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Politifact backtracks on the origin of SARS-Cov-2, yet smears remain uncorrected

By Meryl Nass, MD | May 18, 2021

Here is Politifact quoting me from the film Plandemic, which Politifact then disputed by citing a March 17, 2020 Nature Medicine article, which I had mentioned in the film as being bogus:

“I feel quite convinced that this was a laboratory designed organism.” — Dr. Meryl Nass, internal medicine specialist

POLITIFACT August 18, 2020: Research shows that the virus could not have been created in a lab. An article published March 17 says the genetic makeup of the coronavirus, documented by researchers from several public health organizations, does not indicate it was altered.

Now, it seems, many have awakened, after being spoon-fed an analysis of the facts by Nicholas Wade, and realized the Nature Medicine paper makes absolutely no sense.

Here is what Politifact says now, May 17, 2021:

Some scientists have argued that the lab-leak hypothesis deserves to be taken much more seriously than it was earlier in the pandemic, and that dismissals of it as conspiracy theory were premature. Claims of complete certainty on either side remain unfounded.

No mention, of course, of Politifact’s previous smear of me and the movie. All the fact-checkers piled on me last August, as I described in a blog post, for saying the origin of Covid was a lab. Where are the rest of them now? Do the rest of the fact-checkers correct their facts?

Do the social media platforms that banned the movie resurrect it?

May 19, 2021 Posted by | Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up “vaccine effectiveness”

New policies artificially deflate “breakthrough infections” in the vaccinated, while old rules continue inflating case numbers in the unvaccinated.

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | May 18, 2021

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for “Covid19” in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy “vaccines” are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the change).

The trick is in their reporting of what they call “breakthrough infections” – that is people who are fully “vaccinated” against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.

Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

  1. False-postive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)
  2. Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of “Covid case”, used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a “Covid19 case”, even if they never experienced any symptoms.

Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all, and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected “breakthrough infections”.

From the CDC’s instructions for state health authorities on handling “possible breakthrough infections” (uploaded to their website in late April):

For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)

Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the world going into the 40s.

Essentially labs were running as many cycles as necessary to achieve a positive result, despite experts warning that this was pointless (even Fauci himself said anything over 35 cycles is meaningless).

But NOW, and only for fully vaccinated people, the CDC will only accept samples achieved from 28 cycles or fewer. That can only be a deliberate decision in order to decrease the number of “breakthrough infections” being officially recorded.

Secondly, asymptomatic or mild infections will no longer be recorded as “covid cases”.

That’s right. Even if a sample collected at the low CT value of 28 can be sequenced into the virus alleged to cause Covid19, the CDC will no longer be keeping records of breakthrough infections that don’t result in hospitalisation or death.

From their website:

As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance. Previous case counts, which were last updated on April 26, 2021, are available for reference only and will not be updated moving forward.

Just like that, being asymptomatic – or having only minor symptoms – will no longer count as a “Covid case” but only if you’ve been vaccinated.

The CDC has put new policies in place which effectively created a tiered system of diagnosis. Meaning, from now on, unvaccinated people will find it much easier to be diagnosed with Covid19 than vaccinated people.

Consider…

Person A has not been vaccinated. They test positive for Covid using a PCR test at 40 cycles and, despite having no symptoms, they are officially a “covid case”.

Person B has been vaccinated. They test positive at 28 cycles, and spend six weeks bedridden with a high fever. Because they never went into a hospital and didn’t die they are NOT a Covid case.

Person C, who was also vaccinated, did die. After weeks in hospital with a high fever and respiratory problems. Only their positive PCR test was 29 cycles, so they’re not officially a Covid case either.

The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a “disease” that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.

To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to “Covid” since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.

If you apply them only to the vaccinated, but keep the old rules for the unvaccinated, the only possible result can be that the official records show “Covid” is much more prevalent among the latter than the former.

This is a policy designed to continuously inflate one number, and systematically minimise the other.

What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?

May 18, 2021 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Long Covid ‘Symptoms’ in Teens are No Less Common in Those Who Haven’t Had the Virus – Study

By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • May 17, 2021

The risk of long Covid – the persistence of Covid symptoms like fatigue and headaches for three months or more – has been used to justify health interventions including with younger people who are not at elevated risk from acute infection. For instance, Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested in April that young people should get vaccinated to avoid long Covid, saying Covid was a “horrible disease” and long Covid affected people in their 20s “just as much” as any other age group, sometimes with “debilitating side effects that essentially ruin your life”.

New research, however, casts doubt on whether symptoms attributed to long Covid are really associated with COVID-19 at all, at least in adolescents.

The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, is the first (as far as the authors are aware) to compare the incidence of long Covid symptoms in those who have and have not had the virus, defined in terms of having detectable antibodies. It involved 1,560 secondary school pupils aged 13 to 18 in Eastern Saxony (median age 15) enrolled in the SchoolCovid19 study since May 2020. All have been tested for antibodies throughout the study and in March and April 2021 completed a 12 question long-Covid survey regarding “the occurrence and frequency of difficulties concentrating, memory loss, listlessness, headache, abdominal pain, myalgia/arthralgia, fatigue, insomnia and mood (sadness, anger, happiness and tenseness)”.

The findings are remarkable. Of 1,560 pupils, 1,365 (88%) were seronegative (no IgG antibodies detected) and 188 (12%) were seropositive. Each of the long Covid symptoms was present in at least 35% of the pupils within the seven days before the survey. Crucially, however, there was no statistically significant difference in reported symptoms between seropositive and seronegative pupils (see chart above).

These findings suggest that, in adolescents at least, the prevalence of long Covid is considerably exaggerated, and that the presumed symptoms of long Covid are common to those who have and have not had the virus. One possibility is that this is a background rate for teenagers. However, the authors are struck by the high incidence of the symptoms and suggest they may be linked to the lockdown conditions, saying they confirm “the negative effects of lockdown measures on mental health and well-being of children and adolescents”.

Because the study was only among adolescents it did not include any who had suffered severe illness or been hospitalised, which is where some earlier research on long Covid has focused.

For adolescents it suggests that the threat from long Covid has been greatly overdone, and that the apparent symptoms of the condition are much more likely to be caused by lockdowns than by a viral infection.

May 18, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

We Won! Trader Joe’s was the First Crack in the Armor

By Allan Stevo | Lew Rockwell | May 17, 2021

For more than a year, Trader Joe’s has been a particularly troubling store for some readers of these pages.

Trader Joe’s has some excellent quality products at a consumer friendly price with a quirky corporate style. What’s not to like about such a place?

When corona communism was implemented after the Ides of March 2020, we saw exactly what was not to like about such a place.

Trader Joe’s became one of many private companies that enforced the terrible one-sized-fits-all health mandates, including the CDC’s April 3, 2020, face mask order, the single most powerful tool of 2020.

The very concept of private property is further perverted when such behavior takes place as private companies enforce illegitimate government edict.

It didn’t stop there. Through participation in trade organizations, the executives of Trader Joe’s and other companies, called for even more stringent across-the-board policies from government. They didn’t just enable, they didn’t just enforce, they didn’t just encourage, they demanded even more tyranny!

To the credit of Trader Joe’s, their corporate policy always left room for individual exemptions among customers. However, in practice, this was very difficult to invoke. The Trader Joe’s horror stories are legion, and some of the worst of the past year.

In some locations, a customer practically had to have a law degree to get their face mask exemption policy honored.

The easy breezy decentralized corporate style of Trader Joe’s quickly devolved to utter tyrrany as managers were more likely to follow the directives of the CNN chyron than the actual corporate policy.

That once friendly “crew member” who always gave you an extra big smile at checkout was suddenly a mask Nazi of the tallest order.

I mean it when I say “Nazi.” A defining characteristic of nazism was the fusion of state and corporate power. Nazis needed corporate cooperation for their efforts to take hold, just as the corona communists of the Ides of March 2020 did.

Executives at Trader Joe’s overwhelmingly looked the other way as stores enacted the most preposterous policies.

Example: an employee polling other customers on whether a medically exempt customer looked like someone who should be medically exempt from a mask and then inciting customers to corner and angrily confront the unmasked shopper about that.

This kind of sick behavior was happening to grandmothers! Who could possibly justify an employee cornering a shopper in the spices section and gathering together an angry mob of customers?

Regional Vice Presidents encouraged the tyranny further, giving full support to such behavior and being so full of hubris as to actually put such support in writing. That level of hubris speaks volumes about an organization in a way little else can. There was utter disconnect from reality and total contempt for anyone who disagreed. As is so often true, pride precedes a fall.

On April 29, 2021, I sent a strongly worded letter on this topic of their rampant abuse of costumers to Trader Joe’s CEO Daniel Bane.

Just to make sure the letter was not ignored, my team and I followed up that letter with a press release further pointing to Trader Joe’s illegal and unethical discrimination.

It is the job of corporate communications departments to take note of the chatter about their company in the media and online. In such an environment, press releases can be a helpful exclamation point on a sentence that needs to be spoken with emphasis: Don’t tread on us.

If done right, both the CEOs office and the communications team end up going frantically through the company figuring out how to address those concerns.

This particular press release was picked up and reprinted by at least 109 media sources that day. The Trader Joe’s communications team probably noticed.

Beginning the very next day, the toughest Trader Joe’s stores in the country stopped their ridiculous level of radical enforcement. More than a year’s worth of the most unceasing awful behavior toward customers literally stopped overnight.

It was so rampant that I used to receive several complaints about Trader Joe’s some weeks. As of April 30, more than two weeks ago, I have not received a single new complaint. This was not only what I was observing through correspondences, but my team and I also have folks patrolling the world as health freedom inspectors keeping an eye on tyrannical corporate enforcement of illegitimate government policy. These health freedom inspectors reported similar results. Additionally, I myself am constantly out testing techniques and probing for cracks in the system. I firsthand observed an absolute night and day shift on April 30, repeatedly confirmed in the days thereafter.

I think we had their attention.

In the days ahead, I encouraged people to reach out to the Trader Joe’s CEO at his personal email address as follow up to the letter.

Hundreds of readers of these pages did that. This activity peaked with some 300 emails being sent to the CEO on a single day, Thursday, May 13, 2021.

I was CC’d or BCC’d on about a hundred of them that day.

This wasn’t sent to info@traderjoes.com. This was sent to the CEO. 300 emails to a single inbox can be hard to ignore.

The CDC adjusted their guidance on Thursday as well. Trader Joe’s didn’t leap to the lead on that, sticking their necks out because of the CDC guidance. Based on anecdotal accounts, they had a lot of pressure from employees and customers alike. The lawsuits, the complaints, the pushback, the pressure means a lot. I’ve never worked at a company where a single email that was written right and directed to the right inbox at the right time could not move an entire company to immediate action.

Just one email can do that. Anyone who wants to deny that, has never seen that happen or has some agenda by which they seek to discourage you. One, well targeted email can make a difference. Ten can as well. A hundred can. A thousand can. I don’t pretend to know what happened behind the scenes, but I know that our emails had the ability to shape policy at several dozen companies this Friday and my guess is that they did. They may have even helped to shape policy at the CDC, a much harder entity to motivate than a private business. Having seen letters like that cross desks, both governmental and private, I know how very impactful they can be.

What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall.

The next morning, on Friday, May 14, 2021, Trader Joe’s publicly altered their policy.

They dropped all face mask mandates for customers.

To save face, they cited a CDC guidance from the previous day about vaccines and face masks. They claimed that they would only allow entrance to unmasked customers who had been vaccinated, a detail that they publicly have stated they will not be checking for.

They crumbled.

I knew they were weak, these tyrants, I knew these orders were getting ready to crumble, but I didn’t realize exactly how weak they were. They are very weak and the proper response to weakness from an enemy of freedom is to fight all the harder, until they look back at 2020 and say “I’m never gonna try that again.”

Despite the corporate spin and gobbledygook, the truth of the matter is this:

On May 14, 2021, you and I, who have long been fighting this in ways both big and small, won a decisive victory, as we took down the Trader Joe’s face mask order. We left Trader Joe’s with no other alternative. We made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Dozens of companies immediately followed.

This is a huge victory, and it cannot stop here.

Trader Joe’s plans to leave their employees masked. They also plan to keep their “only the vaccinated can be unmasked policy” in place on paper. If allowed to remain in place, it will be only a matter of time before it returns with a vengeance. The next time it is enforced, we shouldn’t expect it to be as generous and easy to defeat as it was this time.

Therefore, we must stop the forced masking of Trader Joe’s employees and we must remove all mention of any government-advised health mandate as a condition of entering a business.

It is not the place of government to place health mandates on us, and it is certainly not the right of corporations to enforce such illegitimate abuses of government power on us. It is illegitimate abuse of government power no matter who enforces it: your neighbor, your grocer, your child’s school, your mailman, or your own mother.

We must truly redouble our efforts.

Time is of the essence. We have a very short window of opportunity to defeat these one-size-fits-all health mandates.

The annual flu season will begin in late-September. Respiratory virus related illnesses and deaths will increase and the fear campaign will intensify. Standard deaths that take place every year from respiratory viruses will be blamed on something scary. “Vaccine” deaths will be blamed on something scary and will certainly not be blamed on vaccines. We will have quite a fight on our hands.

If these one-size-fits-all approaches are still with us and normalized in September 2021, there will be no stopping them. They will be with us a very long time and we really will have entered the new normal. We must return society to normal by the end of this summer, or we risk losing society as we once knew it.

We must roll society back far before 2019, to regain freedoms we were once certain were gone forever, and we must let no vestige of 2020 remain.

That is the work that is ahead of us. That is the work we need accomplished immediately and by September 2021 at the latest, for if we do not, we will go into a far more pernicious battle for our civilization and will be doing so with the forces of freedom so grossly unprepared. That is something we cannot let happen.

I need you to do one thing right now to help me accomplish that, I need you to sign up at RealStevo.com, and I will enlist you in helping me take down these orders. In signing up, you will be joining an army of activists. The army of activists who read my work, who were so responsive, and who hit Trader Joe’s hard and repeatedly made such a difference in shifting this policy. We have much more work ahead of us.

Then I need you to share this article.

With literally 20 minutes of work a day from a dedicated minority, taking targeted action, we can take down these orders.

If you need pointers on how not to wear a mask ever again read my bestselling “Face Masks in One Lesson.” If you would like similar writing free of charge, check out my LewRockwell.com writing on the topic, but really what it comes down to is insisting in your own life that you will live life by a higher standard: that is what saying “No!” to the mask amounts to.

We can do this.

We are winning.

They are desperate.

Victory is at hand.

And now we must close on our victory.

If you’re a closer I need you.

Who is with me?

May 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Coronavirus: Bioterror And The US Military Laboratory In Kazakhstan – Investigation

By Yan Ostroumov | Rusvesna | March 17, 2021

China for the first time officially announced suspicions of US involvement in the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 in the republic. Beijing referred to information about the appearance of the first infected in the United States long before the official date and, possibly, earlier detection of infection in Hubei.

The reports of the “American trail” in a pandemic seem insane, but this version begins to show solid evidence.

“Recently, a Kazakhstani resource Yvision reported that “a source among the staff of the Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Almaty confirmed that the deadly coronavirus was developed in this institution.”

This laboratory was created with the financial support of the US Army and is still controlled by representatives of Washington.

Preparation for biological warfare in the CIS

After the end of the Cold War, the US Department of Defense in the post-Soviet countries created several biological reference laboratories, of a high (third) degree of protection, designed to work with especially dangerous viruses and bacteria. These facilities operate in Kharkov, Tbilisi and Almaty.

“Their official goal is the fight against the spread of dangerous infections, the real one is to prepare for a possible biological war in the territory of the former USSR.”

Scientific research at the facilities is funded and supervised by the US Department of Defense, and is often carried out with the participation of researchers from the Institute of Military Medicine. Walter Reed US Armed Forces (Maryland) coming to the region.

For example, a detachment of military biologists worked under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Blow, who studied African swine fever, for a long time in the TsRL in Tbilisi. Shortly after the start of the work of this team, in 2013, an outbreak of this disease was recorded in the southern regions of Russia.

However, due to legal restrictions, CRLs are not objects of increased secrecy. Staff publishes articles and defends dissertations, which allows you to track some of their work on open sources.

Publications testify

The Viruses magazine (Viruses, 2019, 11, 356, doi: 10.3390 / v11040356) published in April 2019 the work of a group of American and Kazakh scientists about a new strain of coronavirus, the reservoirs of which are local bats. The work was carried out in the framework of the KZ-33 project of the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency on the Almaty Central Defense League (Tropical Medicine and Infection Disease, 2019, 4, 136, doi: 10.3390 / tropicalmed4040136).

The project was led by Professor Gavin James Smith of Duke University (USA), closely associated with the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the US Department of Health.

The source of the Kazakh publication reported that the biosamples containing coronavirus delivered to the CRL in the winter of 2020

“at the molecular level, they completely coincide with the strain, the study of which was started in the laboratory about two years ago and which, according to his observations, should not all this time was to leave the TsRL.

It was a joint development led by scientists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the final stage of training a large group of Kazakh epidemiologists. ”

According to the publication (Viruses, 2019, p.2), the mentioned American studies of coronavirus were carried out in April – May 2017, that is, strictly on time, called the source. Moreover, both the species studied in 2017 and COVID-19 belong to coronaviruses transmitted by bats.

Thus, the “anonymous stuffing” is increasingly beginning to resemble the message of a person who well knows the nature of working with coronavirus in recent years.

The coincidences are sufficient for a serious verification of the kinship of these diseases by biologists, and we will move further – in the wake of those who conducted this study.

Following the bat

A careful study of the materials of the American CRL in Kazakhstan raises many questions. The KZ-33 project is entitled “Middle East Respiratory Coronavirus Syndrome”, and it is completely unclear why it should be studied on bats in Central Asia.

Even stranger is the ability of the aforementioned Professor Gavin Smith to find bats carrying the coronavirus literally anywhere. In 2017, he published a study (Transboundary Emerg Dis, Dec; 64 (6): 1790–1800. Doi: 10.1111 / tbed.12568) on coronavirus bats in Singapore. Having arrived in Kazakhstan, he also found the same object of study, although the republic was not famous for such a disease before. You might think that his personal mouse flock with his own coronavirus flies behind him.

It is curious that the study involved the resources of the Research Institute for Biological Safety is located in the Kordai district of the Zhambyl region of Kazakhstan. In the same area lives a large community of Chinese-speaking Dungans, who are traditionally engaged in shuttle trade with the PRC, including smuggling.

“There is a suspicion that in Kazakhstan, bats were artificially infected with coronavirus, strains of which were obtained in the Middle East, in the natural distribution area of ​​the disease.”

A genetically modified sample, later called COVID-19, could cross the border by accident or as a result of intentional manipulations.

The recent mass pogrom in the Dungan villages of the Kordai region can also be considered as an attempt to “clean up” witnesses of the work of American military biologists in the region in 2017-2019, their negligence or intentional actions to import COVID-19 to China.

Nobody seems to have cleaned up Professor Smith, but the Duke Institute, of which he is still an employee, seemed to have forgotten about its existence.

The coronavirus pandemic on the site of the scientific center is commented on by many researchers, but not by Gavin Smith, who has studied the spread of a very similar disease in East and Central Asia for at least four years.

Why such secrecy? Perhaps, in order not to remind once again about explorations in Almaty.

Basis for suspicion

Bioterrorism is a serious charge. But the facts gathered suggest a high probability of the involvement of a group of American and Kazakh biologists in the outbreak of coronavirus in China.

“We urge the Kazakh authorities to create a commission with the participation of representatives of WHO, as well as microbiologists from the PRC and CIS countries, with the aim of investigating the work of American specialists in the medical center and the Zhambyl region.”

We also urge international organizations, including UN agencies, to request information from the US Department of Defense about the nature of biological research in Kazakhstan funded by this agency.

May 17, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

FDA’s last word on the safety of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine was issued last year/ FDA

By Meryl Nass, MD | May 16, 2021

FDA managed to find 385 adverse event reports for either HCQ or CQ in its FDA adverse event reporting system database, as justification for withdrawing its EUA for the chloroquine drugs.

But there wa something strange about these reports. Only 102 of the 385 reports, or 26%, came from the United States. Why would foreigners be submitting reports of adverse events associated with a chloroquine drug to the FDA, instead of to their own pharmacovigilance system?

According to FDA, “FAERS is a database that contains information on adverse event and medication error reports submitted to FDA.” It is not an international database.

Might FDA have requested that foreign entities submit reports? Might some of those foreign entities have been sites where the HCQ overdose trials were conducted? The big three multicenter overdose trials were RecoverySolidarity and REMAP-Covid. Page 8 of the FDA report does indicate that some of those patients, for whom adverse event reports were filed, had received excessive HCQ doses. Of a total of 256 reports for which FDA had dosing data, depending where you place the excessive dose cut-off, between 23 and 95 had received high doses.

FDA did a number of different things to suppress the use of hydroxychloroquine. This just happens to be one thing I had not previously reported on.

What else is interesting is that this report was compiled in May 2020. It is attached to a website dated July 2020, ten months ago.

In the intervening 10 months, well over 100 papers have been published on HCQ’s use in Covid. FDA claims, “The FDA’s job is to carefully evaluate the scientific data on a drug to be sure that it is both safe and effective for a particular use…Yet FDA has ignored this massive amount of accumulating literature on hydroxychloroquine, during which 400,000 Americans died of/with Covid. Why? Willful misconduct?

May 17, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

THE NEW ABNORMAL AND THE CONFLICTED MIND OF JOE NORMIE

Computing Forever | May 13, 2021

Reality Bites Sort Of… | Thomas Sheridan | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFUsPz2b3jo
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May 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

FDA attempts to stop OTC sales of N-acetyle cysteine, an adjunctive treatment for Covid-19

By Meryl Nass, MD | May 16, 2021

Last July, FDA sent out warning letters to supplement companies, informing them that N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) could no longer be marketed as an ingredient in food supplements, using the justification that it was also a licensed drug.

FDA has concluded that NAC products are excluded from the dietary supplement definition under section 201(ff)(3)(B)(i) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321(ff)(3)(B)(i)]. Under this provision, if an article (such as NAC) has been approved as a new drug under section 505 of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 355], then products containing that article are outside the definition of a dietary supplement, unless before such approval that article was marketed as a dietary supplement or as a food. NAC was approved as a new drug under section 505 of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 355] on September 14, 1963. FDA is not aware of any evidence that NAC was marketed as a dietary supplement or as a food prior to that date.

But other drugs, such as Coenzyme Q10 and Vitamin D, are licensed as drugs but also permitted to be sold as supplements. And the federal government’s PubChem website lists many virtues of NAC.

In the case of NAC, it has been available as a licensed drug for 57 years in the US. It is widely used and very safe. Unlike many supplements, it has been extensively studied. Clinicaltrials.gov lists 541 studies for the search term ‘N-acetyl cysteine.’ Why did FDA suddenly decide its OTC use should be restricted?

This is especially troubling as a number of doctors have said it is useful in the treatment of Covid-19, especially during the late, cytokine storm stage, since it works as an antioxidant and a substrate for the production of glutathione. In fact, there is a growing body of literature on its benefits for Covid. Here is just one review.

Last week, Amazon stopped selling all products containing NAC. While no absolutely final decision has been made by FDA regarding NAC, it might be the third effective Covid treatment that the FDA has attempted to suppress, after the chloroquine drugs and ivermectin. Stay tuned.

May 16, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

FLCCC Alliance Statement on the Irregular Actions of Public Health Agencies and the Widespread Disinformation Campaign Against Ivermectin

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance | May 12, 2021

Introduction

Awareness of ivermectin’s efficacy and its adoption by physicians worldwide to successfully treat COVID-19 have grown exponentially over the past several months. Oddly, however, even as the clinical trials data and successful ivermectin treatment experiences continue to mount, so too have the criticisms and outright recommendations against the use of ivermectin by the vast majority, though not all, of public health agencies (PHA), concentrated largely in North America and Europe.

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and other ivermectin researchers have repeatedly offered expert analyses to respectfully correct and rebut the PHA recommendations, based on our deep study and rapidly accumulated expertise “in the field” on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. These rebuttals were publicized and provided to international media for the education of providers and patients across the world. Our most recent response to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and others recommendation against use can be found on the FLCCC website here.

In February 2021, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD), an international meeting of physicians, researchers, specialists, and patients, followed a guideline development process consistent with the WHO standard. It reached a consensus recommendation that ivermectin, a verifiably safe and widely available oral medicine, be immediately deployed early and globally. The BIRD group’s recommendation rested in part on numerous, well-documented studies reporting that ivermectin use reduces the risk of contracting COVID-19 by over 90% and mortality by 68% to 91%.

A similar conclusion has also been reached by an increasing number of expert groups from the United Kingdom (UK), ItalySpainUnited States (US), and a group from Japan headed by the Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of Ivermectin, Professor Satoshi Omura. Focused rebuttals that are backed by voluminous research and data have been shared with PHAs over the past months. These include the WHO and many individual members of its guideline development group (GDG), the FDA, and the NIH. However, these PHAs continue to ignore or disingenuously manipulate the data to reach unsupportable recommendations against ivermectin treatment. We are forced to publicly expose what we believe can only be described as a “disinformation” campaign astonishingly waged with full cooperation of those authorities whose mission is to maintain the integrity of scientific research and protect public health.

The following accounting and analysis of the WHO ivermectin panel’s highly irregular and inexplicable analysis of the ivermectin evidence supports but one rational explanation: the GDG Panel had a predetermined, nonscientific objective, which is to recommend against ivermectin. This is despite the overwhelming evidence by respected experts calling for its immediate use to stem the pandemic. Additionally, there appears to be a wider effort to employ what are commonly described as “disinformation tactics” in an attempt to counter or suppress any criticism of the irregular activity of the WHO panel.

The WHO Ivermectin Guideline Conflicts with the NIH Recommendation

The FLCCC Alliance is a nonprofit, humanitarian organization made up of renowned, highly published, world-expert clinician-researchers whose sole mission over the past year has been to develop and disseminate the most effective treatment protocols for COVID-19. In the past six months, much of this effort has been centered on disseminating knowledge of our identification of significant randomized, observational, and epidemiologic studies consistently demonstrating the powerful efficacy of ivermectin in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Our manuscript detailing the depth and breadth of this evidence passed a rigorous peer review by senior scientists at the U.S Food and Drug Administration and Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Recently published, our study concludes that, based on the totality of the evidence of efficacy and safety, ivermectin should be immediately deployed to prevent and treat COVID-19 worldwide.

The first “red flag” is the conflict between the March 31, 2021, WHO Ivermectin Panel’s “against” recommendation and the NIH’s earlier recommendation from February 12th of a more supportive neutral recommendation based on a lower amount of supportive evidence of ivermectin’s efficacy at that time.

Two flawed lines of analysis by the WHO appear to account for this inconsistent result:

  1. The WHO arbitrarily and severely limited the extent and diversity of study designs considered (e.g., retrospective observational controlled trials (OCT), prospective OCTs, epidemiological, quasi-randomized, randomized, placebo-controlled, etc.).
  2. The WHO mischaracterized the overall quality of the trial data to undermine the included studies.

The Severely Limited Extent and Diversity of Ivermectin Data Considered by the WHO’s Ivermectin Panel 

The WHO Ivermectin Panel arbitrarily included only a narrow selection of the available medical studies that their research team had been instructed to collect when formulating their recommendation, with virtually no explanation why they excluded such a voluminous amount of supportive medical evidence. This was made obvious at the outset due to the following:

  1. No pre-established protocol for data exclusion was published, which is a clear departure from standard practice in guideline development.
  2. The exclusions departed from the WHO’s own original search protocol it required of Unitaid’s ivermectin research, which collected a much wider array of randomized controlled trials (RCT).

Key Ivermectin Trial Data Excluded from Analysis 

  1. The WHO excluded all “quasi-randomized” RCTs from consideration (two excluded trials with over 200 patients that reported reductions in mortality).
  2. The WHO excluded all RCTs where ivermectin was compared to or given with other medications. Two such trials with over 750 patients reported reductions in mortality.
  3. The WHO excluded from consideration 7 of the 23 available ivermectin RCT results.  Such irregularities skewed the proper assessment of important outcomes in at least the following ways:
  1. Mortality Assessment
    1. WHO Review: Excluded multiple RCTs such that only 31 total trials deaths occurred; despite this artificially meager sample, an estimate of up to a 91% reduction in the risk of death was found.[1]
    2. Compared to the BIRD Review: Included 13 RCTs with 107 deaths observed and found a 2.5% mortality with ivermectin vs. 8.9% in controls; estimated reduction in risk of death=68%; highly statistically significant, (p=.007).
  2. Assessment of Impacts on Viral Clearance
    1. WHO Review: 6 RCTs, 625 patients. The Panel avoided mention of the important finding of a strong dose-response in regard to this outcome.
    2. This action in (i) is indefensible given that their Unitaid research team found that among 13 RCTs, 10 of the 13 reported statistically significant reductions in time to viral clearance, with larger reductions with multiday dosing than single-day, consistent with a profound dose-response relationship.[2]
  3. Adverse Effects
    1. WHO: Only included 3 RCTs studying this outcome. Although no statistical significance was found, the slight imbalance in this limited sample allowed the panel to repeatedly document concerns for “harm” with ivermectin treatment.
    2. Compare (a) to the WHO’s prior safety analysis in their 2018 Application for Inclusion of Ivermectin onto Essential Medicines List for Indication of Scabies:
      1. “Over one billion doses have been given in large-scale prevention programs.”
      2. Adverse events associated with ivermectin treatment. are primarily minor and transient.”[3]
  4. The WHO excluded all RCTs studying the prevention of COVID-19 with ivermectin, without supporting rationale. Three RCTs including almost 800 patients found an over 90% reduction in the risk of infection when ivermectin is taken preventively.[4]
  5. The WHO excluded observational controlled trials (OCT), with 14 studies of ivermectin. These included thousands of patients, including those employing propensity matching, a technique shown to lead to similar accuracy as RCTs.
    1. One large, propensity-matched OCT from the US found that ivermectin treatment was associated with a large decrease in mortality.
    2. A summary analysis of the combined data from the 14 available ivermectin OCTs found a large and statistically significant decrease in mortality.
  6. The WHO excluded numerous published and posted epidemiologic studies, despite requesting and receiving a presentation of the results from one leading epidemiologic research team. These studies found:
    1. In numerous cities and regions with population-wide ivermectin distribution campaigns, large decreases in both excess deaths and COVID-19 case fatality rates were measured immediately following the campaigns.
    2. Countries with pre-existing ivermectin prophylaxis campaigns against parasites demonstrate significantly lower COVID-19 case counts and deaths compared to neighboring countries without such campaigns.

Assessment of the Quality of the Evidence Base by WHO Guideline Group 

The numerous above actions minimizing the extent of the evidence base were then compounded by the below efforts to minimize the quality of the evidence base:

The WHO mischaracterized the overall quality of the included trials as “low” to “very low,” conflicting with numerous independent expert research group findings:

  1. An international expert guideline group independently reviewed the BIRD proceeding and instead found the overall quality of trials to be “moderate.”
  2. The WHO’s own Unitaid systematic review team currently grade the overall quality as “moderate.”
  3. The WHO graded the largest trial it included to support a negative assessment of ivermectin’s mortality impacts as “low risk of bias.” A large number of expert reviewers have graded that same trial as “high risk of bias,” detailed in an open letter  signed by over 100 independent physicians.

We must emphasize this critical fact: If the WHO had more accurately assessed the quality of evidence as “moderate certainty,” consistent with the multiple independent research teams above, ivermectin would instead become the standard of care worldwide, similar to what occurred after the dexamethasone evidence finding decreased mortality was graded as moderate quality, which then led to its immediate global adoption in the treatment of moderate to severe COVID-19 in July of 2020.[5]

Further, The WHO’s own guideline protocol stipulates that quality assessments should be upgraded when there is the following:

  1. a large magnitude of effect (despite their data estimating a survival benefit of 81%, the low number of studies and events included allowed them to dismiss this finding as “very low certainty”) or;
  2. evidence of a dose-response relationship. The WHO shockingly omits the well-publicized reports by their Unitaid research team of a powerful dose-response relationship with viral clearance.

In sum, the WHO’s recommendation that “ivermectin not be used outside clinical trials” is based entirely upon:

  1. the dismissal of large amounts of trial data;
  2. the inaccurate downgrading of evidence quality; and
  3. the deliberate omission of a dose-response relationship with viral clearance.

Consequently, these actions formed the basis of their ability to avoid a recommendation for immediate global use.

Even more surprising is that based on their “very low certainty” finding, the panel goes on to “infer” that “most patients would be reluctant to use a medication for which the evidence left high uncertainty regarding effects on outcomes they consider important.”

This statement is insupportable in light of the above actions. No patient could ever rationally consent to a trial in which they were acutely ill and would be subject to the possibility of receiving a placebo, once informed of: the large amount of relevant and positive trials that the WHO removed from consideration, their avoidance of reporting a large dose-response relationship, and their widely contradicted  “very low certainty” grading of large mortality benefits. Such a trial would result in a historic ethical research violation, causing both a widespread loss of life and a resultant loss of trust in PHAs and research institutions for decades to come.

The many methods employed by the WHO to distort the evidence base and arrive at a non-recommendation are made even more suspicious and questionable by the following:

  1. The WHO GDG did not hold a vote on the use of ivermectin. This highly irregular decision was purportedly based on the Ivermectin Panel’s “consensus on evidence certainty.”
  2. Unitaid Sponsors allegedly inserted multiple limitations and weakened the conclusions in the preprint, systematic review manuscript by the Unitaid research team, which has recently led to formal charges of scientific misconduct.
  3. Recent WHO whistleblower complaints of external influences in other WHO Covid reports, as well as attempts by massive external funding organizations to increase their influence in formulating WHO policies.
  4. The finding of marked differences in the evidence bases used to support prior WHO/BIRD guideline recommendations for ivermectin in other diseases:
    1. WHO: Approved ivermectin in the treatment of scabies based on 10 RCTs that included only 852 patients, despite it being inferior to the standard of care.
    2. FDA: Approved ivermectin in the treatment of strongyloidiasis based on 5 RCTs that included only 591 patients.
    3. BIRD: Approved ivermectin in March, 2021, for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 based on 21 RCTs and 2,741 patients.

Conclusion

As expert clinician-researchers in society, we are firmly committed to ensuring that public health policy decisions derive from scientific data.  Disturbingly, after extensive analysis of the recent WHO ivermectin guideline recommendation, we could not arrive at a credible scientific rationale to explain the numerous irregular, arbitrary, and inconsistent behaviors documented above. Further, after consultation with numerous physicians, guideline reviewers, legal experts, and veteran PHA scientists, we identified two major socio-political-economic forces that serve as the main barrier influences preventing ivermectin’s incorporation into public health policy in major parts of the world. They are:

1)  the modern structure and function of what we will describe as “Big Science” and;

2)  the presence of an active “Political-Economic Disinformation Campaign.”

“Big Science”

Also known as “Big RCT Fundamentalism,” Big Science reflects a dramatic shift in the practice of modern evidence-based medicine (EBM). Beginning before COVID, it has since rapidly evolved into the current system that more tightly meshes the entities of “Big Pharma,” “Big PHA’s/Academic Health Centers” (AMC), “Big Journals,” “Big Media,” and “Big Social Media” into the public health system’s efforts at guiding patient care, research and policy.

The structure and function of “Big Science” in COVID-19 is most simply represented as follows:

  • Only arbitrarily defined, “large, well-designed” RCTs (Big RCT), generally conducted on North American or European shores, can “prove” the efficacy of a medicine.
  • Only Big Pharma/Big PHA/AMCs have the resources/infrastructure to conduct Big-RCTs. (Many equate Big PHA/AMC with Big Pharma, given the funding source of the former.)
  • Only Big RCTs by Big Pharma or Big PHA/AMC can publish study findings in high-impact, high-income country medical journals (Big Journals).
  • Only medicines supported by Big Journal publications are deemed to have “sufficient evidence” and “proven efficacy” to then be recommended by Big PHAs.
  • Only medicines recommended by Big PHAs are covered by “Big Media” or escape censorship on “Big Social Media.”

Conversely, repurposed, off-patient medications such as ivermectin do not attract Big PHA or Big Pharma sponsors to conduct the mandatory Big RCT. Given this structural handicap, many effective medicines including ivermectin are consequently incapable of ever meeting Big PHA standards for approval in such a system. In the case of ivermectin, it is then considered, first by Big PHAs, then throughout Big Media and Big Social media, to be “unproven” given it lacks “sufficient evidence” and is thus heavily censored from public discussion and awareness. Mentions of ivermectin on Big Social Media led to the removal of a popular Facebook group (“Ivermectin MD Team” with over 10,000 followers). Additionally, all YouTube videos mentioning ivermectin in treatment of Covid-19 were removed or demonetized, as well as Twitter pages locked. Further, in Big Media, even the most credentialed independent and expert groups who recommend ivermectin based on a large body of irrefutable evidence are labeled as “controversial” and purveyors of “medical misinformation.”

A health system structured to function in this manner is clearly vulnerable to and overly influenced by entities with financial interests. Further, in Covid, such systems have evolved into rigidly operating via top-down edicts and widespread censoring. This allows little ability for emerging scientific developments not funded by Big Pharma to be disseminated from within the system or through media or social media until years later when, and if, a Big RCT is completed. This barrier has presented as an enduring horror throughout the pandemic given the widespread loss of life caused by the systematic withholding of numerous rapidly identified, safe and effective, repurposed medicines for fear of using “unproven therapies” without “sufficient evidence” for use. Alternatively, and for the first time in many physicians’ careers, those who seek to treat their patients with such therapies, based on their professional interpretation of the existing evidence are restricted by their employers issuing edicts “from above.” They are then forced to follow protocols that rely predominantly on pharmaceutically engineered therapeutics.

It must be recognized that distinct from “regulatory” agencies such as the FDA, whose system often relies upon the primary importance of a “Big RCT,” stronger foundations used by PHAs are available. One of the long-standing tenets of modern evidence-based medicine is that the highest form of medical evidence is a “systematic review and meta-analysis” of RCTs and not a sole Big RCT. Disturbingly, not one of the Big PHAs mention this established principle or their long-standing reliance on such evidence-based practices for issuing recommendations. In the case of ivermectin, they willfully ignore the multiple published expert meta-analyses of ivermectin RCTs, including almost two dozen trials and thousands of patients, reporting consistent reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance.

These improvements are found consistently and repeatedly, no matter the RCT design, size, or quality, and from varied centers and countries throughout the world. All studies were done without any identified conflict of interest with the vast majority of double-blind, single-blind, quasi-randomized, open-label, standard of care comparison, combination therapy comparisons, etc., reporting benefits. Satoshi Omura, Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of ivermectin, wrote in his team’s recent review paper that “the probability of this judgement on ivermectin’s superior clinical performance being false is estimated to be 1 in 4 trillion.” This supports our public warnings against further “placebo-controlled trials” given the near absolute certainty of harm to research subjects included in a placebo Big RCT.

Conversely, despite sitting atop the highest form of medical evidence, many non-regulatory Big PHAs around the world cry out for a Big RCT. This is while avoiding the issuance of even one of the several “weaker” recommendation options available to them in the setting of a low-cost, widely available medicine with an unparalleled safety profile and a constantly surging humanitarian crisis, even in the interim. Insufficient evidenceunproven — these are comments from WHO, NIH, Europe’s EMA, South Africa’s SAPHRA, France’s ANSM, United Kingdom’s MHRA, and Australia’s TGA.

Most disturbing to contemplate is our estimation that if the use of penicillin in bacterial infection were to have been tested in these same numbers and types of trials in the 1940s, the graphical display of benefits would look nearly identical to those found with ivermectin. Further, the U.S Cures Act of 2016, “specifically designed to accelerate and bring new innovations and advances faster and more efficiently to the patients who need them” emphasized the importance of using various forms of “real-world evidence” data to aid in regulatory decision-making. We can find no evidence of an organized effort to examine the more than 14, often large OCTs that show evidence of the substantial beneficial use of ivermectin. Further, no PHA has cited the numerous convincing epidemiological analyses that find rapidly falling case fatality rates following ivermectin distribution campaigns.

With the lack of a credible explanation for the absence of even a weak recommendation for ivermectin in the setting of widespread increased death rates from COVID-19, numerous citizens have speculated that this can only be explained by the presence of an active disinformation campaign by entities with nonscientific and largely financial objectives dependant on the non-recognition of ivermectin’s efficacy. We explore the near certainty of this occurring below.

Active Political-Economic “Disinformation” Campaign

“Disinformation” campaigns, best described in the article, “The Disinformation Playbook,” are initiated when independent science interferes with or opposes the interests of corporations or policymakers. Although thankfully rare, in certain cases these entities will actively seek to manipulate science and distort the truth about scientific findings that imperil their profit or policy objectives. First developed by the tobacco industry decades ago, these deceptive tactics include the following;

  • The Fake: Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research.
  • The Blitz: Harass scientists speaking out with results inconvenient for industry.
  • The Diversion: Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists.
  • The Screen: Buy credibility through alliances with academia/professional societies.
  • The Fix: Manipulate government processes to influence policy inappropriately.

Numerous examples of the above disinformation tactics by corporations and policymakers, particularly within the pharmaceutical industry, have been documented:

Most worrisome is that ivermectin appears to be up against one of the largest financial and global policy oppositions in modern history, including but not limited to:

  • Numerous Big Pharma companies and sovereign nations selling billions of vaccine doses.
  • Concerns of numerous Big Pharma and Big PHA’s that if ivermectin is approved as effective treatment for COVID-19, EUAs for all vaccines would be revoked.
  • Numerous Big Pharma/Big PHA concerns that ivermectin’s potential as an alternative to vaccines may increase vaccine hesitancy and disrupt mass vaccination rollouts.
    • Opponents include large philanthropic sponsors with global vaccination goals.
    • Disinformation: WHO Panel does not review ivermectin prevention trials.
  • Numerous Big Pharma company investments in novel, engineered therapies (i.e., oral antivirals by Merck and Pfizer and Gilead) directly compete with ivermectin.
    • Disinformation: Merck places a post on their website, without scientific supporting evidence or named scientist authors that: “No evidence of either a mechanism of action, clinical efficacy or safety in COVID-19 exists.”
    • Disinformation: A Merck managing director argues against use in the Philippines by stating: “The levels of evidence do not come up to standards.”
  • Big Pharma company’s (Astra-Zeneca) investment into a long-acting antibody product for prevention and treatment of COVID-19, which competes with ivermectin.
  • Numerous Big Pharma’s monoclonal antibody products that compete with ivermectin.
  • Big Pharma’s Remdesivir demand would rapidly decline once hospitalizations were to decrease after ivermectin approval.

Based on the lack of a rational explanation for the above actions by WHO, Merck, FDA, and Unitaid, we conclude that they result from an active disinformation campaign, executed both through the PHA’s, media and the WHO Guideline group recommendations. As highly published researchers, we find the allegations of scientific misconduct in the writing of the WHO/United research team’s meta-analysis manuscript to be deeply disturbing. It clearly represents a disinformation tactic with an intent to distort and diminish the reporting of a large magnitude benefit on mortality among many hundreds of patients. Further, Merck’s demonstrably and blatantly false statements against ivermectin deserve  no further discussion. It is yet another entry into the disturbing historical record of actions committed by a Big Pharma entity with the primary intent of protecting profit at the expense of the welfare of global citizens.

For These Compelling and Irrefutable Reasons, The FLCCC Makes a Call to Action 

This call to action is no longer just to health authorities, but to citizens everywhere to fight back against these disinformation tactics. We find the advice of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to be an excellent guide to action in this regard:

Global Citizens

  1. Share the playbook with your social media networks when you see new examples like those outlined above.
  2. Set the record straight. When you see someone spreading disinformation on a topic, counter it. There are millions around the world who either have studied the data or have experience with the potent efficacy of ivermectin in COVID-19. It is important to  correct false assertions.
  3. Consider divesting your retirement funds and other investments from companies engaging in disinformation.

Fellow Scientists

  1. Become a UCS Network Watchdog to help track and resist attacks on science.
  2. If a governmental or NGO scientistreport actions that diminish their role in policymaking.

Media

  1. Avoid false equivalencies that distort scientific consensus.
  2. Correct the record when scientific information is misrepresented, particularly by Big PHA/Big Pharma.
  3. Report abuses of science in government.

As an expert group of ivermectin researchers, we are unsure of what else to offer in order to correct or counteract this misrepresentation of an important drug. Our belief is that, of the above actions, the most effective counter to the disinformation campaign would be that a whistleblower become active from within WHO, the FDA, the NIH, Merck, or Unitaid. This moment in history demands a man or woman with the courage and conviction to step forward. Urgently.

In both the interests of humanity and to motivate and inspire such a citizen of the world, we leave you with the words of Albert Einstein: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them and do nothing.

[1]Special emphasis must be placed on this decision; selecting only trials where very few deaths occurred.
(n.b., the number of events observed within trials is a primary criterion for judging the “certainty of evidence”). This action provides almost the entire basis for the panel’s assessment of a “very low certainty of evidence.” It is in effect, a “smoking gun,” one of the many actions above demonstrating that the primary objective of the Panel was to recommend against use of ivermectin.
[2]This omission is the second most important action allowing the panel to find a “very low certainty of evidence,” given that, per WHO protocol, if a dose-response relationship is found, the certainty of evidence must be upgraded.
[3]Special emphasis must be placed on the harm of excluding trials data supporting ivermectin in the prevention of COVID-19. If the preventive efficacy of ivermectin were to be known or accepted, this would allow deployment in regions without vaccines.
[4]British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) panel (2021). The BIRD Recommendation on the Use of Ivermectin for COVID-19. Full report. https://tinyurl.com/u27ea3y
[5]The FLCCC Alliance recommended, as well as gave U.S. Senate testimony in support of, the use of corticosteroids in COVID-19 months before this announcement, during the prolonged period when all PHAs recommended against its use

Sincerely,

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance

Pierre Kory, MD
Keith Berkowitz, MD
Paul E. Marik, MD
Fred Wagshul, MD
Umberto Meduri, MD
Scott Mitchell, MBChB
Joseph Varon, MD
Eivind Vinjevoll, MD
Jose Iglesias, DO

###

May 16, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

YouTube restrictions on medical information are a public health concern

By PeterYim | TrialSiteNews | May 16, 2021

Recently, the American Journal of Therapeutics reported that there was strong evidence that a treatment for COVID-19 had been found:

“Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance.”

The American Journal of Epidemiology also reported on strong evidence of a different treatment for COVID-19:

“Five studies, including 2 controlled clinical trials (of hydroxychloroquine), have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy.”

What these reports have in common is that YouTube explicitly forbids these therapies to be discussed on its platform. It’s policy states:

“Don’t post content on YouTube if it includes ….. Claims that Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine are effective treatments for COVID-19”

Furthermore, YouTube characterizes any information that dissents from the view of the “local health authorities” or the World Health Organization as “misinformation”:

“YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19.”

Under YouTube policy, the peer-review medical literature has lost its place as the source of medical information to governmental and para-governmental organizations. In the US, the relevant organizations are the FDA and the NIH. The FDA currently recommends against the use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 except in clinical trials.

The FDA does not, however, offer any evidence to support this recommendation. In fact, the FDA clarifies:

“The FDA has not reviewed data to support use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or to prevent COVID-19 …”

Nor does the FDA claim that any formal procedure was followed. It doesn’t even identify the individual or individuals who developed that recommendation.

The case of the NIH recommendation on Ivermectin is even more troubling. The NIH formally does not recommend for or against the use of Ivermectin but does make it clear that there are “insufficient data” to make that recommendation. The NIH names the medical experts who form the Panel and explains the procedures for developing the COVID-19 recommendations. Then, apparently, the NIH deceptively bypassed both in arriving at its recommendation.

Our reporting on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines has found that the NIH cannot state whether a vote was held to endorse the latest recommendation on Ivermectin. The NIH even decided to fight a complaint in federal court simply to avoid answering that question. This reporting shows that the NIH cannot be trusted.

Aside from the NIH’s deceptive ivermectin recommendation, the American public is generally skeptical of public health authorities. As reported earlier, a survey was recently conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health on the public’s views of the US public health authorities. The top line finding was:

“The public lacks the high level of trust in key public health institutions necessary to address today’s and future challenges.”

Why then is YouTube adhering so uncritically to the views of “local health authorities”? In so doing, it is obstructing patients and health care providers from accessing the best medical information.

May 16, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Government insider says UK Gov. plans to continue Lockdown and the Mainstream Media are in on it

THE DAILY EXPOSE • MAY 15, 2021

A Whitehall source directly linked to the Covid Response has said that the UK Government have already structured a detailed plan designed to neutralise each stage of lockdown easing, including the compliance of media outlets to help spread fear.

The Whitehall source has said that he has been “increasingly concerned” with how the Government are behaving, and that their “relationship with the truth” is now not even on nodding terms. The latest plan will involve a series of ‘crisis’ around drug supply; mutant strains; and third waves, specifically choreographed to condition the public for further lockdowns and vaccine passports.

The plan, that according to the source is designed to take us to September 27th 2021 is to be released in stages over the summer months and, according to the Whitehall source, is already ‘well underway’.

On March the 8th, the first milestone of the roadmap was implemented, with school children finally returning to class. The following day Chris Whitty gave a pre-written speech to the Commons that said schools reopening would cause another surge in the virus and ended it with “Let me be clear, many, many more people will die before this is over” the soundbite obligingly repeated on every news outlet, with BBC news having it on-loop all day.

On March the 29th, the second milestone of the roadmap was implemented. The Government said – “The evidence shows that it is safer for people to meet outdoors rather than indoors,”. This is why from the 29th March, when most schools start to break up for the Easter holidays, outdoor gatherings (including in private gardens) of either 6 people (the Rule of 6) or 2 households will also be allowed, making it easier for friends and families to meet outside.

The next day (March 30th) the AstraZeneca Vaccine was again stopped due to blood clots fears, despite the medicine’s regulator clearing it only the previous week. Whilst Boris Johnson repeated what he’d said the previous week that the mutated virus on the continent would inevitably “wash up on our shores”.

On April 19th, the third milestone saw pub gardens, and non-essential shops reopen. Followed immediately by news of a second vaccine being halted for fear it was causing blood clots and the discovery of the South African mutation said to be able to avoid them anyway.

The next milestone is due on May 17th with the Government relaxing social contact rules further and the opening of indoor venues. This will be followed by a story that the mutation is ‘more deadly than first thought’ and that young people are now also vulnerable to it, accompanied by the result of the vaccine passport trials have shown that they have a ‘positive effect on virus reduction’.

The final milestone is due on June 21st where ALL restrictions were promised to be lifted. This will not be allowed to happen. Vaccine passports / Track and Trace will be mandatory, as will masks and social distancing. The entire week of the 21st will be taken up by a third wave, which will suddenly be ‘rampant’, and this will be attributed to a new variant which they will declare is more deadly than the previous strains of Covid allegedly doing the rounds. This will be accompanied with yet more issues with vaccine supplies. Authorities will declare that one of the vaccines is effective against the deadlier strain, but a ‘problem’ with its manufacture will emerge.

The Whitehall source went on to say –

“All the measures are aimed at two things, vaccine passports and lockdowns starting next winter,

“The ultimate goal is to have the public, back in their box.

“Note that Boris is now talking down vaccine’s and bigging-up lockdowns, that wasn’t a mistake, that was all part of the plan”.

The plan also includes an ad campaign like the one seen at Christmas, the message this time will be that the pandemic isn’t over and vaccine passports are the ‘solution’.

May 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

When Will the Evidence From Florida and Texas Break Through the SAGE Groupthink?

By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • May 16, 2021

The latest model of doom from Government advisory group SAGE appeared yesterday, predicting a ludicrous 10,000 hospital admissions a day in mid-July in a vaccinated population (nearly three times the January peak) because of the Indian variant – and that’s the central scenario. Furthermore, the researchers don’t even think the Indian variant is more deadly or particularly good at evading vaccines. So how do they conclude it will precipitate such a calamity?

Professor Adam Kucharski, a SAGE modeller from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), explains their reasoning:

The issue is that many people have a mental image that we’ve [already] had the biggest possible epidemic waves, whereas we’ve actually had ones that are relatively small compared to what could have happened without control measures in place. Because of these controls, only a fraction of the people who could have got infected in the past year or so have been infected, so they’re still out there. Of course, for many of these people vaccines have now decreased their risk substantially. But a very large number of infections that come with a very small individual level of risk can produce a similar outcome to a smaller epidemic that carries a larger individual level of risk.

Maths whizz Glen Bishop, writing for Lockdown Sceptics, has shown why SAGE’s assumptions are so unrealistic as to produce these highly implausible scenarios. In their central scenario, for example, they assume that around half of the UK will be simultaneously infected in one week in mid-July. This is despite the January peak only having around 2% of the population infected at one time, according to the ONS.

Another of the models’ big assumptions, prominent in what Prof Kucharski says above, is that lockdowns and social distancing have successfully suppressed the virus and that it is only because they continue in some form that the flood of infections, hospitalisations and deaths is held back. The latest modelling starkly shows how, even with a high vaccination coverage as in the UK, such an assumption can produce predictions so dire they send twitchy Governments reaching for the lockdown order.

As the SAGE briefing says:

At this point in the vaccine rollout, there are still too few adults vaccinated to prevent a significant resurgence that ultimately could put unsustainable pressure on the NHS, without non-pharmaceutical interventions. … It is a realistic possibility that this new variant of concern could be 50% more transmissible. If [the Indian variant] does have such a large transmission advantage, it is a realistic possibility that progressing with all roadmap steps would lead to a substantial resurgence of hospitalisations.

In fact, there is no evidence (outside models, which are not evidence) that lockdown measures or social distancing have any significant impact on reducing Covid infections or deaths. This is why the states in America which removed their restrictions in March (Texas) or last autumn (Florida) or never imposed them (South Dakota) are doing no worse, and often better, than many states which maintained strict restrictions throughout the winter (see the graph above). Sweden demonstrates a similar point in Europe.

The depressing truth, though, is that sceptics have largely failed to get this basic point across to those in charge and their scientific advisers. It’s not as though the evidence is not there. There are numerous peer-reviewed articles in leading journals that set out the evidence on this, and more keep appearingLeading scientists have raised their heads to make the evidence-based case.

Graphs like the above, which should by themselves undermine the entire lockdown edifice, are easy to produce. Leading journalists such as Fraser Nelson, writing in one of the leading Tory newspapers, the Telegraph, has pointed repeatedly to the evidence on this. The data is plain for all to see and the voices highlighting it are not marginal or lacking in credibility.

Yet here we are again, with another model built on dubious assumptions and a presumption of lockdown efficacy once more imperilling our liberty. Freedom has never felt so fragile as in these past 14 months, when access to basic liberties has rested on the evidence-free assumptions made by a small group of mathematical modellers whose word seems to be taken as holy writ by those in charge.

Adam Kucharski is on Twitter. So why not ask him (politely!) why, if so many people remain so susceptible to this virus and its variants as to produce such dire predictions, Florida, Texas and South Dakota have fared no worse than places which have imposed or maintained restrictions? I’ve put the graph as the featured image to make it easy to share – just put a link to this article in the tweet and the graph should appear. If you get any answers from him, why not email them to us here.

May 16, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment