Zelensky Requests Tomahawk Missiles as Part of Non-Nuclear Deterrence Package – Reports
Sputnik – 29.10.2024
The clause on a “non-nuclear deterrence package” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky requested as part of his “victory plan” included long-range Tamahawk missiles, US media reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.
The anonymous US officials have expressed what the newspaper described as exasperation with Zelensky’s new plan, which they consider unrealistic and dependent almost entirely on Western aid.
One senior official addressed, in particular, the plan’s clause on a “non-nuclear deterrence package,” which has not been made public but reportedly includes a request for Tomahawk missiles. The official considers this request totally unfeasible, as cited in the report, as Tomahawk’s 1,500-mile range is more than seven times farther than that of the ATACMS missiles, which the US sent to Ukraine this year after long deliberations.
Moreover, the White House is hesitant to send Ukraine the missiles which it believes may serve a better purpose in the Middle East or Asia, as Kiev’s list of potential targets inside Russia requires far more missiles that Washington initially earmarked, the official was cited as saying.
Zelensky unveiled his “victory plan” in mid-October, insisting that it could help end the conflict in Ukraine no later than 2025. The document includes five clauses and three secret addendums. In particular, the Ukrainian leader proposes inviting Ukraine to NATO, lifting restrictions on strikes deep into Russian territory, and deploying a “comprehensive non-nuclear deterrence package” in Ukraine.
Zelensky’s plan drew criticism in the EU and NATO for outlining in detail the multiple obligations of Ukraine’s Western allies but not assigning any to Kiev itself. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed it as a set of incoherent slogans which pushed NATO into a direct conflict with Russia, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the real peace plan for Kiev would be to realize the futility of the Ukrainian policy. He said that Kiev should “wake up” and understand the reasons that led it to the conflict.
Orban blasts West’s ‘useless lecturing’ of Georgia
RT | October 29, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned against “lecturing” Georgia after the outcome of the parliamentary election in the former Soviet republic attracted sharp criticism from the EU and US.
Orban arrived in Tbilisi on an official visit on Monday. The trip comes after the ruling Georgian Dream party, which seeks to build pragmatic relations with Russia, secured 54% of the vote in Saturday’s election. The victory is expected to give Georgian Dream at least 90 seats in the 150-member national parliament, allowing it to form the country’s next government.
Various opposition forces garnered between 11% and 3% each, according to the Central Electoral Commission.
“One thing is clear about this weekend’s elections: the people of Georgia voted for peace and prosperity in free and democratic elections. We are here to support Georgia’s European integration efforts and to strengthen relations,” Orban wrote on X on Tuesday.
Pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results, branding the vote a “constitutional coup.” Thousands of opposition supporters rallied in Tbilisi on Monday. Georgia’s president, the French-born Salome Zourabichvili, who has sided with the opposition, had earlier called for a rally outside parliament.
Moscow has accused the West of “completely unprecedented interference attempts” in the Georgian vote.
On Monday, the US claimed there was “vote buying and voter intimidation” during the election and threatened Georgia with “consequences.”
“We encourage Georgia’s governing officials to consider the relationship they want with the Euro-Atlantic community rather than strengthening policies that are praised by authoritarians,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
On Sunday, the EU Commission issued a statement voicing concerns of “a tense environment” and “irregularities” in the election. European Council President Charles Michel insisted that Georgia must “prove its commitment” to joining the bloc.
Georgia submitted its EU membership application in March 2022 after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, and was granted candidate status in December 2023.
Western governments have since accused Georgia of democratic backsliding over its recent policies such as labelling NGOs as ‘foreign agents’ and a ban on LGBTQ ‘propaganda’ to minors.
“Georgia is a conservative, Christian and pro-Europe state. Instead of useless lecturing, they need our support on their European path,” argued Orban.
The Hungarian prime minister has voiced views that oppose those of Brussels on issues such as the Ukraine conflict and relations with Russia. His government has refused to send weapons to Kiev and has called for a negotiated solution. Orban has been accused by the West of being pro-Russian, while he has repeatedly insisted that his policies aim to defend the interests of the Hungarian people.
Georgia Unrest Part of West’s Grand Strategy to Use Russia’s Neighbors as Pawns in Hybrid War
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 29.10.2024
Thousands gathered outside the parliament building in Tbilisi on Monday night amid opposition claims that Saturday’s parliamentary elections were “rigged”. The strategy is not new, and designed to pressure the ruling party into becoming more malleable to Western interests, says political analyst and Caucasus politics expert Stanislav Tarasov.
The United States and the European Union “want to create a whole package of conflict situations: Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, and to play these games like a grandmaster across multiple boards, yielding somewhere while hitting out somewhere else,” Tarasov told Sputnik, commenting on the shaky political situation in Georgia after the weekend’s parliamentary vote, which some observers fear may escalate into a new Euromaidan-style coup scenario.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller announced Monday that the US would “join calls for international and local observers for a full investigation of all reports of election-related violations.” The US has “consistently urged the Georgian government this year to walk back its anti-democratic actions and return to its Euro-Atlantic path. We do not rule out further consequences if the Georgian government’s direction does not change,” Miller warned.
Georgia can expect further pressure from the West, including sanctions, if the Georgian Dream Party government sticks to its independence on foreign and domestic policy, Tarasov says.
The former includes pragmatism in relations toward Russia to avoid being dragged into a Western-fueled conflict, while the latter features staunchly socially conservative policies decried by the EU and the US, plus a foreign agent law passed earlier this year to ensure transparency among NGOs, which forced would-be agents of foreign influence to register as such. That measure was also slammed by Washington and its allies.
“They’ll impose sanctions… They can’t very well send in the armed forces or some expeditionary corps. First they feed them some investments, then they impose sanctions; first they open a visa regime; then they impose bans, and so on and so forth… This is the primitive scheme in the American version of colonial rule being implemented in relation to Georgia,” the observer said.
Pointing to the unlikelihood of the West being able to oust the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which won nearly 54% of the vote and gathered enough seats to form a new government, Tarasov believes the opposition’s claims of fraud and manipulation may not be aimed at overthrowing the government, but forcing it to accept members of the opposition into a coalition to “erode” it from within.
“In this case, the plot is aimed not so much at destabilizing the domestic situation, but is a purely political technological approach designed to force Georgian Dream to accept the idea of a coalition,” Tarasov said. Once inside, the opposition can block certain policies, including regional economic and infrastructure projects like the North-South Transport Corridor that would allow Tbilisi to escape the West’s political and economic grip entirely, according to the analyst.
Denmark Not Interested in Finding Truth About Nord Stream Explosion – Russian Ambassador
Sputnik – 29.10.2024
MOSCOW – Denmark prevented the initiation of an independent international investigation into the explosion of Nord Stream pipelines, the country is not interested in establishing the truth, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin said commenting on the possibility of the Danish side resuming the investigation.
“This would contradict the logic of the Danish side’s behavior. Denmark curtailed its own investigation, rejected any interaction with the Russian side, prevented the initiation of an independent international investigation under the auspices of the UN, concealed the fact of the presence of American warships in the area of the explosions on the eve of this terrorist attack on the gas pipelines,” he said.
The head of the diplomatic mission noted that Copenhagen had no interest in establishing the truth.
“The Danish authorities are obviously concerned that the investigation may reveal inconvenient facts and evidence that will compromise both Euro-Atlantic solidarity and further arms supplies to the Kiev regime,” the ambassador added.
Denmark and Sweden stopped investigating the Nord Stream explosions in February 2024.
The explosions on two Russian export gas pipelines to Europe, Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, occurred on September 26, 2022. Germany, Denmark and Sweden did not rule out deliberate sabotage. Nord Stream AG, the operator of Nord Stream, said that the destruction of the gas pipelines was unprecedented and that it was impossible to estimate the repair time. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has initiated a case on an act of international terrorism. Russia has repeatedly requested data on the explosions on Nord Stream, but has never received it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
China demands that US stop militarizing space
RT | October 28, 2024
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged the US to stop the militarization of space and to refrain from actions that threaten global security. The warning comes days after Washington announced plans for the first delivery of satellite jammers.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, the ministry’s spokesman Lin Jian said that Beijing insists on the peaceful use of what it called outer space and opposes the arms race and the placement of weapons there.
“China once again urges the US to stop spreading irresponsible remarks, stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and make due contribution to upholding the lasting peace and security in outer space,” Lin said, when asked to comment on China’s response to the potential threat to its satellites from US ground-based jammers.
The spokesman stressed that China is not planning to participate in a space race with any country and is not seeking space superiority. He also said that Washington openly defines space as a war zone, continues to expand its space capabilities and is working to establish a military alliance in outer space.
Last week Bloomberg reported, citing the US Space Force, that the first five of a planned 32 weapons meant to jam Chinese and Russian satellites in the early stage of a possible conflict could be declared operational between January and March 2025. The Counter Communications System known as Meadowlands is more than two years behind schedule.
Technological weaponry of this type is intended to cause temporary damage in a conflict “to counter the growing number of Chinese and Russian space systems,” the news agency noted.
The Pentagon has repeatedly accused China of amassing anti-satellite weapons, voicing concerns about the country’s focus on space-war capabilities. The Chinese government has denied the allegations, saying that Washington poses the greatest threat to security in space and is the main instigator behind the militarization of its various domains.
Washington has voiced similar allegations against Russia on multiple occasions, suggesting that Moscow has undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities that, it claims, are possibly nuclear in nature. The Kremlin has dismissed the insinuations as unfounded, saying that they are merely a smokescreen intended to distract from Washington’s own military activities in space.
Israeli minister threatens Bashar al-Assad: ‘You are in danger’
The Cradle | October 28, 2024
Israeli government minister and war cabinet member Gideon Saar threatened Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on 27 October, warning that he will be “in danger” if his country continues to act as a “conduit” for Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah.
Saar – who rejoined Benjamin Netanyahu’s government late last month – said during a conference that Tel Aviv “missed an opportunity” to “collapse” Assad’s government, which was “saved” by Iran and Hezbollah.
Syria must not be permitted “under any circumstances to be a conduit for weapons supply from Iran to Hezbollah,” the minister went on to say, adding that “Israel must make clear to Assad that if he chooses to harm Israeli security in this manner, he places his regime in danger.”
Israel “will not agree to Hezbollah’s renewed buildup of power through Syria, and will not agree to the opening of a front against it from Syrian territory,” he said. “Removing Assad from the Iranian axis will have far-reaching consequences for Israel’s security.”
Israel was heavily involved in supporting extremist groups against the Syrian government at the start of the US-led regime change war against Damascus, which began in 2011.
Fighters from Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front were given Israeli air cover during the 2014 battles against Syrian government troops and Hezbollah in Quneitra. Wounded Nusra Front fighters were also treated at Israeli hospitals in the occupied Golan Heights.
Over the past several years, Israel’s air force has been waging an unofficial campaign of indiscriminate attacks against Syria, which aim to stifle the flow of weapons from Iran via Syria to the resistance in Lebanon. According to Lebanese analyst and journalist Khalil Nasrallah, this unofficial campaign – dubbed the ‘battle between wars’ – has failed.
Israeli attacks on Syria have increased since the start of the war in Gaza and Lebanon in October last year.
Since Israel’s massive escalation against Lebanon last month, nearly 2,000 people have been killed and over a million displaced. Israel has begun to target Lebanese–Syrian border crossings under the pretext that they are used to facilitate the delivery of Iranian weapons to Lebanon.
Hezbollah has promised its follower base recently that its military capabilities and weapons are in “great shape,” despite Israeli claims to the contrary.
The group has not yet used its more sophisticated and destructive weaponry against Israel.
West ‘arm-twisting’ Georgia over elections – Kremlin
RT | October 28, 2024
The West is openly trying to interfere in Georgia’s parliamentary elections, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, stressing that voters in the former Soviet republic have every right to independently choose their own future.
In Saturday’s high-stakes election, the ruling Georgian Dream party, which seeks to build pragmatic relations with Russia, secured 54% of the vote, while various opposition forces garnered between 11% and 3% each, according to the Central Electoral Commission.
Pro-Western opposition parties, however, have refused to recognize the results, calling the vote a “constitutional coup.” The nation’s French-born President Salome Zourabichvili joined the chorus, urging the people to protest and claiming that Georgia had become a “victim of a Russian special operation.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov unequivocally denied the allegations. “We are not trying at all and hardly have the opportunity to influence the development of the situation” in the country, he said, stressing that “it is the Georgian people’s business to make the relevant decisions.”
“However, we see completely unprecedented interference attempts from the West. They are trying not only to twist Tbilisi’s arms, but also to impose their terms. It is hard for me to imagine how the proud Georgian people can tolerate such ultimatums that pour in daily.”
On Sunday, the EU Commission issued a statement voicing concerns of “a tense environment, with frequent compromises in vote secrecy and several procedural inconsistencies” as well as “irregularities” in the election, insisting that those issues must be addressed. European Council President Charles Michel also noted that Georgia must prove its commitment to continuing the path to joining the bloc.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has demanded that Georgia conduct an investigation into reports on violations during the vote while sounding the alarm about suspected “vote buying, and voter intimidation.”
This summer, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze warned that pro-Western opposition in the country would open a “second front” against Russia in addition to the Ukraine conflict if it won the parliamentary elections. Around the same time, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said that the US was seeking a regime change in the Caucasus country by fomenting protests during the vote.
Relations between the West and Tbilisi soured in recent months after Georgia passed the ‘foreign agents’ law requiring entities and individuals which receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as “promoting the interests of a foreign power.” While its proponents insisted it would increase transparency, the EU condemned the legislation, warning that it goes against Georgia’s goal of joining the bloc.
I don’t want war with Russia, China – Vance
RT | October 28, 2024
The US is not at war with Russia and should not seek one, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance has said.
The senator from Ohio was asked during his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether he saw the Russian leader “as an ally or an enemy.” Putin is “clearly an adversary, he is a competitor,” but Washington needs to be “smart about diplomacy too,” Vance responded.
”Just because we don’t like somebody doesn’t mean that we can’t occasionally engage in conversations with them,” he suggested.
Host Kristen Welker pushed him further on whether he would directly refer to Putin as an enemy.
”We are not at war with him. And I don’t want to be at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” the senator said. “I think that we should try to pursue avenues of peace.”
The same logic applies to China, Vance said, adding that he perceives it as a greater threat to American interests than Russia. The US may not like having to talk to its rivals, but in the case of the Ukraine conflict, resolving it will require negotiations, the senator pointed out.
When asked whether former President Donald Trump would take the US out of NATO, Vance assured that he wouldn’t. If his running mate returns to office, the country will honor its commitment to the organization, but the bloc “is not just a welfare client, it should be a real alliance,” he said. Vance was referring to Trump’s criticism of insufficient defense spending by its European members.
Moscow has identified NATO’s enlargement in Europe as a threat to its national security and a key reason for the deterioration of relations with the West. Russian officials have for decades declared that the US-led military bloc’s increasing involvement in Ukraine since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev and its promise to bring the country into the fold have contributed in a major way to setting off the ongoing hostilities.
The current US Democrat administration has pledged to stand by Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia and has pushed other nations to do the same. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on weapons and aid for Ukraine, Kiev’s troops are currently retreating along many parts of the front. Trump has claimed while campaigning that he would end the hostilities in 24 hours, if elected.
Trump derangement syndrome out of control as Deep State tries defamation
By Drago Bosnic | October 28, 2024
From prosecution (although persecution is a more fitting term) by the Department of “Justice” (DoJ) and bans on running for presidency to several assassination attempts, Donald Trump has seen it all. The Deep State and the corrupt federal institutions are determined to prevent him from winning. Does this mean that Trump descended from Heaven to save us all? Certainly not. Many have argued, myself included, that it’s highly unlikely that he’ll change America’s disastrous foreign policy. Despite promises to do so, it will be exceedingly difficult (if possible at all) for Trump to significantly alter the way the United States works. However, what’s quite obvious is that he thinks thermonuclear war is an extremely bad idea (to put it mildly). And while this should be common sense, very little of it is left in Washington DC, so Trump indeed seems like the light at the end of the tunnel in comparison to the war criminals currently running the show.
That being said, it’s not his only redeeming quality, but it’s by far the most important one. However, the lunatics in power aren’t going to give up that easily. Namely, after all else failed, they’re now desperately launching defamation attacks on Trump in hopes of turning the tables at the polls. In the two latest cases of the Trump derangement syndrome (TDS), we have yet another alleged “sexual assault”, as well as an attempt to destroy the growing support Trump enjoys among Latinos and African Americans. The Guardian just published a story about Stacey Williams, a former model who claims that (for now) former president “touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Epstein introduced them”. Williams didn’t say why she “suddenly” decided to publicly speak about the supposed “incident” only now after over 30 years of silence, although it’s quite clear who would benefit from such a story.
However, as the “sexual scandal” strategy was already tried several times, with little success, the mainstream propaganda machine wanted to make sure to simultaneously run several narratives aimed against Trump. This one isn’t new either, but it comes in a “new package”. Namely, the Atlantic, infamous neoliberal mouthpiece, is claiming that he supposedly tried to “walk back on a promise” to support the family of US soldier Vanessa Guillén who was killed in 2020. According to the report, Trump was allegedly “outraged when he learned that Guillén’s funeral, which included heightened security and closed streets, cost $60,000”. Quoting “anonymous sources”, the Atlantic reports that Trump said that “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican” and then “ordered then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to deny payment”. There’s just one “tiny” problem with these claims – none of it is true.
“I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics – hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Guillén’s sister Mayra posted on X, condemning the Atlantic’s highly politicized reporting and adding: “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”
Meadows himself also denied the claims made by the infamous warmongering mouthpiece, insisting that “any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillén or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false” and that “he was nothing but kind, gracious and wanted to make sure that the military and the US government did right by Vanessa Guillén and her family”. Meadows instructed his spokesperson Ben Williamson to demand the Atlantic remove the deliberate disinformation. However, the magazine only added that Meadows “didn’t hear Trump say it”. This was the second time that the Atlantic published misleading and/or outright false information on Trump. Back in September 2020, it claimed that he “refused to visit a veteran cemetery” because he allegedly “called fallen soldiers ‘suckers’ and ‘losers'”. This blatantly fake story was never retracted.
It should be noted that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mainstream propaganda machine and its anti-Trump witch-hunt. Namely, it’s long been a routine to compare him to the likes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, even in American academia. CNN has been doing it for years, while war criminals such as the Clinton family never miss out on calling Trump a “threat to democracy”. Funnily enough, the mainstream propaganda machine now even claims that he will “use lawfare” against political opponents, “conveniently forgetting” that’s exactly what the corrupt federal institutions have been doing to him all these years. Hillary Clinton even called for more censorship to prevent people from accessing any objective information on what’s actually going on. There are other examples of TDS-induced panic, including claims that Trump will “use Navy SEALs to round up political opponents”.
Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made similar allegations, claiming that he would “use the US military against those who didn’t vote for him”, while CNN facilitated even more disturbing acts of defamation, such as that Trump is planning to “exterminate people through eugenics”. This deeply irrational hatred was also extended to the electorate, with cases of teachers organizing mock voting, where those who voted for Harris were rewarded with pizza parties, unlike those who voted for Trump. Meanwhile, some of the DNC supporters are attacking Trump voters even in their homes, coming to their front doors and insulting them. The McDonald’s restaurant where Trump recently made a campaign ad is being review-bombed, but that’s the lesser issue, as it’s now forced to up security due to threats. And yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg of intimidation attempts both he and his supporters are subjected to.
African Americans who want to vote for Trump are now suddenly “fascists”, while whites are told they’ll be “held accountable” if they don’t vote for Kamala Harris. In previous months, Amazon allowed the sale of merchandise with the slogan “The Only Good Trump Is A Dead One”, while the mainstream propaganda machine tried suppressing information on several people who directly threatened to kill Trump. It should be noted that blatant death threats to him, his family and supporters never stopped even after several assassination attempts. Despite all this, prominent Democrats, including university professors, were openly saying things like “we hope the shooting will inspire others” or “Trump supporters should be lined up and shot”. In the meantime, corrupt federal institutions ignored repeated warnings about more plans to kill Trump, even after new “security incidents”, as they called the attempts on his life.
On the whole, it’s clear that the warmongering oligarchy in Washington DC is determined to either eliminate Trump (physically, politically, judicially or in any other way) or to sabotage his coming presidency by setting up a war with a global or at least a major regional power. Short of war, defamation is the Deep State’s last-ditch effort to (ab)use TDS, although it seems extremely unlikely this will work. Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, next week will surely be the most fateful in recent memory, as the warmongers, war criminals and plutocrats are desperate. This is why Trump and his team will have to be wary of warhawks who tried to sabotage his first presidency by starting new perpetual wars. It seems some measures are already being taken against these warmongers, but it’s yet to be seen to what extent will Trump remain resilient to their malignant influence.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Despite Concerns About ‘Vaccine Fatigue,’ CDC Recommends Extra COVID Boosters, Including for Some Infants
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 24, 2024
Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday recommended two COVID-19 boosters during the 2024-2025 season for people ages 65 and older and for younger people who are moderately or severely immunocompromised.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) also recommended that immunocompromised people ages 6 months and older take “additional doses” of the shot — three or more — based on shared clinical decision-making between doctor and patient.
The vote for all three new COVID-19 vaccine recommendations was unanimous.
The committee also voted 14-1 to recommend Pfizer and Merck’s pneumococcal conjugate vaccines — designed to protect against meningitis and pneumonia — for all adults who have never received the vaccine ages 50 and older, lowering the recommended age from 65.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June approved Merck’s Capvaxive for prevention of invasive pneumococcal disease and pneumococcal pneumonia in adults.
The vote expands the market for both companies, who will now be able to market their vaccines to millions more eligible adults, boosting their annual revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars, FiercePharma reported.
CDC Director Mandy Cohen endorsed the recommendations after the meeting, making them official CDC recommendations.
“CDC will continue to educate the public on how and when to get their updated vaccinations so they can risk less severe illness and do more of what they love,” Cohen said.
“ACIP loves advising that people receive the most vaccines possible,” internist Dr. Meryl Nass told The Defender.
She added:
“When ACIP talks about shared decision-making, what they mean is this: ‘We lack the data to recommend this vaccine for this group, so we could be criticized (or worse) for making an unscientific recommendation. But we really want you to have it.’
“So we think the patient and doctor (who is much less educated about the minutiae regarding the vaccine than the ACIP members are) should together decide whether the patient should get it. That way we protect ourselves while maximizing the number of jabs.’”
Nass said that if ACIP members were serious about shared clinical decision-making, “They would put all their thoughts down so clinicians could become educated and then jointly evaluate the risks and benefits with patients.”
The committee also voted unanimously to add high-dose and adjuvanted flu vaccines to the Vaccines for Children Program — which provides free vaccines to children whose families can’t afford them — for transplant recipients taking immunosuppressive medications.
ACIP is described as an independent, nonfederal expert body of professionals with clinical, scientific and public health expertise. The committee decides which vaccines should be recommended to the public, who should take them and how often.
In practice, most members have financial ties to vaccine makers that they don’t consider to be conflicts of interest. For example, in Wednesday’s meeting, paid Merck consultant and researcher Noel Brewer, Ph.D., declared “no conflict” before voting to recommend Merck’s vaccine.
More recommendations may ‘exacerbate existing vaccine fatigue’
The CDC said that in the 2023-2024 COVID-19 season, only 8.9% of people over age 65 and 5.4% of immunocompromised adults age 18 and older had received two boosters.
The presenter, Dr. Georgina Peacock, said there was “obviously a need for additional education and recommendations,” but raised concerns that additional recommendations “may also exacerbate existing vaccine fatigue.”
Ruth Link-Gelles, Ph.D., presented COVID-19 vaccine efficacy data that provided the rationale for the new recommendations. Efficacy is affected by time since the last booster dose, changes in COVID-19 variants and the time since someone was last infected with COVID-19, she said.
Link-Gelles said those are hard to disentangle, especially given that all adults have high rates of infection-induced immunity. Infection-induced immunity rates ranged from 72% for people over age 65 to 89% for those ages 16-49 and 84% for those ages 50-64.
In adults over 65, she said protection waned to zero against emergency room visits and hospitalization by four to six months and was somewhat more effective against critical illness.
She also said that additional education alone wasn’t effective in increasing uptake.
Waning efficacy: an argument for more shots or proof of natural immunity?
Link-Gelles presented a slide that showed COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness waned significantly among people ages 18-64, beginning at 30% and dropping to negative 15% by six months post-vaccination.
When pressed on how to interpret the negative efficacy, she said, “There is no biological plausibility for the vaccine increasing your risk of disease.”
Vaccine effectiveness data is relative, meaning it’s a measure of how much more protection a vaccinated person has than an unvaccinated one, she said. Therefore, “what we think is happening” is that unvaccinated people were getting natural immunity during that time, giving them more robust immunity and skewing the baseline for comparison.
Because vaccine efficacy is a comparison of the disease in the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, if the efficacy is negative, “then the unvaccinated have more protection than the vaccinated,” Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender.
Jablonowski pointed out that Link-Gelles suggested the unvaccinated are exposed to wild-type COVID-19 and then gain immunity, compared with the vaccinated who would not gain that same wild-type immunity.
“What Dr. Link-Gelles is not entertaining, that which she sees ‘no biological plausibility,’ is the possibility of diminishing immune health of the vaccinated,” he said.
Jablonowski added:
“Both scenarios reduce the infections in the unvaccinated relative to the vaccinated. Either scenario points to the same conclusion, that the unvaccinated have superior long-term (180-299 days) immune health when facing the COVID-19 pandemic.
“More broadly, you cannot present VE [vaccine efficacy] analysis as a valid assessment of how well a vaccine works and then disregard the analysis when it shows the vaccine is not working.
“It is clear, from CDC’s own data and presentation, that the vaccinated had a higher long-term incidence of disease than the unvaccinated.”
Watch the Oct. 23 ACIP meeting here
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.
The Most Devastating Report So Far
By Jay BhattacharyaJayanta Bhattacharya | Brownstone Institute | October 27, 2024
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a physician, epidemiologist and health economist. He is Professor at Stanford Medical School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Faculty Member at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration.
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Book Excerpt
Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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