Suggests that “we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID”
I don’t know much about the American pandemic pundits, but I gather that Brown University economist and “parenting guru” Emily Oster is far from the worst of them. Her Twitter timeline suggests she spent the early months of the pandemic terrified about the virus until school closures took their toll on her kids, at which point she repositioned herself as a kind of lockdown moderate, opposing the worst of the hystericist excesses while validating their central premises whenever possible to save face with friends and colleagues.
“Employer mandates” mean firing people who don’t share your medical and political opinions.
Emily Oster’s latest act of moderation is the suggestion that we forgive and forget all the disastrous policies inflicted on us by terrified wealthy urbanites, clueless technocrats and mad scientist vaccinators since 2020, because, hey, these were just honest mistakes, anybody could’ve messed up like that, it’s all good.
April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks. Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”
These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.
The thing is, Emily Oster, that we did know. We’ve studied respiratory virus transmission for years. All the virologists and epidemiologists who aren’t total morons knew your 2020 mask routine was crazy and they just didn’t care. They wanted you to do it anyway, because they thought that if they got you to act paranoid and antisocial enough, your insane behaviour might have some limited effect on case curves. Joke’s on you, and it’s sad you still haven’t realised.
[T]here is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming. But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate. …
No, reasonable people could see already in March 2020 that SARS-2 posed no measurable threat to children. There was never any honest debate to be had about this.
The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. …
We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. … [W]e need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.
Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.
I’m sorry somebody called you genocidal, Emily Oster. That must’ve been tough for you. You know what’s also tough? Getting your head kicked in by riot police because you had the temerity to protest against indefinite population-wide house arrest.
Or being fired from your university job and banned in perpetuity from the premises because you uploaded a video to social media complaining about the onerous and expensive testing requirements imposed upon unvaccinated staff. Or being confined to your house and threatened with fines because of personal medical decisions that had no chance of impacting the broader course of the pandemic in the first place. But somebody called this woman genocidal in French and she’s ready to move on, so it’s all good.
Emily Oster may have said a few reasonable things in the depths of her pandemic moderation, but she can take her proposal for pandemic amnesty and shove it all the way up her ass. I’m never going to forget what these villains did to me and my friends. It is just hard to put into words how infuriating it is, to read this breezy triviliasation of the absolute hell we’ve been through, penned by some comfortable and clueless Ivy League mommyconomist who is ready to mouth support for basically any pandemic policy that doesn’t directly affect her or her family and then plead that the horrible behaviour and policies supported by her entire social milieu are just down to ignorance about the virus. We knew everything we needed to know about SARS-2 already in February 2020. The pandemicists and their supporters crossed many bright red lines in their eradicationist zeal and ruined untold millions of lives. That doesn’t all just go away now.
October 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky first tested positive for Covid on 21 October. This was weeks after getting her fifth jab. This is the same Rochelle who assured us that the vaccinated don’t carry the virus and don’t get sick. My Post – A picture is worth a thousand words highlighted her journey to Covid infection.
Well the vaccinated clearly do carry the virus.
And they clearly do get sick. Although Walensky only had mild symptoms she took a course of the antiviral pill Paxlovid. Paxlovid, on rare occasions, causes a COVID rebound, i.e. you start testing positive again. This is so rare, Jill Biden rebounded, Joe Biden rebounded and Anthony Fauci rebounded. They just all must be really unlucky.
People were getting worried about Walesnky. She had gone quiet for longer than expected. 10 days had passed and she had only been seen on the odd video. Where had she gone?
You’ve guessed it, after taking Paxlovid, Walensky has also rebounded. After testing negative, mild symptoms returned on Sunday and she is isolating at home again.
Paxlovid seems to return symptoms quicker than the Speed of Science.
The question is, why are they all so keen to tell us that their safe and effective vaccines and drugs are no longer effective? They could easily disappear for a few weeks and nobody would be any the wiser that they had rebounded or even contracted mild Covid in the first place. There is clearly a nudging agenda going on.
October 31, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Paxlovid |
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A doctor who publicly questions COVID-19 vaccine orthodoxy is severely punished
Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo de Fiori in Rome, February 17, 1600.
Imagine the history of medicine if—every time a new disease emerged or was described for the first time—an Official Cure was quickly imposed by government authorities, and any doctor who questioned this Official Cure was branded a dangerous spreader of misinformation.
To students of history, such a scenario is reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Church’s Holy Office of the Inquisition, founded to prosecute anyone in the church’s jurisdiction deemed to have publicly uttered or written statements that questioned Church orthodoxy on spiritual and temporal matters. In the scientific realm, the Inquisition’s most notorious prosecutions were of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Both were convicted of heresy for their heterodox views. The former was first publicly humiliated by being hanged upside down on Rome’s Campo de Fiori and then burned at the stake. His ashes were then thrown in the Tiber River. The latter spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest.
For a while I lived in Rome in the Via Tor di Nona, in an apartment on the site of the Tor di Nona prison in which Giordano Bruno was incarcerated for seven years before he was put to death, and I often walked past his stately monument on the Campo de Fiori—a monument to his life and death, and also to the inhumanity, illiberality, and shame of the Holy Office.
By all accounts, Bruno was an exceedingly adventurous and courageous man. At his trial, upon receiving his dreadful sentence, he reportedly gazed directly into the eyes of his judges and said, “Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.”
Because the US Constitution was so ingeniously framed, the American people lived in a free republic for over two centuries. Sometime during the last ten years or so, we lost sight of the fact that the great advances our people have made in science, technology, and medicine were entirely predicated on free speech and the free exchange of ideas. James Madison, the author of our constitution, understood that the danger of infringing free speech greatly exceeded the danger of people making erroneous utterances. The reason for his conclusion is simple: The only way to correct erroneous perceptions and beliefs is to discuss and debate them.
Six months ago, Dr. Peter McCullough received a letter, dated May 26, 2022, from Richard J. Baron, M.D., who is President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine. The letter was a formal notice that the ABIM was considering potential disciplinary sanction of Dr. McCullough. As Dr. Baron stated:
ABIM has learned that you have made numerous, widely reported and disseminated public statements about the purported dangers or lack of justification for Covid-19 vaccines.
Because of Dr. McCullough’s statements—which the Board deemed to be misinformation—the Board was considering revoking Dr. McCullough’s ABIM certifications in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease. In other words, the ABIM has assumed the function of maintaining/defending the official orthodoxy of Covid-19 vaccines.
It doesn’t matter that these are a based on a novel gene transfer technology, developed at Warp Speed, and deployed on the public by means of an Emergency Use Authorization. According to Dr. Baron, the ABIM’s understanding of these products and how the body reacts to them is a completely settled matter. Therefore, doctors who question the safety and efficacy of these products are, in effect, committing scientific heresy and subject to disciplinary action.
As Dr. McCullough and I document in our book, the COVID-19 vaccines—especially the mRNA products developed by Moderna and PfizerBioNTech—were (already in March of 2020) heralded as the solution to the pandemic, even before they were tested. As Bill Gates proclaimed in a press interview on April 6, 2020, he considered it imperative that mass manufacturing of these vaccines commence even before they were tested. This and countless other statements by Gates and his friends in public health agencies and the mainstream media indicated that the forthcoming vaccines and their mass deployment were a fait accompli.
As a medical scientist and treating physician, Dr. McCullough knew all too well the history of drugs that initially seemed safe and effective, but were later revealed to cause adverse reactions. OxyContin is a notorious recent example. Since SARS-CoV-2 arrived in the United States, Dr. McCullough has been at the forefront of researching the COVID-19 syndrome it causes and how to treat it. When the new vaccines were rolled out, he was at the forefront of investigating their safety and efficacy in the general public.
In the late spring of 2021, Dr. McCullough grew increasingly alarmed about the emerging vaccine safety data. According to the CDC, 6,207 deaths of people who’d received the COVID-19 vaccine were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) up to July 26, 2021. This was a staggering number. By comparison, the 1976 Swine Flu mass vaccination program was shut down after about 25 deaths and 550 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome were reported.
McCullough pointed this out in his media interviews to the consternation of his hospital administrators who regarded his statements as grounds for termination. Since then, he has been systematically stripped of three professorships, multiple editorial positions at academic medical journals, and a host of other professional memberships and benefits. All that remains of his long and distinguished career are his Texas Medical License and his Board Certifications in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease. Now the ABIM wants to strip him of his certifications.
In a letter dated October 18, 2022, the ABIM gave Dr. McCullough notice that its Credentials and Certification Committee (CCC) had “determined to recommend that your board certifications be revoked.”
The ABIM’s CCC claimed that Dr. McCullough’s primary offenses were:
1). Understating the risk of COVID-19 death for people under the age of 50.
2). Overstating the risk of death from COVID-19 vaccines.
In making this determination, the ABIM ignored the obvious fact that both of these risks are highly complex and multifactorial and are therefore matters of ongoing inquiry and debate. Again the ABIM made the erroneous assertion that its understanding of these complex phenomena is final, settled, and therefore codified in official orthodoxy.
By inflicting this grave punishment, the ABIM ignores the other salient fact that Dr. McCullough has, in the course of his career, achieved decades of perfect clinical performance, board scores, and hundreds of peer reviewed publications. His patients—including a growing body of vaccine injured patients—consistently give him glowing reviews as a healer.
Since I started working with him over two years ago, I have gotten to know him not only as a compassionate doctor (who frequently takes calls from sick patients in the evening and makes house calls) but also as a devoted family man and loyal friend. Beyond his boundless passion for medical scholarship, he is deeply interested in the entire human condition and the integrity of our Constitutional Republic. In the two years I’ve known him, I’ve never once heard him complain. He has borne his ongoing persecution with perfect stoicism and dignity.
He and his lawyer are doing everything they can to challenge the ABIM’s determination, but doing so is an extremely time-consuming and costly endeavor. If his stripping is finalized, it will impair his status with medical insurers and therefore his ability to be paid for his services as a physician. Welcome to the New American Inquisition.
October 30, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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The EU has set out its commitment to the continued use of lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine passports and other restrictions this winter to control the spread of Covid-19, and also to the creation of a ‘legally binding’ global pandemic treaty with a ‘reinforced World Health Organisation at its centre’.
The document, published on September 2 and titled EU response to COVID-19: preparing for autumn and winter 2023, was prepared by the EU Commission (the EU executive) and sent to the EU Parliament. It reveals how much in thrall to the new biosecurity orthodoxy the EU leadership is and bodes ill for the future management of contagious disease in the bloc and globally.
On lockdowns and other restrictions, it proposes a framework of ‘key indicators to assess when deciding on reintroducing non-pharmaceutical measures’. These indicators include severe disease and hospital occupancy data, and importantly are stated to relate not just to Covid-19 but to influenza as well, potentially making this part of normal winter disease management indefinitely.
It suggests mask mandates as a ‘first option to limit community transmission’, giving a preference for FFP2 masks.
The document recommends the pre-emptive imposition of work-from-home and gathering limits before any rise in infections to try to avoid the ‘need for more disruptive ones such as lockdowns, closing businesses and schools, stay-at-home recommendations and travel restrictions’. It stresses the need for ‘political commitment’ to make lockdowns and other measures work.
The one welcome aspect of the document was the clear statement to avoid disrupting children’s education and lives any further, though even here school closures were not ruled out: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of children and adolescents affecting their everyday routines, education, health, development and overall well-being. It is therefore important to keep in mind the negative impacts of school disruptions on the health and development of children. The implementation of measures at schools should be aimed to be kept at a minimum and the further loss of learning should be prevented.’
The document discourages travel restrictions – freedom of travel and the elimination of internal borders being an article of faith for the EU. However, it recommends use of the EU Digital Covid Certificate (i.e., vaccine passport, though it also recognises natural immunity) wherever travel restrictions are necessary’, boasting about how widely it is already used.
‘The EU Digital Covid Certificate has been a major success in providing the public with a tool that is accepted and trusted across the EU (and in several third countries) and in avoiding fragmentation of multiple national systems. As of August 1st 2022, 75 countries and territories from across five continents are connected to the EU Digital Certificate system (30 EU/EEA Member States and 45 non-EU countries and territories), and several more countries have expressed interest in joining the gateway or are already engaged in technical discussions with the Commission. This makes the EU Digital Covid Certificate a global standard.’
What this fails to mention, of course, is any rationale for the passes. What’s the point of restricting the travel of the unvaccinated (or not-sufficiently-vaccinated) when the vaccinated are no less likely to spread the disease? This key question is entirely unaddressed.
On vaccination, the document provides 15 ‘objectives’, ‘priorities’ and ‘actions’ for Covid-19 vaccination strategies. These include the ‘priority’ of encouraging take-up of the original vaccine (that’s right, for the extinct Covid strains) among all eligible children and adolescents, and an action point of making sure GPs are spending enough of their time vaccinating people (don’t they have anything else to do?) It suggests administering boosters as often as every three months, implying they are of little use after six months. It also encourages governments to counter ‘misinformation’ in the media and online to ensure ‘clear, consistent and evidence-based messaging demonstrating the continued safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines’. It links worries about vaccine safety with ‘anti-Western and anti-EU narratives’ and with websites which also go off-narrative on the Ukraine war.
The document also trails a forthcoming ‘EU global health strategy’ which ‘will provide the political framework with priorities, governance and tools, enabling the EU to speak with one influential voice and making the most of Team Europe’s capacity to protect and promote health globally’.
This is a very disturbing document. For those of us who still hold to the evidence-based pandemic strategies of pre-2020, premised only on mitigating impacts by expanding emergency healthcare capacity and finding safe and effective treatments, and not imposing intrusive, harmful and unproven methods of trying to prevent the spread of a disease that is anyway harmless to most people, this bodes ill indeed for the current direction of travel in Europe and globally.
October 28, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, Human rights |
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Video Link
Sounds of Silenced Science is a salute to all of those who found their own path, while sometimes walking alone through a maze of information and disinformation. It is a solid tribute to those who possessed the confidence to methodically question reality presented from without, but who knew another truth arising from within. We raise a toast to science, as this questioning is its fundamental definition, and the individual trust in this science, multiplied by many, is what united us, and ultimately, at least temporary, saved us from an eternity of lock-downs.
The Adverse Events featuring The Spike Girls might have been born out of good fun, but doesn’t life usually tell you you’re on the right track if even hard work comes by effortlessly? Thanks to four special ladies for the delightful collaboration.
Lyrics:
Hello Darkest MSM,
I’ve come to face you once again,
Because the horrors steadily streaming,
Grew seeds of fear while I was sleeping,
And the nightmares you planted in my brain,
Were sustained,
When you silenced science.
In quarantine I walked alone
Down the halls of my own home
In the halo of a zoom call
I wore a mask ‘cause I was in their thrall
Then my mind was stabbed with a thought of its own free will
I tried until
I understood the science
And on the evening news I saw
Ten million people, maybe more
People jabbing without thinking
People aping without listening
People spewing hate that famous voices shared
But no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
“Fools” said I, “You do not know
That silence like a cancer grows
Learn the science that it might teach you
Do the math that it might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of pseudo-science
And the people bowed and prayed
To the CoVid god they made
And the Science shouted its warning
In the findings that it was forming
And I found that “The words of the prophets are written in Substack mail and Twitter jail, and echo against the silence.
“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”
― Yevgeny Yevtushenko
The original upload of this video got banned on YouTube. Thanks to a few key people, it found itself in front of many eyeballs for which I’m grateful. I’ll be posting all third rail content on alternative media channels. You can find me most active on VisceralAdventure.Substack.com
Back in 2020 (which seems like a different lifetime), I was fortunate enough to not have anyone close to me get diagnosed with covid and die soon after from/with it. But through the course of the year, the circle of who got sick closed in and I even saw a post or two on social media about a friend’s dad or mom whose death was amplified as a warning to all: the elderly and the really sick people are dying, and so we must do everything we can to stop that from happening, this is a grade A emergency, damnit.
And then, this year rolled around and not a day goes by that I don’t see a tribute post or an obituary, except they are, for the most part, of people who are quite young. And then there are the athletes. And the movie stars. And the public personas. And the politicians. And their kids. There’s cancer, and a wallop of overdoses and lots of suicides, and then there’s SADS: Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome or more commonly known as Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. And that’s just awfully analogous to SIDS, a still mysterious condition, the likes of which have infants tragically dying while they sleep. Incredulously, we’ve come to terms with the fact that, sometimes, ‘nature’ (?) unexpectedly and without a warning terminates a healthy baby. But until this year, I had never heard of SADS. I never knew that this could also happen to a young healthy adult. While they sleep.
How long before SADS becomes as normal as SIDS? Before we all notice that the surges happen around specific milestones and can be prevented only if one slept in the correct sleeping position? Or have we already normalized it? Endemic SADS. Maybe we can rename it SEADS. What’s it gonna end up taking to break our collective camel’s back?
Two yeas ago, iatrogenic deaths were the third leading cause of death in America. What’s the over/under on that rating this year?
Go to VisceralAdventure.Substack.com for more content.
October 26, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Samizdat | October 25, 2022
US President Joe Biden received his fifth Covid-19 vaccine dose on Tuesday, and urged Americans to do the same. While the president is pushing for a yearly vaccine schedule, less than 10% of the eligible population has gotten the latest omicron-specific shot.
“Get vaccinated,” Biden said at a White House event. “It’s incredibly effective, but the truth is, not enough people are getting it. We’ve got to change that so we all can have a safe and healthy holiday season.”
Biden, who caught a recurring case of Covid-19 earlier this summer despite having received a total of four vaccine doses at the time, then rolled up his sleeve and received his fifth dose – this time of Pfizer’s omicron-specific bivalent booster – on camera.
The president said that the coronavirus vaccine is “just like the flu shot,” and added that “for most Americans, one Covid shot each year will be all that they need.”
However, uptake for the latest round of booster shots has been slow. Fewer than 20 million people have taken the updated formulation, or just 8.5% of the eligible population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Meanwhile, the state of Florida has recommended against mRNA booster shots for children under 18 and males under 39, citing the low risk posed by Covid-19 to children and the elevated risk of cardiac arrest in young vaccinated men. Several European countries have issued similar recommendations in recent months, but the CDC still recommends that children as young as five receive bivalent boosters, and has recommended that Covid-19 vaccines be added to children’s routine immunization schedules.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden combined an intense public messaging campaign with legal mandates for federal workers and contractors in a bid to up the US’ vaccination rate. While some municipalities also drafted their own mandates, legal challenges followed. In New York City on Tuesday, the Staten Island Supreme Court ordered the city to lift its mandate and rehire all employees fired for non-compliance with full back pay.
October 25, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Voter analytics firm PredictWise harvested location data from tens of millions of US cellphones during the initial Covid lockdown months and used this data to assign a “Covid-19 decree violation” score to the people associated with the phones.
These Covid-19 decree violation scores were calculated by analyzing nearly two billion global positioning system (GPS) pings to get “real-time, ultra-granular locations patterns.” People who were “on the go more often than their neighbors” were given a high Covid-19 decree violation score while those who mostly or always stayed at home were given a low Covid-19 decree violation score.
Not only did PredictWise use this highly sensitive location data to monitor millions of Americans’ compliance with Covid lockdown decrees but it also combined this data with follow-up surveys to assign “Covid concern” scores to the people who were being surveilled. PredictWise then used this data to help Democrats in several swing states to target more than 350,000 “Covid concerned” Republicans with Covid-related campaign ads.
In its white paper, PredictWise claims that Democrats were able to “deploy this real-time location model to open up just over 40,000 persuasion targets that normally would have fallen off” for Mark Kelly who was running for Senate at the time and has now been elected.
“PredictWise understood that there were potential pockets of voters to target with Covid-19 messaging and turned high-dimensional data covering over 100 million Americans into measures of adherence to Covid-19 restrictions during deep lockdown,” the company states in the white paper.
PredictWise doesn’t provide the exact dates when this location data was collected but its white paper does note that the data was collected during Covid lockdowns and used during Senator Kelly’s 2020 election campaign. State-level US lockdowns began on March 15, 2020 and Kelly was elected on November 4, 2020 so the data appears to have been collected during the first few months of this 11 month period.
Location data and survey data are just two of the many types of data PredictWise claims to have access to. According to its white paper, PredictWise also tracks “telemetry data” (which is “passively sourced cell-phone data”), media consumption data, and unregistered voter data (which contains verified data on over 50 million unregistered voters that’s updated daily and sourced from credit files and portal registration data). Additionally, PredictWise claims that “Crate&Barrel” (which seems to be a reference to the online furniture and home decor shopping portal Crate & Barrel) is one of the portal registration data sources it has access to.
In total, PredictWise says its data “tracks the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors” of over 260 million Americans – a figure that represents 78% of the entire US population of 333 million.
PredictWise uses the data it collects to create scores on 13 issue preference clusters and 7 value-frame, or psychometric clusters. These clusters use more than 30 million behavioral data points. PredictWise also claims to be able to use this data to predict the party of unregistered voters.
This mass surveillance of location data and lockdown compliance is just one of the many examples of the large-scale data harvesting that occurred during the pandemic. Private companies tracked the everyday activities of citizens, pushed remote learning surveillance technologies, increased surveillance in the workplace, and more. Meanwhile, governments ushered in numerous forms of surveillance such as forcing citizens to wear ankle bracelet trackers, secretly surveilling vaccine recipients via their phones, and combining vaccine passports with digital IDs.
Related: 🛡 Many apps on your phone have pivoted to selling your location data to coronavirus researchers and others
October 25, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, Human rights |
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Last month, Japanese pharma company Kowa put out a press release of the results of its 1030-person double-blind randomised control trial (RCT) of Ivermectin conducted at 54 institutions in Japan and 2 in Thailand.
Here’s how the results were reported in The Japan Times.
Not effective, you hear! I mean, look at the photo. You don’t get Ivermectin from a pharmacy; you get it from a farmer. Anyway, on to the trial.
A clinical trial was unable to prove the efficacy of the antiparasitic medicine ivermectin against coronavirus variants, according to Japanese drugmaker Kowa Co., which has indicated that it will no longer seek approval for the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
So this means that not only has IVM not been widely used in Japan (despite what many people outside Japan think) but probably never will be. So what happened? Did the people who took the anti-vaxers’ favourite veterinary medicine all get sick?
In the trial, 1,030 patients with mild COVID-19 were orally administered the drug daily for three days and then compared to others given a placebo.
Ivermectin was found to be safe and few people given the drug developed severe symptoms, Kowa said. But both the group given the drug and the one administered a placebo saw improvements in symptoms, meaning the trial did not show the drug’s efficacy over the placebo as a COVID-19 treatment.
So the reason Kowa was “unable to prove the efficacy” wasn’t because IVM is “not effective”; it was because almost everyone in the placebo group got better quickly too. According to Kowa’s press release, “Both intervention and placebo arms showed milder symptoms around 4 days after the start of administration” and “There were no deaths and hardly any severe cases.”
Although Kowa hasn’t released the full trial details or results, the 0% mortality rate among the 500+ participants in the placebo arm suggests they were mostly at very low risk of severe disease. So the results don’t show IVM was ineffective; they show no medication was necessary for these participants to prevent symptoms worsening or for them to recover quickly.
This a not a new issue in studies on early treatments. Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch noted the same thing in RCTs showing non-significant effects for another “controversial” drug, hydroxychloroquine.
The RCT studies proclaimed supposedly as definitively showing no benefit of HCQ use in outpatients have all involved almost entirely low-risk subjects with virtually no hospitalization or mortality events and are uninformative and irrelevant for bearing upon these risks according to HCQ use in high-risk outpatients.
When tested on larger numbers of people for mortality benefit, IVM often performs a bit better.
Next, let’s compare how the JT reported Kowa’s IVM trial press release with how Reuters reported Shionogi’s press release for its 1821-person RCT of its anti-Covid drug ensitrelvir.
Japan’s Shionogi & Co Ltd said on Wednesday its oral treatment for COVID-19 demonstrated a significant reduction in symptoms compared with a placebo in a Phase III trial in Asia.
The drug, a protease inhibitor known as ensitrelvir, met its primary endpoint in a trial conducted among predominantly vaccinated patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, the company said in a statement.
A significant reduction in symptoms! So how many people were kept out of the ICU? Well, the Reuters article didn’t clarify what the main result was, so here it is from Shionogi’s press release.
the median time to resolution of the five COVID-19 symptoms [stuffy or runny nose, sore throat, cough, feeling hot or feverish, and low energy or tiredness] was significantly reduced in those treated with the low dose of ensitrelvir (the dose level submitted for approval in Japan) compared to placebo: 167.9 hours versus 192.2 hours, a statistically significant difference of 24 hours (p=0.04).
Yep, ensitrelvir cleared runny noses 1 day quicker than a placebo. So the media reporting of Shionogi’s results wasn’t dishonest, but it wasn’t exactly candid.
Similar to in Kowa’s IVM trial, no deaths were reported among the 900+ placebo recipients in Shionogi’s trial, which again suggests they were very low risk. So these results give us no idea about whether ensitrelvir will prevent the progression to severe disease in high-risk immunocompromised people, which is what actually matters.
Shionogi also reported that no serious adverse events occurred in the intervention arm. But one problem with not trialing a medication on the type of high-risk people who will actually need it is that the trial probably won’t pick up major safety signals that become clear later.
But as El Gato Malo has said, pharma doesn’t make mistakes in trial design; it makes choices.
October 24, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19 |
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This week, Boston University found itself at the centre of scorn over claims its laboratories were engineering a “SARS-CoV-3” virus that would (hypothetically) put humanity one lab-leak away from a renewed Covid pandemic.
In the midst of worldwide relief over SARS-CoV-2’s eventual replacement by the mild, ‘common cold’ Omicron variant, BU’s scientists have created de novo an “Omicron S-bearing virus”, potentially marrying Omicron’s transmissibility with the Wuhan strain’s dangerous pathogenicity.
Boston University leadership should not be shocked by the widespread condemnation of this experiment. It has its own hubris to blame: steamrolling neighbourhood opposition to the urban placement of America’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), through which BU amasses lucrative research grants. As the philosopher Spider-Man has said, “with great power, there must also come great responsibility.”
In this case, BU exhibits power, but avoids responsibility. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is examining whether these experiments should have triggered a federal review as ‘gain of function’ with SARS CoV-2’s gaining new or enhanced abilities, which NIH deems “inherently risky”. Boston University says it “did not have an obligation to disclose this research”, despite having received federal NIAID funding which BU states was only for “tools and platforms” used by the scientists.
“We take our safety and security of how we handle pathogens seriously, and the virus does not leave the laboratory,” noted NEIDL’s Dr. Ronald Corley. Cynics might point out that as recently as 2018, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) touted that its work “held the secret to preventing epidemics”. NEIDL has (probably) released fewer unintentional pandemics than WIV, so there’s that.
NEIDL can be seen as either a bulwark against – or conversely, a conduit for – bioterrorism. NEIDL houses the Level-3 Biosafety Lab (BSL-3) of this trans-viral graft experiment as well as one of the rare US BSL-4 laboratories, intended for studying the deadliest transmissible diseases, such as Ebola.
Lab-coat scientist researchers are not selected or rewarded for political acumen, nor should they be. Actual wet-lab work often embodies the phrase by which physicians tease anesthesiologists: “99% boredom and 1% panic” – but, without the panic. Instead, researchers have their 1%-portion comprised of the brief, refreshing glory on the occasion of publishing consequential results – the news of which usually stays within a small coterie of PhDs cognisant of the technical ‘twin-speak‘ pertinent to the narrow focus of the experiment performed.
Upending the news cycle, bringing fear and then furor to a Covid-weary populace, and a posse of paparazzi upon itself is not the usual modus operandi of researchers releasing a preprint dryly titled (as they often are): “Role of spike in the pathogenic and antigenic behavior of SARS-CoV-2 BA.12 Omicron“. Boston University’s Mohsan Saeed (et al.) ‘buried the lede‘ by not communicating clearly having formed a SARS-CoV-2 mutant through chimeric graft of Omicron spike onto SARS CoV-2.
The researchers’ insularity is evident in their not predicting that producing novel camouflage for the pandemic’s perpetrator would be sufficient cause for all hell to break loose. Given Dr. Saeed’s interim disappearance from the scene, it is assumed notoriety was not the researchers’ actual intent. His additional lack of communicating the societal need for a rejiggering of COVID-19 spare parts into a new mutant strain is its own problem.
NIAID says that the BU should have communicated in advance the purpose and nature of the study. BU responds that it did not have to because the primary funds were from BU itself. Medical ethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan says, “the entire research community would benefit from better communication.” Perhaps even earlier “better communication” might have obviated the experiment itself.
By focusing so intently within the micro-world, it’s perhaps forgivable virologists lose sense of the macro. Conversely, the general public has earned every right to be twitchy and tetchy over ‘gain of function’ engineered augmentations to SARS-CoV-2 after the many millions of excess deaths following what many suspect was a Wuhan lab leak.
The Daily Mail’s story headlined “‘This is playing with fire – it could spark a lab-generated pandemic’” had this graphic stating the mutant strain has an 80% kill rate.
Sensationalism definitionally entails shocking language at the expense of accuracy. Corrections are therefore in order:
- Yes, this lab is performing a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ experiment: putting Omicron’s spike protein (head) on ancestral SARS CoV-2’s envelope (body) – but, this is the standard operating procedure for virologists. Chimeric work allows comparisons to be made gauging the relative strength or pathogenicity of individual virion segments.
- Yes, this is a brand-new ‘deadly strain’ – but for a particularly and purposefully vulnerable strain of mice, not for humans. The new ‘Frankenstein’ Omicron-spike-and-Wuhan-body chimeric coronavirus caused 80% of hACE-2 lab mice to die – fewer, actually, than had perished from the ancestral Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 itself. For better or worse, these mice have been specifically genetically engineered to have 100% fatality to SARS-CoV-2. If the mice instead replicated human’s very low fatality rate against this virus (less than 0.1% in the non-vulnerable), it would be nigh impossible to make any statistically significant judgements in any experiment unless multi-thousands of mice were included in every phase.
This specific type of work was performed in an appropriate BSL-3 laboratory, and was technically legal even though it encompassed ‘gain of function‘ work. There had been a moratorium in the mid-2010s on such potentially dangerous work within the United States, but that was repealed in 2017. The rationale for reversing the moratorium was similar to that of any military’s maintaining and testing weaponry and engaging in wargames: “Researchers deliberately make viruses more dangerous to help prepare better responses to outbreaks that might occur naturally.”
Ostensibly, the moratorium was lifted to keep us safe; however, it was instituted for the very same reason, in 2014, to curtail scientists’ juicing up avian flu.
In 2011, Fouchier and Kawaoka alarmed the world by revealing they had modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so that it spread between ferrets (animals used for their similarity to humans’ influenza response). Critics worried a souped-up virus could spark a pandemic if it escaped from a lab (accidentally or as bioterror).
The flip-flopping in allowing gain of function research points to the dual needs in relation to such cutting edge science. Even as the moratorium was lifted, there were rules about the flow of information on gain of function experiments. Open communication is a prerequisite to scientific innovation but also can provide ready blueprints for any intrepid bioterrorist. An additional complication is that almost every study in the U.S. receives federal funds, creating a loophole of having to divulge sensitive results through any given FOIA request.
It is uncertain if BU’s newly chimeric COVID-19 mutant could qualify as a bio threat. Personally, I think not. Almost every one of its mutations is less efficacious than the parent. Viruses go through trillions in order to adapt sequentially to changing immune systems amongst the host. That researchers would come up with a highly dangerous one on the first try seems unlikely. In any event, there is vast natural immunity to Omicron and natural and vaccine immunity to ancestral SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19.
So what was the purpose of the BU NEIDL team? Since poor communication seems to be a threat throughout this story, it is perhaps no surprise that this preprint’s abstract section lacks clarity – and features instances of ‘begging the question (highlighted).
The recently identified, globally predominant SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (BA.1) is highly transmissible, even in fully vaccinated individuals, and causes attenuated disease compared with other major viral variants recognised to date. The Omicron spike (S) protein, with an unusually large number of mutations, is considered the major driver of these phenotypes. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant. The Omicron S-bearing virus robustly escapes vaccine-induced humoral immunity, mainly due to mutations in the receptor binding motif (RBM), yet unlike naturally occurring Omicron, efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells. In K18-hACE2 mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80%. This indicates that while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.
Let’s translate the abstract into general English:
Omicron is milder – and its spike protein is structurally different enough from the ancestral Wuhan strains that an mRNA vaccine to SARS CoV-2 does nothing to protect mice from Omicron. This is somewhat immaterial because Omicron doesn’t make these mice sick in the first place (basically the same situation as with humans). So, with research funding in hand, what are we going to do? Let’s put an Omicron ‘Halloween mask’ on the dangerous Wuhan strain! How many mice will die? A lot, nearly 80%. That’s sounds really bad, but we forgot to mention (in this abstract) that Wuhan strain without the Omicron-spike mask kills 100% of these mice, which sadly are canaries in a coal mine, engineered to die from SARS-CoV-2. Conclusion: the stuff inside the SARS-CoV-2 envelope is the really bad stuff. With its very own original spike protein it’s more dangerous, but what did we expect? We just made a virus that’s different from a fairly dangerous one and it’s not quite as dangerous.
Thus restated, it becomes difficult to ascertain the genuine need for doing this experiment (whose results seem obvious, predictable and axiomatic). Einstein favored Gedankenexperimente (‘thought experiments’) using conceptual rather than actual experiments in creating the theory of relativity. There’s nothing like the ‘real thing’, but I’m imagining 99% of virologists could have foreseen a conclusion similar to this without having done any of the study. Moreover, most would not have seen a real point in doing this study in the first place. Of course, getting paid and churning research grants can help provide motivation.
Even without the researchers’ having read my own article “Is it Time to Accept That Omicron is not COVID-19?” in The Daily Sceptic, September 25, 2022 – they should still have had enough information to know Omicron (despite its Greek letter) is not a SARS CoV-2 variant nor lineal genomic or genetic descendent. Such information was easily available January 2022. With this in mind, the highlighted portions make little sense and the purpose of the study even less.
One virologist offered these criticisms of the preprint’s study (in confidence):
- Why put Omicron S on a virus that is no longer circulating? I’m not sure what scientific question they are trying to answer.
- The grants that are cited for the work were meant to study innate immunity. They claim they want to study the role of spike protein in phenotype but they are not using the proper controls.
- It would have made more sense to have reversed the experiment, i.e., put the Wuhan spike on the Omicron envelope.
- Also, site-directed mutagenesis (creating specific, targeted changes) would have been a more useful technique, given that there are so many mutations in Omicron’s spike protein compared to earlier variants.
- The authors’ conclusion, “These findings indicate that the S protein is not the primary determinant of Omicron’s pathogenicity in K18-hACE2 mice,” should say that “S protein was not a primary determinant of Wuhan pathogenicity”.
- They actually [downwardly] attenuate the Wuhan strain by putting the Omicron-S onto that virus, yet try to sell it as if they had made the virus more lethal.
- Overall, they seem to really be studying Wuhan pathogenicity in the context of Omicron spike.
All products and methods of technology (e.g. nuclear power, mining, fossil fuels) are variously considered ‘double-edged swords’. So too it is with these studies. There are potential benefits and potential risks. In this particular case, were the risks worth it? Was the study appropriately directed and was the information gleaned worth the global consternation? The answer to both is ‘no’.
“It’s not like they made this monster virus, that’s a complete misinterpretation,” states infectious disease specialist Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes. “Researchers compared the ancestral version, Omicron, and a combined version of the two to research what piece of the virus dictates how sick a person will get. What we see in animal models does not translate directly to what we will see in humans. The labs are extraordinarily careful in how they do these experiments. There are strict protocols in place to make sure that nothing produced in the lab is released into the environment.”
My assessment is that this is more ‘tempest in a teapot’ than monster – although Dr. Frankenstein’s methods and ethical issues find resonance here. That there is a federal investigation into this case is interesting for the side reason that it seems an admission against its own interest, namely to the possibility that virology laboratories can potentially leak mutant strains. Who would’ve thought? For so long, it was all but forbidden to consider such a possibility for China’s WIV, even though ancillary evidence is nearly conclusive it occurred.
Dr. Randall Bock is a primary care physician near Boston, Massachusetts, and the author of Overturning Zika.
October 23, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, United States |
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Critics have long questioned why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would fund experiments by University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill (UNC) professor Ralph Baric to develop a technique for hiding evidence of human tampering in laboratory-created super viruses.
Aided by some $220.5 million in National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funding, Baric developed a so-called “Seamless Ligation” technique, which he boasted could perfectly conceal all evidence of human tampering in laboratory-created viruses. Baric nicknamed his invention the “no-see’m” method.
Now a new study, “Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV2,” published on the preprint server bioRxiv, shows that — apparently unbeknownst to Baric — the “seamless ligation” concealment gimmick leaves its own minute but legible signature.
Most momentously, these same researchers have discovered that damning signature in the genome of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Baric’s technique has long been controversial. “It’s the artist that doesn’t sign his name to the painting; the virologist that doesn’t put his signature into the virus to let us know whether or not it is emerging naturally or whether it is produced in a laboratory,” said Jeffrey Sachs, chair of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, a task force that investigated the origins of COVID-19.
“All of it says, my God, there was really a big, very risky research agenda underway.”
This month, Sachs published the results of his 22-month investigation in The Lancet, including the damaging conclusion that COVID-19 was probably laboratory-generated and that the technology probably came from NIH-funded science.
Referring to Baric’s seamless ligation methodology, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein observed:
“It’s the exact opposite of what you would do if your interest was public health. Public health scientists would be marking their enhancements with red flags — not devising ways to hide them. The only reason you would want a concealer is to advance a sinister purpose — such as illegal bioweapons development — some mischief that the scientist didn’t want traceable back to his lab.”
Baric taught his “no-see’m” method to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli in 2016. In return, Baric received Chinese coronaviruses collected by Shi from bats in Yunnan province. (Scientists have linked the COVID-19 genome’s pedigree to closely related bats.)
Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute subsequently demonstrated their mastery of Baric’s high-risk technique in a series of published — and highly controversial — gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab. It has been even more puzzling to his critics that Baric, again with NIAID funding, chose to share this dangerous technique for weaponizing pathogens with Chinese scientists who have clear links to the Chinese military.
Experts say that the implications of this new study could be far-reaching. By pointing the finger at Baric, the study raises the possibility of potentially devastating liability for the NIAID and the University of North Carolina and other parties.
Scientists, including those close to Dr. Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly pointed out that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has genomic sequences that appear inconsistent with natural evolution: The COVID-19 virus is no longer infectious in bats, and its spiked protein feature — which is unknown in this family of coronavirus — includes numerous mutations that make it ideally infectious in humans.
The closest known coronavirus relative — a coronavirus from the Wuhan lab — is 96.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2. The peculiar spike accounts almost completely for the entire 3.8% difference. Oddly, there are multiple novel mutations in the spike and almost none in the rest of the genome.
Natural evolution would be expected to leave mutations distributed evenly across the genome. The fact that virtually all the mutations occur on the spike led these scientists to suspect that that particular Wuhan lab coronavirus collected by Shi Zhengli is the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 and that its new spike was implanted through engineering.
However, the unmistakable fingerprints of lab engineering were absent — leaving many experts wondering whether Baric’s technique was used to assemble a novel coronavirus with the engineered spike while removing the evidence of lab generation.
This new study connects the biological breadcrumbs that link federally funded research to a global pandemic. That trail leads directly to UNC and NIAID.
The authors of the study — a team of researchers from Duke University, University Clinics of Würzburg and an industry group — identified a characteristic signature in the amino acid code. That indelible artifact could only have emerged from Baric’s “no-see’m” methodology.
In an interview last spring, Baric himself confessed, that at the time the pandemic began, only two or three labs in the world were using his protocol – including his UNC lab and the WIV.
The study’s authors’ conclusions rest on the presence of unique sites in the COVID-19 virus. These sites allow special enzymes called “restriction enzymes” to cut the DNA into building blocks of unique size that then can be “stitched together in the correct order of the viral genome,” according to the study’s authors.
Essentially, Baric’s technique leaves behind unique spellings in the “genetic vocabulary.” The new words include “odd spelling choices” subtly distinguishing them from typical viral vocabulary.
The magic of Baric’s “no-see’m” technique is to invisibly weave these telltale “spelling” changes into the viral sequence between relevant genes without altering the viral protein. This is like changing the “spelling” of the word without changing its meaning; the casual listener will never notice the difference.
The research team used forensic tools to drill down on minute “spelling differences” in the SARS-CoV2 genome that betray laboratory tampering using the “no-see’m” technique.
Consider how a Brit would spell “colour,” “manoeuvre” or “paediatric.” The choice to spell a word in a certain way can reveal your nation of origin. Similarly, these nearly imperceptible changes in the viral sequence give away the laboratory origins of this virus.
In sharing his seamless ligation technique with Shi Zhengli, Baric assured that the WIV possessed all the required elements of the assembly process. EcoHealth Alliance’s infamous DEFUSE proposal describes the same techniques in detail. (submitted to The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in 2018).
The world now has proof positive that SARS-CoV2 is an engineered laboratory creation generated with technology developed by Ralph Baric with U.S. government funding.
Prosecutors and private attorneys representing clients injured by the COVID-19 pandemic now have a smoking gun. The gun points at humanity. Forensic scientists have now successfully lifted faint but precise fingerprints from the lethal pistol’s grip and trigger. Those fingerprints belong to the NIAID and the University of North Carolina.
Baric is Fauci’s favorite gain-of-function scientist. The cascade of NIAID funding to Baric and his UNC lab has financed 152 studies approaching a quarter-billion dollars.
Those federal grants have made Baric the global kingpin of gain-of-function science. In conformance with standard practice, it is probable that UNC pockets one-quarter to one-half of NIH’s financial felicities to Baric for “administrative costs.”
These monumental payments have probably incentivized UNC to turn a blind eye to Baric’s reckless experiments and to his controversial decision to transfer his dangerous technologies to a Chinese military laboratory known to suffer from deficient safety protocols and shoddy construction that make it, in the words of Congressional investigators, less secure than a “dentist’s office.”
UNC’s role in enabling the questionable conduct may have precipitated a global pandemic that could easily give rise to liability for negligence.
UNC and NIAID’s liability is now clear. But do we have positive proof that the Wuhan lab created the monstrosity that caused COVID-19?
The cumulative evidence strongly suggests that the Wuhan lab used Baric’s methodologies to cobble together the chimeric virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. But a few missing puzzle pieces still prevent us from definitively proving that this dangerous construction project occurred at the Wuhan lab.
As The Lancet Commission report concluded, the released emails show that NIH’s Dr. Francis Collins, NIAID’s Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak, and others are continuing to collaborate with Shi Zhengli and Chinese officials to suppress the public release of information that would allow us to complete this picture. Stay tuned!
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
October 22, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Anthony Fauci, Covid-19, NIAID, NIH, Ralph Baric, United States, University of North Carolina |
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Samizdat | October 22, 2022
The White House’s chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, and other senior officials are set to be deposed under oath as part of a lawsuit claiming the government worked alongside social media platforms to create a “massive censorship enterprise” throughout the Covid-19 outbreak.
In a Friday ruling, Judge Terry Doughty granted a joint request from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to compel several current and former officials to testify in the suit, among them Fauci, ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and two high-level figures from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the [Joe] Biden administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” Missouri AG Eric Schmitt said in a statement. “It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
While the defense insisted that senior officials can only be called to testify about their actions in office under “extraordinary circumstances,” Judge Doughty said the personnel in question met that standard. He added that the two GOP-led states “have proven that Dr. Fauci has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to Covid-19,” ordering him to cooperate with a deposition.
Requests to depose the other officials were granted on similar grounds, as the judge concluded all either held direct meetings with social media firms about the purported censorship, or had close knowledge of those discussions.
Jen Easterly, who heads up the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was also ordered to testify. She played a “central role” in “flagging misinformation to social-media companies for censorship,” the plaintiffs argued, describing the cyber agency the “nerve center” of “the federal government’s efforts to censor social media users.” The same official was said to be involved in the DHS’ now-defunct ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ – dubbed the ‘Ministry of Truth’ by critics – which would have created a new mechanism to facilitate cooperation between the White House and social media sites.
Initially filed last May by Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, the lawsuit claims the federal government encouraged online platforms to censor, delete or ban certain speech about the pandemic, including discussion of the “lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origin,” as well as questions about the effectiveness of face masks, vaccines or lockdown policies, among other issues. The two AGs have largely relied on documents obtained through subpoenas of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook’s parent firm Meta, which detail regular communications between the government and social media sites.
The White House, as well as the eight officials ordered to testify, have yet to comment on Friday’s ruling. The depositions must take place within 30 days of the order, though it remains unclear whether the defense intends to appeal the decision.
October 21, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | CISA, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, DHS, FBI, United States |
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