Biden calls for tighter censorship of Covid-19 content
RT | January 13, 2022
US President Joe Biden’s latest “surge response” to fight the spread of Covid-19 includes an appeal for Big Tech and media companies to block allegedly false pandemic-related claims.
“I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets,” Biden said on Thursday. “Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”
Biden made the comment as he announced a series of new measures to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, including plans for free masks, more free tests, and additional deployments of military medical teams to help hospitals cope with rising patient loads. He didn’t specify what constitutes misinformation or disinformation in the pandemic age.
Biden urged a crackdown immediately after chiding people who have chosen not to get vaccinated by saying they were “standing in the way” of the fight against the virus.
Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms already have strict policies on commentary about Covid-19 if it clashes with the currently mainstream approach to dealing with the virus. Social media giants have also employed teams of fact-checkers, vigorously working to enforce those policies. But Biden’s administration is scrambling to find more ways to fight Covid “misinformation” after the fast-spreading Omicron variant pushed new infections and hospitalizations to record highs.
Biden’s apparent censorship appeal quickly sparked backlash on social media. This included claims that the president is among those spreading misinformation. Biden falsely said last month that “almost all” Covid-19 deaths were among unvaccinated people, and he claimed last July that “you’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”
Other critics blasted Biden’s statement on principle. “Imagine calling for censorship of your own nation as the POTUS when you’ve taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and the FIRST Amendment is freedom of speech,” podcast host Barrington Martin II said on Twitter.
Many observers questioned the wisdom of letting gatekeepers decide which speech is misinformation, thereby blocking open discussion and independent truth-seeking. Still others suggested that Biden is trying to do damage-control after his failure to meet campaign promises on Covid-19 contributed to a downward spiral in his approval ratings.
Biden admin flip-flops on tracking Covid jab refusers
RT | January 13, 2022
A US government agency in Washington, DC has said it will make a list of those who refuse to get vaccinated against Covid-19 for religious reasons. The move goes against earlier promises by the Biden administration.
The Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) for the District of Columbia announced its intention to create what it called the “Employee Religious Exception Request Information System” in a notice on Tuesday.
According to the agency, which assists officers in DC with formulating release recommendations and supervising defendants awaiting trial, the new system will store the names and “personal religious information” of employees who file “religious accommodation requests for religious exception from the federally mandated vaccination requirement.”
The PSA didn’t specify the reasons for compiling such a list, or how the personal data on it would be used.
It only said vaguely that the system would “assist the Agency in the collecting, storing, dissemination, and disposal of employee religious exemption request information collected and maintained by the Agency.”
The PSA is a small local agency, but conservative outlet the Daly Signal suggested that “likely, the Biden administration is using it to stealth test a policy it intends to roll out across the whole government.”
There is no proof to support this assumption. However, the White House had previously promised that would not store data on the vaccination status of Americans at a federal level.
In August, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients assured during a briefing that “there will be no federal vaccination database. As with all other vaccines, the information gets held at the state and local level.” Zients was replying to a question about ways to deal with the rise in counterfeited jab cards, after more businesses and education institutions across the US began demanding proof of vaccination.
On Monday, the Biden administration’s vaccine or test mandate for private employers entered into force despite still being contested in the US Supreme Court.
The White House, which had previously told millions of federal employees and contractors to be fully vaccinated, now demands that those working for companies with more than 100 employees receive two shots of a coronavirus vaccine or get tested at least once a week.
More than 60% of the population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the US, which has become the world’s worst-hit country, with more than 63 million infections and over 843,000 deaths related to the virus.
The media’s Covid mouthpieces don’t know their SARS from their elbow
By Suzie Halewood | TCW Defending Freedom | January 13, 2022
LAST week Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff (A Hard Lesson For Djokovic: Patience with vaccine sceptics is wearing thin) took a gleeful swipe at tennis star Novak Djokovic, who was initially denied the right to remain in Australia to defend his Australian Open title.
This was despite the world number one receiving an exemption from a review panel appointed by the state of Victoria’s Department of Health, which took into consideration Novak having previously been tested positive for asymptomatic Covid.
‘Few tears will be shed for the man now inevitably known as “Novaxx” Djokovic,’ opined Gaby, who has clearly never organised a tennis tournament.
She attacks the Serbian star for his ‘wacky beliefs’ such as ‘natural’ healing, as though natural immunity is a conspiracy theory, before equating him with the one rule for them, one rule for us elites of Downing Street, merely because he’s earned millions from being focused and talented. (A parallel piece in The Telegraph suggests they’re all still singing from the same hymn sheet).
But Djokovic isn’t trying to slip under the radar because he’s a millionaire. He isn’t trying to slip under the radar at all. Prior to the 2021 Australian Open, he quarantined as per the requirements of the Australian department of health. This year, having had Covid and therefore natural immunity, he applied for an exemption, which was granted. Djokovic’s only mistake was to travel to Australia during election year.
However, Gaby’s attack isn’t really on Djokovic, it’s on the unvaccinated in general: ‘Just over a month ago, I wrote about how the mood might harden as intensive care beds filled with patients realising too late that they should have got the jab, while restrictions once again loomed over people who had done what was asked of them.’
Sorry Gaby, but intensive care beds aren’t filling up with the unvaccinated. According to the latest technical briefing from UKHSA, Britain’s health security agency, emergency admissions up to December 29 consisted of 206 unvaccinated, 591 vaccinated and 18 unlinked.
As for restrictions once again looming over people who had done what was asked of them, more fool you for believing the Government. Three weeks to flatten the curve, a firm pledge to loosen restrictions once the vulnerable were jabbed, double-jabbed means fully jabbed – until you need a booster. When exactly are you going to catch on?
Like every other sloppy columnist with a ‘vaccine refusenik’ in their sights, Gaby clearly feels that as she unquestioningly followed the rules, so should everybody else, never stopping to ask who made the rules, why and to what end? History should have taught us that blindly following rules does not end well.
Vince Cable is another one who believes the unvaccinated are responsible for restrictions affecting everyone, sidestepping the latest UKHSA technical briefing to declare that the Covid circus is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. ‘The harm caused to society by the unvaccinated is partly that there is increased transmissibility,’ says Vince.
The UKHSA says otherwise, showing vaccine effectiveness against contracting the disease in all 18+ cohorts as a negative (the most extreme figure being minus 151.2 per cent in the 40-49 year-old cohort) which means you are more likely to catch the disease if vaccinated. If more catch it, more can spread it.
And let’s not forget the overburdened NHS, struggling to cope with a reduction in perfectly healthy staff who were sent home after testing positive using a lateral flow test that can find Covid in an orange.
The UKHSA, usually so reliable with a positive (if favourably skewed) spin on its own data, could manage only a crestfallen ‘among those who had received two doses of AstraZeneca, there was no effect against Omicron from 20 weeks after the second dose’. Oh dear.
Having dug himself into one hole, Vince – who is about as adept at statistics as he is at dancing – decides to dig himself an even bigger one, saying: ‘The most difficult objection is that there are distinct groups who have refused injection not as a result of laziness or bloody-mindedness, but because of widespread suspicion, based on experience, that the authorities are not to be trusted.’
Ignoring that something learned from experience is more than a suspicion, Vince goes on digging. ‘In the US, some black Americans cite the history of being used for scientific experiments (as to why they won’t get vaccinated) … but these arguments are wearing a little thin.’
Or to look at it another way Vince, perhaps being viewed as little more than a Petri dish by pharmaceutical companies and US governments alike for the best part of the 20th century is wearing a little thin for African Americans, or Guatemalans, or Africans.
Vince’s three options to deal with the unvaccinated in the UK (thankfully he had zero policy influence even when in office) are ‘compulsion through employment conditions; changes to rights of treatment under the NHS and a more comprehensive vaccine passport system’.
He does stop short of ‘refuseniks dragged away, held down and forcefully injected’, primarily because it’s impractical. A true Liberal.
Another Liberal (whilst at Cambridge at least) happy to inhabit the scientific wasteland of journalism is Matthew ‘How to wrongfoot an anti-vaxxer’ Parris, who trips over himself trying to prove in his Spectator article that those who choose not to be vaccinated against a disease with a survival rate of 99.98 per cent must be paranoid.
‘Mass paranoia is plainly a strand in the anti-vax movement,’ proclaims Matthew, whose Imperial College-worthy research includes a tale about a ‘lonely Arab boy’ who mistook a porch light for a death ray and one about a woman in Glasgow he has never met, whose neighbour believed someone was trying to poison the residents.
I wonder how he’d label those getting boosted against an Omicrom variant a third of the strength of the Delta strain, which is itself a twentieth of the strength of Alpha?
The Parris article is one of pure projection. He ‘cannot condone frightening people with stories that are not true’. Really? Then how about an article on wealthy Marxist pandemic adviser Susan Michie, or one on the government’s Nudge Unit, or the taxpayer millions thrown at PR companies such as 23red and MullenLowe, who are paid to frighten people into believing Covid is the new plague?
Parris’s claims that ‘viral ideas and beliefs’ fuel the ‘anti-vax rumour machine’ remain unsubstantiated, as he offers zero proof. Conversely, the unvaccinated have a plethora of government data from around the world to study.
Early data from Italy for example showed the average age of death from Covid was 84.1. In the UK, ‘deaths for any reason within 28 days of a Covid positive test’ in the healthy under-65 cohort – for the whole of 2020 – were 1,549. And on March 19 2020, both the Four Nations Public Health Group and The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) were in agreement that Covid-19 need no longer be classified as an HCID – high consequence infectious disease.
But it isn’t just Cambridge graduates attacking the pro-choicers. Michael Deacon, in a particularly mean spirited piece in the Telegraph, singles out John O’Looney. He is he funeral director brave enough to speak out about the vaccine injuries he’s witnessed and the families who have opened up to him not only in regard to family members who died following the Covid jab, but also families of those who died with a Covid mention on the death certificate when their loved one clearly died of something else, like Alzheimer’s, cancer or a car crash.
Unlike O’Looney, Deacon does not attend autopsies of those who died with a suspected vaccine injury. Neither does Andrew Neil, who also claims those who choose not to get vaccinated do so through ‘fear, ignorance, irresponsibility or sheer stupidity’.
Or maybe they just studied government data or read autopsy report summaries of what the vaccines can do to the heart, lungs, liver and thyroid gland. ‘You can’t shout “fire!” in a crowded cinema if there is no fire,’ says Neil. But that is exactly what the Government did. And journalists either fell for it, or got paid to look the other way.
At least the ‘What Are We Going To Do With the Antivaxxers?’ pudding in Forbes magazine gets one thing right. ‘It is unacceptable,’ declares Enrique Dans ‘that millions of people, seemingly influenced by a small group of irresponsible idiots, have decided to endanger not only their own lives, but also the possibility of eradicating the pandemic’. Absolutely, Enrique. Here in the UK we refer to those idiots as the Government.
Thankfully, such rhetoric is already beginning to feel outdated. There is light at the end of the tunnel. ‘Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end,’ says Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK’s vaccine task force.
Meanwwhile, Professor Angus Dalgleish, writing in the Mail points out that ‘the policy of obsessive Covid screening of the population using lateral flow tests has lurched into mass hysteria. Worse, it is tantamount to national self-harm’.
As Dr Steve James, the hospital anaesthetist who took on Sajid Javid over forced vaccination pointed out, there is no sense in a sustained boosting campaign when efficacy wanes after eight weeks and most will have been exposed to Covid by now.
But hold the front page. Researchers at Imperial College have now discovered the ‘Holy Grail’ of Covid resistance. News from the Telegraph heralds a ground-breaking study which found that – and I hope you’re sitting down – large numbers of Britons were already protected from coronavirus before the pandemic began because of previous exposure to common colds. Which is exactly what Mike Yeadon and every other sane scientist flagged up prior to the vaccine rollout, before being laughed out of town.
The net is tightening around the Johnson government. If Boris chooses to push forward with his NHS mandatory vaccination drive, come April 1, he could end up with 100,000 agitated NHS whistleblowers on his hands who now have a lot less to lose.
If he pulls back from mandatory vaccination for all NHS staff, he risks facing the wrath of both the sacked non-vaccinated care workers and those care workers forced to take the jab in order to keep their jobs.
And he will still have to answer to the millions (estimated prior immunity 30-50 per cent) of vaccinated who will surely want to know why they were hoodwinked into taking an experimental treatment when all along they could have been offered a T-cell test option which would have told them if they were even likely to develop Covid. Especially in light of the fact that the Johnson government invested taxpayer money in the very T-cell research that could have prevented any need for a jab – long before the vaccine rollout.
Whether or not Djokovic gets to defend his title, his greatest service yet may be worldwide publicity for basic common sense.
For here is a healthy, fit, intelligent 34-year-old sportsman with prior immunity who, having weighed up the odds of vaccine risk versus Covid risk, has maybe decided that taking an experimental treatment with zero long-term safety data and extremely concerning short-term safety data (especially amongst young, fit sportsmen) to ward off a much-weakened Omicron variant, defies logic.
Hinsliff, Cable, Parris and Neil meanwhile will no doubt continue to be guided by the voices coming out of the telly.
“We Failed”: Danish newspaper apologizes for publishing official COVID narratives without questioning them
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 12, 2022
In August, Germany’s top newspaper, Bild, apologized for the outlet’s fear-driven Covid coverage – with special message to children, who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”
Now, a newspaper in Denmark has publicly apologized for reporting government narratives surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic without questioning them.
“We failed,” reads the article’s headline from tabloid Ekstra Bladet, which goes on to admit that “For ALMOST two years, we – the press and the population – have been almost hypnotically preoccupied with the authorities’ daily coronavirus figures.” (translated).
Read the rest below:
WE HAVE STARED at the oscillations of the number pendulum when it came to infected, hospitalized and died with corona. And we have been given the significance of the pendulum’s smallest movements laid out by experts, politicians and authorities, who have constantly warned us about the dormant corona monster under our beds. A monster just waiting for us to fall asleep so it can strike in the gloom and darkness of the night.
THE CONSTANT mental alertness has worn tremendously on all of us. That is why we – the press – must also take stock of our own efforts. And we have failed.
WE HAVE NOT been vigilant enough at the garden gate when the authorities were required to answer what it actually meant that people are hospitalized with corona and not because of corona. Because it makes a difference. A big difference. Exactly, the official hospitalization numbers have been shown to be 27 percent higher than the actual figure for how many there are in the hospital, simply because they have corona. We only know that now.
OF COURSE, it is first and foremost the authorities who are responsible for informing the population correctly, accurately and honestly. The figures for how many are sick and died of corona should, for obvious reasons, have been published long ago, so we got the clearest picture of the monster under the bed.
IN ALL, the messages of the authorities and politicians to the people in this historic crisis leave much to be desired. And therefore they lie as they have ridden when parts of the population lose confidence in them.
ANOTHER example: The vaccines are consistently referred to as our ‘superweapon’. And our hospitals are called ‘superhospitals’. Nevertheless, these super-hospitals are apparently maximally pressured, even though almost the entire population is armed with a super-weapon. Even children have been vaccinated on a huge scale, which has not been done in our neighboring countries.
IN OTHER WORDS, there is something here that does not deserve the term ‘super’. Whether it’s the vaccines, the hospitals, or a mixture of it all, is every man’s bid. But at least the authorities’ communication to the population in no way deserves the term ‘super’. On the contrary.
* * *
Will other news outlets have the journalistic integrity to follow suit? Perhaps CNN’s ratings wouldn’t be down 90% from last year in the key 25-to-54 demographic if they simply owned up to their complicity in breathlessly spewing government propaganda.
It is time to end the pandemic state of emergency
Declare the Pandemic Over!
By Paul Elias Alexander, PhD | January 12, 2022
I begin with the end. It is time we allow policy to be made by the States as POTUS Biden has indicated. Omicron has presented the unique opportunity for the federal and local governments to declare success, that the vaccines have helped somewhat, the risk is very low for Omicron, and that COVID January 2022 is not COVID February 2020.
The vaccines have shown themselves to be ineffective now and there are reports of adverse effects and even deaths post vaccine. This is a real concern and forms part of my view that we must end this now. All of it. To the extent that vaccines were ever needed, my view remains ‘no’.
Yes, I can repeat what I have stated repeatedly and for well over a year now (AIER) and more recently (Brownstone), that the lockdowns are and were futile, and so were the school closures and mask mandates. That mass testing and isolation/quarantine of asymptomatic persons was useless and actually harmful. That you could never ever defeat a mutable respiratory virus and especially one with an animal reservoir and open borders. That the lockdown policies caused crushing harms on societies and especially those least able to afford them. That business owners and laid off employees and children self-harmed and took their own lives. That you would deny people the right to choose vaccination or not (their natural immunity), with relentless infringement on their liberties and humanity. That you would work to wrongfully and without scientific basis, separate the society on vaccine status. That you would claim success when the epidemic waves declined without any regard for seasonality and the natural behavior of the epidemic and as such, insist you do more and more of the same failed policies.
Yes, I could go on and on about the catastrophic failures of the lockdowns and near every pandemic policy and action taken, but this is not the place. We have to focus on moving forward for the society is dangerously fractured, polarized, and divided. Yes, we have plenty of time to revisit and examine what went wrong and I do not wish to be sidetracked and want to focus on ‘ending the pandemic emergency’ and ‘moving forward’ immediately given the trauma to the society.
The fact is that we know extensively more on who is at risk and how to manage and treat COVID. Omicron can allow the government to now save face and declare success. We can thus begin healing our societies. It is time we learn to manage this virus and go on with life, and start by ending the emergency, the restrictions, and mandates. Now. The nation is suffering and especially our children, and in many respects, needlessly.
It is time now. It is time we be brave as a society. It is time to end the pandemic state of emergency. It is time also to end the controls, the closures, the restrictions, the plexiglass, the social distancing stickers and exhortations, the distancing announcements, and also the vaccine mandates given the overwhelming evidence implying that the infection explosion globally that we have been experiencing – post-double vaccination and even triple vaccination in e.g. Israel, UK, US etc. – may be due to the vaccinated becoming infected and spreading Covid as much or more than the unvaccinated.
We have emerging indications (not yet affirmed) that 95% of infections in Germany are among the fully vaccinated. Additional evidence of the seeming failure of the vaccines emerged when Omicron cases spiked in Germany’s most vaccinated state. Israel is already considering a fourth vaccination for the elderly (given that the prior three shots have been largely ineffective with vaccinal immunity rapidly waning) and also whether to end vaccination in everyone except high-risk people, and thus adopting a ‘herd’ immunity policy.
The former COVID czar of Israel has now alluded that Omicron “will give Israel herd immunity without swamping ICUs.” In Israel, it is becoming increasingly clear that Omicron could lead to population-level herd immunity. Denmark is also signaling admission of Omicron’s deliverance from the COVID-19 pandemic, stating “it will impart a kind of herd immunity shielding the country from future variants.” Vaccines and mandates are increasingly being called into question in the face of Omicron with health experts saying “the highly transmissible Omicron variant could help countries reach herd immunity as cases continue to rise.”
COVID is circling the drain and this pandemic emergency can end. This will take courage and political will. Ending this is really a societal decision where the population must decide it is time to go on with usual life, making reasonable commonsense decisions and taking necessary precautions. This means we will have to come to terms with living with the pathogen and that this is reasonable and was expected. This signals a healthy society. We already have the Great Barrington Declaration and a 20-step Alexander/Brownstone Model as signposts to help us emerge.
The evidence shows that there is no marked difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in terms of infection risk and harboring of heavy viral load, relative to previous variants. We have accumulated evidence that appear to strongly support this (Brownstone here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
What these studies have shown are that vaccines have not protected against the Delta and Omicron variants. Importantly, they show that the vaccines cannot stop the disease from spreading and eventually infect most of us. That is, while the vaccines provide individual benefits to the vaccinee, and especially to older high-risk people, the public benefit of universal vaccination is in grave doubt.
As such, Covid vaccines should not be expected to contribute to eliminating the communal spread of the virus or the reaching of herd immunity. These vaccines cannot cut the chain of transmission and thus have no role in contributing to herd immunity. We also have accumulated evidence that the vaccines are harmful for many, and alarmingly in young persons e.g. myocarditis in males < 40 years of age (Patone et al.). What we are seeing is that the vaccines are very limited in stopping Omicron infection that now dominates. It is becoming increasingly clear that we will have to rely on natural immunity (COVID-recovered) to get us to population-level herd immunity.
This unravels the rationale for vaccine mandates and passports. “The notion that we have to vaccinate every living, walking American – and eventually every newborn – in order to control the pandemic,” writes Marty Makary, “is based on the false assumption that the risk of dying from COVID-19 is equally distributed in the population. It’s not. We have always known that it’s very hard for the virus to hurt someone who is young and healthy. And that’s still the case.”
As it currently stands, the SCOTUS seems poised to rule against POTUS Biden’s vaccine and testing mandates for businesses. We even have evidence that Omicron arrived on all 7 continents, as 36 cases were reported in Antarctica.
We also know that natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity and it always was. Any suggestions otherwise by public health leaders and officials have been an effort to misinform and mislead the public into vaccinating. It is actually a scandal, outrageously so, that the natural immunity (COVID-recovered) of persons is not being recognized as equal to and even superior to vaccine immunity as it is.
It turns out that we have data to show that natural immunity is life-long, with data showing that it is robust near 100 years after exposure e.g. researchers find long-lived immunity to 1918 pandemic virus, CIDRAP, 2008 and the actual 2008 NATURE journal publication by Yu. We also know of the research that exposure to prior common cold coronavirus provides protection and that we were likely all immune at some level e.g. exposure to common cold coronaviruses can teach the immune system to recognize SARS-CoV-2, La Jolla, Crotty and Sette, 2020 and selective and cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes in unexposed humans, Mateus, 2020, as well as those who had SARS-1 in 2003 were immune to SARS-CoV-2 now e.g. SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls, Le Bert, 2020.
It is becoming more apparent then, that the pandemic is on its last legs and Omicron has ushered this endemic (endemic equilibrium) phase in, thankfully. This variant is milder yet highly infectious. Yes, we have had approximately 1 million new cases in one day in the United States as January 2022 arrived and we have to take this seriously and be on guard as the pandemic winds down.
Importantly, while there has been an increase, the massive hospitalization has not occurred and the ICU and death curves that typically follow the infection and case curves by approximately one to two weeks, have not materialized. The deaths are about one-tenth of Delta’s. The New York Times has reported that Omicron is not more severe for children, this despite increasing hospitalizations. Dr. Fauci has also weighed in by stating “hospitals are overcounting COVID-19 cases in children because they automatically get tested.”
This is tremendous news for populations. We have been fortunate that the variants have been mild as expected (Muller’s ratchet), yet there is always a small risk that a novel variant can be pathogenic. We continue to be hopeful that the mildness and non-lethality of Omicron remains so and we have no data or evidence to suggest otherwise.
The very good news is based on the best data to date. The vaccines have served their purpose but have shown themselves to be insufficient against the Omicron variant, which by the very infectious nature of this variant, will affect virtually everyone regardless of vaccinations. Moreover, after its current steep rise, there will be a peak and decline and reduction of what is left of Covid to small endemic pockets that may recur in the fall like flu but will continue according to best evidence as mild if annoying infections.
The evidence accumulated rapidly that Omicron quickly escalated, peaked, and then declined as rapidly (here, here, here, here). “If you look at the United States, the bulk of the infections should be mid-January, and we should start seeing a decline in the second half of January,” Vespignani says. “So it’s, in a sense, very soon.”
Recent research findings out of Hong Kong give us even more good news. Researchers reported that “Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infects and multiplies 70 times faster than the Delta variant and original SARS-CoV-2 in human bronchus.” This helps account for why this variant may spread faster between humans than prior variants e.g. Delta. Their study also showed that “the Omicron infection in the lung is significantly lower than the original SARS-CoV-2, which may be an indicator of lower disease severity.”
Researchers found that “the variant replicates much faster in the bronchus, which connects the windpipe to the lungs, 24 hours after infection. Yet it reproduces more than 10 times slower in the actual human lung tissue.”
In sum, this is all great news.
Yes, there is evidence of reinfection (though the data is still to be robustly collected and expert immunologists explain this represents more of an ‘immune rechallenge’ and not pure breach of natural acquired/adaptive immunity) but by all accounts, the symptoms are mild, with reports that even the elderly require no treatment and that symptoms are short-lived. This is excellent news and we see no indications that this will change. At the same time, we should expect some modest amount of death in vulnerable persons. In effect, COVID can be considered being over and Omicron has hastened the pace of endemic transition. Omicron is being exalted as nature’s vaccine, a gift, an off-ramp, an exit strategy for governments and COVID policy decision-makers, should they have the courage and will to avail themselves of it.
In summary, it is now time to end the pandemic’s state of emergency and everything associated with it. All mandates. It is time we accept that we will live with COVID as we live with other mild common cold coronaviruses. Normal infection is the risk we accept in a free society that comes with day-to-day living. It comes with freedom to make commonsense decisions, based on one’s personal risk profile, one’s own needs, values, and preferences.
There is never ‘zero risk’ and vulnerable persons may succumb but if there is one thing COVID has taught us or reminded us, it is that we must properly and strongly protect the vulnerable (elderly) and high-risk persons among us ‘first.’ But ‘zero COVID’ or ‘stop COVID at all costs’ only destroys economies, and the collateral damage as to harms and suicides are crushing. This is particularly so for women and children and especially those poorer among us who can least afford. We must never take this path again or allow our governments the emergency powers to implement these liberty- and human rights-crushing lockdown policies. Lockdown costs (financial and otherwise) have been catastrophic and will incur millions of years of life lost to Americans.
It is time we allow policy to be made by the States as POTUS Biden has indicated. Omicron has presented the opportunity for the federal and local governments to declare success, that the vaccines have helped, the risk is very low for Omicron, and that COVID January 2022 is not COVID February 2020.
We know extensively more on who is at risk and how to manage and treat COVID. Omicron can allow the government to now save face and declare success. We can thus begin healing our societies. It is time we learn to manage this virus and go on with life, and start by ending the emergency, the restrictions, and mandates.
Washington DC to combine photo ID with vaccine passport scheme
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 12, 2022
The mayor of Washington DC has decided to introduce new Covid restriction to the US capital starting on January 15, when businesses and many venues will start asking for proof of vaccination and, on top, a picture ID as yet more proof – that their vaccine pass really belongs to them.
The new rules concerning ID verification will apply to everyone over 18 who wishes to enter a restaurant, bar, gym, movie theater, etc., and the mandate is being introduced by Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat. Bowser announced the more stringent measures back in December.
Children aged 12 to 18 will also have to show vaccination cards if they wish to enter restaurants, concert venues, bowling alleys, and other venues. In addition, these businesses will have to put a sign in their window that notifies customers and reads, “Attention: Per Mayor’s Order 2021-48, COVID-19 Vaccination is REQUIRED to enter this business” – the Washington DC government’s site explains.
However, the inclusion of photo IDs in the vaccine mandate scheme in the District as an order coming from a Democratic mayor looks puzzling to those who recall that the party’s leaders, including President Biden, previously equated requiring photo IDs to vote to “21st century Jim Crow” – referring to historical state and local racial segregation laws in the US.
When Biden went after Georgia last summer for its new voter law that required citizens to prove their identity with an ID, he effectively accused the state and Republicans of introducing discrimination against minorities, who are most likely to lack picture IDs, saying the new legislation was “un-American” and designed to deny people their rights – in that case, the right to vote.
Biden went on to accuse his political opponents of enacting a law that was “a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”
But no such consideration seems to now be extended to Washington DC residents who will have to show their ID cards, driver’s licenses, passports, or another state-issued document to avoid getting cut off from many everyday activities.
Boosters are over
By Alex Berenson | Unreported Truths | January 12, 2022
Now the World Health Organization has waved the white flag on Covid vaccine boosters too.
WHO released a statement about Covid vaccines yesterday. It’s filled with the usual public health jargon and ass-covering, but one line stands out:
… a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.
It’s over, people.
Aside from a few unlucky Israelis, no one is going to receive a fourth dose of the original vaccine; everyone with eyes can see it doesn’t work against Omicron. (And if you haven’t gotten a third dose, at this point, why would you? You are getting at most weeks of marginally improved protection for potentially severe side effects.)
Instead the WHO is now promising/demanding vaccines based on whatever the dominant Sars-Cov-2 strain is at the moment.
That promise is as empty as all the others the health bureaucrats and vaccine companies have made.
At least five major variants (“variants of concern”) have developed in the last year, and two have become globally dominant. Even the mRNA vaccines cannot be cooked up and delivered fast enough to match whatever strain of virus becomes dominant. Covid is faster than the scientists.
At most, future Covid vaccinations will look a lot like current influenza vaccinations (and NOT the other way around). They’ll be cooked up annually and handed out at the beginning of the winter season. They won’t do much, and no one will expect them to.
Except when it comes to Covid, the WHO doesn’t want those vaccines either.
It explicitly said in the statement that future vaccines against Covid must “be more effective in protection against infection thus lowering community transmission.”
Two huge points hidden in those 11 words:
First, they are inherently a devastating critique of the current failure of Covid vaccines to work as promised.
Second, the WHO does NOT apply that standard to flu vaccines, which do not and are not expected to stop community transmission. Why demand more of Covid vaccines? The only honest answer is that the mRNA and DNA Covid vaccines have much more severe side effects than flu vaccines and thus must be held to a much higher standard.
Which they have no hope of meeting.
The war is over. The (mRNA) vaccines lost. The only question is when how many more people will be harmed before American public health authorities announce their surrender.
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in Parliament: ‘I want to send a clear message to the New Zealand public: we will share with you the most up-to-date information daily. You can trust us as a source of that information. You can also trust the Director-General of Health and the Ministry of Health . . . dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.’


