I Could Believe This Was About Saving Lives If Iodine and Ivermectin Were On The Treatment Protocol

WaPo  |  U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory Thursday calling misinformation a threat to vaccination efforts and attempts to control the pandemic. “We live in a world where misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health,” he said at a news briefing.

Fed up, CoxHealth chief executive Steve Edwards, a frequent social media presence, tweeted July 1: “If you are making wildly disparaging comments about the vaccine, and have no public health expertise, you may be responsible for someone’s death. Shut up.”

32% symptomatic pos. rate, very concerning! (From 4%) 4 pediatric Covid inpatients yesterday. Age…a few weeks old to 18 y/o

If you are making wildly disparaging comments about the vaccine, and have no public health expertise, you may be responsible for someone’s death. Shut up. pic.twitter.com/TqkNbZKsYE

— Steve Edwards (@SDECoxHealth) July 1, 2021

That tweet won praise from people seeking catharsis when anti-vaccine voices have been loud and belligerent, but it also unleashed a backlash.

Nick Reed, a local conservative radio talk show host, devoted a show the next day to Edwards’s tweet. He said the message would erode community trust further and make patients with legitimate concerns about side effects more wary of getting honest answers from doctors at CoxHealth.

In an interview, Reed expressed sympathy for health-care workers frustrated from seeing the daily toll of the virus.

“It makes it difficult to understand there are people going about living their life and recognize what’s going on and recognize it can be very deadly and many have lost loved ones, but they have the luxury of standing back and evaluating the situation as a whole and wondering about the long-term effects of vaccines,” Reed said. “It’s two different worlds that people are in, and sometimes we don’t give grace and understanding to the other person’s world, and that can lead to this separation.”

Edwards stood by his tweet, which he said was clearly targeting people spreading false information and not those concerned about side effects.

“This is my hometown. I don’t treat it as a job. … When I’ve been in our covid ICU, I’ve seen people I know and it breaks my heart,” Edwards said in an interview. “I really don’t care about any kind of backlash I get by speaking the words that I do that I think will save lives.”

 

DNC Wants To Screen Your Text Messages For Anti-Vaxx 'Extremism'

dailycaller |  The Democratic National Committee reportedly wants Short Message Service (SMS) carriers to step in and police private text messages as part of a new push against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

Allies of President Joe Biden, including the DNC, plan to “engage fact-checkers more aggressively” and work alongside phone companies to combat misinformation about vaccines shared via social media and private SMS messages, according to a Monday report from Politico.

White House officials are particularly frustrated with the characterization by some Republicans of their door-to-door pro-vaccination campaign, according to the report.

One example SMS message cited by Politico was sent by conservative activist group Turning Point USA, in which co-founder Charlie Kirk falsely contends that “Biden is sending goons DOOR-TO-DOOR to make you take a Covid-19 vaccine. Sign the petition to: No medical raids in America.”

“When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country’s public health and will not shy away from calling that out,” White House spokesman Kevin Munoz told Politico.

Big Tech platforms and corporate media outlets have consistently cracked down on alleged “misinformation” throughout the pandemic, but in some cases, they’ve censored or suppressed information that turned out to be true. Perhaps the chief example is the lab-leak theory, which hypothesizes that the pandemic originated from an accidental leak of the virus out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

The Biden administration has blamed misinformation for contributing to vaccine hesitancy and slowing down the country’s vaccination campaign. Biden set a goal of achieving a 70% vaccination rate by July 4, but the U.S. fell just short of that benchmark.

“The failure to provide accurate public health information, including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country, including South Carolina, is literally killing people, so maybe they should consider that,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week.

 

"KNOCK KNOCK!!! I'm With Lil'Fauci And Have An mRNA Jab For Dat Ass"

politico |  The Biden administration is casting conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme, adopting a more aggressive political posture in an attempt to maneuver through the public health conundrum.

The White House has decided to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics.

“The big misinterpretation that Fox News or whomever else is saying is that they are essentially envisioning a bunch of federal workers knocking on your door, telling you you've got to do something that you don't want to do,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview on Sunday. “That's absolutely not the case, it's trusted messengers who are part of the community doing that — not government officials. So that's where I think the disconnect is.”

Fauci took some of that messaging to Sunday cable news shows, including underscoring the idea that door-to-door vaccination efforts are an attempt to remove barriers to access and that 99.5 percent of deaths due to Covid are among people who are unvaccinated.

“Those data kind of hits you right between the eyes,” Fauci said of the fatalities.

Beyond Fauci, press secretary Jen Psaki has pushed back on Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a lawmaker she once said she’d not mention from the podium — who compared the administration’s vaccine campaign to Nazis. Jeff Zients, the White House’s Covid response director, rebuked Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who contended falsely in a tweet that government “agents” were going door-to-door to “compel vaccination.”

Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.

“We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country's public health and will not shy away from calling that out.”

I Love Me Some Chlorine Bleach - But Clorox Needs To Be Shot With Hot Pee For This!

undark  |  As a second wave of Covid-19 infections tore through the United States in the summer of 2020, a partnership was forged between the Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation’s premiere medical centers, and the Clorox Company, the California-based ­­­­­­­maker of surface disinfectants. Sales of Clorox products had been soaring since the beginning of the pandemic, when public health agencies were still warning that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, could lurk on surfaces, sickening people who touched them. The company’s stock was also soaring, and at times it struggled to keep up with demand.

Under the partnership, the company and the clinic would co-produce public health guidelines to help the public navigate the Covid-19 pandemic. The arrangement continued into March of this year, when the CDC Foundation — an independent nonprofit chartered by Congress to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — joined the group. Their ongoing campaign, the Clorox Safer Today Alliance, includes ads for the brand that bear the Cleveland Clinic and CDC Foundation logos. The Alliance advises companies — including United Airlines and AMC Theatres — and individuals on navigating Covid-19 reopening, with an emphasis on disinfecting surfaces. 

This seemingly benevolent union in the name of public health has a problem, critics say: a lack of compelling evidence that surface disinfection plays any significant role in halting the spread of Covid-19. Despite early speculation among experts that surface contact was a key mode of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and subsequent rush among consumers to purchase cleaning products at the outset of the pandemic, the science supporting frequent surface disinfection as a response to Covid-19 has largely faltered, many experts say.

Indeed, after nearly 18 months of investigation, most scientists believe that airborne transmission is the chief concern, and that overuse of surface disinfectants may well do more harm than good. “Your efforts at cleaning are better spent towards cleaning the air than cleaning the surfaces,” said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and a prominent expert on Covid-19 transmission.

Given this, the continued relationship between two major public health organizations and the Clorox Company — which appears well positioned to profit from a particular interpretation of the science — has some critics raising pointed questions about the appropriateness of the arrangement and the misleading messages it might send to consumers. It also comes amid ongoing scrutiny by experts and advocates of the effects of corporate donations on scientific research and public health. Clorox donated $1 million to the Cleveland Clinic this spring, and a press release for the Safer Today Alliance notes that the company also donated $1 million to the CDC Foundation in early 2020.

 

The Panicdemic Backfired Exposing ALL Of The Ruling Classes Weaknesses

americanthinker |  What happens when a population of introverts, hypochondriacs, and obsessive-compulsives is continuously bombarded with messages to seclude and disinfect themselves, for fear that COVID-19 prickle-balls lurk everywhere, waiting to attack?

What happens is that emotionally damaged people start driving bad politics and bad policy.

"Fifteen days to flatten the curve."  That phrase is surely now banned by corporate media, for it reminds us how the supposedly acute health threat of March 2020 was repeatedly re-packaged to keep populations off-balance and out of business not for 15 days, but for 15 months. 

“Outrageous.” @BillMaher railed against Facebook and Google for banning and suppressing content about lab leak. “You were wrong, Google and Facebook....The CDC’s been wrong about a lot shit, this is outrageous that I can’t look this information up.” #RealTime pic.twitter.com/28dwaQGz9W

— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) June 26, 2021

Never in modern times has a health issue been so flagrantly politicized, nor wielded as a club, as the Wuhan virus has been.  Outside a few rational locales, almost every nation drank the COVID Kool-Aid, competing to see who could enforce the stupidest rules.

Naturally, academia would lead the way: 

Among Americans aged 15–24, a total of 587 died of COVID in 2020, according to the CDC, representing about 0.16%, or about 1 in 642, of COVID deaths.  If you are young, you have essentially no chance of dying of COVID.  The low youth mortality impact from COVID was known by April 2020.

Yet many universities now require these low-risk young people to inject the experimental vaccine or be banished from campus.  Did you already catch the WuFlu and have antibodies?  Too bad.  The great pulsating brains of academia cannot differentiate.

Young people who want to serve their country are also targets: the passive-aggressive command at West Point compels the unvaccinated to sacrifice a week's vacation to quarantine and then to wear masks in the most ridiculous circumstances imaginable — to harass them and make them look like fools.  Military leaders do not care whether the experimental vaccines might do more harm than good, especially on a previously COVID-exposed youth.  Take the jab and shut up, cadet; Colonel Suckup needs to PowerPoint his 100% compliance success.

Why Do Pfizer mRNA Jabbed Israelis Have To Quarantine If Exposed To Delta Variant?

reuters  |  Israel empowered health officials on Wednesday to quarantine anyone deemed to have been exposed to an especially infectious variant of COVID-19, even if they were previously vaccinated or recovered from the disease with presumed immunity.

The decision followed a warning by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday over new outbreaks caused by the Delta variant, with daily infections rising after weeks of low plateau credited to Israel's record mass-vaccination drive.

Under the updated Health Ministry directives, vaccinated or formerly infected people can be ordered to self-isolate for up to 14 days if authorities believe they may have been in "close contact with a carrier of a dangerous virus variant".

Such proximity could include having been passengers on the same plane, the ministry said - a possible dampener on Israel's gradual opening of its borders to vaccinated summer tourists.

Addressing parliament, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said fines of "thousands of shekels" would also be levied against Israeli citizens or residents who travel to countries blacklisted as high COVID-19 risks.

On June 16, the Health Ministry listed Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, India, Mexico and Russia as off-limits to Israeli citizens or residents unless they receive special permission.

Some 55% of Israel's 9.3 million population have received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N), (22UAy.DE) vaccine, and a steep drop in cases had prompted most economic restrictions to be lifted.

 

What The Whole And Entire F__k?!?!?!

centerforhealthsecurity |  The Center’s SPARS Pandemic exercise narrative comprises a futuristic scenario that illustrates communication dilemmas concerning medical countermeasures (MCMs) that could plausibly emerge in the not-so-distant future. Its purpose is to prompt users, both individually and in discussion with others, to imagine the dynamic and oftentimes conflicted circumstances in which communication around emergency MCM development, distribution, and uptake takes place. While engaged with a rigorous simulated health emergency, scenario readers have the opportunity to mentally “rehearse” responses while also weighing the implications of their actions. At the same time, readers have a chance to consider what potential measures implemented in today’s environment might avert comparable communication dilemmas or classes of dilemmas in the future.

The self-guided exercise scenario for public health communicators and risk communication researchers covers a raft of themes and associated dilemmas in risk communications, rumor control, interagency message coordination and consistency, issue management, proactive and reactive media relations, cultural competency, and ethical concerns. To ensure that the scenario accounts for rapid technological innovation and exceeds the expectations of participants, the Center’s project team gleaned information from subject matter experts, historical accounts of past medical countermeasure crises, contemporary media reports, and scholarly literature in sociology, emergency preparedness, health education, and risk and crisis communication.

The scenario is hypothetical; the infectious pathogen, medical countermeasures, characters, news media excerpts, social media posts, and government agency responses are entirely fictional.

Project team lead: Monica Schoch-Spana, PhD

Project team: Matthew Shearer, MPH; Emily Brunson, PhD, associate professor of anthropology at Texas State University; Sanjana Ravi, MPH; Tara Kirk Sell, PhD, MA; Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD; Hannah Chandler, former research assistant at the Center

Date completed: October 2017

Resources:

• SPARS Pandemic scenario book
• SPARS announcement from the Center
• SPARS Pandemic scenario book listing in the HHS Disaster Information Management Research Center's resource library

The Panicdemic Has Really Rewired Some Nervous Systems

nationalreview  |  The association of danger with permissiveness has warped the “expert class” that is supposed to inform the public. Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have betrayed their view that they do not trust the public with good news; they seem to fear that an inch given will be a mile taken. And so, even during one of the most successful vaccine rollouts in the world, CDC director Rochelle Walensky warned of “impending doom” just a month ago. But no doom was in the offing.

And the expert class has also corrupted itself. The short circuit of the pandemic has led to a dramatic tightening of groupthink among public-health pundits. One would normally expect that a variety of experts would come up with a variety of recommendations, precisely because, like everyone else, they value the risks differently. But instead, public-health pontificators have tried to guard their authority with an ersatz sheen of unanimity.

When Dr. Martin Kulldorff expressed his view that the pause of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would do more harm than good, the CDC threw him off its vaccine-safety advisory committee. Four days later, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was made available again, but the visible dissent was too much to abide. Kulldorff had pioneered many of the processes by which the CDC detects the safety of vaccines. But he had expressed his view that the urge to vaccinate everyone was as superstitious as being anti-vaccine. Twitter, preposterously, put a misinformation tag on this tweet, based on the superstition that there is only one valid “expert” answer — and no valid debates among experts. Kulldorff’s worst crime, apparently, was expressing his views in person in the presence of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

I used to think that the COVID era would snap to a close once vaccines removed the danger from the most vulnerable — and that the human urge to connect would assert itself dramatically in a new roaring ’20s. Now I’m not so sure. A significant portion of the public and some of our leading institutions have internalized entirely new habits of thought and life. The circuit between truth, science, fear, and caution and virtue needs to be unwired — and reprogrammed.

Only A Special Pinhead Could Consider IdPol Ideology Net Of Panicdemic State Ideology

unherd |  The extraordinary spread in recent months of what has become known, in the writer Wesley Yang’s phrase, as “the successor ideology” has encouraged all manner of analysis attempting to delineate its essential features. Is it a religion, with its own litany of sin and redemption, its own repertoire of fervent rituals and iconography? Is this Marxism, ask American conservatives, still fighting yesterday’s ideological war?

What does this all do to speed along policing reform, ask bewildered African-Americans, as they observe global corporations and white celebrities compete to beat their chests in ever-more elaborate and meaningless gestures of atonement? What kind of meaningful anti-systemic revolution can provoke such immediate and fulsome support from the Hollywood entertainment complex, from the richest oligarchs and plutocrats on earth, and from the media organs of the liberal state?

If we are to understand the successor ideology as an ideology, it may be useful here, counterintuitively, to return to the great but increasingly overlooked 1970 essay on the “Ideological State Apparatuses,” or ISAs, by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Once influential on the Western left, Althusser’s reputation has suffered somewhat since he killed his wife in a fit of madness 40 years ago. Of Alsatian Catholic origin, and a lifelong sufferer from mental illness, Althusser wrote his seminal essay in a manic period following the évènements of 1968, for whose duration he was committed to hospital. 

Composed with a feverish, hallucinatory clarity, Althusser’s essay aimed to elucidate the manner in which ideology functions as a means to prop up the political order, observing that “no class can hold state power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the Ideological State Apparatuses”. 

What are these ISAs? Contrasted with the Repressive State Apparatuses — the police, the army, and so on — the ISAs are the means by which the system reproduces itself through ideology: Althusser lists the church, the media and the education system along with the family, and the legal and political system and the culture industry as the means through which the ideology of the governing system is enforced. Althusser here develops Gramsci’s thesis that the cultural sphere is the most productive arena of political struggle, and inverts it: instead of being the site of revolutionary victory, it is where the system reasserts itself, neutering the possibility of political change through its wielding of the most powerful weapon, ideology. 

It is through ideology, Althusser asserts, that the ruling system maintains itself in power: “the ideology of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of God, nor even by virtue of the seizure of state power alone,” he states, “it is by the installation of the ISAs in which this ideology is realised and real­ises itself that it becomes the ruling ideology.”

"Trust The Science" But Obey The Teachers Unions On School Reopenings

pjmedia  |  In the Biden administration, “follow the science” takes second place to “follow the campaign donations from teachers unions.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was heavily lobbied by the nation’s second-largest teachers union on when to reopen America’s schools, emails obtained by the New York Post show. There was extensive communication between the American Federation of Teachers, the CDC, and the White House in the lead up to the release of school reopening guidelines in February.

The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the group Americans for Public Trust and provided to The Post.

Anyone in the United States, any group, has a perfect right to lobby any federal agency they wish. But don’t you think it would have been nice to know that the CDC was being influenced by teachers in coming to the conclusion that schools should remain closed to in-person learning?

The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, her top advisors and union officials — with Biden brass being looped in at the White House — in the days before the highly-anticipated Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening guidelines.

“Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as the CDC’s “thought partner.”

You can’t really say the teachers union was driving the discussion on when to open schools. Or can you?

“We were able to review a copy of the draft guidance document over the weekend and were able to provide some initial feedback to several staff this morning about possible ways to strengthen the document,” Trautner continued. “… We believe our experiences on the ground can inform and enrich thinking around what is practicable and prudent in future guidance documents.”

 

A Novel IS Being Written - What's India's Role In The Unfolding Narrative?

consortiumnews  |   The unfolding pandemic horror in India has many causes. These include the complacency, inaction and irresponsibility of government leaders, even when it was evident for several months that a fresh wave of infections of new mutant variants threatened the population. Continued massive election rallies, many addressed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, brought large numbers to congested gatherings and lulled many into underplaying the threat of infection.

The incomprehensible decision to allow a major Hindu religious festival — the Mahakumbh Mela, held every 12 years — to be brought forward by a full year, on the advice of some astrologers, brought millions from across India to one small area along the Ganges River and contributed to ‘super-spreading’ the disease.  

The exponential explosion of Covid-19 cases — and it is likely much worse than officially reported, because of inadequate testing and undercounting of cases and deaths — has revealed not just official hubris and incompetence but lack of planning and major deficiencies in the public health system. The shortage of medical oxygen, for instance, has effectively become a proximate cause of death for many patients.

Failing Vaccination Program

But one significant — and entirely avoidable — reason for the catastrophe is the failing vaccination programme. Even given the global constraints posed by rich-country vaccine-grabbing and the limits on domestic production set by the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, this is unnecessary and unexpected.

India is home to the largest vaccine producer in the world and has several other companies capable of producing vaccines. Before the pandemic, 60 per cent of the vaccines used in the developing world for child immunisation were manufactured in India.

The country has a long tradition of successful vaccination campaigns, against polio and tuberculosis for infants and a range of other diseases. The available infrastructure for inoculation, urban and rural, could have been quickly mobilised.

In January, the government approved two candidates for domestic use: the Covishield (Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccine, produced in India by the Serum Institute of India, and Covaxin, produced by Bharat Biotech under a manufacturing licence from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) — other producers could have been similarly licenced to enhance supply.

The vaccination program officially started on Jan. 16 , with the initial target of covering 30 million healthcare and frontline workers by the end of March and 250 million people by July. By April 17 , however, only 37 percent of frontline workers had received both doses (of either vaccine); an additional 30 percent had received only the first.

Low uptake even among this vulnerable group could have resulted from concerns about the rapid regulatory approval granted to Covaxin, which had not completed Phase III trials. The Indian government also encouraged exports, partly to fulfil commitments by the Serum Institute of India to AstraZeneca and the global COVAX facility — partly to enhance its own standing among developing countries.

Cyber Pandemic: Davos Reptilians Now Signaling Their Aims On Electronic Funds And Power Grids

weforum  |   The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity has created a community of security and technology leaders to identify future global risks from next-generation technology in order to avert a cyber pandemic.

What policies, practices and partnerships are needed to prevent such a cyber pandemic? This question was raised in sessions on Thursday 28 and Friday 29 January at the Davos Agenda 2021, featuring commentary from Check Point Software Technologies, Cloudflare, Fortinet, INTERPOL, Cyber Security Agency of Singapore and AustCyber.

The Forum has created Future Series: Cybercrime 2025, a joint program of work with the University of Oxford - Oxford Martin School, enabling organizations to share and develop research, insights and responses to future risks as a community.

The initiative convenes over 150 global experts from the world’s leading companies, research institutions and public-policy departments. Major collaborators include Palo Alto Networks, Mastercard and KPMG, and support from such institutions as Europol, ENISA and NIST.

The first findings and recommendations of the community’s work were recently published in the Cybersecurity emerging technology and systemic risk report.

The critical technology transformations on which future prosperity relies – ubiquitous connectivity, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and next-generation approaches to identity and access management – will not just be incremental challenges for the security community.

Unless action is taken now, by 2025 next-generation technology, on which the world will increasingly rely, has the potential to overwhelm the defences of the global security community.

Next-generation technologies have the potential to generate new risks for the world, and at this stage, their full impact is not well understood. There is an urgent need for collective action, policy intervention and improved accountability for government and business.

Without these interventions, it will be difficult to maintain integrity and trust in the emerging technology on which future global growth depends.

Covid Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese: Why Don't We Address Systemic Obesity?

 aier |  Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the media and politicians have insisted we rely on the “judgment calls” of their proclaimed experts to guide policy. Facile but incorrect stories about lockdowns dominated. 

In March, Dr. Fauci again incorrectly predicted that doom was upon us when Texas relaxed its pandemic rules. 

Kahneman writes: “It is wrong to blame anyone for failing to forecast accurately in an unpredictable world. However, it seems fair to blame professionals for believing they can succeed in an impossible task.” Perhaps, Kahneman is too kind. With Covid, predictions are founded on politics, not science, as Bill Maher recently pointedly and humorously explained. 

We are ignorant of our ignorance. It is time to look for new patterns in the evidence of those who have not survived.

Who Didn’t Come Back from Covid

The military was wise enough to listen to Wald. It would have been perverse to ignore the cockpit and reinforce parts of the plane that could survive bullet hits.

Policy makers, politicians, and the media have largely ignored the cockpit of good health: the human immunological system.

Maher pointed to a recent CDC study that reported the vast majority (78%) of those hospitalized or dead from Covid have been overweight or obese.

Of Americans aged 20 and over 73.6% are overweight; 42.5% are obese. (Obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of over 30.) Many studies explain how obesity decreases resistance to infection. Obesity is linked to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, which increase the odds of hospitalization from Covid. 

The Covid survival narrative has focused attention on lockdowns, masks and vaccinations. Maher pointed out the role that obesity played: “People died because talking about obesity had become a third rail in America.” Maher continued, “the last thing you want to do is say something insensitive. We would literally rather die. Instead, we were told to lock down. Unfortunately, the killer was already in the house and her name is Little Debbie.”

Little Debbie, of course, is Maher’s reference to heavily processed foods that are ubiquitous in the American diet. 

A significant factor in the startling numbers of overweight Americans is the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in heavily processed foods. 

The total per capita consumption of all sugars in the United States is approximately 150 pounds a year. Of that, the average American consumes over 50 pounds of corn sweeteners a year.

Sugar is heavily subsidized by the US government through loans, purchases of sugar, and tariffs on imported sugar. Government incentives have created a high-fructose corn syrup industry which didn’t exist prior to the 1970s. US sugar prices can be up to twice the world price.

From 1995-2020, corn subsidies in the United States totaled $116.6 billion. The subsidized and surplus corn ends up not only as processed food but as animal feed. 

Kwestins About The Panic-demic Got Asked - But Went Entirely Unanswered

thewrap  |  On Tuesday, Tucker talked about what he argued has been a severe miscommunication problem from medical science leaders regarding the vaccines, in particular messaging that suggests people’s lives cannot meaningfully change even after they’ve received the vaccine — which actually we’ll concede is a good point. Tucker also brought up the pause in distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine following a tiny fraction of people who developed a blood clot disorder after taking it.

This led him to say, “It is possible, in fact, that this vaccine is more dangerous than they’re indicating it is.”

And then later in the rant, he appeared to suggest that the vaccines may not work at all, and that it’s possible that a conspiracy of some sort might be covering that up. If you don’t believe us, here is what he said, verbatim:

“Experts say it is not entirely clear when it will be considered okay for people who are fully vaccinated to stop wearing masks. At some point, no one is asking this but everyone should be, what is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives? Honestly, what’s the answer to that, it doesn’t make any sense at all. If the vaccine is effective there’s no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that. Well you’d hate to think that especially if you’ve gotten two shots but what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one.”

Yes, Tucker actually said this. Perhaps it was just a rhetorical device, but if so, he didn’t say that was the case.

 

 

Representative Jim Jordan asked Dr. Fauci when the COVID mitigation would be considered successful? When exactly would Americans be permitted to recapture the rights the government has taken away? What exactly are the metrics that define success?…. 

 

 

Jordan continued to press him for a specific number. But, as Fauci started to give a response, the next committee member began to speak, thanking Clyburn. “I’d like my question answered!” Jordan shouted, in response to which Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) yelled: "You need to respect the chair and shut your mouth!”

 

Global Panicdemic Teaches Nurses They're Expendable Resources For Corporate Profit

FT |  When Silvia, a 33-year-old Italian nurse, received a bonus worth less than €500 after months battling one of Europe’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, she wondered if it “was a joke”. She had worked on a busy Covid-19 ward of a hospital in the city of Genoa throughout the crisis, putting her health on the line and missing out on time with her young daughter “from a sense of duty and love for the job”. The one-off bonus from the Italian health ministry announced late last year was “almost insulting for those of us who had spent months on the frontline risking our lives”, said Silvia, who declined to give her full name. Silvia’s disillusionment points to the scale of the challenge for pandemic-hit governments around the world as they grapple with the question of how, and whether, to reward staff who endured the most searing experience of their professional lives. In many cases, the discussions have forced governments to acknowledge longstanding grievances from healthcare workers about their pay and conditions. The ability to retain and recruit staff will also play a vital role in determining how strongly not just health systems, but national economies, emerge from the crisis.

Chris James, senior OECD health economist, said the focus had already shifted from worries over the availability of hospital beds and ventilators in the early phase of the pandemic to anxieties over staffing levels. “Moving forward, one of the big discussion points among OECD countries is how do we make sure health systems can be stronger in future waves of Covid and meet any other emerging threat,” he said. “The health workforce is at the centre of that.” Demand for healthcare workers exceeded supply long before the pandemic struck, said Anita Charlesworth, chief economist for the Health Foundation, a UK-based charity. This was fuelled by a global commitment to achieve universal health coverage and the rapid spread of diseases such as cancer and diabetes as nations industrialise and prosper. Charlesworth pointed to a World Health Organization estimate that Europe would have a shortfall of 1.5m nurses by the end of the decade. The global estimate would be 13.5m. “If we’re going to be more resistant to the shocks of emerging infectious diseases we’re going to need a bigger buffer,” she said.

Corporate Enforcement Of Federal Censorship Imperatives

CTH |  The Big Tech ministry of COVID compliance has again removed scientific discussion that runs counter to the approved narrative presented by the ideological community.  In this article we explain why….

…”COVID Compliance is Infrastructure“

Governor Ron DeSantis held a roundtable discussion with panel experts from world-renowned doctors and epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard.  However, the panel debated the efficacy of masks on children and that apparently was considered too contrarian for the Big Tech control agents.

(Via NBC) – […] The video of DeSantis’ roundtable discussion last month at the state Capitol in Tallahassee was removed on Wednesday because it violated the social media platform’s standards, YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez said.

[…] “YouTube has clear policies around Covid-19 medical misinformation to support the health and safety of our users,” Hernandez said in a statement. “We removed AIER’s video because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19.”

[…]  DeSantis’s press secretary Cody McCloud called YouTube’s move “another blatant example of Big Tech attempting to silence those who disagree with their woke corporate agenda.”

“YouTube claimed they removed the video because ‘it contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities,’ yet this roundtable was led by world-renowned doctors and epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, all of whom are eminently qualified to speak on the global health crisis,” McCloud said. “Good public health policy should include a variety of scientific and technical expertise, and YouTube’s decision to remove this video suppresses productive dialogue of these complex issues.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, one of the scientists on the panel, said this “was a policy forum, in which it is appropriate to consider both the benefits and costs of a policy (child masking) when making judgments and recommendations.” (read more)

CTH warned since last summer of the ramifications if a leftist group used COVID-19 to expand federal power over peoples lives and livelihoods.  In January JoeBama’s team unleashed a series of TEN EXECUTIVE ORDERS fully weaponizing the opportunity.  Their need to control the public behavior requires them to control public information.

(1) Executive order on COVID worker Safety, weaponized Dept of Labor, OSHA.  Literally word-for-word what CTH predicted.   [Predictions HERE and HERE]

(2) Executive order on COVID school safety, weaponized the Dept of Education. Leverages federal funds, grants.  Supports the education labor union effort. Exactly as expected.

(3) Executive order creating COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force.  Weaponizing the HHS takeover; the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Secretary of Education, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Again, exactly as predicted.

(4) Executive order using National Health Crisis as a security threat.  Weaponizing the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Homeland Security.

(5) Executive order taking over National Guard.  The domestic terrorists need a category within the health emergency.  The isolation and detainment camps need security. “Support of Operations or Missions to Prevent and Respond to the Spread of COVID-19. (a) The Secretary of Defense shall, to the maximum extent feasible and consistent with mission requirements (including geographic proximity), request pursuant to 32 U.S.C. 502(f) that all State and territorial governors order National Guard forces to perform duty to fulfill mission assignments.”

(6) Executive order taking control of travel.  “The Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Secretary of Transportation (including through the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)), the Secretary of Homeland Security (including through the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard).

You can read the rest HERE.

Social changes under the guise of COVID-19 mitigation, are the entry point for the goals and aspirations of the political left on a national and global scale. COVID-19 is a virus, but also a very important political weapon, and we are about to discover exactly what the purpose of the hype is all about. What follows will help understand; and when you encounter the fear it will help to reconcile what people cannot figure out.

246 Fully "Vaccinated" Michiganders Got Covid Between January And March

FREEP  |  State health officials say 246 fully vaccinated Michiganders contracted coronavirus from January to March, and three have died. 

"These are individuals who have had a positive test 14 or more days after the last dose in the vaccine series," said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for the state health department.

Some of the 246 people may ultimately be excluded from the state's tally of vaccine breakthrough cases because they may have had earlier coronavirus infections and still tested positive two weeks post immunization. 

"These cases are undergoing further review to determine if they meet other (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) criteria for determination of potential breakthrough, including the absence of a positive antigen or PCR test less than 45 days prior to the post-vaccination positive test," Sutfin said. 

Although so-called vaccine breakthrough cases are rare, and all three COVID-19 vaccines on the market are considered highly effective with efficacy rates ranging from 72% for Johnson & Johnson's vaccine to 94% and 95% for Moderna's and Pfizer's, respectively, it can happen. 

"While it is significantly less likely, it is still possible to contract the virus after being vaccinated," Sutfin said. "Studies indicate that even if vaccinated people do become ill, they are far less likely to experience severe illness requiring hospitalization or resulting in death.

"But the possibility of infection and further transmission is why we continue to encourage Michiganders to take precautions while out in public, including wearing masks, washing hands and social distancing, even after receiving the vaccine until more Michiganders have been able to be vaccinated."

Hospitalization data for 129 of the fully vaccinated cases is incomplete, Sutfin said. But for the 117 people for whom hospitalization records are known, 11 were hospitalized.

"A number of these are new cases that have been reported ... as a result of a positive test, but local health departments are either early in their investigation or have yet to begin their case investigation," Sutfin said. 

The three fully vaccinated people who died, Sutfin said, were all ages 65 and older. Two of them were within three weeks of full vaccination.

Christian Nationalism Doesn't Account For Black, Latino, Or Medical Vaccine Hesitancy

nakedcapitalism |  Yves here. I’m running this post with its original headline, although the article doesn’t make terribly clear what “Christian nationalism” is. The author defines is at extreme evangelism but I’m at a loss to understand what makes that “nationalism”. The reason I am running this article is that it discusses an specific issue that IM Doc mentioned back in early February.

And even though we are discussing different subcultures in America, we might as well be talking about different countries. One of the lessons I learned by virtue of deciding to see the world on the McKinsey plan, was that virtually without exception, US companies entering a foreign market would royally screw things up. Even if they’d managed to hire good managers from the new market, the top brass would reject recommended changes to the product or branding to cater to local tastes: “They can’t possibly want that! Of course they’ll prefer our superior dog food!” They almost always had to fail before they’d listen to how the locals thought about things and understand why they wanted what they wanted.

I had sent a link from the Ghion Journal, which was and is pretty up in arms about the Covid vaccines, as an example of vaccine alarmism in the black community. IM Doc said then that he was hearing a lot of reports from doctors in his network in big cities of vaccine hesitancy among blacks and if anything more so among Latinos at that point. But he was the first to alert me to opposition among conservative Christians, beyond those based on the mistaken belief that fetal cells had somehow been used in vaccine development (true in a very strained sense with the J&J vaccine). From his e-mail:

We are seeing all this rage and rush to get vaccinated right now. It is easy to assume there is widespread demand. That is not true…. And then the fun will begin. If you think the anti-mask, anti-lockdown people have been ridiculed and shamed – you have not seen anything yet. I know my Big Pharma and it is obvious they have a stranglehold on our agencies and politicians. They have gotten so used to complete acquiescence that they are becoming supremely over-confident. Trust me, if they think they will get away with forced vaccination of kids for school, they have no idea what they are stepping in. Also, I can think of no quicker way to bankruptcy for airlines and cruise companies then to demand a vaccine passport. They will instantly cut their customer base by 30-40%.

It is not just blacks and Latinos. Our medical and public health elites have their head so far up their ass that they are missing critical cultural and religious issues going on all over this country with regard to the vaccine. For example, my oh so Protestant family members and all their friends back home have zero intention of taking this vaccine. All the talk of vaccine passports and vaccine cards to get in and out of stores and restaurants and events have convinced them that this is the first manifestation of the long anticipated Mark of the Beast. To take the Mark of the Beast is a certain trip to Hell for Eternity….And because of our elites’ complete bungling insensitivity, they have already completely and permanently alienated these people. Again, this is being preached from their pulpits, and no amount of coercion or threats is going to work. I grew up in that environment. I know what I am talking about. They will starve to death before they take The Mark of the Beast.

I have no idea how large this population is. IM Doc gave an estimate for rural America and the South that struck me as high, having lived in the rural upper Midwest, Oregon, and spent a lot of time in Maine. But the point is this is a cohort that is not trivial in size, and its existence has finally gotten the attention of some in the officialdom, too late in the game for them to change course. You’ll see the out-of-touch recommendation in the piece:

…faith leaders can guide their followers and use their pulpits to encourage parishioners that the vaccine is safe and in line with religious doctrines.

That could work with concerns that are based on misinformation, but not ones based on views that see social control/surveillance as evil. There’s no way of prettying up the more heavy-handed schemes to get citizens to take the shot.

And IM Doc, then as now, argued that the bureaucrats have done a terrible job with general practitioners by failing to give the information needed to give honest answers and “best available data” assessments of outcomes and risks:

And again, I will remind you – as a primary care physician I have been tasked with educating patients about these vaccines. I have little if any information about safety. I have zero information on how these vaccines will help death or hospitalizations. I have zero information on how long the immunity will last. I have zero credible and often wildly disparate information about whether it will work on these variants, which are now this month’s panic porn topic on the news. I have very educated patients who come to ask questions all day every day. I will not lie to them, nor will I smile and pass out happy horse shit like so many of my colleagues seem to be doing. The medical elites have put the normal PCPs of this country in a very difficult if not impossible situation.

I hope and pray that all goes well. I, like everyone else, want this to be over. However, if something goes majorly wrong with this gamble, God help us.

Worse Than Walensky: Dr. Leana Wen Claims "Very Narrow Window To Tie ReOpening Policy To Vaccination Status"

CTH |  There is so much in this soundbite from Dr Leana Wen (Public Health Policy, George Washington University) it is difficult to encapsulate.

When they show you who they are, believe them.  In this soundbite Dr. Wen is apoplectic that people might realize there is no need for a vaccination because everything is open and there is no crisis.   She frets that American people will enjoy their freedoms without vaccination.  Just watch and listen to the priority in her soundbite.

The blind-spot exposure of their ideology is a weakness of the totalitarian mind.  They spend so much time in an echo-chamber they cannot fathom the insanity of what they are espousing.  To them it just seems like the typical conversation they have all the time, because they never face anyone challenging them.

“We have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status because if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be… How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine… So that’s why I think the CDC & the Biden  admin need to come out a lot bolder & say “if you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things…here are all the freedoms that you have, because otherwise people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms ANYWAY.”

Vaccine Passports: Corporate Fascists Plotting War On Individual Freedom And Lying About It Again

WaPo  |  These non-passport passports won’t emerge as a mandate from the Oval Office or Congress, and the biggest of Big Government won’t be tracking our individual vaccination status, what we’ve done with our newfound immunity or where we’ve done it. Mostly, private companies will want to know whether we’re jabbed so that they can finally make as much money as they used to with as little hazard as that used to involve.

But public health guidelines permitting large indoor gatherings only among the inoculated will inform some of those private companies’ decisions, and creating scannable codes such as those New York just started piloting will require some verification against state records. (The concerns about equity, too, are real, as long as disenfranchised people get fewer shots and own fewer smartphones.)

Similarly, signing up will be a choice — but when everything fun in the world is conditioned on that sign-up, the concept of choice turns fuzzy. This is coercion. Yet coercion may be exactly what the doctor ordered for those hesitant to face the needle but desperate to dance at a wedding.

None of us know yet where, when and to whom we might be required to present this handy-dandy credential, so people instead invent the scenarios that either most enrage or most soothe them. Maybe we’re barred from anywhere and everywhere, unable even to step into the grocery store for tomorrow’s breakfast. Or maybe we’re only turned back from the punk show where we had hoped to throw ourselves against thousands of strangers.

Vaccine passports are the new masks. Depending on where you are, what you read and how you vote, they are either the badge of the oppressor or the brand borne by the righteous. They will either solve everything or nothing. They are the new lockdown and the new quarantine: both terms we continue to use for our current condition even though most of us are only semi-isolated and fully free to romp where we please. No one cares about the in-between. We want extremes, and where there aren’t any we create them.

Vaccine passports don’t even exist yet, but that won’t stop our riven country from turning them into exactly what we’re always looking for: a reason to get mad at the other guy.