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Media outlets try to deflect from lab leak theory and censorship

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 29, 2021

Mainstream media, now embarrassingly forced to follow President Biden’s policy and abruptly reverse course on the Wuhan lab leak theory – after branding and ridiculing it as a conspiracy theory for months – are working to downplay the importance of censorship around the topic that was enforced until just a few days ago.

One would think it would be hard to find a single person who has been through more than a year of lockdowns and myriads of restrictions who would not be interested to learn what the virus is and where it came from – but apparently, such people exist, in media outlets like The Verge.

An article that could easily be described as a distraction in its own right from the topic of why the lab leak theory was suppressed and censored so vigorously, now claims that the origin of coronavirus doesn’t really matter and suggests that it should be swept under the rug as a distraction from truly important topics.

While briefly paying lip service to the importance of discovering the origin of the virus, the article’s real goal is to convince its readers to change the topic. Forced to eat their own words, this class of media are no longer calling the Wuhan theory a fringe conspiracy, but “an extraordinary claim” that is “technically possible.”

But discussing the topic is discouraged as no less than “a distraction from the rest of the urgent work governments and health agencies around the world need to do in order to end this pandemic and prepare for the next one” – while at the same time calling for vaccination efforts to be doubled.

And as scientists who have tried to study the origin of coronavirus, including the possibility that it was artificially created, are finally getting a chance to speak after being censored and ostracized for a long time – mainstream media are scrambling to adjust to the new reality around the topic.

The New York Times has already done its U-turn, reporting on Friday that US intelligence agencies have a large amount of evidence concerning the Wuhan lab – but one of its reporters, Apoorva Mandavilli, didn’t get the memo immediately.

On the same day President Biden announced an investigation, Mandavilli tweeted, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here” – only to quickly delete the post after receiving backlash for making the claim that it was “racist” to consider the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

New Paper: Masks Achieve Nothing In Terms Of Spread

By Damian D. Guerra and Daniel J. Guerra | medrxiv.org | May 29, 2021

Latest analysis shows yet again – yet again – what we already knew from 40 years of published research. And also empirically from simply glancing over the past year’s real-world data. Masks don’t work!

Our main finding is that mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states. 80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mandates induced greater mask compliance but did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low  (minima) or high (maxima). We infer that mandates likely did not affect COVID-19 case growth [15], as growth rates were similar on all days between actual or modeled issuance dates and 6 March 2021. Higher mask use (rather than mandates per se) has been argued to decrease COVID-19 growth rates [11].

While compliance varies by location and time, IHME estimates are robust (derived from multiple sources [17]) and densely sampled (day-level precision). Higher mask use did not predict lower maximum growth rates, smaller surges, or less Fall-Winter growth among continental states.

Mask-growth rate correlation was only evident at minima. This may be an artifact of faster growth at fewer normalized cases, as well as regional differences in case prevalence early in the pandemic. States in the high mask quintile grew at similar rates as states in the low mask quintile after maxima (when interstate total case differences were smaller than before minima).

In addition, mask use did not predict normalized cases at minima, and low mask growth curves trailed those of high mask (particularly Northeast) states before minima. Growth maxima and Fall-Winter surges did not differ between Northeast and other states. Northeast states exhibited the highest seroprevalence up to at least July 2020 [24] and constituted 80% of the top quintile of mask use, which may explain their comparatively lower Summer growth.

Overall, mask use appears to be an intra-state lagging indicator of case growth. There is inferential but not demonstrable evidence that masks reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Animal models [25], small case studies [6], and growth curves for mandate-only states [16] suggest that mask efficacy increases with mask use [11]. However, we did not observe lower growth rates over a range of compliance at maximum Fall-Winter growth (45-83% between South Dakota and Massachusetts during maxima) [17] when growth rates were high.

This complements a Danish RCT from 3 April to 2 June 2020, when growth rates were low, which found no association between mask use and lower COVID-19 rates either for all participants in the masked arm (47% strong compliance) or for strongly compliant participants only [8].

Masks have generally not protected against other respiratory viruses. Higher self-reported mask use protected against SARS-CoV-1 in Beijing residents [26], but RCTs found no differences in PCR confirmed influenza among Hong Kong households assigned to hand hygiene with or without masks (mask use 31% and 49%, respectively) [27].

Medical and cloth masks did not reduce viral respiratory infections among clinicians in Vietnam [9] or China [10], and rhinovirus transmission increased among universally masked Hong Kong students and teachers in 2020 compared with prior years [28].

These findings are consistent with a 2020 CDC meta-analysis [29] and a 2020 Cochrane review update [30].

Our study has implications for respiratory virus mitigation. Public health measures should ethically promote behaviors that prevent communicable diseases. The sudden onset of COVID-19 compelled adoption of mask mandates before efficacy could be evaluated.

Our findings do not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates decrease with greater public mask use.

As masks are required in public in many US states, it is prudent to weigh potential benefits with harms. Masks may promote social cohesion as rallying symbols during a pandemic [31], but risk compensation can also occur [32]. Prolonged mask use (>4 hours per day) promotes facial alkalinization and inadvertently encourages dehydration, which in turn can enhance barrier breakdown and bacterial infection risk [33].

British clinicians have reported masks to increase headaches and sweating and decrease cognitive precision [34]. Survey bias notwithstanding, these sequelae are associated with medical errors [35]. By obscuring nonverbal communication, masks interfere with social learning in children [36]. Likewise, masks can distort verbal speech and remove visual cues to the detriment of individuals with hearing loss; clear face-shields improve visual integration, but there is a corresponding loss of sound quality [37, 38].

Future research is necessary to better understand the risks of long-term daily mask use [30]. Conversely, it is appropriate to emphasize interventions with demonstrated or probable efficacy against COVID-19 such as vaccination [39] and Vitamin D repletion [40]. In summary, mask mandates and use were poor predictors of COVID-19 spread in US states. Case growth was independent of mandates at low and high rates of community spread, and mask use did not predict case growth during the Summer or Fall-Winter waves.

Strengths of our study include using two mask metrics to evaluate association with COVID-19 growth rates; measuring normalized case growth in mandate and non-mandate states at comparable times to quantify the likely effect of mandates; and deconvolving the effect of mask use by examining case growth in states with variable mask use. Our study also has key limitations. We did not assess counties or localities, which may trend independently of state averages.

While dense sampling promotes convergence, IHME masking estimates are subject to survey bias. We only assessed one biological quantity (confirmed and probable COVID-19 infections), but the ongoing pandemic warrants assessment of other factors such as hospitalizations and mortality. Future work is necessary to elucidate better predictors of COVID-19 spread. A recent study found that at typical respiratory fluence rates, medical masks decrease airway deposition of 10-20μm SARS-CoV-2 particles but not 1-5μm SARS-CoV-2 aerosols [41].

Aerosol expulsion increases with COVID-19 disease severity in non-human primates, as well as with age and BMI in humans without COVID-19 [42]. Aerosol treatment by enhanced ventilation and air purification could help reduce the size of COVID-19 outbreaks.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Widespread distribution of ivermectin proves effective in Mexico against COVID-19

By Juan Quintero | TrialSiteNews | May 28, 2021

One country that has had remarkable success in the war against the COVID pandemic, but has received little to no global media coverage, is Mexico. Like the rest of the world, COVID cases in Mexico exploded in April 2020, the first hot spots flaring up along the northern border with the United States, in Mexico City and Quintana Roo, a popular tourist destination in the Caribbean. At the beginning of the pandemic, Mexico took recommendations and followed protocol set forth by the World Health Organization (WHO) and watched the virus spread from state to state, engulfing the entire country.

First COVID Outbreak in Mexico

On June 10, the Spanish-speaking media began reporting on the success that Peru was having in controlling the virus using ivermectin as a treatment. Mexico was in the middle of its worst peak of cases and deaths with records breaking daily, and interest in the drug – as well as sales – rose dramatically.

On June 20, the pan-American WHO (OPS/OMS) issued a statement strongly opposing the use of ivermectin. Additionally, other media sources started publishing anti-ivermectin articles all over Mexico. And as the number of deaths slowly decreased, interest in ivermectin subsequently died down.

Google trends. Google seaches in Mexico about iveremctin

In October 2020, cases in Mexico began spiking again; the outbreak this time started in Chihuahua, the state on the border of Texas. Texas was also experiencing an outbreak at this time, so it’s likely that the cases in Mexico were sparked in the US. From Chihuahua, cases spread south and into Mexico City igniting the worst outbreak yet. Mexico City was an inferno of COVID cases and death, and health workers rushed to the capital city from all over the country to help.

Determined to stop the spread at any cost, Mexico City officials held a meeting at the end of December, 2020, and invited the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) among other groups of doctors. Together, they decided to begin distribution of ivermectin kits in Mexico City and Mexico State to anyone who tested positive for COVID and wanted to take the drug, and to closely monitor hospitalizations to keep tabs on ivermectin’s efficacy. The kits distributed included ivermectin, aspirin and paracetamol. Between the end of November 2020 and the end of January 2021, more than 200,000 people tested positive for COVID, and of these, nearly 80,000 used the ivermectin kits. Results showed up to 76% reduction in hospitalization in the group that was taking ivermectin.

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/r93g4/

On January 22, 2021, the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, held a live televised press conference where she talked about the positive results from the ivermectin distribution from December. Following the press release, the kits were made available for everyone in the whole of Mexico, and nation-wide results of ivermectin use were monitored. Amazingly, after mass distribution of ivermectin, every single COVID indicator in Mexico improved. Over the course of 18 weeks, COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continuously dropped, and on May 14, the mayor held another televised press conference sharing the positive results of the months’-long campaign.

What is astonishing, however, is that the media outlets in Mexico have not reported on this astounding result. They continued to report on the number of excess deaths from before the ivermectin intervention – and not one has covered the current situation of declining cases and deaths due to wide-spread ivermectin intervention.

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May 29, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Let’s Not Be Sensible, Folks

By Sinéad Murphy | Lockdown Sceptics | May 28, 2021

My little boy with autism is back at school, for three days in the week. His support teacher is at last unmasked. On the seventh day of his return, there was an unheralded change. Instead of Joseph being accompanied by his support teacher at pick-up time so that she and I might have a quick chat, he was sent out alone along with his classmates. Inside his bag was a new small notebook, with “Communication Log” written on the cover, in which there were phrases describing aspects of Joseph’s day.

Joseph’s communication is profoundly restricted. He is unable to report any aspect of his physical experience; he cannot tell of anything that has happened to him, no matter how recently. A short exchange, before and after school, with the person responsible for him during the day is essential.

At drop-off time the following morning, Joseph’s support teacher watched helplessly from behind the classroom’s glass door while I held Joseph’s hand at the gate – another of the pathetic scenes that have been a feature of our Covid incarceration. “Mummy’s going to drop you here”, said one of Joseph’s year’s teachers, to me via him. When I objected, she told me, in a rush of what seemed like resentment, that the ‘Communication Log’ was to substitute for the morning and evening chats.

It did not take much representation to the school’s Head to have the chats reinstated; the arguments in their favour were so obviously reasonable. But that the arguments against them were so paltry reveals something concerning, I think.

Even according to ‘The Science’, there could be no conceivable added risk of infection by a respiratory virus in ending a day of up-close support of Joseph by standing in the open air and talking for a few minutes to his mum – to his credit, the Head did not attempt to suggest that there could be.

But if there was nothing actually harmful about these chats, even on the highly-sensitive Covid safety-scale, why were they ruled out so summarily?

Joseph’s support teacher is a woman of great humour; chatting with her is inevitably a lively affair no matter how mundane the topic. But there is something indistinctly offensive now about liveliness of any kind, something excessive, disrespectful.

On our uncertain return to normality there is dawning a new morality, according to which lively human interaction is unseemly simply by virtue of being… well, lively.

This may explain why persecution of the public house continues unabated – insofar as the pub encourages informal and vibrant association, it is the den of a new iniquity: the spontaneous overflow of the human spirit.

At the supermarket checkout the other day, the man in front of me observed through his mask to the woman working the till, how good it is that we have our freedoms back. So long as we use them sensibly, he added.

We have been prodded this year by the devilish theme of safety, which has dramatically altered the contour of our lives. But now the colour of our lives may be changing too, as we are encouraged from all sides not only to stay safe but to be sensible.

On May 15th, the FA Cup final was attended by twenty-two thousand supporters. The fans were back. Football was back. And certainly, the real crowd did foreground how anaemic has been its virtual equivalent. But when Leicester scored the goal that won them the cup, their cheering fans were faced down by a line of officials, caped in plastic over their high-visibility jackets and fanning their outstretched gloved hands, palms downwards, in a calming gesture – Let’s be sensible, folks.

Two days later, May 17th, brought the return of hugging for anyone who had been observing the ban. But it is not a rush-into-the-arms hugging, not a big hugging, not a tight hugging, all of which have about them this new taint of excess. It is sensible hugging: faces turned in opposite directions and got over with as quickly as possible.

There is a new kind of puritanism abroad – casting its pall over our lives, already so out of shape. Those moments when life is brimming over, when we act on impulse, when our sides split with laughter, when we cry with anger or with joy, when we cannot let go our embrace or when we could talk and talk for hours: all have about them a new hue of poor taste. The palate of human life has been dimmed; Let’s be sensible, folks.

In a short blog post from April 16th, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben prepared us for a change of this kind.

Differently from other animals, Agamben wrote, we humans have always the task of deciding what it is that makes us human, and not merely animal.

Homo sapiens is the being that knows itself, the only being on earth that must determine its own essence.

This unique duty – that we decide the kind of being that we are – is what makes us humans so culturally rich and almost infinitely adaptable. But it is also what makes us vulnerable, as no other animal is, to being transformed, profoundly, from the ground up.

Nothing absolute stands in the way of our knowing ourselves differently and knowing ourselves differently changes us utterly.

Is such a change occurring now, as we get back to our new future? Are we in the process of deciding all over again what it is that makes us human?

This would certainly explain the newly muted tones of the life that we are now to live, in which the chatting, the cheering, the hugging that still come naturally to some of us seem suddenly and strangely out of step, not really done, a bit much – Let’s be sensible, folks.

According to Agamben, a society’s decision about what it is that makes us human is reflected in what that society identifies as ‘mere existence’ – bare life. In this space are established the terms on which we claw back from our animal natures whatever it is that is judged to make us human.

We opponents of governments’ Covid policies have traded heavily on this concept of ‘mere existence’, criticising the lockdowns for having reduced our human life to its bare bones.

But in doing so, have we unwittingly lent our voices to a new Covid-era version of ‘mere existence’ and, consequently, to a new Covid-era decision about what it is that makes us human?

Still when I was growing up, references to ‘mere existence’ had mostly to do with work; bare life was the life absorbed by a low-paid unsatisfying job with long hours, or (depressingly) by unwaged care of other people.

If you lived this mere existence, this bare life, you were perilously close to losing that which distinguished you as human – you were said to work like a dog, to have a dog’s life.

If you managed to rise above this mere existence to something better, something more human, you did so also in terms of work. Because a bare life was a life of unwaged drudgery, a full life was a life of satisfying and rewarding employment, and a good life was industrious and purposeful, filled with hobbies and sports at which you were as hardworking as you were at your job.

But since the advent of Covid, when we have bemoaned the reduction of our lives to mere existence, we have referred not to dull work without wages but to quarantine without symptoms. Bare life is no longer the life of unrewarding toil, but of isolation from other people, faces covered and hands sheathed.

The theme of bare life is no longer work but health, where ‘health’ refers, not to a personal equilibrium, but to public safety from invisible attack.

As we have lived this bare life during the past 15 months or so, and tried to reassert our humanness so as to rise above it, it is not the dog’s life against which we have had to define ourselves but the life of the herd animal whose individual hopes and needs are submitted to the advantage of the group: I isolate for everyone, I mask for everyone, I vaccinate for everyone.

Herd immunity has always been a feature of human life. It is a well-established phenomenon in epidemiology. But never before 2020 was it brought before us so unrelentingly that we were simultaneously compelled to reject it as beneath our human status and submitted to the version of it engineered and imposed by governments and their science advisers.

On the new terrain of bare-life-as-isolation-from-and-for-the-herd, we have had to battle all over again to reestablish what makes us human. Human life, we have objected, is more than isolation for the sake of public health. Human life, we have protested, is anathema to distance and to masks.

But we should be careful. Because, if we are beginning to win the battle against the reduction of our lives to mere-existence-as-quarantine, we are likely to be winning it on the terms set up by mere-existence-as-quarantine, that is, on the terms of health-as-safety.

If the society of work is coming to an end, the society of health may be just getting going. In this society, a full life will be the life of optimal protection from identified threats to public safety; and a good life will be the life of due respect for this enterprise, the careful life, the sensible life, in which our human bodies, now branded as traitors, will not be suffered to stretch their limbs too far, nor shout too loud, nor laugh too much, nor hug too tight.

The devil used to make work for idle hands – hence the old morality of working hard. Now the devil makes sickness for loose tongues, and all other body-parts that are brought to bear with gleeful abandon – hence the new morality of being sensible.

What is it that effects a transformation of this magnitude, from a life defined by work and lived industriously to a life defined by health and lived sensibly? How can such changes come about so suddenly and completely? According to Agamben, all it needs is a powerful enough device.

For the society of work, this device was the slave, an idea (rooted in reality, of course) profound enough to capture and recast a whole culture as woven around the theme of work and as haunted by the near-animality of work without reward.

For our society of health, the device is the asymptomatic, an idea (not rooted in reality, it turns out) so powerful that it has captured and recast our world as revolving around the theme of health-as-safety and as haunted by the prospect of disease at the level of the pack.

The device of the asymptomatic sick person has reset the horizons of our lives: the bare life is the life lived apart from the herd for the good of the herd; the full life is the life that is constantly proven to be without sickness itself and protected from the sickness of others: and the good life is the life that abstains from the joyful excess that so irresponsibly forgets that the absence of symptoms does not imply safety.

One of the Internet phenomena of our Covid era has been the film of a flash mob rendition of ‘Danser Encore’ in the Gard du Nord on March 4th.

It has inspired many repeat performances in towns and cities around the world, each one of them a joyful affair.

When I first saw the original video, its effect was profound. To see the sudden eruption, as if from nowhere, of… well, a mob, a glut of people, in the midst of the faceless bedraggle at the station – to see the masks carelessly pulled down or discarded, the random weaving in and out of the crowd, arms linked to the music, to hear singing at the top of fine unmuffled voices. Such a glorious upturning of safety.

But what strikes me now when I watch it is the ludicrousness of the performance, an assemblage of this and that: the tap dancer on her makeshift floor; the circus performer in his Breton top, making upside-down frog-legs; the amateur country dancers; the woman in the mask (around her eyes, not her mouth and nose!) creeping stealthily through the scene… random, heedless, a propos of nothing, not at all sensible.

If we are to unwind the Covid decision about what it is that makes us human – if we are to defuse the device of the asymptomatic spreader and refuse the life of safety to which it consigns us, then we might do worse than begin here, with the players in the Gard du Nord : and dance again and hug again and cheer again and chat again with the lively abandon that spares not a thought for the hidden health-status of ourselves or anyone else.

Dr Sinead Murphy is Associate Researcher in Philosophy at Newcastle University.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Don’t Be Stupid – Inform Your Decisions

By Gillian Dymond | OffGuardian | May 28, 2021

Are you tired of having to watch everything you say, in case you’re accused of “hate speech”? Do you frequently have to bite back innocently-spoken words, when someone claims to be “offended” by them? Have you become used to avoiding lively debate or expressing frank opinions on social media, for fear of finding police officers on your doorstep?

If so, you’ll be glad to know that at last there is a whole class of people you may attack with impunity; people who may be derided, slandered and ostracised to your heart’s content; people so selfish and stupid that you are fully entitled to incite hatred against them with the full blessing of your government.

These are the Great Unclean: the “anti-vaxxers” who are not just nasty spoilsports, standing between you and the ever-deferred reopening of society, but who continue to waft death and disease through a world which can only be made safe by universal, and repeated, “jabbing”.

The opportunity to indulge in virtuous hate speech has been seized with zest by household names and obscure Twitterati alike.

“Love the idea of covid vaccine passports for everywhere,” enthuses Piers Morgan, “restaurants, clubs, football, gyms, shops etc. It’s time covid-denying, anti-vaxxer loonies had their bullshit bluff called and bar themselves from going anywhere that responsible citizens go.”

Edwina Currie has emerged from political oblivion to agree:

I hear what you say about someone exercising their freedom not to have a vaccination and they’re perfectly healthy. I don’t want them sitting next to me in the theatre. I don’t want them standing next to me at the theatre bar. I don’t want them next to me or anywhere near me or even in the same carriage on the train. So they can exercise their freedom by staying at home.”

As for the chorus of the immunologically saved on social media, here’s a sample meme:

If you’re antivax and you see me making fun of antivax people, I just want to say I’m talking about you personally and I hope you’re offended because you’re fucking stupid.”

Just try substituting one of a whole range of tenderly protected diversities for “antivax people” or “anti-vaxxers”, and watch the frisson of outrage creeping down any bien-pensant spine. But as the State extends its tolerance, even its encouragement, to our abusers, we covid sceptics, it seems, are fair game.

For there is no quarter from the government for those who are standing aloof from the stampede to get “shots into arms”, as believers in the WHO’s revised definition of herd immunity so crudely like to put it.

This is, after all, a government which, spurred on by behavioural psychologists and with malice aforethought, has industriously stirred up and exploited social disapproval as a potent means of shaming dissent and achieving maximum compliance.

Be kind, they urge you, and deprive yourself and your children of oxygen for your neighbour’s sake. Be responsible, and roll up your sleeve to receive the magic injection that will not only make you immortal but demonstrate your selfless concern for others. Don’t be stupid! Remember, having no symptoms doesn’t mean you’re not a silent super-spreader.

But do sceptics really deserve the contempt being dished out to them so freely?

Are they really so stupid?

Would any self-respecting “anti-vaxxer”, for instance, have been silly enough to come out with the nonsense spouted by the UK’s secretary of state for health, when he told us that:

If you think about it, the vaccine is a tiny bit of the virus in order to get your body to be able to respond.”

Really, Mr Hancock? Are you sure that’s what’s actually on offer here?

Perhaps Mike Yeadon, former head of respiratory research at Pfizer, can set you straight. As he pointed out to James Delingpole recently, “a tiny bit of the virus” is not what goes into these novel treatments – perhaps because, when it comes down to brass tacks, “no-one’s got any”.

What is actually being pumped into millions of arms throughout the world with such careless abandon is not, he says, “just a vaccine”. Although these gene-based medications do “ultimately raise an immune response … the way they do it is completely different from any vaccine we’ve used before … they induce the body, the cells of your body, to actually manufacture a piece of this pathogen, this infective agent. And you respond to that.”

“Anti-vaxxers” could have told you that, Mr Hancock, because they’ve done their own research, and they understand the difference between the traditional idea of a vaccine and what is currently being held up as the golden ticket to freedom. So please stop feeding us blatant untruths about what is actually being injected into all those trusting arms and making its insidious way around millions of bloodstream.

Let’s have the facts that would enable everyone to make a truly informed decision. It really doesn’t help when you fuel sectarian hatred by standing up in parliament and declaring that:

those who promulgate lies about the dangers of vaccines that are safe and have been approved … are threatening lives …”

The obvious response to that is, “those who promulgate lies about the safety of novel and incompletely tested gene therapies doled out on emergency approval only are threatening lives.”

The life of Peter Meadows, for instance: a superlatively healthy seventy-six-year-old, who, trusting government and NHS assurances that the “vaccines” were “safe and effective”, suffered an unprecedented heart attack within hours of receiving the Pfizer jab, and died a few days later: just one of over a thousand post-vaccine fatalities officially logged in the UK’s Yellow Card system to date – or perhaps, as the evidence is increasingly suggesting, of thousands of vaccine-related deaths which, unlike those ascribed to Covid, are not in line with natural mortality profiles.

It seems that those castigated for being “anti-vaxxers” are, in fact, far from stupid. On the contrary, they are the ones sensible enough to take the time and trouble to research and weigh up risks versus benefits before exposing their bodies to any of the novel gene therapies currently being hawked around as “vaccines”.

It is those who don’t search out the facts for themselves who are not using their intelligence, and who are thereby laying themselves open to the smooth sales talk of drug pushers in high places. Peter Meadows and his wife were apparently not handed even the minimal information supplied by the NHS regarding possible side effects they might suffer until after they had received their shots.

They had no idea that the “vaccines” so confidently touted by Matt Hancock were not fully tested for immediate, let alone medium- or long-term, safety, and were issued under the “black triangle” system – ie, were still “subject to intensive safety monitoring”, with the proviso that a record should be kept of all adverse reactions experienced by those acting effectively as human guinea pigs on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies.

What is more, a “high volume” of such adverse reactions were anticipated by the apparently unconcerned UK government before the roll-out began.

Although the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is quick to state that the black triangle label “does not indicate that the product is unsafe for use in patients”, the common-sense response to such a claim, after careful examination of the Yellow Card data, must surely be, “Oh yeah? And now pull the other one!”

In fact, a Pubmed paper advising the US as to whether or not the black triangle system does indeed promote “more judicious prescribing” of new medications, concludes that, “Accelerated drug approvals could cause more uncertainty about drug effectiveness and safety, but specific labeling of newly approved medicines is unlikely to promote more judicious prescribing.”

How much more accelerated could approval be, than the emergency approval accorded to the new coronavirus “vaccines”? And how much less judicious their prescribing, encompassing, as it does, the wholesale jabbing of populations throughout the world, including young people and children, who are at little to no risk of succumbing to the disease, let alone dying of it? It is depressing to learn that Peter Meadows’ daughters had understood enough about the uncertain nature of the hastily concocted “vaccines” to urge their parents not to have the jabs.

Unfortunately, like so many others, the couple were swayed by a longing to return to their old normal, and by peer pressure whipped up by the likes of Matt Hancock and SAGE, rather than by the reasonable concerns raised by their daughters after careful scrutiny of the facts.

So, once more: just how stupid are anti-vaxxers? Interestingly, a recent paper by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online found that, contrary to their popular denigration as “covidiots”, and to the embarrassment of the researchers themselves, covid sceptics “practice a form of data literacy in spades”.

Many of them “express mistrust for academic and journalistic accounts of the pandemic, proposing to rectify alleged bias by ‘following the data’ and creating their own data visualisations.” What they value is “unmediated access to information” and they “privilege personal research and direct reading over ‘expert’ interpretations.” And “Most fundamentally,” say the MIT team, “the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.”

Exactly.

In which case, their dismissal of the WHO’s presumption, in claiming to be custodians of “The Science”, is hardly surprising. Nonsense, say the sceptics. Science can never be above questioning. It is not a bundle of rubber-stamped, government-approved dogmas, handy for facilitating some political or commercial agenda.

Like all forms of human knowledge, science remains eternally incomplete, the evolving construction of many minds researching truth in a continuing process of discovery: forming hypotheses, and attempting by all means possible to disprove those hypotheses; seeking to explain or resolve anomalies, but never holding any theory sacrosanct which further investigation might yet prove false; adapting to the gradual unfolding of new perspectives, as fresh evidence shakes the foundations of old paradigms.

It is the alleged “covidiots” and “anti-vaxxers” who, while they may not be scientists themselves, understand the principles on which the scientific method is based. As the MIT study admits, to complain that these irritating people “need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed and inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: they are deeply invested in forms of critique and knowledge production they recognise as scientific expertise.”

All the same, the authors of the study seem to find the concessions they are compelled to make disturbing. “(H)ow do these groups diverge from scientific orthodoxy,” they wonder, “if they are using the same data?” Since all right-minded facts should show decent respect for the statutory consensus, surely anyone inducing them to defect in support of alternative, unsanctioned conclusions must be employing underhand methods?

“We have identified a few sleights of hand that contribute to the broader epistemological crisis we identify between these groups and the majority of scientific researchers,” the defenders of the true faith plead: and they shake their heads at the way “these groups skillfully manipulate data to undermine mainstream science,” quoting as examples the sceptics’ “outsize emphasis on deaths versus cases” and their suspicion of the officially promoted confusion of deaths “with” and “of” covid: both very good reasons, less partial analysts might say, for questioning the figures being spewed out ceaselessly by the government-funded mainstream media, and taken by a terrorised public to be gospel truth.

Yet it’s not just annoying amateurs, with their absurd claims that actual facts should trump any institutionally-coerced consensus, who question the official “narrative” – and, indeed the very existence of a pandemic, as traditionally understood before the WHO decided to “re-imagine” the term, on 4th May 2009, in anticipation of the projected swine-flu apocalypse (in the event, a damp squib, but a useful practice-run for the present resounding success).

After accumulating hard evidence in interviews with over a hundred eminent scientists and other experts, the Corona Investigation Committee, a team headed by Dr Reiner Fuellmich, are likewise challenging the means – essentially, a fraudulent PCR test capable of manufacturing cases on demand and fuelling the myth of the “asymptomatic superspreader” – by which the global coup and its predestined outcome, the push to “get jabs into arms”, have been so artfully engineered.

Dr Fuellmich – a lawyer qualified to practise in both the States and Europe – has already taken on such giants as Deutschebank and Volkswagen. We can only hope that the evidence which he and the rest of the Committee have gathered so painstakingly over the past year and shared with lawyers all over the world will continue to result in court cases where facts will triumph over consensus, vindicating the unvaccinated of “stupidity” before they are forced by the uninformed to wear yellow stars and find themselves rounded up in camps for the unclean.

And that those behind the coup, along with all who enabled and enforced their unlawful actions by “just following orders”, are brought to justice before an international tribunal, to be charged with what the Corona Committee describes as “the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.”

May 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Switch to Remote Learning Caused Large Increases in School Dropout and Learning Losses in Brazil

By Noah Carl • Lockdown Sceptics • May 28, 2021

Back in April, I wrote about a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that Dutch students made “made little or no progress while learning from home”. Now researchers have reported a similar finding in Brazil.

As in the Dutch study, the researchers used rigorous methods to gauge the impact of remote learning on student outcomes. In other words, they didn’t just compare outcomes in 2020 to those the year before.

In São Paulo State (where the study was based) state schools switched to remote learning only at the end of the first quarter, and they continued to teach remotely thereafter. This allowed the researchers to compare the change in outcomes between the first and last quarters of 2020 to the change in outcomes between the same two quarters of 2019.

They looked at two different outcomes: high dropout risk (i.e., whether the student had any math and Portuguese grades on his school record in the relevant quarter), and standardised test scores.

When comparing the change in 2020 to the change in 2019, the researchers found large increases in school dropout and learning losses.

Furthermore, they exploited a natural experiment to gauge the impact of switching back to in-person learning. In the fourth quarter of 2020, some municipalities allowed high-schools but not middle-schools to switch back. This allowed the researchers to compare middle- and high-schools in those municipalities with respect to the change in 2020 versus the change in 2019.

Consistent with the previous result, they found that switching back to in-person learning was associated with higher standardised test scores.

In the authors’ own words, their results show that “the societal costs of keeping schools closed in the pandemic are very large”. As such, they argue that “the public debate should move from whether schools should be open or not to how to reopen them safely”.

May 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Dr. Peter McCullough Interview – May 19, 2021 (Banned on YouTube)

https://www.bitchute.com/video/tt0yyvUtKFfs/

Dr. Peter McCullough has been the world’s most prominent and vocal advocate for early outpatient treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection in order to prevent hospitalization and death. On May 19, 2021, he was interviewed about his efforts as a treating physician and researcher. From his unique vantage point, he has observed and documented a PROFOUNDLY DISTURBING POLICY RESPONSE to the pandemic — a policy response that may prove to be the greatest malpractice and malfeasance in the history of medicine and public health.

Dr. McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A & M College of Medicine, Dallas, TX USA. Since the outset of the pandemic, Dr. McCullough has been a leader in the medical response to the COVID-19 disaster and has published “Patho-physiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection” the first synthesis of sequenced multi-drug treatment of ambulatory patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the American Journal of Medicine and subsequently updated in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine. He has 40 peer-reviewed publications on the infection and has commented extensively on the medical response to the COVID-19 crisis in The Hill and on FOX NEWS Channel. On November 19, 2020, Dr. McCullough testified in the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and throughout 2021 in the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, Colorado General Assembly, and New Hampshire Senate concerning many aspects of the pandemic response.

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Life Insurance and Covid-19; Something Doesn’t Make Sense

By Jeff Harris | Ron Paul Institute | May 26, 2021

You would think that during the worst Pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu life insurance companies would be hedging their bets to avoid major losses from Covid-19. I haven’t written a life policy for several years so I was wondering what was going on? I called one of the brokers I deal with that interacts with hundreds of big life insurers to get an inside look into how the Covid crisis has changed their business.

Imagine my surprise when she said it was pretty much business as usual! Last year when the hysteria was just getting ramped up she did say the companies temporarily tightened up underwriting and reduced the amount of coverage they would offer. But as time went by and the hard data came rolling in those same companies went back to business as usual.

I asked her specifically if life insurers wanted a Covid test as part of the underwriting process and she said none that she was aware of. Hmm, that’s pretty interesting isn’t it? The most lethal pandemic in decades descends on the globe with deadly mutations taking millions of innocent lives and the life insurance companies couldn’t care less.

I also asked if the cost per thousand of coverage had increased due to Covid and again she said no. Rates were pretty much the same as they were before the Covid Pandemic ravaged the earth. Life Insurance companies are very risk adverse. They don’t like losing money to unnecessary claims. The fact they’re treating Covid as a nonevent should be an indicator that something is very wrong with the whole narrative.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Five recently published Randomized Controlled Trials confirm major, statistically significant benefits of ivermectin against COVID-19

TrialSiteNews | May 26, 2021

Abstract

Major benefits of ivermectin (IVM) treatment for COVID-19 have been known since the results of 20  such randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were reported, as compiled in January 2021. Of the eight of these RCTs that tracked mortality or morbidity in patients with serious cases, seven showed statistically significant clinical improvements. The pooled mortality reduction in these eight RCTs was 78% in the treatment vs. controls groups, and the RCT that used the highest dose of IVM reported a 92% reduction in mortality (p < 0.001). Three RCTs for IVM prevention of COVID-19 and two animal studies of IVM at low human-equivalent doses likewise reported pronounced efficacy. Here we note the recent publication of RCTs for IVM treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in mainstream scientific journals that confirm these previously reported findings.

Background

The consistently observed, major benefits of ivermectin (IVM) for COVID-19 treatment have been known since a January 2021 meta-study compiled results of 20 such randomized clinical trials (RCTs).1 Of the eight of these RCTs that tracked mortality or morbidity in patients with moderate or severe symptoms (4 double-blind,2-5 1 single-blind,6 and 3 non-blinded7-9), seven showed statistically significant clinical improvements (all but Podder et al.8). The pooled mortality reduction in these eight RCTs for the IVM treatment group vs. controls was 78% (mortality of 2.1% for IVM, 9.5% for controls). The RCT that used the highest dose of IVM, 1,600 μg/kg total, had 2 vs. 24 deaths in the treatment vs. control group (n=200 each),7 a 92% reduction in mortality (p < 0.001).

Complementing these IVM treatment studies, three RCTs evaluated IVM for prevention in subjects exposed to COVID-19 patients. These studies reported relative COVID-19 incidences of 20%, 16% and 13% compared with incidences in controls, with even lower relative incidences for serious such cases. In addition, two animal studies of IVM treatment at low human-equivalent doses for SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters10 and for a closely related betacoronavirus in mice11 likewise found major, highly statistically significant treatment benefits.

Yet some skeptical reviewers had dismissed this overwhelming RCT evidence for clinical efficacy of IVM against COVID-19, claiming insufficient quality of the studies,12,13 as had been indicated by the lack of publication of any in mainstream scientific journals. The recent publication of five such RCTs for IVM in top-tier journals, including Lancet eClinicalMedicine14 and BMC infectious diseases,15 all reporting major, statistically significant clinical benefits against COVID-19, dismantles these skeptical critiques.

Five recently published studies in mainstream scientific journals

Among these five recently published RCTs was a prevention study of April 2021 by Seet et al.16 IVM was administered to 617 subjects, with 2,420 other subjects assigned to either a control group or to one of three other preventative regimens. The subjects were then tracked for onset of COVID-19 symptoms and positive nasopharyngeal PCR tests over a 42-day period. IVM at a dose of 12 mg was given just once on day one, while the three other preventative regimens were each administered daily during this 42-day period. Yet IVM at this single low dose yielded the best clinical results, reducing incidence of symptomatic COVID-19 by 50% (p=0.003) and of ARDS symptoms by 49% (p=0.012) with respect to controls. IVM at that single low dose, however, yielded only a non-significant 8% reduction in relative incidence of positive PCR tests.

Of the four recently published RCTs that studied IVM treatment of COVID-19, Chaccour et al., as previously released in preprint, monitored outcomes for 40 generally young patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms.14 A single dose of IVM at 400 μg/kg significantly reduced the duration of hyposmia/anosmia (p<0.001), but gave only a modest reduction in viral load. Shahbaznejad et al. reported that IVM in a single dose of 200 μg/kg reduced duration of COVID-19 symptoms and hospitalization (p=0.02 for each).17 IVM also reduced duration of coughing (p=0.02) and of shortness of breath (p<0.05). No conclusions could be drawn regarding mortality, since only one patient died, within 24 hours of hospitalization in critical condition, a 78-year old woman in the treatment group with a history of diabetes and heart failure.

Mahmud et al. administered a single dose of IVM at 12 mg plus doxycycline at 100 mg twice daily for five days.18 The IVM treatment group had statistically significant clinical benefits v. controls by four different measures, p=0.001 to 0.003, and had a reduced percentage of positive PCR tests at 14 days with p=0.002. Okumus et al. administered IVM at 200 μg/kg for five consecutive days, in addition to the standard of care used for both the treatment and control groups, which included azithromycin.15 At the end of the five-day study follow-up period, spO2 was increased; CRP, ferritin and D-dimer blood levels were reduced; and percentage of PCR-negative tests were increased vs. controls, all to statistical significance (p=0.032, 0.02, 0.005, 0.03, and 0.01, respectively).

More pronounced reduction by single-agent IVM of COVID-19 morbidity v. infectivity

The findings of two of these five recently published RCTs, Chaccour et al.14 and Seet et al.,16 both fit a pattern established in a prior RCT3 and two animal studies10,11 of more pronounced alleviation by IVM as a single agent of COVID-19-related symptoms and morbidities than reductions in viral load. Indeed, one RCT of IVM at an unusually high dose, 3,000 μg/kg total over 5 consecutive days, yielded a statistically significant reduction in viral load in COVID-19 patients vs. controls only for the subgroup of treated patients (45%) in which the highest levels of plasma IVM levels were obtained.19

This disparity between reduction in morbidity vs. infectivity by IVM for COVID-19 may be explainable by the indicated clinically operative biological mechanism of IVM as reported in seven molecular modeling studies.20-26 Those studies found that IVM bound strongly to regions of SARS-CoV-2 viral spike protein, one subdomain of which (RBD) controls viral binding and replication via host cell ACE2 receptors, with another subdomain (NTD) governing viral attachments to sialic acid (SA) binding sites on blood, endothelial and other host cells.27 The latter such attachments of SARS-CoV-2 to SA binding sites on red blood cells (RBCs) are responsible for the clumping that is observed in vitro when virus is mixed with RBCs in this hemagglutinating virus. Whereas the common cold human betacoronavirus strains contain an enzyme, hemagglutinin esterase (HE), that releases viral-RBC clumps, the three virulent betacoronavirus strains—SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS—lack HE.27 IVM, if it is found to bind to NTD sites on SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, might thus limit viral virulence by blocking such hemagglutinating bindings.

The biological mechanism of IVM that is operative clinically against COVID-19 remains to be confirmed, as do indications of its greater reduction of morbidity than of infectivity per the studies noted. The recent publication of the five RCTs noted in top tier scientific journals, however, positively confirms the major, statistically significant clinical benefits of IVM, as previously reported in several prior such RCTs, for COVID-19 treatment and prevention.

References

1. Hill A, Abdulamir A, Ahmed S, et al. Meta-analysis of randomized trials of ivermectin to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. Research Square. 2021;doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-148845/v1.

2. Babalola O, Bode C, Ajayi A, et al. Ivermectin shows clinical benefits in mild to moderate COVID19: A randomised controlled double blind dose response study in Lagos. medRxiv. 2021;doi:10.1101/2021.01.05.21249131.

3. Kirti R, Roy R, Pattadar C, et al. Ivermectin as a potential treatment for mild to moderate COVID-19 – A double blind randomized placebo-controlled trial. medRxiv. 2021;doi: 10.1101/2021.01.05.21249310.

4. Mahmud R. Clinical Trial of Ivermectin Plus Doxycycline for the Treatment of Confirmed Covid-19 Infection (NCT04523831). https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04523831?view=results. Updated October 9, 2020. Accessed April 2, 2021.

5. Niaee MS, Gheibi H, Namdar P, et al. Ivermectin as an adjunct treatment for hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients; A randomized multi-center clinical trial. Research Square. 2020;doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-109670/v1.

6. Hashim HA, Maulood MF, Rasheed AM, et al. Controlled randomized clinical trial on using Ivermectin with Doxycycline for treating COVID-19 patients in Baghdad, Iraq. medRxiv. 2020;doi:10.1101/2020.10.26.20219345.

7. Elgazzar A, Hany B, Abo Youssef S, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic. Research Square. 2020;doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-100956/v1.

8. Podder CS, Chowdhury N, Sina MI, et al. Outcome of ivermectin treated mild to moderate COVID-19 cases; a single-centre, open-label, randomised controlled study. IMC J Med Sci. 2020;14(2):002.

9. Okumus N. Ivermectin for Severe COVID-19 Management (NCT04646109). https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04646109?view=results. Updated January 27, 2021. Accessed April 21, 2021.

10. Melo GD, Lazarini F, Larrous F, et al. Anti-COVID-19 efficacy of ivermectin in the golden hamster. bioRxiv. 2020;doi:10.1101/2020.11.21.392639.

11. Arévalo AP, Pagotto R, Pórfido JL, et al. Ivermectin reduces in vivo coronavirus infection in a mouse experimental model. Scientific Reports. 2021;11(1):7132.

12. COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group Rapid Evidence Report: Ivermectin in the Treatment and Prevention of COVID-19. Alberta Health Services. https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppih-covid-19-sag-ivermectin-in-treatment-and-prevention-rapid-review.pdf. Published February 2, 2021. Accessed May 24, 2021.

13. Sax PE. Ivermectin for COVID-19 — Breakthrough Treatment or Hydroxychloroquine Redux? NEJM Journal Watch. https://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/ivermectin-for-covid-19-breakthrough-treatment-or-hydroxychloroquine-redux/2021/01/04/. Published January 4, 2021. Accessed May 24, 2021.

14. Chaccour C, Casellas A, Blanco-Di Matteo A, et al. The effect of early treatment with ivermectin on viral load, symptoms and humoral response in patients with non-severe COVID-19: A pilot, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. EClinicalMedicine. 2021;10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100720.

15. Okumuş N, Demirtürk N, Çetinkaya RA, et al. Evaluation of the effectiveness and safety of adding ivermectin to treatment in severe COVID-19 patients. BMC Infectious Diseases. 2021;21(1):411.

16. Seet RCS, Quek AML, Ooi DSQ, et al. Positive impact of oral hydroxychloroquine and povidone-iodine throat spray for COVID-19 prophylaxis: An open-label randomized trial. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2021;106:314-322.

17. Shahbaznejad L, Davoudi A, Eslami G, et al. Effect of ivermectin on COVID-19: A multicenter double-blind randomized controlled clinical trial. Clinical Therapeutics. 2021;https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinthera.2021.04.007.

18. Mahmud R, Rahman MM, Alam I, et al. Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline for treating COVID-19 symptoms: a randomized trial. Journal of International Medical Research. 2021;49(5):03000605211013550.

19. Krolewiecki A, Lifschitz A, Moragas M, et al. Antiviral effect of high-dose ivermectin in adults with COVID-19: a pilot randomised, controlled, open label, multicentre trial. SSRN. http://ssrn.com/abstract=3714649. Published 2020. Accessed November 23, 2020.

20. Dayer M. Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Deactivation via Spike Glycoprotein Shielding by Old Drugs, Bioinformatic Study. Preprints.org. 2020;doi:10.20944/preprints202005.0020.v1.

21. Hussien MA, Abdelaziz AEM. Molecular docking suggests repurposing of brincidofovir as a potential drug targeting SARS-CoV-2 ACE2 receptor and main protease. Network Modeling Analysis in Health Informatics and Bioinformatics. 2020;9(1):56.

22. Suravajhala R, Parashar A, Malik B, et al. Comparative Docking Studies on Curcumin with COVID-19 Proteins. Preprints.org. 2020;doi:10.20944/preprints202005.0439.v2.

23. Nallusamy S, Mannu J, Ravikumar C, et al. Shortlisting Phytochemicals Exhibiting Inhibitory Activity against Major Proteins of SARS-CoV-2 through Virtual Screening. Research Square. 2020;doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-31834/v1.

24. Kalhor H, Sadeghi S, Abolhasani H, et al. Repurposing of the approved small molecule drugs in order to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 S protein and human ACE2 interaction through virtual screening approaches. Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics. 2020;10.1080/07391102.2020.1824816:1-16.

25. Agrawal L, Poullikkas T, Eisenhower S, et al. Viroinformatics-Based Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Core Proteins for Potential Therapeutic Targets. Antibodies (Basel). 2021;10(1).

26. Toor HG, Banerjee DI, Lipsa Rath S, et al. Computational drug re-purposing targeting the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 as an effective strategy to neutralize COVID-19. Eur J Pharmacol. 2021;890:173720.

27. Scheim DE. From cold to killer: How SARS-CoV-2 evolved without hemagglutinin esterase to agglutinate, then clot blood cells in pulmonary and systemic microvasculature. http://ssrn.com/abstract=3706347. Published 2020. Accessed March 30, 2021.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

MORE Flagrant Data Manipulation from the CDC

New report is further evidence the CDC is deliberately hiding post-vaccine “breakthrough cases”

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | May 26, 2021

A new report, published just yesterday, has provided yet more evidence that the CDC is manipulating data to conceal the number of “breakthrough infections”.

A “breakthrough infection” (or “breakthrough case”) is defined as a person who tests positive for Sars-Cov-2 infection, despite already being fully vaccinated. And this new report finds that the CDC’s official record of breakthrough cases is:

likely a substantial undercount.

Going on to explain:

The national surveillance system relies on passive and voluntary reporting, and data might not be complete or representative. Many persons with vaccine breakthrough infections, especially those who are asymptomatic or who experience mild illness, might not seek testing.

Which is partially accurate, but also a pretty major lie by omission.

It is probably true that vaccinated people with no symptoms are unlikely to seek testing, but it is also true that, on March 17th, the CDC updated their advice on testing policy to specifically exclude such people from testing protocols:

Screencap of CDC’s testing guidelines

So, while it’s certainly true that “breakthrough cases” are likely a substantial undercount, it is dishonest to pretend that this is just an accident of the system. Rather, the system is specifically designed to hide such cases.

Of course, this report only goes up to the end of April, the “undercount” will only have gotten worse since then, because the CDC changed their rules AGAIN to make it even harder to keep an accurate count of breakthrough cases.

As we wrote last week, as of May 1st the CDC will no longer be counting mild or asymptomatic cases as “breakthrough infections”, choosing to focus only on hospitalisations and deaths.

According to the CDC’s own report, though, over a quarter (27%) of breakthrough infections were asymptomatic, and a further 61% were only mildly ill. Conversely, only 10% of them were ever hospitalised, and only 2% died:

Based on preliminary data, 2,725 (27%) vaccine breakthrough infections were asymptomatic, 995 (10%) patients were known to be hospitalized, and 160 (2%) patients died.

So, the CDC has taken their “substantial undercount”, and then slashed it by 90%. The official figures, moving forward, will be so inaccurate as to be completely useless.

The CDC claims these changes “will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.” But that is an obvious and absurd lie.

Statistical studies have shown up to 86% of Covid “cases” never experience symptoms. To exclude such cases from your vaccine effectiveness studies is to poison your data in order to prop up a pre-determined conclusion. It is, at the very best, extremely poor science.

Of course, the truth is far more cynical even than that.

From the beginning of the so-called “pandemic”, waves of asymptomatic “cases” were deliberately created by running unreliable PCR tests on 100,000s of perfectly healthy people every day.

The entirely predictable false positives were called “cases”, and these manufactured “cases” of Covid19 were used to build up the illusion of a global plague.

This was a prolonged campaign of deception in order to bring about sweeping changes in the construction of our society.

To this point “asymptomatic cases” have been the backbone of the Covid narrative. But now the CDC has attempted to remove them from the reckoning by instructing medical labs and hospitals around the country to stop looking for them, but only in those who have had the “vaccine”.

This is a new prolonged campaign of deception, spinning the narrative that these untested, experimental “vaccines” truly are “effective” against a “pandemic” that was built on statistical smoke and mirrors.

In short: before the vaccine they needed “asymptomatic infections” to create a “problem”, after the vaccine they are actively hiding “asymptomatic infections”, because their existence undermines their “solution”.

“Breakthrough infections”, existing in anything approaching large numbers, effectively means one of three things is true: either the tests are unreliable, the “vaccines” are ineffective…or both.

To anyone interested in the truth, keeping an accurate count of these “breakthrough infections” is therefore vitally important.

The corollary of that, of course, is that anyone attempting to conceal, minimise or ignore them is NOT interested in the truth. Such behaviour is, in fact, a tacit admission of deception.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

JHU Prof: Half Of Americans Have Natural Immunity; Dismissing It Is ‘Biggest failure Of Medical Leadership’

“Please, ignore the CDC guidance”

By Steve Watson | Summit News | May 26, 2021

A professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has said that there is a general dismissal of the fact that more than half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to the coronavirus and that it constitutes “one of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership.”

Dr. Marty Makary made the comments during a recent interview, noting that “natural immunity works” and it is wrong to vilify those who don’t want the vaccine because they have already recovered from the virus.

Makary criticised “the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history” for not clearly communicating the scientific facts about natural immunity compared to the kind of immunity developed through vaccines.

“There is more data on natural immunity than there is on vaccinated immunity, because natural immunity has been around longer,” Makary emphasised.

“We are not seeing reinfections, and when they do happen, they’re rare. Their symptoms are mild or are asymptomatic,” the professor added.

“Please, ignore the CDC guidance,” he urged, adding “Live a normal life, unless you are unvaccinated and did not have the infection, in which case you need to be careful.”

“We’ve got to start respecting people who choose not to get the vaccine instead of demonizing them,” Makary further asserted.

The professor’s comments come amid a plethora of media generated propaganda suggesting that natural immunity isn’t enough, and that those who do not choose to take the vaccine should be socially ostracised.

The likes of the World Health Organisation have even shifted the definition of ‘herd immunity’, eliminating the pre-COVID scientific consensus that it could be achieved by allowing a virus to spread through a population, and insisting that herd immunity comes solely from vaccines.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Google blocks ads from Italian author who suggested coronavirus could have originated in a lab

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021

Facebook, YouTube and other major social media platforms have been enforcing extremely strict rules around what their users can and cannot say about coronavirus and the pandemic for over a year now, to make sure only messages and narratives aligned with state authorities and the WHO made it through.

But at this point, it looks like those rules are even more stringent than what officials are saying, to the point that, if applied consistently, Facebook would have to ban Dr Fauci for not ruling out the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.

This has so far been considered the type of “misinformation” that is sure to get posts deleted and accounts suspended, as Facebook says it prohibits any discussion around coronavirus possibly being man-made.

Facebook is not alone, since YouTube has a similar censorship policy. Only last week, Google prevented Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti from advertising his book that explores much the same topic that Fauci did in his recent comments. Google said Gatti – whose book also criticizes China’s role – was guilty of creating content with “speculative intent.”

“Once the infection is overcome with vaccines, as I write in my book, we will have to defend our democracies from totalitarianism and the digital monopoly,” Gatti said, reacting to the blacklisting, and urged Google to reverse the decision.

Other contentious rules enforced by YouTube concern any questioning of the usefulness of masks, regardless of the fact official recommendations and guidelines on this topic have been changing throughout the pandemic.

Along the same line, saying that coronavirus vaccines might cause serious harm to people will get content and/or users banned on Facebook – even if medical authorities in Europe and in other places say that at least two of them – AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – can cause blood clots, though rare.

Even though tech giants behind the largest social media sites defend their policies as a way to prevent misinformation and promote official sources, those who have been on the receiving end – everyday users, medical professionals, journalists – see this as unwarranted censorship that stifles any debate.

And as former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson observed, this vigorous suppression of opposing views around Covid is a cause for concern, but is also emblematic of the general direction we’re headed in.

“This isn’t about Covid, it’s about whether or not as a society we’re going to allow people who have views that are sort of outside what the mainstream media want you to believe, to present those views. It’s becoming harder and harder to have honest conversations,” said Berenson, whose book skeptical of lockdowns and masks Amazon had temporarily banned.

May 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

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