcephaly.”

“A report from the Argentine doctors’ organisation, Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, challenges the theory that the Zika virus epidemic in Brazil is the cause of the increase in the birth defect microcephaly among newborns.”

“The increase in this birth defect, in which the baby is born with an abnormally small head and often has brain damage, was quickly linked to the Zika virus by the Brazilian Ministry of Health. However, according to the Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, the Ministry failed to recognise that in the area where most sick people live, a chemical larvicide [pesticide] that produces malformations in mosquitoes was introduced into the drinking water supply in 2014. This poison, Pyriproxyfen, is used in a State-controlled programme aimed at eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes.” [Emphasis added]

“The Physicians added that the Pyriproxyfen is manufactured by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese ‘strategic partner’ of Monsanto. Pyriproxyfen is a growth inhibitor of mosquito larvae, which alters the development process from larva to pupa to adult, thus generating malformations in developing mosquitoes and killing or disabling them. It acts as an insect juvenile hormone or juvenoid, and has the effect of inhibiting the development of adult insect characteristics (for example, wings and mature external genitalia) and reproductive development. It is an endocrine disruptor and is teratogenic (causes birth defects).”

“The Argentine Physicians commented: ‘Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyriproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage.’”

“They also noted that Zika has traditionally been held to be a relatively benign disease that has never before been associated with birth defects, even in areas where it infects 75% of the population.”

“… The Argentine Physicians’ report…concurs with the findings of a separate report on the Zika outbreak by the Brazilian doctors’ and public health researchers’ organisation, Abrasco.”

“Abrasco also names Pyriproxyfen as a likely cause of the microcephaly. It condemns the strategy of chemical control of Zika-carrying mosquitoes, which it says is contaminating the environment as well as people and is not decreasing the numbers of mosquitoes. Abrasco suggests that this strategy is in fact driven by the commercial interests of the chemical industry, which it says is deeply integrated into the Latin American ministries of health, as well as the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organisation.”

“Abrasco names the British GM insect company Oxitec as part of the corporate lobby that is distorting the facts about Zika to suit its own profit-making agenda. Oxitec sells GM mosquitoes engineered for sterility and markets them as a disease-combatting product – a strategy condemned by the Argentine Physicians as ‘a total failure, except for the company supplying mosquitoes’.”

“…Abrasco added that the disease [microcephaly, other birth defects] is closely linked to environmental degradation: floods caused by logging and the massive use of herbicides on (GM) herbicide-tolerant soy crops – in short, ‘the impacts of extractive industries’.”

FIVE: In a recent greenmedinfo article—“What is the Zika Virus Epidemic Covering Up?” by Jagannath Chatterjee—the author traces other Gates-Brazil connections. For example:

“While investigating the procedures directed at pregnant women in the year 2015, shocking facts emerged. Acting as per a WHO [World Health Organization] decision to inject pregnant women with vaccines despite contraindications the Brazilian Government had allowed its pregnant women to become the equivalent of guinea pigs. Besides the tetanus vaccines (provided as Diphtheria Tetanus vaccines), the women had also received the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine in pregnancy. What is worse a DTaP vaccine was mandated for pregnant women in 2014. Citing a shortage of the DTaP vaccine the highly reactive [dangerous] DTP vaccine was also administered. Clearly huge risks had been inflicted on the unsuspecting women. None of these vaccines are known to be safe during pregnancy and the MMR and the DaPT/DPT vaccines are lapses that cannot be condoned. The rubella virus in the MMR vaccine and the pertussis component in the DPT vaccine are known to cause microcephaly…”

“The DTaP vaccine initiative to vaccinate pregnant women was financed by BMGF [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] funds…”

SIX: For example, every year in the US, there are 25,000 cases of microcephaly. And the literature is very clear about causes: any insult to the fetal brain during pregnancy can result in microcephaly. Severe malnutrition, falling down stairs, a blow to the stomach, a toxic street drug or medical drug or vaccine or pesticide, and so on.

SEVEN: For science bloggers who live in mommy’s basement and love the statements of the experts, try this. I’ll give you the full citation. Ready?

“Practice Parameter: Evaluation of the child with microcephaly (an evidence-based review)”; Neurology 2009 Sep 15; 73(11) 887-897; Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology and the Practice Committee of the Child Neurology Society.

Here’s the money quote:

“Microcephaly may result from any insult that disturbs early brain growth… Annually, approximately 25,000 infants in the United States will be diagnosed with microcephaly…”

Bang.

Let me take apart that quote. Microcephaly can result from any early insult to the brain. Any.

That could mean a highly toxic pesticide, for example. It could mean severe and prolonged malnutrition of the mother. It could mean a toxic substance injected into the mother—a street drug or a vaccine. It could mean a physical blow. It could mean a mother’s chronic high fever. And so on.

Moving on: 25,000 cases, not just once, but every year in the US, means what? Christopher Columbus actually brought the Zika virus to America in 1492, and it lay dormant for a very long time and then, in the modern age, exploded on the scene in the US?

No. 25,000 cases a year in the US means we’re being treated to an unsupported major bullshit story right now about the Zika virus.

That’s what it means.

EIGHT: Now we have a January 27, 2016, Associated Press story out of Rio, published in SFGate :

“270 of 4,180 suspected microcephaly cases confirmed.”

That’s called a clue, in case you’re wondering. Of the previously touted 4,180 cases of microcephaly in Brazil, the actual number of confirmed cases so far is, well, only 270. Bang.

But wait, there’s more. AP :

“Brazilian officials said the babies with the defect [microcephaly] and their mothers are being tested to see if they had been infected. Six of the 270 confirmed microcephaly cases were found to have the [Zika] virus.”

Bang, bang, bang. Out of all the microcephaly cases re-examined in Brazil, only six have the Zika virus. That constitutes zero proof that Zika has anything to do with microcephaly.

—end of my excerpts from 2016—

Getting the picture?

In 2015-16, the World Health Organization and the press whiffed on the Zika virus-microcephaly hustle.

But they re-grouped, analyzed their mistakes, and prepared a wall-to-wall messaging campaign for the next fake pandemic.

China would provide the model:

LOCKDOWNS.

House arrest of a major percentage of the global population. Economic devastation.

COVID.

As I’ve been demonstrating for the past year, the COVID story is as full of holes as Zika.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hague-based tribunal orders US to pay $37mln to Iran for breaching 1981 treaty

Press TV – March 4, 2021

In a legal victory for the Islamic Republic, the Hague-based Iran–United States Claims Tribunal (IUSCT) has ordered Washington to pay $37 million to Iran after finding it guilty of passing Treasury regulations that prevented or delayed the transfer of part of the Iranian assets in violation of the 1981 Algiers Accords.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Iran’s Presidency Center for International Legal Affairs said the tribunal — which resolves claims by nationals and governments of Iran and the US — had ruled in favor of Iran in the legal case brought by Tehran, obliging the US to pay financial damages to the country and restitute some of the assets belonging to the Iranian government and government institutions.

In 1982, the Islamic Republic of Iran brought the case against the US before the IUSCT, which issued its initial ruling in 1992, it added.

After hearings, the center said, the tribunal handed down a final verdict in March 2020 condemning the United States for failing to transfer Iran’s assets or delaying the process.
Under the ruling, the US government was ordered to pay almost $29 million to Iran.

The court also set a time limit for America to restitute some assets with historical value like musical instruments belonging to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. If the US fails to do so, it must pay Iran $8 million dollars, bringing the total fine to $37 million.

The IUSCT, which was established on January 19, 1981, consists of nine members, three appointed by each government and three (third-country) members appointed by the six government-appointed members.

March 4, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The National-Security State Racket

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 3, 2021

Some people are criticizing President Biden for the recent U.S. air strikes in Syria as well as his refusal to sanction Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman, the man who U.S. officials have concluded orchestrated the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Yes, it’s possible that Biden made those decisions. But there is another possibility, one much more likely, one that unfortunately all too many Americans are loath to consider: that it was the U.S. national-security establishment, particularly the Pentagon and the CIA, who made those decisions and that Biden simply deferred to their judgment.

That’s what many people simply cannot bring themselves to consider: that it is the national-security establishment, namely the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and, to a certain extent, the FBI, that is actually running the federal government, especially in foreign affairs. The other three branches, while permitted to have the veneer of power, are expected to defer to critical judgments made by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

And defer they do. When was the last time that Congress significantly reduced the budget for the national-security establishment? You’ll never see it. That’s because the national-security establishment controls Congress. No member of Congress, especially the military and CIA veterans, would dare to take them on. If he did, he would be toast because the Pentagon would immediately retaliate by threatening to close down military projects or bases in his district. The Pentagon’s and CIA’s assets in the mainstream press would immediately take the offensive and accuse the congressman of being “ineffective.” He would be out in the next election.

The Supreme Court has long deferred to the overwhelming power of the national-security branch of the federal government. The Pentagon’s and CIA’s torture and prison center in Cuba, where people have been denied the right to a speedy trial for more than a decade, is an ongoing testament of that deference to authority. So is the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Pentagon’s and CIA’s power to assassinate people, notwithstanding the express prohibitions on assassination in the Fifth Amendment. Indeed, America’s official secrets act wasn’t a law enacted by Congress; it was a judicial doctrine that the Supreme Court crafted out of whole cloth in deference to a demand by the military.

Trump vs. Biden

With the national-security establishment’s decision that President Kennedy’s policies posed a grave threat to national security and, therefore, that he needed to be removed from office, no president has dared to take these people on. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, it appeared that Donald Trump was going to do so. But for some unknown reason, once he entered into office, he crumbled, surrounding himself with military generals and civilian warmongers. He also surrendered to the CIA’s demands to keep its 50-year-old JFK assassination records secret, on grounds of “national security.”

But there is no doubt that Trump was different. He didn’t show the same deference to the authority of the national-security establishment that other presidents since Kennedy have. That was why the deep state went after him from the very beginning, especially with its nonsensical investigation into whether Trump was a Russian agent who was betraying America, just as they said Kennedy was doing with his policies. Perhaps with time, we will learn the full extent of the deep state’s efforts to ensure Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Now they have Biden, which is their notion of an ideal president, one who will defer to the omnipotent power of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Did Biden really select military-industrial complex man Lloyd J. Austen III as Secretary of Defense? It’s much more likely that the Pentagon, not wanting to jack with a civilian overseer, chose Austin and that Biden simply deferred to its wishes.

Unheeded warnings

President Eisenhower warned about this type of governmental structure in his Farewell Address in 1961. He pointed out that it constituted a grave threat to the democratic processes and rights and liberties of the American people. That was more than 50 years ago. Since then, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI, along with their army of contractors and subcontractors feeding at the public trough, have only grown progressively more powerful and rich.

John Kennedy took these people on directly. Kennedy was not a dumb man. He knew precisely the nature of the power structure he was up against. That was why he played an instrumental role in bringing the movie Seven Days in May into production — to serve as a warning to the American people, the same type of warning that Ike issued to Americans in his Farewell Address.

The problem is that Americans have never paid heed to those warnings. They just don’t want to acknowledge that they had any validity. Indeed, many Americans still do not want to confront the fact that this brutal structure within their governmental apparatus ended up turning its omnipotent power inward against a president whose policies they deemed constituted a grave threat to national security.

Milking the rackets

For some 45 years, the national-security establishment milked the “war on communism” for all that it was worth, constantly engendering deep fear with the American people so that they would continue to vest the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI with ever-increasing power, influence, and money.

It was nothing more than one great big racket, one that continually, year after year, enriched the pockets and expanded the power of those in the military-intelligence establishment.

When Kennedy decided to bring an end to the Cold War racket, he had to be dealt with. And a message needed to be sent to the American people: “We are here, we are in charge, never take us on, and just get used to it.”

When the Cold War ended, their racket quickly morphed into the “war on terrorism.” All the fears about communism that these people engendered in the American people were simply switched to terrorism — or Islam. At first the fear revolved around the notion that foreign terrorists were coming to get us. Now it’s morphed into the notion that domestic terrorists are coming to get us.

They have now come full circle, restoring Russia and China as official enemies who are supposedly coming to get us, just like they supposedly were during the 45 years of the Cold War racket. It’s now a fear-mongering perfect storm — terrorists, Muslims, Russia, and China and, for good measure, Syria, North Korea, ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, and an unsafe world.

An upending of values and morals

Ever since its inception, the deep state has upended America’s morals and values. How many foreign regimes, including democratically elected ones, have these people destroyed in the name of national security? How many brutal military and right-wing dictatorships have they installed into power, trained, supported, and aligned with? How many people, including a democratically elected U.S. president, have they assassinated over the years based on national security?

The obsessive quest to inflict extreme punishment on people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden says it all. Here are people who have done nothing more than disclose the truth about the national-security establishment’s evil and immoral actions. Yet, it is people like Assange and Snowden who are considered to be the evil, immoral ones. What better evidence of an upending of America’s morals and values than that?

If our American ancestors had been told that the Constitutional Convention was bringing into existence a national-security state type of governmental structure, they never would have approved the deal. The only reason they approved the deal was because they were assured that the Constitution was bringing into existence a limited-government republic.

The national-security state is a root cause of many woes under which America is suffering. To get our nation back on the right road, it is necessary that we dismantle, not reform, the national-security establishment and restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic to our land.

March 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

James Cook University Walks Back Extreme Global Warming Coral Extinction Claims

By Eric Worral | Watts Up With That? | March 3, 2021

Peter Ridd is right – the Great Barrier Reef is not in immediate danger of dying. James Cook University, Peter Ridd’s adversary in his unfair dismissal court case, has just slightly walked back some of their more ridiculous Great Barrier Reef extinction claims.

Coral count rethinks extinction risk

Fraser Barton

The global extinction risk of most coral species is lower than previously estimated, scientists in North Queensland claim.

In a world-first, researchers at James Cook University have assessed the number of coral colonies in the Pacific Ocean and evaluated their risk of extinction.

The study measured the population sizes of more than 300 individual coral species on reefs across the Pacific Ocean, from Indonesia to French Polynesia.

Using a combination of coral reef habitat maps and counts of coral colonies to estimate species abundances, they estimate roughly half a trillion corals in the Pacific alone.

Given the huge size of these coral populations, researchers believe it is very unlikely that they face imminent extinction.

…

Co-author Professor Terry Hughes stated while the study results have huge implications for managing and restoring coral reefs, it is is not the solution to climate change.

“You would have to grow about 250 million adult corals to increase coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef by just one percent.”

…

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/coral-count-rethinks-extinction-risk/ar-BB1e7fD5

The abstract of the study;

The population sizes and global extinction risk of reef-building coral species at biogeographic scales

Andreas Dietzel, Michael Bode, Sean R. Connolly & Terry P. Hughes

Abstract

Knowledge of a species’ abundance is critically important for assessing its risk of extinction, but for the vast majority of wild animal and plant species such data are scarce at biogeographic scales. Here, we estimate the total number of reef-building corals and the population sizes of more than 300 individual species on reefs spanning the Pacific Ocean biodiversity gradient, from Indonesia to French Polynesia. Our analysis suggests that approximately half a trillion corals (0.3 × 1012–0.8 × 1012) inhabit these coral reefs, similar to the number of trees in the Amazon. Two-thirds of the examined species have population sizes exceeding 100 million colonies, and one-fifth of the species even have population sizes greater than 1 billion colonies. Our findings suggest that, while local depletions pose imminent threats that can have ecologically devastating impacts to coral reefs, the global extinction risk of most coral species is lower than previously estimated.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01393-4

Professor Terry Hughes, whose name appears on this paper, lodged official complaints about Peter Ridd, and in my opinion contributed to Peter Ridd’s dismissal for the crime of being right.

On one hand it is a positive that coral science seems to be edging towards a much needed correction.

But this slight shift towards Peter Ridd’s position, that claims the Great Barrier Reef is on the verge of extinction are grossly exaggerated, in my opinion puts James Cook University into an even more untenable position.

The sooner James Cook University apologises and settles Peter Ridd’s unfair dismissal claim, the better it will be for their long journey back to restoring James Cook’s in my opinion shattered scientific reputation.

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

Why is Death After COVID-19 Vaccination Always Assumed to Be Coincidental?

By Marco Cáceres | The Vaccine Reaction | March 1, 2021

There appears to be a pattern developing when deaths are reported shortly following COVID-19 vaccinations, in that all deaths are assumed to be only “coincidentally” associated with vaccination before all the evidence is in. This raises an obvious question: Is the assumption that the experimental COVID-19 vaccines are never the cause of death scientifically justified or is it a symptom of bias?

Following the death of Drene Keyes in Virginia within minutes of receiving the first dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) BNT162b2 vaccine for COVID-19 on Jan. 30, 2021, the doctors who treated Keyes told her daughter, Lisa Jones, that her mother had suffered from what is called “flash pulmonary edema” (a condition caused by excess fluid in the lungs) caused by a serious allergic reaction, or anaphylaxis.1 2

While anaphylaxis is a known side effect of many vaccines, including mRNA vaccines like the one given to Keyes, almost immediately Virginia’s health commissioner Norman Oliver, MD said that preliminary findings of the investigation into Keyes’ death indicate that the cause of death was not anaphylaxis. Dr. Oliver acknowledged that the death had occurred soon after Keyes had been vaccinated, but insisted that fact was not “evidence of it being related.”1

Dr. Oliver said, “We are currently investigating and do not yet know the cause of death.” Danny Avula, MD, who is director of the Richmond City and Henrico County health departments and Virginia’s vaccine coordinator, said, “They’re looking for patterns, they’re looking for a causation versus just a correlation based on time.”1

Weeks have passed since Keyes died and the official cause of death has yet to be determined. A news report in mid-February noted that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia had informed Jones that an autopsy on her mother would not be performed. According to the article, Jones said she had been told the state would not do a full autopsy “due to public health concerns.”1

One can only speculate why Virginia state officials opted out of doing a full autopsy to try and better understand what caused Keyes’ death by citing “public health concerns.” The oddness of that reasoning might only be surpassed by the reason given by the Portuguese Ministry of Justice for not revealing the cause of death for 41-year-old Sonia Acevedo in Portugal on Jan. 1, 2021 two days after being given the first dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine: “secrecy of justice.”3 4

Other Deaths Reported Soon After Vaccination

There have been reports of other deaths that have occurred during the past two months soon after people have received the COVID-19 vaccine. In each of those cases, health authorities and vaccine providers have immediately written the deaths off as either unlikely to have been connected to the vaccine or, reportedly, the deaths are still being investigated.

Dozens of deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations have been reported in Europe, India, Israel and other regions of the world.3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

There have been several well-publicized deaths after COVID-19 vaccination in the United States, including the death of 56-year-old Gregory Michael, MD in Florida on Dec. 18, 2020 two weeks after getting the first dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s experimental messenger RNA (mRNA) BNT162b2 vaccine.41 42

Dr. Gregory’s death was followed by the death of 60-year-old Tim Zook in Orange County, California on Jan. 9, 2021 four days after getting the second dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine and the death of a man in his late 40s who died on Jan. 17 in Nebraska one to two weeks after getting the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. There was also the death of a 64-year-old man in Placer County, CA on Jan. 21 three hours after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.43 44 45 46 47

More recently, there was the death of 90-year old Daniel Thayne Simpson in Michigan on Feb. 4 the day after he received the first dose of Moderna’s experimental mRNA-1273 vaccine and the death of a man in his 70s on Feb. 7 in New York 25 minutes after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, followed by the death of 36-year-old J. Barton Williams, MD, who died on Feb. 8 in Tennessee just weeks after receiving the second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.48 49 50

Finally, there was the death of a 78-year-old woman within minutes of getting the first dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona on Feb. 12 and the death on Feb. 16 of former Detroit news anchor Karen Hudson-Samuels, 68, the day after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.51 52 At least thus far.

Officially, No Post-Vaccination Deaths Have Been Linked to COVID-19 Vaccines

Interestingly, despite the close proximity of the sudden and unexpected deaths of all these people to the times they were given COVID-19 vaccinations, none of the deaths have been deemed by health officials to be related to the COVID-19 vaccines recently administered. Most deaths have been judged to be merely coincidental or a specific cause of death has not yet been given.

Almost unanimously, mainstream media outlets have forwarded the narrative that nobody has died from a COVID-19 vaccination. One news report noted:

While people have died after receiving the vaccine, doctors say those deaths are not—in any way—linked to the vaccine. Every time someone gets sick or dies after getting the shot, government agencies investigate to ensure there is no link. So far, the CDC has been unable to identify a single case where the vaccine is the cause of someone passing away.53

“Scientists say it’s human nature to draw a connection between events—especially when they happen close together—but it doesn’t mean one caused the other,” wrote Stephanie Widmer, MD in an article published by ABC News.54 Dr. Widner offered the following quote from fellow physician William Schaffner, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center:

We all know that the rooster crows before the dawn, but we don’t think the rooster makes the sun come up, simply because they are related in time.54

That’s an interesting way of looking at things. But then, the same might be said of those who have been listed as having died of COVID-19. After all, an unknown number of people, whose deaths were attributed to COVID-19, had underlying poor health conditions, known as “comorbidities. ” Those underlying poor health conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and other co-morbidities, could have been the major reason they died. Yet, because those individuals tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 disease—whether symptomatic or asymptomatic—they were counted as having died of COVID-19.

The truth is that some people are obviously dying of COVID-19, while others are dying from well-known chronic diseases that are leading causes of death in the U.S. every year.55 56 57 58

Is There an Inherent Bias Against Blaming Vaccines?

I suspect the same may be true of those who have died so soon after getting a COVID-19 vaccination. However, there is no way to prove that there is an inherent bias against considering the possibility that a COVID-19 vaccine can, in rare instances, cause a person to die suddenly and unexpectedly shortly after vaccination. There will be no way to obtain the necessary evidence to prove it if health authorities refuse to complete full investigations (including conducting autopsies) into these cases.

Could it be that Virginia’s medical examiners, or those above them, were reluctant to conduct a full autopsy on Keyes for fear of what they might find? How much did the possibility that Keyes’ death could have been connected to the vaccine she received factor into the “public health concerns” of Virginia health officials, who refused to do an autopsy? Were they concerned that discovery of a connection might discourage some people from getting vaccinated?

One can only ask the questions.

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

The Antibody Deception

The Antibody Deception from Rosemary Frei on Vimeo.

By Rosemary Frei, MSc | March 2, 2021

The world has been fixated for months on novel-coronavirus PCR testing, contact tracing and vaccination.

Meanwhile, another major part of the Covid biomedical complex has received far less attention: the use of antibodies for detecting, diagnosing and treating infection with the novel coronavirus.

Hundreds of antibodies have been approved for these purposes since January 2020. And hundreds more are poised to start being marketed soon.

This is part of the biomedical gold rush: by last summer already, antibodies were on track to become the most lucrative medical product, with global revenue projected to reach nearly half a trillion dollars by 2024. Profit margins in the range of 67% aren’t uncommon.

Pharma giants such as AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly are among the companies grabbing the largest chunks of the novel-coronavirus-antibody market. And some of the most muscular government agencies, including Anthony Fauci’s US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, are part of the action (see, for example, the second-last section of this article, on antibodies used to treat Covid).

Virtually every study and piece of marketing material related to Covid is premised on scientists having positively and correctly identified the presence of the novel coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2) in the material they’re working with.

The job of that identification is usually given to antibodies that are said to bind to the novel coronavirus. The assumption is these antibodies are able to pick out the virus and only the virus from among every other organism and substance surrounding it.

Unfortunately it turns out that the antibodies rarely (if ever) do that. This is because of, among other things, inadequate verification of the antibodies’ accuracy in targeting the virus by the companies that manufacture and sell them. And there’s even less verification by government regulators.

Let’s take a 30,000-foot tour of a couple of the main features of the antibody-industry landscape, which is awash in complexity and cash.

Can Antibodies be Created That Only Bind to One Type of Virus or Another?

Antibodies are tiny, finely-tuned, parts of our immune system. One of their main functions is to seek out viruses and bacteria that may have the potential to cause disease. Antibodies bind to and neutralize these microbes so they can’t multiply and spread.

Humans and our ancestors have been making antibodies in our bodies to fend off infections for millions of years. Then a few decades ago companies got involved in the discovery and manipulation of antibodies, partnering with university labs.

There are two main categories of antibodies. One is ‘polyclonal’ antibodies. These are garden-variety antibodies that bind to a variety of different substances and/or organisms.

The other is monoclonal antibodies. As the name implies, cloning is involved in their creation. First an antibody that is specific to a particular amino-acid sequence (amino acids are the building blocks of proteins) of interest – for example, one from a protein on the surface of a virus or bacterium — is identified. Then the immune-system cell which produced that antibody is ‘cloned’ in the lab. As a result, each set of monoclonal antibodies binds to that particular amino-acid sequence.

I emailed one of the English-speaking world’s leading authorities on monoclonal antibodies, Harvard Medical School professor Clifford Saper, to get clarity on this. I asked him if it’s true that, as most in the antibody-commercializing arena claim, a monoclonal antibody can be created that’s specific for (that is, binds to) just one type of virus or just one other type of organism.

Saper replied [bolding and italics added by me for emphasis]: “No, there is no such thing as a monoclonal antibody that, because it is monoclonal, recognizes only one protein or only one virus. It will bind to any protein having the same (or a very similar) sequence.”

The implication of Saper’s statement is that any attempt to use a monoclonal antibody to verify the presence of the novel coronavirus will yield a large rate of false-positive results. That is, they will indicate that the novel coronavirus is detected when in fact it hasn’t been. That’s because there’s a high probability that the monoclonal antibody is binding to something else besides the virus (this is known as ‘cross-reacting’).

(I recommend this review paper by Saper, and this one and this one co-authored by Yale pathology professor David Rimm, to anyone wishing to learn about antibody validation.)

And in fact, the vast majority of antibodies and monoclonal antibodies marketed as being specific for the novel coronavirus were developed years ago for detecting SARS-CoV-1. They were then simply repurposed for identifying SARS-CoV-2 — with very few if any checks for whether they also cross-react to other organisms or substances.

I sought confirmation of this repurposing from Zhen Lu. She’s the North American marketing manager for Sino Biological, a Beijing-headquartered company that develops and sells, among other things, hundreds of antibodies. Lu replied to me via email, “Yes, antibodies are repuposed [sic].”

I also checked and received confirmation from Pratiek Matkar, a senior staffer from BenchSci, an antibody-database company. And to see for myself, I logged into the BenchSci database (Matkar granted me a guest account), selected all antibodies for the novel coronavirus, and looked to see which organisms had been used in cross-reactivity tests for them. SARS-CoV-1 was the only one that came up in this check.

This all explains something I observed last week: Sino Biological had just changed the content of its home page for the section of their website on antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. The page now announces that they’ve introduced new “matched antibody pairs” that work better at finding the virus. The pair consists of a “capture antibody” and a “detection antibody.”

And they claim these pairs are more accurate at finding the novel coronavirus: that they “have high specificity without cross-reactivity with MERS-CoV, [or with the common human coronaviruses] 229E, NL63, HKU1, [and] OC43.”

The only way I can interpret that is they know the antibodies they’ve been marketing for months as being specific for the novel coronavirus bind to other things, such as common human coronaviruses.

How Are Antibodies Harnessed in Tests for the Novel Coronavirus?

One of the main types of tests for the virus contains antibodies that are ostensibly specific for the novel coronavirus. The way they’re designed to work is that if the virus is present in a blood sample the antibodies bind to it and, as a result, the test gives a positive signal.

The other type of test contains sequences of protein from the novel coronavirus; if antibodies to the virus are present in a blood sample, they bind to the protein sequences and produce a positive result.

The manufacturers are supposed to conduct accuracy checks of their test kits before they put them on the market. These checks largely consist of estimation of the rates of false positives and false negatives (the latter is a negative result when the antibody or protein of interest is contained in the sample being tested by the kit).

However, companies do this cursory accuracy check with only very few samples of a small number of viruses — and rarely on bacteria or any other of the millions of biological substances that can be present in the blood.

Despite this very inadequate validation and the strong incentive for the companies to make their products look good, as documented last May by David Crowe, the manufacturers often record a significant rate of false positives. The false positives are to everything from West Nile virus to various types of human coronaviruses.

Usually the companies and governments wave that off as insignificant. Occasionally though, the test kits are so bad that they’re taken off the market.

For example, an antibody-testing kit sold by a company called Chembio Diagnostics was launched on March 31, 2020. It was almost immediately granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An EUA allows companies to rush products onto the market with very minimal oversight. Brazil and the European Union also gave the nod for the Chembio test to be sold in their jurisdictions in April and May 2020, respectively.

Then in June 2020 the FDA pulled it off the market. The agency said ”this test generates a higher than expected rate of false results.” (Note that the top table on page 13 of the product insert for that “revoked” Chembio test indicates it cross-reacts to the human coronavirus 229E.)

But in November 2020 the Chembio antibody test again was approved for use in Brazil. And on January 14, 2021, the test got the nod in the European Union, the UK and Ireland.

Is it identical to the rest that was so inaccurate it was pulled off the market last June? It’s hard to tell. There is no product insert for it that I could find. In fact there’s very little information about it on the webpage for the test; you have to request the information. I submitted a request on Jan. 23 and haven’t received it yet.

Two of the heads of the FDA branch that approves testing devices penned a February 18, 2021, New England Journal of Medicine article. In it, the pair admitted that the FDA’s EUAs allowed too-loose approvals for serology tests.

They indicated the FDA has tightened its criteria for approval of these tests. They also point to efforts by other government agencies to evaluate serology tests. But the pair don’t say a word about the need to move toward objective, thorough test validation. They also are mute on the fact that EUAs are still being issued.

(Also note that the FDA and Health Canada listings of the 65 serology tests approved to date in the US and 19 approved to date in Canada continue to give the sensitivity [correct identification of positive samples] of the tests by ‘positive percent agreement’ and specificity [correct identification of negative samples] by ‘negative percent agreement.’ These are relative measures of accuracy – that is, compared to other tests – rather than objective/absolute accuracy, and therefore are poor facsimiles of accuracy.)

One of the many major figures in the Covid-biomedical complex who are priming the pump of the antibody pipeline is Ian Lipkin. He’s director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University in New York. Lipkin is involved at high levels in many global organizations including the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well in pharmaceutical companies. (And he is quoted in a ‘fact-check’ of a July 2020 article I co-authored with Patrick Corbett titled, “No one has died from the coronavirus.” Lipkin states, among other things, in the fact-check piece that “Conspiracy theorists are not persuaded by data.”)

Lipkin co-authored a Feb. 12, 2021, paper in which he and his team claimed to have identified, using a new ‘peptide-microarray’ technology they invented, 29 amino-acid sequences unique to the novel coronavirus. They assert that antibodies specific to the sequences could be created – and that these in turn could be harnessed “to facilitate diagnostics, epidemiology, and vaccinology” for Covid. (The only conflict Lipkin and some of his co-authors disclose in the ‘competing interests’ paragraph at the end of article is that they invented the peptide-microarray technology described in the article.)

Do Antibodies Used to Treat Covid Fare Any Better?

Antibodies are also being marketed to treat Covid. Some are sold singly (known as ‘monotherapy’) and others in pairs. They are deemed to confer ‘passive immunity.’

Among the most-reported-on set of antibodies for treating Covid is the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab. This pair reportedly was used in October 2020 to treat then-U.S. President Donald Trump. The combo subsequently was granted an EUA by the FDA on November 21, 2020. It also is being considered for approval by Health Canada.

I’d like to focus on a somewhat lesser-known monoclonal antibody called bamlanivumab. It’s being used both singly and as one half of a pair for treatment of symptomatic Covid patients early in the course of their infection. The antibody was discovered, and clinical study of it started, by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which is headed by Anthony Fauci) and a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company called AbCellera Diagnostics. The antibody is being manufactured and sold by Eli Lilly. It costs more than $1,200 a vial.

AbCellera is developing a significant pipeline of other antibodies. Its capabilities for this were developed over the past two-plus years as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pandemic Prevention Platform program.

(AbCellera also has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Canadian government, including for building an antibody-manufacturing plant. And Peter Thiel, who co-founded both PayPal and Palantir, is a board member. So is John Montalbano, who’s also on the board of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and until 2015 was CEO of RBC [Royal Bank of Canada] Global Asset Management. This and significant positive media coverage helped propel the company to the biggest Canadian-biotech-company Initial Public Offering to date, on Dec. 11, 2020.)

Bamlanivumab was given an EUA by the FDA on November 9, 2020, for treatment of mild to moderate Covid. And Health Canada gave the monotherapy an interim authorization on November 17. It’s not getting much traction in clinical practice so far in Canada, though, perhaps because of the less-than-stellar results from clinical trials (see below).

But this hasn’t deterred the Canadian and US federal governments, which combined have purchased close to half a million of these tests. For example, most recently, on February 26, the US government bought 100,000 vials.

The only study on bamlanivimab made public prior to the November 9 FDA approval was one posted October 1, 2020, on the website of the online-only journal bioRχiv. [My Feb. 3, 2021, and Feb. 11, 2021, articles — on the new variants and the associated modelling papers, respectively – noted that the journal and its sister publication medRχiv contain only non-peer-reviewed articles and were created by an organization headed by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.]

The study used rhesus monkeys and provided very extensive details about how the antibody was discovered and checked for specificity to the novel coronavirus. The researchers concluded that the antibody – at that time known as LY-CovV555 — has “potent neutralizing activity” against SARS-CoV-2.

On January 14 I emailed the lead author of that paper, Bryan Jones. He’s a researcher in Lilly’s Biotechnology Research Program. I asked Jones where in their paper is the proof the antibody is specific to SARS-CoV-2 (and therefore isn’t binding to something else instead of, or in addition to, the novel coronavirus).

He responded promptly, as follows [bolding added by me for emphasis]: “While we did determine that LY-CoV555 is specific to SARS-CoV-2 (and doesn’t bind to the spike protein of SARS-CoV), that is not specified or detailed in any of the figures or tables [in the paper].”

Jones pointed me to several parts of the paper and supplemental material published with it that he said show, via indirect extrapolation, that the antibody is specific for the novel coronavirus.

That’s not exactly convincing.

Then on December 22 a study in the New England Journal of Medicine gave a thumbs-down to the usefulness of bamlanivimab in people hospitalized after receiving a Covid diagnosis. The paper noted that in late October the study was stopped because the antibody didn’t help the patients any more than did placebo.

But this didn’t deter Lilly.

On January 21, 2021, the company issued a news release about a study of bamlanivumab in residents and staff of nursing homes. They claimed their research showed that the antibody “significantly reduced the risk of contracting symptomatic COVID-19.”

However, they didn’t back this up with much information. The study hasn’t been published in a journal or presented at a scientific/medical meeting. And there’s no word on when it will be.

Despite that, on the same morning the release was sent out by Lilly, glowing articles appeared in major media outlets stating that the study showed bamlanivumab appears to significantly reduce Covid symptoms in the frail elderly.

For example a Bloomberg article was posted at 8 a.m. on Jan. 21 with the headline, “Eli Lilly Antibody Cuts Covid-19 Risk Up to 80% in Nursing Home Study.” The article was carried in many other media outlets such as the Globe & Mail.

The article quoted Lilly’s Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Skovronsky as saying, “This is an urgent situation. Where there’s an outbreak in nursing homes and people haven’t yet received the vaccine, this could be a potential way to protect them before they get it.”

And January 21 New York Times piece by senior science journalist Gina Kolata quotes a vaccine expert at Boston Children’s Hospital, Ofer Levy, who wasn’t one of the scientists involved in the study, as saying, “I see only positives here. This is a win.”

Kolata also reported that Lilly plans to ask the FDA for an EUA for bamlanivimab for prevention of Covid in the frail elderly, focusing on those in nursing homes and long-term-care homes.

In parallel, Lilly is pivoting to using bamlanivumab in combination with another monoclonal antibody called etesevimab. A study on this combination in people with mild or moderate Covid was published on January 21, 2021. The results indicate it doesn’t reduce symptoms, but only lowers the viral load of people.

This didn’t deter Lilly either; it’s spinning this in the media as a very positive result. And so is the FDA: on February 9 the agency issued an EUA for the combination of the two antibodies for treating mild or moderate COVID.

Then the next twist in the plot happened, on February 16: a paper published that day in bioRχiv indicated that bamlanivumab doesn’t neutralize the South African and Brazilian variants of the novel coronavirus.

I’ll Leave the Last Words to Scott Adams

Dilbert-cartoon creator Scott Adams makes this observation on page 13 of his book Loserthink: “One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved.”

This perfectly describes the situation with antibodies for the novel coronavirus.

Buyer beware, follow the money, and stay tuned.

After obtaining an MSc in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, Rosemary Frei became a freelance writer. For the next 22 years she was a medical writer and journalist. She pivoted again in early 2016 to full-time, independent activism and investigative journalism. Her website is RosemaryFrei.ca.

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

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