The Mad Perceptions Driving our Covid Policies
BY WILLY FORSYTH | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | JANUARY 12, 2022
When I quit my job working for the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the United States Antarctic Program, I largely did so due to this premise espoused by McMurdo Station’s NSF representative:
“I appreciate that the impacts of COVID, and the mitigations being taken by the program, are challenging. I also appreciate that the risks are perceived differently by each of us depending on our backgrounds and our varying levels of ownership of that risk.”
We have allowed subjective “perceptions” rather than quantifiable risk analysis – one of the primary functions of public health – to control our lives. I hoped I had left the insanity of misguided Covid policies behind me in Antarctica, I was wrong.
I have been reflecting on how policies still abound in the United States that are solely driven by perceptions rather than empiricism and considering whether we are moving away from this erroneous way of thinking. There are some promising signs for such a return to reason, particularly when remembering early policies of the pandemic contrasted with today. But we are still moving at a snail’s pace.
Looking back on my final week living in New York City – the first week after lockdowns commenced – I remember bicycling and driving for the first (and I hope only) time through empty streets. Soon after, beaches began to close in my home state of California. These policies were based on nothing but the perception that moving about would kill people, when in reality, the outdoors is the best environment to avoid SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Like many of our Covid polices, these had quite the opposite of their intended effect, driving people to spend weeks indoors – an environment highly more amenable to transmission.
Thankfully almost no American would now accept the closure of outdoor environments as viable. Unfortunately, another unfounded closure is still being debated in the US – the closure of schools. Europe quickly did all they could to get and keep children back in school with only 14% not in-person opposed to 65% in the US. But panicked American parents, teachers, and news outlets have perpetuated a narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is harmful to children, when the data have always told a vastly different story. The New York Times finally published a penitent article recognizing the harms that we have caused our children, again, far too late.
Europe also followed comprehensive scientific reasoning to limit the masking of children. They recognize the minimal benefits and the immense harms of such policies. Yet, children continue to cover their faces on campuses across America.
The United States have vast global influence, and setting such terrible precedents based on perception alone gives license to others, like President Yoweri Musevini, of Uganda – a country with a much lower Covid risk profile than aging western populations – to justify horrific school closures and other infringements on human rights in the name of public health with little scrutiny or accountability. And that is only one of many detrimental burdens wealthy nations have exported to the global poor during the pandemic. Our current hoarding of vaccines for unnecessary boosters is another.
Fortunately, recognition of the lack of evidence for some policies, such as population wide protection from masks, is growing. This is particularly important when paired against the amazing protection from immunity. Unfortunately, while Covid vaccines provide excellent individual protection, there are overwhelming data at this point showing they do little to nothing to prevent transmission.
Yet, policy makers are still pushing for further vaccine and booster mandates flying against the face of the evidence. Boosters are being advocated for everyone 16 and older despite a greater risk of myocarditis in males under 40 following just a 2nd dose, than from SARS-CoV-2 infection itself. Evidence continues to be ignored and perceptions continue to drive the premises for closing schools, mandating masks, mandating vaccines, and even burdensome testing protocols for our school children and others.
Dr. Vinay Prasad has made a great case for the limited usefulness and immense uselessness of Covid tests. A primary concern in my mind here is that tests for keeping kids in schools will again result in the opposite outcome. They will mostly provide information of mild or asymptomatic infection that will inevitably keep them out of school in the name of protecting them from a disease that doesn’t harm them. We are conflating the noise of tests with their signal and hindering the healthy. This is harmful enough, but the bigger sin of such obsessive testing protocols is the misallocation of tests away from use cases for protecting the vulnerable.
For example, a friend tells me much of film industry – made up of largely young and heathy and vaccinated adults – is requiring tests every day, leading to frequent staffing shortages (much like those we are seeing amongst health care workers) and massive demand for tests. Repeat these test hoarding protocols across multiple industries of mostly healthy and vaccinated individuals and you are left with the widespread testing shortages we are seeing now.
Might these tests be better used for those who have frequent access to vulnerable individuals such as my 90-year-old grandmother who recently moved into an assisted living home? Last week my brother was not allowed to visit her because he is not vaccinated (even though he has had Covid and has immunity to the virus – something else Europe has recognized that we have not).
My grandmother is also vaccinated, but we know that this protection only goes so far for 90-year-olds, who, even vaccinated, still have extremely higher risks of severe Covid outcomes than the school aged children whose parents are hoarding tests. My brother and myself (I had Covid after 2 vaccine doses) would do much better to protect our grandmother and her cohabitants if we could access rapid Covid tests to ensure we are not carrying the virus into her communal home. But rapid tests across Southern California pharmacies are sold out.
Fortunately, discourse has improved surrounding our mistakes during the pandemic, the negative outcomes of our own policies, and even the psychological pitfalls that allow such errors to perpetuate.
Even Biden’s top advisers are now urging him to adopt the strategy of living with the virus. Whether or not there is enough consensus on this way of thinking (known as rationality) for us to move past the hysteria that has crippled our way of life while providing little to no protection from an inevitable pandemic is critical for our future.
Will we live with illogical fear and behaviors for years? Or will we use facts to take back the lives we value?
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.
Tidal Wave of Documents on Gain-of-Function and the Leak of the Virus
Stuff is starting to get interesting (and undeniable)
By Robert W Malone MD, MS | January 11, 2022
There is so much news hitting the streets that is being censored by main stream media and social media today, that it is overwhelming easy comprehension.
Let’s start with the letter to sent to Secretary of the HHS, Xavier Becerra from Representatives Jim Jordan (Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary) and James Comer (Ranking Member, Committee on Oversight and Reform). Here is the opening excerpt:
The letter goes on:
Rather than be transparent with the Committee, HHS and NIH continue to hide, obfuscate, and shield the truth. By continuing to refuse to cooperate with our request, your agencies are choosing to hide information that will help inform the origins of the ongoing pandemic, prevent future pandemics, respond to future pandemics, inform the United States’ current national security posture, and restore confidence in our public health experts. HHS and NIH’s continued obstruction is likely to cause irreparable harm to the credibility of these agencies. The emails released today raise significant questions, including but not limited to:
1. Did Drs. Fauci or Collins warn anyone at the White House about the potential COVID-19 originated in a lab and could be intentionally genetically manipulated?
2. If these concerns were not shared, why was the decision to keep them quiet made?
3. What new evidence, if any, came to light about COVID-19 between February 1, 2020 and February 4, 2020 to alter the belief it originated in a lab?
4. Did Drs. Fauci or Collins edit the Nature Medicine paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”?
5. Would having this knowledge earlier have benefitted either vaccine or treatment development?
6. By February 1, 2020, were Drs. Fauci or Collins aware of the State Department’s warnings about WIV safety?
7. Would this warning have changed the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
These questions are vital to understanding this and future pandemic responses. Unfortunately, thus far, HHS and its subordinate agency have hidden behind redactions to shield these emails from public scrutiny. We call on you to immediately lift these redactions and produce the email communications to Congress. Further, considering the import of the above questions, we request Dr. Anthony Fauci be made immediately available to sit for a transcribed interview. Please respond by January 18, 2022 to confirm.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
If you want a detailed analysis of above letter and the appended emails, I recommend ZeroHedge Tyler Durden’s article entitled “House Republicans Release Damning Fauci Emails Suggesting Concealed Knowledge Of Lab Leak”.
More on the Project Veritas data dump.
Minor main stream media outlets are already trying to cast aspersions on the Veritas documents, although as of yet, they have yet to strike a direct hit. Their tactic out of the box are to attack Veritas, and smear the legitimacy of the documents (without evidence, near as I can tell). All the while, ignoring the contents of the documents themselves. Did “we” really expect anything more from them?
I will be the first to say that we don’t have full verification, but the report issued to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense by US Marine Corp Major Joseph Murphy on August 13th, 2021 appears to be the real deal so far. When Project Veritas contacted Major Murphy, he declined to talk about the documents, but Project Veritas reported that he said the following:
To me, the above statement doesn’t exactly sound like a denial. Something tells me that Major Murphy will be pushed one way or another to reveal more of what he knows. To either verify the legitimacy of his report or not.
First, I encourage everyone to read the actual report.
This report is damming on so many fronts. Read it. Read it. Read it.
If validated, it is as big as the Pentagon papers. This would mean that research funded and conducted by the US Government has caused the death of millions of people world wide. Just ponder that. I can’t hardly wrap my head around the idea. Shocking doesn’t describe how important this is. History will remember.
I am briefly going to focus on just one of tiny aspect of this report. The “how and why” this all happened:
Translated: The purpose of the gain of function research was to inoculate (vaccinate) bats found in caves in Yunnan, China where confirmed SARS viruses had been identified. This research project was to reduce the prevalence of bat SARS viruses found in bat populations there. Basically, the researchers were trying to build a bat attenuated virus spike protein vaccine to “enhance their immune memory.” Of course, remember the adage that one should not vaccinate into a pandemic or against a rapidly mutating RNA virus, as one does not want create vaccine escape mutants. But these researchers seemed unaware of this risk (they seemed unaware on a whole lot of issues, but that is beside the point here). Why vaccinate bats with viruses adapted to humans, you might ask? Major Murphy then details that the virus got accidentally released before it fully attenuated (attenuated means to be mutated to be non-pathogenic, presumably to bats and humans).
Now, I have all sorts of questions about this. My first and foremost question is why would the researchers chose a chimera that attaches to human ACE2 receptors as the target?
Warning- tortuous logic curves ahead…
Once again seeking to provide benefit of the doubt, I suspect that the logic must have been that by vaccinating the bats with such a construct, this would reduce the risk of developing a human adapted, ACE2-binding SARS-related virus in same bats. But if this is the case, then the logic is really convoluted. One would first develop a human adapted SARS-like virus which binds human ACE2, then attenuate this virus, then find a way to aerosolize it, then infect the bats. And apparently, somehow, before the attenuation step to adapt the human adapted virus to infect the bats, there was a lab leak.
I think that might have been the underlying logic and history, at least as far as I can figure out at this point.
I think that at this point we can all agree that more rigorous constraints on gain of function research are needed. And in my opinion, we need to renegotiate the biowarfare treaty.
However, how we can stop arrogant scientists with a sense of entitlement from doing reckless stuff with viruses is beyond me.
I also still question the legitimacy of this report. Provenance and chain of custody need to be established. A statement from Major Murphy to someone or a group other than the primary source of the documents would be a good start.
Please note that I have only touched on one tiny aspect of this report. Please go read it for yourself. It is jaw dropping in its detail and allegations.
I also know that it is time for Congress to step in and investigate. Are all of these documents real? Does Major Murphy’s report accurately detail all of the events in the report? Finally, I have complete faith that the Congressional Representatives Jim Jorden and James Comer intend to conduct this investigation. I just hope that the rest of Congress gets out of the way and lets them do their job.
Twitter bans Project Veritas Chief of Staff Eric Spracklen
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | January 11, 2022
Twitter has permanently banned Eric Spracklen, the Chief of Staff for investigative reporting outlet Project Veritas, from its platform for violating its rules on “ban evasion,” less than 24 hours after Project Veritas released a bombshell report on Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Before his ban, Spracklen had been promoting the Project Veritas report which focuses on documents that appear to contradict testimony that Fauci gave under oath on gain of function research.
The report quickly gained traction on Twitter and an associated “#exposefauci” hashtag became the number one trend for several hours.
Spracklen’s final tweets before being banned revealed that the video of this Project Veritas report had racked up 2.8 million views.
The timing is also notable because Fauci was testifying at a Senate hearing on COVID variants as this Project Veritas report was going viral on Twitter.
Spracklen had over 200,000 followers at the time he was banned and was Project Veritas’ last remaining large account on the platform. Its main account (which had more than 735,000 followers) and the account of its founder James O’Keefe (which had over 926,000 followers) were booted earlier this year.
As with the banning of Spracklen, O’Keefe was banned on the same day that one of Project Veritas’ explosive reports was trending on Twitter.
“Twitter has PERMANENTLY SUSPENDED my account for journalism,” Spracklen said. “Twitter knows Veritas is over the target.”
Spracklen is the latest of several high-profile accounts to be banned by Twitter recently. In the last two weeks alone, the tech giant has booted Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, American immunologist and virologist Dr. Robert Malone, and @Unity4J, a popular support account for journalist Julian Assange.
In addition to the bans, Twitter has locked several users out of their accounts and introduced new censorship rules during the last 30 days.
The growing levels of censorship on Twitter and other Big Tech platforms have inspired an exodus to alternative platforms that vow to not censor their users. Free speech social network Gab, Twitter alternative GETTR, and video sharing platform Rumble have all attracted big names this year.
House Republicans Release Damning Fauci Emails Suggesting Concealed Knowledge Of Lab Leak
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 11, 2022
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have released several emails which suggest Dr. Anthony Fauci may have known that Covid-19 originated from a lab leak, and that it may have been “intentionally genetically manipulated.”
“We write to request a transcribed interview of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Excerpts of emails we are making public today (see enclosed Appendix I) reveal that Dr. Fauci was warned of two things: (1) the potential that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute Virology (WIV) and (2) the possibility that the virus was intentionally genetically manipulated. It is imperative we investigate if this information was conveyed to the rest of the government and whether this information would have changed the U.S. response to the pandemic,” reads the letter from Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
The letter goes on to state that Fauci – despite claiming otherwise on multiple occasions – was in fact aware of the monetary relationship between NIAID, the NIH, EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan lab – by January 27, 2020. Fauci also knew that EcoHealth and NIAID worked together to craft a grant policy which would ‘sidestep the gain-of-function moratorium at the time.’
“This allowed EcoHealth to complete dangerous experiments on novel bat coronaviruses – and with little oversight – that would have otherwise been blocked by the moratorium,” the letter continues, adding that in January 2020, Fauci was also aware that EcoHealth was delinquent in submitting an annual progress report to NIAID, “presumably to hide a gain-of-function experiment conducted on infectious and potentially lethal bat coronaviruses.”
The conference call
The letter references a February 1, 2020 conference call between Fauci, NIH head Collins, and ‘at least eleven other scientists’ who convened to discuss Covid-19.
“It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated. Again, it is unclear if either Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins ever passed these warnings along to other government officials or if they simply ignored them.”
Three days after the call, four participants authored a paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” of which Fauci and Collins were sent drafts. The authors, who had previously expressed concern over a lab-leak and genetic manipulation, suddenly abandoned that theory to insist the new virus had a natural origin.
Meanwhile, on April 16, 2020, Collins emailed Fauci to express dismay that the Nature Medicine article which they saw prior to publication (and were given the opportunity to edit), did not quash the lab leak hypothesis. Collins asked Fauci if the NIH could do more to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis. The next day, Fauci cited the paper from the White House podium “likely in an effort to further stifle the hypothesis that COVID-19 leaked from the WIV.”
Questions
The House GOP letter then asks a series of questions.
Rather than be transparent with the Committee, HHS and NIH continue to hide, obfuscate, and shield the truth. By continuing to refuse to cooperate with our request, your agencies are choosing to hide information that will help inform the origins of the ongoing pandemic, prevent future pandemics, respond to future pandemics, inform the United States’ current national security posture, and restore confidence in our public health experts. HHS and NIH’s continued obstruction is likely to cause irreparable harm to the credibility of these agencies. The emails released today raise significant questions, including but not limited to:
1. Did Drs. Fauci or Collins warn anyone at the White House about the potential COVID-19
originated in a lab and could be intentionally genetically manipulated?
2. If these concerns were not shared, why was the decision to keep them quiet made?
3. What new evidence, if any, came to light about COVID-19 between February 1, 2020 and February 4, 2020 to alter the belief it originated in a lab?
4. Did Drs. Fauci or Collins edit the Nature Medicine paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”?
5. Would having this knowledge earlier have benefitted either vaccine or treatment development?
6. By February 1, 2020, were Drs. Fauci or Collins aware of the State Department’s warnings about WIV safety?
7. Would this warning have changed the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Read the entire letter and released emails below:
Five Theories on the Origin of Omicron, the Variant That Might End the Pandemic
By Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 10, 2022
The genome of Omicron has taken the community of public health scientists by surprise.
Not only are there a large number of mutations, but some of these mutations have not been observed in the many previous genome analyses, thousands of which are being conducted in labs around the world.
Among scientists, there are five competing explanations for this situation.
- Maybe the virus has been mutating toward Omicron for a long while, but it has happened “under the radar” in a region of the world where there are few scientific labs that might have reported its genome in intermediate states. In other words, it appeared someplace where genomic testing was unavailable and intermediate strains remained undetected.
- A single immune-compromised patient might have harbored the virus for an extended period of “long COVID,” during which the virus mutated while replicating within that individual.
- The virus might have jumped to a mouse host and spread from mouse to mouse, in an environment where different mutations would be favored. The heavily mutated virus must then have jumped back to humans.
- The virus leaked from, or was released from, a laboratory in Durban, South Africa, where experimenters were genetically manipulating the virus.
- Vaccinated populations have put intense selection pressure on the virus to evade the vaccine by mutating its spike protein, which is the only part of the virus to which vaccinated individuals have immunity.
As with everything COVID, we’ve seen significant censorship around the origins of Omicron, both in the mainstream press and the medical journals.
Three of the above theories were discussed out in the open. But No. 4 was relegated to the fringes because scientists are still gunshy about discussing engineered bioweapons, and No. 5 has similarly been sidelined because it is politically incorrect to say anything bad about vaccines.
The irony here is that evolution in vaccinated populations may have led to the emergence of a version of COVID that everyone can live with.
Let’s take a closer look at each theory.
Theory #1: Omicron was hiding out in darkest Africa
Christian Drosten, a virologist at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, proposed Omicron evolved its prodigious ability to spread rapidly while hiding out in regions of Botswana and Southwest Africa.
“I assume this evolved not in South Africa, where a lot of sequencing is going on, but somewhere else in southern Africa during the winter wave,” Drosten said.
This region of the world has few virology laboratories that would have reported intermediate versions of the virus.
In both Botswana and South Africa, just under half the population has been vaccinated, according to Reuters. This might explain the many mutations in the spike protein and Omicron’s ability to infect the vaccinated.
Theory #2: Omicron gestated in the slow cooker of a single patient with long COVID
According to a Dec. 1, 2021 article in Science, Omicron clearly did not develop out of one of the earlier variants of concern, such as Alpha or Delta.
Instead, it appears to have evolved “in parallel — and in the dark.”
Emma Hodcroft, a virologist at the University of Bern, told Science :
“Omicron is so different from the millions of SARS-CoV-2 genomes that have been shared publicly that pinpointing its closest relative is difficult. It likely diverged early from other strains. I would say it goes back to mid-2020.”
That raises the question of where Omicron’s predecessors lurked for more than a year.
Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh told Science he can’t see how the virus could have stayed hidden in a group of people for so long.
“I’m not sure there’s really anywhere in the world that is isolated enough for this sort of virus to transmit for that length of time without it emerging in various places,” Rambaut said.
Rambaut and others propose the virus most likely developed in a chronically infected COVID-19 patient, likely someone whose immune response was impaired by another illness or a drug.
According to Science, when Alpha was first discovered in late 2020, that variant also appeared to have acquired numerous mutations all at once, leading researchers to postulate a chronic infection.
That theory is bolstered by sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 samples from some chronically infected patients.
Theory #3: Omicron jumped to a mouse, then back to humans
This study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, cites genetic evidence from the Omicron genome to support the thesis that the virus jumped to mice, then back to humans.
The frequency of different kinds of mutations (different amino acid substitutions) is different within the mouse physiology compared to the human physiology.
These authors determined the types of mutations found in Omicron are more characteristic of mouse than human physiology.
A creative idea! But perhaps that is its main weakness, because:
- There are a huge number of mutations of every kind when the virus replicates, either in a mouse or a human. The ones that stick are the ones that are adaptive, i.e., the ones that help the virus replicate or spread more effectively to another host. The Chinese study does not address this.
- A great many adaptations would be needed for a virus to effectively infect a mouse population. These would have to be established to accomplish the jump into the mouse population, then undone for the virus to jump back to humans. Still, there is some precedent in the known ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect a herd of white-tailed deer.
- Both these objections could be obviated if the virus were deliberately passaged through humanized mice in a laboratory.
Theory #4: Omicron escaped from a gain-of-function laboratory
In April 2021, a laboratory in Durban, South Africa, published this paper, describing the genetic modification of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In November 2021, the Omicron variant was first discovered in the area of Johannesburg / Pretoria, about 600 km away from Durban.
Were the two events related?
The 501Y mutation which is the subject of the Durban study is present in the Omicron variant, but many of the other mutations listed in the Durban manuscript are missing from the Omicron genome.
Many scientists are convinced, based on its genetic signature, that the original Alpha strain of COVID was engineered in a bioweapons laboratory.
Normally, the spike protein of a virus is just evolved to latch firmly onto a host cell. But in the case of the COVID virus, the spike protein does a lot of nasty things as well, including blood clots and damage to nerves and arteries.
The spike protein seems on its face to be designed for toxicity.
The early Nature Medicine article that tried to put the lab-origin theory to rest claimed only that the spike protein was not fully optimized to bind to human cells. That was the sole basis of the authors’ certainty that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
However, when Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails were FOIAed, we learned Fauci himself commissioned this article, whose authors included suspects for channeling bioweapons research to China through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of which Fauci is the director.
So now it appears the spike protein was designed as a compromise between optimal infectivity and optimal toxicity.
If Omicron was engineered for unsavory purposes, it seems to be serving more as an antidote rather than a weapon.
Omicron appears to spread so fast that it has rapidly displaced Delta in the population where it originated, yet it is causing remarkably mild illness and few if any deaths.
Theory #5: Omicron evolved to evade the vaccine
All four of the above theories have adherents and all four can be supported with logic. Any one of them may turn out to be correct.
But there is a simpler hypothesis, theory No. 5, which involves no extra assumptions, relying instead only on the principles of natural selection.
The main weakness of this hypothesis is that the number of mutations in Omicron, and the rate of evolution of those mutations, seem to be anomalously high — but perhaps that fact is being ignored because of publishing taboos.
Viruses eventually evolve toward higher transmission rates and lower fatality rates. The higher transmission rate is what allows the virus to out-compete other variants and spread through the population.
The lower fatality rate is less obvious — viruses can spread better if the host is feeling well and circulating in the population. If the host dies, the virus dies with it.
The Omicron variant seems to take an unusually large step in both directions. This is why most epidemiologists are looking for a specialized explanation for its origin.
A more mundane explanation points to the possibility that vaccinated populations put pressure on the virus to adapt. Communities with high vaccination rates have created an ideal environment for the coronavirus to mutate.
All parts of the virus are mutating all the time, but not all help the virus to be successful.
If the spike protein mutates, this can throw the vaccinated immune system off the scent because vaccination produces a highly focused immune response to the (Wuhan original) spike protein.
Dr. Geert vanden Bossche prominently predicted this would happen early in the distribution of the COVID vaccines.
The Omicron variant demonstrates that vanden Bossche got this exactly right. It includes 37 new mutations in the area of the spike protein, and Omicron has largely evaded the vaccines.
Vaccinated people are as likely or more likely to get Omicron compared to unvaccinated.
Vanden Bossche anticipated tragic consequences for all of humanity, but this does not seem to be what is happening. Rather, this cloud appears to have a silver lining.
As stated above, the spike protein is the toxic payload of the COVID virus, responsible for most of the damage the virus does to blood vessels and neurons. (It appears that the spike protein was engineered for this purpose in a gain-of-function experiment.)
As the spike protein has mutated, it has become less toxic. As a result, the Omicron variant is far milder than the original Wuhan COVID.
The Omicron mortality rate, according to UK figures, is only 1/10 as high as the Wuhan rate. (The UK has had 10,866 Omicron cases and 14 deaths for a mortality rate of 0.0013. For comparison, the two-year total of COVID deaths and cases in the UK was 148,000/11,800,000 = 0.013, almost exactly 10 times higher.)
Unknowns and what lies ahead?
We know historically that the natural immunity of a recovered patient provides the best immunity we know. People (mostly Chinese) who recovered from SARS 18 years ago seem to have full immunity to COVID, though the two viruses are substantially different.
This should mean that Omicron will sweep through the population, and many, many people will recover after a mild and abbreviated illness, with permanent immunity to all forms of COVID.
This would be the dawn of herd immunity and the end of COVID. The question is whether recovering from Omicron will provide full immunity to future variants.
We see that recovery from past variants does not provide sufficient immunity to protect against Omicron.
Is this because Omicron is an exception to the general rule about robust immunity in recovered patients?
Or is it an artifact of faulty testing, people who have been told they recovered from COVID when they really had the flu?
Or is it an artifact of vaccination after recovery, which seems to be counter-productive, narrowing some of nature’s robust, acquired immunity?
Meanwhile, press releases from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and mainstream reports are using Omicron as a booster for the fear-porn industry, citing exploding “case” statistics while ignoring the simultaneous drop in “death” statistics.
Pfizer is developing a new mRNA vaccine for Omicron, which it plans to release in March. Will the vaccine maker double down on its tragic mistake in basing the vaccine on the toxic spike protein?
Or will the new vaccine be derived from a less dangerous part of the virus?
We have reason to hope Omicron will spell the end of COVID, but only time will tell.
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.
BUY TODAY: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s New Book — ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’
Early treatment book is now available on Amazon
By Steve Kirsch | January 9, 2022
COVID is a very treatable disease if it is treated early using an early treatment protocol. There are lots of such protocols that are highly successful. This new book documents one such protocol.
Since March of 2020, Brian Tyson and George Fareed, two physicians with impeccable credentials, have been treating COVID patients of all ages in Imperial Valley, CA using early treatment protocols.
Their track record is extraordinary. If you started treatment within 7 days of first symptoms, only 2 people were briefly hospitalized and there were no deaths. The earlier you start treatment, the better the results and the faster you recover.
Their book is now available at Amazon (if you buy it now on Kindle for $5.95, it will be delivered Jan 24). It is a #1 best seller as you can see below.
The entire pandemic response was unnecessary: COVID is very treatable if treated early
This book shows that we’ve known about effective treatments since March 2020.
Had the CDC publicized such treatments, it would have made the entire pandemic response completely unnecessary: lockdowns, vaccines, mandates, masking, business closures, etc. Everyone would have gotten natural immunity and the pandemic would have ended with virtually no deaths.
Tyson and Freed tried contacting the FDA, CDC, and NIH, but nobody would talk to them or return their calls. The same is true today. They are just “too busy” to talk to them. Keeping patients out of the hospital and morgue is not a priority for them.
The same is true of the mainstream media. The NY Times refused to run op-eds about early treatments and CNN said that they were too busy covering the vaccines and people dying from COVID that they didn’t have the resources to talk about early treatment protocols that would have prevented everything.
Instead of promoting early treatment using repurposed drugs, the CDC instructed people to just stay home and do nothing until they were so sick that they had to go to the hospital. Even after drugs in the Tyson/Fareed protocol like ivermectin and fluvoxamine have been proven time and time again to work in clinical trials and, in the case of ivermectin, published in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the NIH still fails to acknowledge them rating them NEUTRAL. This means that most doctors will not use them.
On May 24, 2021, I offered $2M to anyone who could show that the NIH made the proper decision on these two drugs, but nobody came forward.
In short, nobody in the world thought they made the right decision (or at least could justify it). But they are the authorities and we cannot question their judgement, ever.
The CDC doesn’t want you to share this post with anyone
The CDC would like you to know the following:
- You need to follow our advice. Do not think. Do not ask questions. Just do as you’re told. We are the CDC and we always know best.
- Trust us: early treatments don’t work. Ignore all the data from these physicians. Even though we’ve never even talked to them or looked at their data, we know they are wrong. We don’t even have to look at their data to know that they are wrong. The data does not matter. It is our opinion that matters. Got it?
- Do not share this post with anyone, especially your doctor, anyone in mainstream media, or Congress. Do not to do anything to disrupt Big Pharma’s profits.
- Even if you did share it, nobody would believe you anyway; they will think you are crazy. We have totally brainwashed pretty much everyone except for a relatively small number of people.
- Don’t read the book. This book will destroy our credibility as well as that of the NIH and FDA. You may not be able to deal with the cognitive dissonance. Just do what we say. Don’t worry, be happy.
- If you feel you must read the book, ask your doctor to prescribe Versed and take it as directed before you read the book. That way, after you are done reading it, you won’t remember anything.
- If the public finds out about this book, a lot of people are going to be very upset about how they’ve been fooled. You wouldn’t want that to happen now, would you?
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Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops
- What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say
- ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz
- Pakistan Throws Open Its Gates for Iran’s Transit Trade to Third Countries
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 