Ever since I realised the devastating effects lockdowns would have all over the world, I have actively fought them. My first task, in October 2020, was hosting an interview with world-renowned epidemologist Martin Kulldorff, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which argues for focused protection instead of blanket lockdowns.
Incidentally, Kulldorff was involved also in my first really memorable encounter with the so-called fact-checkers. Last summer the Icelandic Chief Epidemiologist said in an interview he believed herd immunity would never be reached by vaccination, only through infections. I posted a link to the interview on LinkedIn. Kulldorff shared my post, and the next thing he knew his reshare had been removed. Clearly a fact-checker hadn‘t liked what our Chief Epidemiologist said, and decided the public shouldn‘t know.
Part of my activities as an active lockdown sceptic has been managing a large and fast-growing local Facebook group, dedicated to providing a broad view of the Covid situation, including negative effects of lockdowns, and later on, growing concerns with the effectiveness and safety of mass-vaccination. This is a difficult task as we must always be very careful not to accept posts that for some reason contain material that doesn‘t comply with the worldview of the fact-checkers. We get a few strange conspiracy theories of course, but mostly the material we have to reject is simply inconvenient facts or well-argued opinions, even by respected scientists, that just happen to go against the official narrative.
Fact-checking is nothing new, and until recently it was just that, checking for facts. But since very early in the pandemic, fact-checkers have become less concerned with facts, but more, and in some cases exclusively, with censoring anything that goes against their own opinions. Every day, hundreds of such articles are published and then used to justify censorship. The following example is a typical one.
Recently, official Scottish data has shown COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths are becoming more frequent among the double-vaccinated than the unvaccinated. The latest report shows the infection rate among the double-jabbed is now double the rate for the unjabbed, and 50% higher for the triple-jabbed. Hospitalisations are higher among the double-jabbed than the unjabbed and the death rate is double. This is a concerning development and has garnered some attention from those who follow such statistics. I wrote a short Facebook post on this the other day, quoting an article discussing this development. A few days later the familiar warning of ‘false information’ had been slapped on my post.
I decided to follow up on the ‘fact check’ referred to in the warning, an article by Mr. Dean Miller, managing editor at Lead Stories, one of the agencies that frequently publish articles used to justify censorship. Mr. Miller holds an undergraduate degree in English and seems to have no science training whatsoever.
Mr. Miller begins by claiming there is a consensus among health statisticians “working independently” that vaccination reduces the probability of hospitalisation and death, and that as the vaccinated tend to be older than the unvaccinated, “amateur statisticians” often reach false conclusions based on official data. Mr. Miller then quotes an epidemiologist who suggests various factors that “may” affect the numbers. First, that the vaccinated are more likely to get tested, quoting test and trace data but providing no reference. Second, that the vaccinated tend to be older than the unvaccinated and therefore more vulnerable in general. Third, that the vaccinated may behave differently from the unvaccinated when it comes to social interactions. Fourth, that the unvaccinated are more likely to have been previously infected by the virus.
None of this is necessarily untrue. But the article provides no references showing that vaccinated people behave differently from unvaccinated people, which would make them more likely to come into contact with infected persons. We also have no way of determining if the opposite is true. In other words, this is pure speculation, for which no evidence is provided. Whether vaccinated people are more likely to get tested is speculative also and there is no data provided to back up this claim. The same goes for the claim that the unvaccinated are more likely to have been previously infected. In fact, as numerous studies have already demonstrated that infection provides strong and lasting protection, this suggestion seems highly unlikely.
So, three of Mr. Miller‘s arguments are pure speculation, unquantified and not supported by any evidence. But what about the last argument, that the vaccinated tend to be older and therefore more likely to be hospitalised or to die? This certainly looks like a valid point, since we know it is primarily the elderly who become seriously ill with COVID-19. But how valid, or relevant is this really?
To start with, being vulnerable to serious illness or death if infected has nothing to do with the probability of infection. Rather than increasing it, it might rather decrease it, as a vulnerable person might be more likely to avoid situations where they are likely to get infected. As for hospitalisation and death, the data presented in the Public Health Scotland reports is in fact age-standardised. This means the age-related probability of death is already accounted for in the statistics. Mr. Miller‘s key argument, and the only one that isn‘t purely speculative, is therefore simply invalid. It seems he either failed to familiarise himself with the methodology used, or did not understand what it entails.
The weakness of Mr. Miller‘s argumentation does not however stop him from categorically denying that comparison of infection rates is a valid indicator of vaccine effectiveness. And of course it does not prevent the media and social media using his claim, based on speculation and lack of basic understanding of the data, to censor the discussion of a disturbing development that most certainly calls for thorough investigation.
When I showed the data to a Scottish friend recently, he suggested it was of no relevance for other nations, as the Scots were genetically different from other people due to a long-standing diet of nothing but chips, Marlboros and Irn-Bru. I can only say his explanation makes just as much sense as Mr. Miller‘s do.
But Scotland is not the only country experiencing this disturbing trend. A couple of weeks ago I published an article in the Daily Sceptic discussing a similar trend in Iceland: early January data showed the double-vaccinated to be twice as likely to get infected as the unvaccinated. This undermines the aforementioned dietary explanation, as in Iceland we boil our potatoes, smoke Camels rather than Marlboros and Irn-Bru has never been available. No ‘fact check’ has yet been published trying to invalidate this data. However the already published infection rate for the unvaccinated suddenly rose by 20%, without explanation, soon after this development was pointed out.
Unfortunately Mr. Miller‘s article is not the only example of a ‘fact check’ that ignores or distorts the facts, or counters hard data with pure speculation. This sloppy kind of reporting seems to be the fact-checkers’ standard way of working when it comes to the pandemic. Some have even admitted their fact-check labels are nothing but opinion. And the general press is no exception. For example, the Scottish Herald recently published an article on this subject, also failing to acknowledge the fact that the data is age-standardised.
It is a noble endeavour to try to make sure facts rather than fiction influence public opinion. But unfortunately, it looks as if the champions of ‘fact-checking’ have little respect for facts. Most of the material they produce consists of low quality, highly opinionated articles, lacking not only references, but more importantly the clarity of thinking that must be required of anyone who takes upon themselves the important and difficult task of deciding what is true and what isn‘t.
Thorsteinn Siglaugsson is an economist who lives in Iceland. Find him on his blog.
February 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Why are there so many articles on heart attacks recently?
There have always been articles, now and then, discussing strenuous activities that can cause heart attacks. However, in recent weeks there seems to have been a flurry of them.
Are there more heart attacks happening? Are they being caused by Covid? Lack of care during lockdowns? Lockdowns themselves? Vaccines?
Do you have access to any cardiac data and what do you think is causing them, if there are in fact more? (To be fair, looking at my recent energy bills did make me fill a bit funny).
A selection of the articles I am talking about:
The Times
Wales Online – Energy bill price rise may cause heart attacks and strokes
New York Post – The little-known heart attack that’s striking ‘fit and healthy’ women as young as 22
The Sun – How the weather is HARMING your health – from heart attacks to stroke and gout
The Times – Rise in heart attacks attributed to pandemic stress and poor diet
BBC – Devoted football fans experience ‘dangerous’ levels of stress
The Sun – HIDDEN RISK Urgent warning as 300,000 Brits living with stealth disease that could kill within 5 years
Express – Heart attack: The drink that could trigger a ‘sudden’ cardiac arrest – ‘catastrophic’
Express – Heart attack: Does skipping breakfast increase your risk?
Times of India – Why are heart attacks becoming common in ‘seemingly’ fit people?
Mining Journal – Sports can break your heart in more ways than one
Daily Mail – Expert warns that shovelling snow can be a deadly way to discover underlying cardiovascular conditions as straining the heart with physical activity could cause sudden death
Daily Mail – Popping a paracetamol each day could raise your risk of a deadly heart attack or stroke by a FIFTH, study warns
Heart – Cannabis use disorder may be linked to growing number of heart attacks in younger adults
February 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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End the mandates now. We will not be tricked into a violent outcome. We are peaceful protestors. Justice Hugh McLean acknowledges that we have a right to be here, to be heard and to protest, that is what we are here for. We are prepared to be arrested. We have our lawyers. We have no fear. We are here for our children.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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As protests against Canada’s COVID vaccine mandates entered their 12th day, Ottawa police continued to cut off food and fuel supplies for hundreds of truckers.
Police Tuesday told reporters they are “having discussions with the Children’s Aid Society about what steps to take” to protect children living in what they estimated to be about 100 of the 400 trucks parked in the city.
The Freedom Convoy left Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, on Jan. 23 and arrived Jan. 29 in Ottawa.
It has inspired protests around the world, including in 27 European countries which are planning their own convoys.
Here’s the latest news on the Freedom Convoy:
- Police said discussions are underway with the Children’s Aid Society for the possible removal of the children from their protesting parents. Ottawa’s Deputy Police Chief Steve Bell cited noise, carbon monoxide fumes, lack of sanitation and noise levels as possible safety hazards. “We’re not at the stage of looking to do any sort of enforcement activity around that,” Bell told CTV News. “We’ll rely on the Children’s Aid Society to give us guidance.”
- In a news release, groups of retired and active-duty police officers from across Canada, along with members of parliament and other advocacy groups, expressed support for the truckers: “The government’s decision to block refueling of the trucks puts fellow Canadians and their families including their young children in danger due to the extreme cold temperatures currently occurring in Ottawa. Regardless of where one stands on this topic, these actions are inhumane and do not align with Canadian principles,” the release stated.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bodyguard resigned stating that he could not abide by the government’s dictates which he felt contravened the human rights enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
- Nick Motichka, a 10-year veteran of the Calgary Police Service, delivered a strong message on Facebook to his fellow regulation enforcement officers: “Police are here to help and protect people” not “to do the politicians’ dirty work… What is happening in Ottawa, with the clear political influence on the police, to physically exert political will on peaceful protesters for nothing more than possible political gain is so very wrong, on so many levels.”
- Alberta Premier Jason Kenny dropped his province’s vaccine passport program at midnight, promising to lift other public health restrictions by March 1, depending on the number of hospital admissions.
- Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced Tuesday he will end his province’s vaccine passport policy by Monday, Feb. 14. Other public health policies, such as masking, will remain in effect until the end of the month.
- Provincial Parliament Member Randy Hillier is organizing another “Blue-collar Convoy” of tractors to join the truckers in Ottawa this weekend, as he did last week. The proposed routes are listed on the Facebook page.
- Freedom Convoy truckers and Canadian doctors sent a message that vaccine mandates must be removed and they pleaded for a meeting with Trudeau.
Beyond Canada’s borders:
- The current blockade by truckers of the bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit is preventing much of the daily “$300 million in car and truck parts, agricultural products, steel and other raw materials” to reach its destinations, according to the Financial Post. “Almost 20% of all Canada-U.S. trade moves across the Ambassador Bridge, and 30% of cross-border freight moved by truck uses that route.”
- According to Politico, convoys are now being organized across the U.S. and “regional protests have been planned in states from Alabama to Wyoming, based on Politico’s review of social media activity.”
- “Anti-mandate protesters in France, inspired by the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Canada, plan to make their way to Paris, then Brussels, to demand an end to vaccine passports,” according to the Financial Post. “Around 200 protesters gathered in a parking lot in Nice today, waving Canadian flags in solidarity with protesters in Canada. Their convoy is made up of motorcycles and cars, but no trucks.”
Similar protests erupted in the last few days in Australia and New Zealand, the Washington Post reported. The “Convoy to Canberra” involves only a couple of 18-wheelers as few Australian truckers own their own vehicles. Protestors brought camping gear — setting up an occupation which has been compared to “Occupation Wall Street.” According to CNN, a convoy of trucks and camper vans has blocked the streets near New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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The Ontario government is further being accused of suppressing civil liberties and the right to organize a protest after it has announced that it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to the millions of dollars donated to the Freedom Convoy through free speech fundraising platform GiveSendGo.
GiveSendGo is the alternative US-based fundraising platform that came to the rescue after GoFundMe pulled the plug on donations to the Freedom Convoy protesters who are campaigning for civil liberties in Ottawa and at multiple border crossings.
A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford says Ontario’s Attorney General submitted the application to the Superior Court of Justice, requesting that it be illegal to distribute donations made through GiveSendGo’s two crowdfunding campaigns, the “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “Adopt-a-Trucker.”
The full statement is as follows:
“Today, the Attorney General brought an application in the Superior Court of Justice for an order pursuant to section 490.8 of the Criminal Code prohibiting any person from disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, in any manner whatsoever, any and all monetary donations made through the Freedom Convoy 2022 and Adopt-a-Trucker campaign pages on the GiveSendGo online fundraising platform.
“This afternoon, the order was issued. It binds any and all parties with possession or control over these donations.”
Ford’s office said that an order binding “any and all parties with possession or control over these donations” has been granted and issued.
GiveSendGo is now being described as an “offense-related property” as described in 490.8 of the Criminal Code.
Civil liberties protestors have faced an uphill battle, with the Canadian government trying to suppress the protest in several ways.
More than $10 million was originally raised through GoFundMe, a platform that has been accused of bias and selectively enforcing its policies.
Donors have raised over $8.4 million on GiveSendGo at the time of writing.
In a statement, GiveSendGo was not deterred by the order and said, “Know this! Canada has absolutely zero jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for every campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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In an article published Feb. 7, The Exposé reported Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine “increases children’s risk of death 5100%,” based on data recorded by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS is the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics that include COVID vaccine uptake and mortality by age group.
The ONS data cited by The Exposé is found in table 9 of the dataset, labeled “Deaths occurring between 1 January 2021 and 31 October 2021 edition of this dataset.” It can be downloaded directly from the ONS website here.
The Exposé accurately plotted some of the ONS data in its article:
Figure 1. Mortality rates by vaccination status (ages 10-14)
As the above table shows, the all-cause mortality rate in the doubly vaccinated is in fact 238.7/4.58 = 52 times larger, or 5,100% higher than in the unvaccinated.
However, before drawing any conclusions it is imperative to examine the actual ONS data more closely.
First, we must consider the total number of deaths in each population. There were 96 total deaths among nearly 2.1 million unvaccinated children in the 10- to 14-year-old age group compared to four deaths among 1,678 children in that age group who had received their second dose 21 days or more prior to their demise.
Children who received only one dose or who were inside the 21-day window were not included in the subgroup with the highest mortality.
The Exposé chose to compare the most extreme subset of the vaccinated to support its provocative headline. Moreover, although the specific cause of death is not given (the ONS only separates cause of death into COVID or non-COVID-related), none of the four deaths were related to COVID.
This poses important questions. What if the four perished in an automobile accident? What if they were all suffering from a debilitating chronic condition that led to a predictable fatality?
We arrive at a major confounder: These two populations of children are not necessarily matched.
It is likely parents with children with significant comorbidities would have more readily sought the vaccine for their kids compared to parents with healthy children.
According to actuarial tables from the U.S. Social Security Administration, the risk of death in a 10- to 14-year-old is about 1 to 1.7 in 10,000 in a given year.
These numbers are 2 to 4 times higher than the mortality rate in the unvaccinated group in the ONS dataset, further indicating that this group is healthier than the average.
Nevertheless, taking all children who had received at least one dose of the vaccine as a whole, we find that 11 deaths occurred in 27,359 person-years. This mortality rate is still significantly higher (nearly 9 times) than the unvaccinated.
Based on the Fisher Exact Test — a standard statistical test used to determine if the proportions of categories in two group variables significantly differ from each other — there is less than a 1 in 100,000 probability this difference could have happened at random.
What do ONS data reveal about vaccine effectiveness?
As stated above, though a large difference in mortality between the vaccinated and unvaccinated exists, it is impossible, based on ONS data, to come to any definitive conclusions about the safety of these vaccines because of the mismatched cohorts and the small number of unclassified deaths in one of the groups.
Let us now examine what this data may tell us about the effectiveness of the shots. How good are the vaccines at preventing deaths from COVID in this age group?
There were two COVID deaths in 2,121,963 unvaccinated person-years. There were also two COVID deaths in 27,359 vaccinated person-years.
This means the vaccine effectiveness (VE) = -7,557%. This is because the unvaccinated group is 76.57 times larger and had the same number of deaths due to COVID.
However, the deaths in the vaccinated group occurred before the child had received a second dose.
By Pfizer’s methodology, blessed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), its product is 100% effective. This is a direct result of only counting deaths 14 days after the second dose.
With “zero” deaths in the vaccinated and two in the unvaccinated, the vaccine is 100% effective in preventing death from COVID.
On the other hand, if we compare the two groups of adolescents aged 15-19, we find that there was one COVID death in the 127,842 person-years of the fully vaccinated group and 18 in the 1,587,072 person-years of the unvaccinated group. This results in a calculated vaccine effectiveness of only 31%.
Where does that leave us?
The ONS data give us much to be concerned about. There seems to be an undeniable safety signal emerging from England which must be monitored closely over time.
Strangely enough, the subsequent data set from the ONS, which includes data through the end of December 2021, conspicuously excludes children in these age groups.
Where else, then, can we look? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has chosen not to report on deaths by vaccination status in this age group.
We are in the same predicament that Pfizer’s severely flawed and underpowered pediatric trial left us in. With fewer than 2,200 children involved and only 1,450 receiving the vaccine, the trial did not answer any questions about safety or efficacy.
Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel, acknowledged the trial did not offer any information by succinctly and notoriously stating during an FDA hearing, “We are never going to learn how safe this vaccine is until we start giving it. That’s just the way it is.”
Rubin is not completely correct. We could learn how safe this vaccine is if he and his fellow advisory panel members demanded that a properly powered and designed trial were conducted prior to deploying the vaccine to tens of millions of children.
In any case, we have started giving it. When will we learn how safe this vaccine is?
More importantly, what should we do in the meantime? Pause childhood vaccinations until data can be collected and deaths investigated?
Or carry on while testing it on infants 6 months of age and older?
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Police will keep the Canada-inspired trucker demonstration out of the Belgian capital, its mayor says
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close announced on Thursday that a protest convoy of truckers will be barred from entering the city. Inspired by an ongoing demonstration against vaccine mandates in Canada, the truckers are set to reach the Belgian capital early next week.
“We have taken the decision to ban the ‘Freedom Convoy’ which has not been authorized to demonstrate because no request has been sent,” Close wrote on Twitter, noting that he made the decision along with Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Brussels region Minister President Rudi Vervoort.
Local and federal police “will divert motorized vehicles coming towards the capital despite the ban,” Close added.
Drawing participants from across the continent, the protest is inspired by a similar demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Traffic in parts of Ottawa has been brought to a standstill for nearly two weeks by truckers demanding the immediate lifting of Covid restrictions, including a mandate that requires them to be vaccinated to re-enter the country from the US.
As host to key EU institutions, Brussels is a natural focal point for the European protest. While individual nations in the bloc have begun rolling back their vaccine pass systems at home, vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test is required to cross national borders within the union, and the EU recently proposed extending this system until 2023.
Truckers en route to Brussels have planned some stops along the way, with a major protest set to hit Paris this weekend. Authorities in the French capital issued a similar ban on Thursday, and threatened protesters with stiff fines should they block traffic in the city. Paris police said that a “specific device” would be used by the authorities to prevent the convoy from entering the city.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Brussels, COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, France, Human rights |
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Comedian Heather McDonald, 51, has posted a video showing her collapsing mid-set during a stand-up routine in Tempe, Arizona earlier this week.
In the video McDonald collapses just moments after saying she is vaccinated, boosted, and still has her period, proclaiming that she still hasn’t contracted Covid and that “clearly, Jesus loves me the most. Seriously. So nice, so nice.” The next moment she stumbles, rolls her eyes and falls unconscious, hitting her head on the stage floor. The audience can be heard laughing as apparently everyone assumed it was all part of the act.
Her sister had her rushed to the hospital, where it was revealed she had fractured her skull. The reason for her collapse is still unknown, but her publicist has stated that it may have been “because of dehydration.” … Full article
The family of Bob Saget has revealed the comedian died of “head trauma” in his Florida hotel room
RT | February 10, 2022
Comedian Bob Saget’s death last month was caused by “head trauma” sustained in his Florida hotel room, according to a statement released by his family that shared the conclusion from the medical examiner’s office investigation into the passing of the ‘Full House’ star.
“Now that we have the final conclusions from the authorities’ investigation, we felt it only proper that the fans hear those conclusions directly from us,” the statement said. “The authorities have determined that Bob passed from head trauma. They have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep.” … Full article
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.
There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.
For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.
But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.
Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.
Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.
Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”
Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.
You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?
Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.
Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?
Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?
Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.
The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.
The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did it again.
The FDA last week granted its seal of approval for a ghost vaccine that is unavailable in the United States — and it did so using a preordained process that made a mockery of “science” and of “regulation.”
Days later, the CDC backed the FDA’s decision, using similarly flawed data and reasoning.
The approval of Moderna’s Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine was an even greater travesty than the FDA’s approval last August of Pfizer’s Comirnaty shot.
That’s because Moderna has been even more secretive than Pfizer about its trial data, and because Moderna’s shot is linked to an even higher rate of heart disease than Pfizer’s.
The FDA’s approval of the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine led people to believe they would get a fully licensed, FDA-approved vaccine — when in fact they were still getting the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine distributed under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
People can ask for the Comirnaty vaccine as often as they like — but it is not being distributed in the U.S. The Comirnaty vaccine is supposed to be the same formulation as the old Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but the vials labeled “Comirnaty” are in a legal class of their own.
Why this Kabuki theater?
Because any adult who is harmed or killed as a side effect of an “FDA-approved” vaccine can sue the manufacturer. But if you are harmed in exactly the same way by an EUA vaccine, you are out of luck — the manufacturer and everyone in the chain of delivery has full immunity from lawsuits. The law depends on the label.
Now Moderna has the same legal advantage as Pfizer. Its “Spikevax” is the same formula as the old Moderna vaccine, but only if you are dosed with a vial bearing the “Spikevax” label can you sue for bodily harm. So, of course, the Moderna vaccine continues to be distributed, but Spikevax is not available in the U.S.
The approval of Spikevax is not just a legal sham. It’s also a scientific sham. FDA approval is supposed to include long-term safety testing, but there is no long-term data available for a product that has been in existence less than a year.
The FDA hearings on the licensing of Spikevax were one-sided and dominated by self-congratulatory rhetoric. They also raised more questions than answers.
Questions for the FDA
- Besides offering publicity to the manufacturer and sowing confusion in the public mind, why would the manufacturers want FDA approval for a vaccine that is not available in the U.S.?
- Neither Pfizer nor Moderna explicitly specified the content of their placebos, but a published review claims they were simple saline. If this is the case, why is the rate of medical problems following injection with a “placebo” so much higher with Moderna’s placebo compared to Pfizer’s placebo?
For example, 18 people out of 15,000 in the Moderna placebo group died before the start of the trial (2 weeks from the second vaccination), while only 4 people out of 22,000 who received Pfizer’s placebo dose died in a comparable period. There were 31 “severe adverse events” in the placebo group of the Moderna trial, and zero in the (larger) Pfizer placebo group. What was in that “placebo” that killed 18 people and sent 31 to the hospital?
- The FDA relies on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) to help assess the safety of vaccines before approval. There was an animated debate at the VRBPAC meeting for the Pfizer vaccine. Why was VRBPAC not invited to convene for the Moderna vaccine? The answer is given in this letter of approval from the FDA to Moderna (January 31, 2022):
“We did not refer your application to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee because our review of information submitted in your BLA [Biologics License Application], including the clinical study design and trial results, did not raise concerns or controversial issues that would have benefited from an advisory committee discussion.”
- The FDA plainly states that it limited the scope of its analysis to the trial data alone. Why isn’t the FDA interested in the enormous amount of data that has become available in the last year?
Safety: Did FDA cook the books?
Deaths and disabilities associated with the mRNA “vaccines” have occurred with shocking frequency, 90 times as many as the worst vaccine in the past. There have been more than 1 million COVID vaccine reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), compared to 11,000 for the worst vaccine in 2020 (Shingrix).
There were more than twice as many deaths related to the COVID vaccines this year as the sum total of all vaccine deaths in the 30-year history of VAERS.
To rig the approval process in favor of such a product, the FDA needed to rewrite the rule book. The agency did this with a new statistical criterion, masking murder with mathematics. I am grateful to Matthew Crawford for having decoded the algebra and sounded the alarm.
The safety criterion chosen by the FDA is an obscure computation called PRR, which stands for Proportional Reporting Ratio. As the name implies, it is based on RATIOS of different event types and is utterly blind to the ABSOLUTE RATE of such events.
PRR measures the distribution of different kinds of adverse events, e.g. blood clots, heart attacks and deaths. If those ratios are severely out of line with the great variety of vaccine reactions in the past, PRR would detect that.
For example, if the new vaccines caused an extraordinary risk of myocarditis, but everything else was low, then PRR would flag that. But if myocarditis was just one risk among many that have been reported from past vaccines, then PRR would not pick that up.
The real scandal is that PRR is blind to the absolute risk numbers. PRR is defined in such a way as to look for unusual PATTERNS of adverse events, but it is completely insensitive to unusual RATES of adverse events.
Of course, it is the rates and not the patterns that are of primary concern, and the PRR is designed NOT to reflect that.
For example, suppose we have two vaccines:
- Vaccine A has 1 reported death per million vaccinations, 3 reported heart attacks per million, and 20 reported headaches per million.
- Vaccine B has 1 reported death per hundred vaccinations, 3 reported heart attacks per hundred, and 20 reported headaches per hundred.
Vaccine A is quite safe, and vaccine B is extremely dangerous. And yet the formula for PRR will produce the same result for vaccine A and B!
Clearly, PRR is not an appropriate criterion for evaluating the safety of any particular vaccine. Did the FDA use PRR in order to cook the books?
In Moderna’s own trials, 1.3% of vaccine recipients had a reaction to the vaccine that was severe enough to require medical attention. The following possible side effects were listed in information given to doctors:
“Anaphylaxis and other severe allergic reactions, myocarditis, pericarditis, and syncope have been reported following administration of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine during mass vaccination outside of clinical trials.”
Off with his head! — the CDC’s ACIP hearings
In Alice’s Wonderland, the Red Queen’s justice began with the execution, then there was a verdict — and finally a trial.
The FDA hearing was followed by a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which reports to the CDC.
The committee on Feb. 4 voted to recommend the Moderna Spikevax. Only after that action step had been secured did the committee hear testimony from the Public Health Agency of Canada that Moderna’s vaccine was associated with a myocarditis risk five times higher than Pfizer’s.
Questions for the CDC
- All-cause mortality was equal in both placebo and vaccine groups (16 deaths in each). In the midst of a pandemic, Moderna’s vaccine demonstrated no survival benefit. This should have been enough to end any further consideration of approval.
- We have detailed data on myocarditis from decades of past history. One-fourth of myocarditis patients are dead within 5 years, but the same study reports that if the myocarditis is caused by human immunodeficiency virus, then three-fourths die in the same 5 years.
We have no long-term data on vaccine-induced myocarditis, but we do have some 6-month data, which show 39% of cases still had their activity restricted by their doctors, 20% were still on heart medication, 32% still reported chest pain, 22% still had shortness of breath, 22% had palpitations and 25% still reported fatigue. Thirteen vaccine recipients died. (All these numbers were presented at the ACIP hearing on Feb. 4.)
Why should we have confidence that the course of vaccine-induced myocarditis will be much less severe than other forms of the disease?
- The Moderna trial, like the Pfizer trial, was limited to healthy people, mostly young, with no pre-existing problems. Pregnant women were explicitly excluded. Why is the vaccine being approved as safe for everyone, including diabetics and immune-compromised, elderly and pregnant women?
- When mRNA vaccines were approved on an emergency basis, the FDA promised to track all safety concerns with a new cell phone app called V-Safe. Why are the results of V-Safe being withheld from the public?
- The FDA was considering approval of Moderna’s vaccine in January 2022. There was a full year’s experience with side effects reported from nearly 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine in the U.S. alone. But the FDA limited its consideration to the 15,000 subjects who were in the Moderna trial, ending March 26, 2021. Why was this huge trove of data on vaccine safety not reviewed by the FDA?
- Yes, we understand that the vaccine doesn’t become fully effective until 2 weeks after the second shot. But is that a reason to exclude from consideration the damage that is inflicted by enhanced vulnerability to disease during those two weeks, or, for that matter, the four weeks between shots? These have been counted as diseases of the “unvaccinated,” but in fact, people in this stage of treatment are much more vulnerable than the truly unvaccinated.
- France and Germany do not recommend Moderna’s vaccination for young people, presumably because the Moderna vaccine is associated with a higher rate of myocarditis than the Pfizer vaccine. How did our FDA come to a different conclusion?
- Anaphylaxis following vaccination is an immediate, life-threatening and an undeniable consequence of the vaccine. The CDC claimed the rate of anaphylaxis is 6 per 1 million.
However, in March of 2021, an examination of anaphylaxis following mRNA vaccines revealed a much higher incidence of this adverse event. In fact, 9 of 38,971 Moderna vaccine recipients suffered documented anaphylaxis. This equates to 230 per million, or 38 times higher than the CDC estimate.
Efficacy — but at what cost?
The proper measure of the efficacy of any medication is how it affects all aspects of a patient’s health. But in evaluating the Moderna vaccine, the FDA looked only at its effect on COVID.
There are early but disturbing indications that vaccination worldwide has had dramatic effects on other aspects of health, unrelated to COVID. Insurance company trade journals report that they are paying life insurance claims for adults 18-64 years of age at a rate 40% higher than during any normal year.
This number from OneAmerica (Indianapolis) has been echoed by other studies in Europe. A leaked spreadsheet from the Defense Medical Epidemiological Database showed that incidences of many medical problems in the U.S. military surged in this year of vaccination. For example, heart attacks were up 343%, cancers up 218%, among many other disorders.
Could it be that the vaccines have had a small benefit for COVID severity and disastrous impact on other aspects of human health?
We now have some real-world experience with the efficacy of vaccines. For example, we know the virus mutated to a more contagious, less lethal form. Omicron is now the dominant form of the virus in the U.S. and most other parts of the world today.
The Omicron mutations are concentrated in the spike protein — the only part of the virus to which the vaccinated population has immunity. This suggests the virus is mutating in response to the vaccine, and mutations are an important factor affecting efficacy in the long run.
Nevertheless, the FDA considered efficacy data predominantly from the first five months of data (through March 26, 2021) in making its decision to fully license Spikevax, with an absolute cutoff in November, before Omicron became dominant.
More questions
- Almost all subjects in the original Moderna trial who received placebo initially were subsequently given the vaccine. How will we ever know the long-term effects of the vaccine if we have no controls with which to compare?
- Why do CDC studies of death rates based on vaccination status differ so markedly from the same question asked by independent groups in other countries?
Here, for example, is a report from Public Health Scotland stating that vaccination increases vulnerability to Omicron. Here is a similar report from England. This study shows countries with higher vaccination rates tend to have higher rates of COVID, and this one confirms the same result for U.S. states.
- We are now in an era dominated by the Omicron variant, against which all the vaccines seem much less effective. But even “follow-up data” was analyzed only through March 26, 2021, nine months before Omicron took over. Why did the FDA base its decision on data only from older variants?
- The secondary efficacy endpoint was the prevention of severe COVID-19. Now that it is accepted that there is little, if any, protective effect of mRNA vaccines from infection, the prevention of severe disease should be the primary focus of approval determination.
Moderna claims its vaccine efficacy is an astonishing 98.2% in preventing severe COVID-19 (Table 8). Pfizer’s was 96.7% (Table S6).
The reason for the calculated difference in efficacy between these two products was not from a lower incidence of severe disease in the vaccine arm of Moderna’s trial (it was lower in Pfizer’s trial). It was because the incidence of severe disease in Moderna’s placebo group was much higher than in Pfizer’s.
Severe COVID-19 in Pfizer’s placebo group occurred in 30 participants out of 23,0379. In Moderna’s, severe disease occurred in 106 participants out of 14,164 that received a placebo. Why was the incidence of severe COVID-19 nearly six times higher in Moderna’s placebo group than Pfizer’s?
Postscript: Failure was never an option
In America, why are clinical trials for new drugs run by the same companies that own the drugs, and will profit from them if the trial is successful?
It’s a glaring conflict of interest, but necessary within a capitalist system. Since the trials cost, typically, hundreds of millions of dollars, only the company that will profit from the drug is motivated to invest such huge sums in testing.
In the case of the COVID vaccines, however, the development and the trials were both publicly funded. There was no excuse for contracting the same organization both to develop and test their own product.
Moderna’s development cost was funded through Operation Warp Speed in the U.S. and Pfizer through the German government. Now, the companies are reaping windfall profits, though they risked no money of their own.
This leaves us wondering, did our government ever want a fair and unbiased evaluation of the COVID vaccines? Or — after a full year of telling the public that vaccines were the only path out of the COVID crisis — did NIH feel they could not risk the possibility that the trials might fail?
There were no animal tests. There was no time to experimentally optimize dosage and delivery. They had to guess right the first time.
Maybe they thought this is what the exigency of a pandemic required — but please don’t call it “science.”
Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D., has a background in theoretical physics. Since the 1990s, he is best known for his contributions to the biology of aging, including many articles and two books.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, United States |
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