ssrn | Introduction: In 2020, prior to COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the Coalition
for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Brighton Collaboration created
a priority list, endorsed by the World Health Organization, of
potential adverse events relevant to COVID-19 vaccines. We leveraged the
Brighton Collaboration list to evaluate serious adverse events of
special interest observed in phase III randomized trials of mRNA
COVID-19 vaccines.
Methods: Secondary analysis of serious adverse
events reported in the placebo-controlled, phase III randomized
clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines
(NCT04368728 and NCT04470427), focusing analysis on potential adverse
events of special interest identified by the Brighton Collaboration.
Results:
Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an
increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest, with an
absolute risk increase of 10.1 and 15.1 per 10,000 vaccinated over
placebo baselines of 17.6 and 42.2 (95% CI -0.4 to 20.6 and -3.6 to
33.8), respectively. Combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with an
absolute risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of
12.5 per 10,000 (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9). The excess risk of serious
adverse events of special interest surpassed the risk reduction for
COVID-19 hospitalization relative to the placebo group in both Pfizer
and Moderna trials (2.3 and 6.4 per 10,000 participants, respectively).
Discussion:
The excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to
the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are
stratified according to risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes such as
hospitalization or death.
naomiwolf | On driveway after driveway of the ex-Brooklynites, of the
former weekend people — (and I confess that I too was once a weekend
person, but something has happened to me in the last two years that has
changed me even more than my change of home address) there were now
Ukrainian flags. Not American flags. No one cared or even asked about
the town halls being closed for the past two years. Tyranny overseas was
more pressing than the rights that had been suspended just up the road.
Otherwise most things were almost back to normal! Almost pre-2020 normal!
The masks had recently come off. Hudson, New York, and Great
Barrington, Massachusetts, the two cities nearest us, and also, by
chance, both left-leaning, had also been two of the maskiest and most
coercive of places when it came to pandemic policies and pandemic
cultures. Now businesses were being allowed to reopen.
(I’d been
fired from my Great Barrington synagogue because I’d dared to invite
people over to my house at the depth of the pandemic — if they had
wanted, as adults, affirmatively, to join me — to watch the Zoom Friday
Evening Shabbat service together. Shocking behavior on my part, I
know.)
As if a switch had been flicked, now the cruel moral
judgments, the two-tier society, the mandates, the coercions, the nasty
looks, the desperate masked children with their laboring breath, the
loneliness, the desolate centrally-planned economies — had evaporated
and were no more.
A memo from a political consultancy had
gone out to the DNC, warning about how these policies spelled defeat in
the midterms, and Pouf! — a whole retinue of “mandates” messaged as if
they had been matters of life and death, a raft of Board of Health
demands, a plethora of social strictures, and baroque instructions on
how and when to discriminate against one’s fellow Americans — vanished,
like the smoke from an unwelcome cigarette on a breezy veranda. An
MSNBC commentator said, in a logical non sequitur, that now that
vaccines were available for kids, in-person office life would resume.
Overnight, a new concern, a new moral signifier, was presented,
wholly formed: and it involved a conflict area half a world away. Now,
war is always bad and invasions are always cruel; but I could not help
noticing that there are wars, refugees, invasions and conflict areas
around the world, and that only this one — this one one — demanded the
attentions of my irksomely cultish and uncritical former tribe. I could
not help noticing that the dozens of devastated conflict areas and war
zones being totally ignored by the ex-Brooklynites — from Ethiopia,
where there have been 50,000 deaths since September, to Sri Lanka, with
its catastrophic food shortages, to Mexico’s drug war, which has led to
300,000 deaths, to Afghanistan, where women are being rounded up and
people are being shot in the street — do not involve white people who
look like the ex-Brooklynites; and for various other reasons, are not
attracting a lot of television cameras.
You’d think the ex-Brooklynites, with their expensive educations, would bear those complexities in mind.
But no; the ex-Brooklynites are so easily led, when it comes to anyone invoking their particular moral high ground.
When they are directed to pay attention to one conflict out of
dozens, and ignore the rest, no matter how dire the rest may be, they do
so. Just like, when they were instructed to present their bodies
uncritically to an untried MRNA injection and to offer up the bodies of
their minor children, they did so. When they were asked to shun and to
discriminate against their blameless neighbors, they did so.
So the great apparatus of messaging about COVID was switched off,
almost overnight, as the politics clearly soured and as Republicans
consolidated an increasingly popular, multiracially inclusive,
transpartisan-ly appealing freedom message; and the comms apparatus
simply replaced the COVID drama with a new, equally gripping
European-conflict drama.
canada | Around the world, liberal democracies have been facing serious and sustained threats.
We may have thought – we may have hoped – that Canada would be
spared. Over the past two and a half weeks, we have learned that it is
not.
This occupation and these blockades are causing serious harm to our
economy, to our democratic institutions, and to Canada’s international
standing.
The world’s confidence in Canada as a place to invest and do business is being undermined.
These illegal blockades are doing great damage to Canada’s economy and to our reputation as a reliable trading partner.
The blockade of the Ambassador Bridge has affected about $390 million
in trade each day. This bridge supports 30 percent of all trade by road
between Canada and the United States, our most important trading
partner.
In Coutts, Alberta, about $48 million in daily trade has been affected by the blockades.
In Emerson, Manitoba, about $73 million in daily trade has been affected by the blockades.
Those costs are real. They threaten businesses big and small.
And they threaten the livelihoods of Canadian workers, just as we are
all working so hard to recover from the economic damage caused by
COVID-19.
We fought tooth and nail to protect Canada’s privileged trading
relationship with the United States during the NAFTA negotiations and in
the face of the illegal and unjustified 232 tariffs.
We will not allow that hard-won success to be compromised. The world
is watching. Our jobs, our prosperity, and our livelihoods are at stake.
That is why our government is taking action. We are resolute and determined. These illegal blockades must and will end.
As part of invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions:
First: we are broadening the scope of Canada’s anti-money laundering
and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms
and the payment service providers they use. These changes cover all
forms of transactions, including digital assets such as
cryptocurrencies.
The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding
platforms, and some of the payment service providers they use, are not
fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated to report
to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or
FINTRAC. As of today, all crowdfunding platforms, and the payment
service providers they use, must register with FINTRAC and must report
large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC.
This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit
funds; increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by
FINTRAC; and make more information available to support investigations
by law enforcement into these illegal blockades.
We are making these changes because we know that these platforms are
being used to support illegal blockades and illegal activity, which is
damaging the Canadian economy.
The government will also bring forward legislation to provide these authorities to FINTRAC on a permanent basis.
Second: the government is issuing an order with immediate effect,
under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions
to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution
suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades
and occupations. This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.
Third: we are directing Canadian financial institutions to review
their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades and
report to the RCMP or CSIS.
As of today, a bank or other financial service provider will be able
to immediately freeze or suspend an account of an individual or business
affiliated with these illegal blockades without a court order. In doing
so, they will be protected against civil liability.
Federal government institutions will have a new broad authority to
share relevant information with banks and other financial service
providers to ensure that we can all work together to put a stop to the
funding of these illegal blockades.
This is about following the money. This is about stopping the
financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice: if
your truck is being used in these protests, your corporate accounts will
be frozen. The insurance on your vehicle will be suspended. Send your
semi-trailers home. The Canadian economy needs them to be doing
legitimate work, not to be illegally making us all poorer.
We are announcing these measures after careful reflection. I spoke
directly with the heads of Canadian banks and I would like to commend
them for doing their part to uphold Canadian laws and Canadian
democracy, and to protect our economy.
Team Canada has stood together over the past two years. We have trusted one another. We have leaned on one another.
What we are facing today is a threat to our democratic institutions,
to our economy, and to peace, order, and good government in Canada. This
is unacceptable. It cannot stand and it will not stand.
off-guardian | I am afraid I am not all that excited about the current hoopla
regarding our apparent victory over the mainstream narrative. I simply
don’t believe it entirely.
We’ve made a run, so to speak, maybe have gotten too rowdy, too
powerful, and we are being given a bit of slack so we don’t break the
line.
This run is not being executed only by the folks on our side of the
fence, but by the sheep as well. We are ALL tired, we are all ready to
get out of this mess and call it a day.
It seems like a sensible tactic on their part—to let out a little
line, but still keeping us hooked and apparently still in their control.
All this euphoria about us finally winning the battle and that the
narrative is finally crumbling indicates to me that we may be getting
lost in the weeds of apparent success and the hook and line is still, in
reality, firmly embedded in our flesh, only to suddenly reel us in
again, after a dizzying and disorienting taste of freedom. I don’t like
it.
Most everyone is familiar with the 1950’s Harvard experiment
conducted by a rather soulless Curt Richter. Rats were placed in a tank
where they had to frantically tread water to survive. Typically they
lasted only 15 minutes or so before giving up, sinking, and subsequently
drowning.
A second set of experiments showed that if the rats were saved right
before their demise, dried off and given a little respite, and then
again returned to the tank of water, they could tread, and stay alive,
for up to 60 hours.
They called this the “hope experiment,” which is relevant to the current happenings.
To maintain the narrative, people must maintain some sort of hope.
When we are about to throw in the towel we are given a little slack in
the line, and when the pressure hits again—with a new variant, a new
virus, or, in a radical right turn, a nuclear war threat — we can
sustain our loyalty, and ultimate compliance, believing we will not
drown but will be saved at the last minute by our surrogate parents and
archetypal “protectors.”
These tactics work in different ways with the masses on opposing
sides of the fence. The sheep need the slack when they are about to
throw in the towel of compliance. The rest of us are not about to throw
in the towel, but are about to gain greater potential of harm to the
narrative—they respond to both situations with the same tactic, but with
different results depending on where you sit in this whole mess.
I listened to Fauci, Stephane Bancel (Moderna), Annalies Wilder-Smith, and Richard Hatchett discuss the future of covid at Klaus Schwab's WEF yesterday. Here are my notes. 🧵1/https://t.co/NvyMBrlzfy
courtlistener | The plaintiffs have moved the court to preliminarily enjoin the enforcement of two executive orders by the President. The first, Executive Order 14042, is already the subject of a nationwide injunction. Because that injunction protects the plaintiffs from imminent harm, the court declines to enjoin the first order. The second, Executive Order 14043, amounts to a presidential mandate that all federal employees consent to vaccination against COVID-19 or lose their jobs. Because the President’s authority is not that broad, the court will enjoin the second order’s enforcement.
The court notes at the outset that this case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19—the court believes they should. It is not even about the federal government’s power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees. It is instead about whether the President can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment. That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.
clinicaltrials | On the topic of immune escape: Gauteng, the province where the Omicron cluster was detected, has just come out of heavy Delta wave. This suggests that the antibodies binding to Delta might not do that much for Omicron.
This is also quite possibly the reason for Omicron being discovered there – researchers encountered an unexpected and unexplained uptick in Covid numbers, prompting them to look a bit harder. Of course luck favours the prepared – the research teams there are capable, in possession of good sequencing kits and know how to use them.
I would not be surprised if Omicron arose somewhere else completely, and just got detected in Gauteng. The vast number new of mutations could be explained by an unknown population outside RSA, whether nearby in Zimbabwe or at the other ends of Africa be it in Senegal or Egypt.
This does suggest that blocking flights from RSA might already be too late. This is not to say that quarantining international flyers is a bad thing – if I were in charge that would be the case for any international arival anywhere. Pets have always been quarantined – if your dog has to do it, you should too.
Finally I have a theory why the WHO is so reluctant to ban international air travel: WHO staff are probably among the most frequent of fliers – one day in Geneva at a conference, the next day in Canada to lobby for funding and the next week in the DRC to worry about Ebola. This means that blocking flights is unthinkable for them, even if it is a sensible course of action.
What are Fauci and the pedophobe pediatrician smoking? That pediatrician MUST NOT HAVE kids of his own. The neo-vaccinoids were
tested on only 2,268 youngsters aged 5 to 12:
The pediatrician: “Given how infectious Delta is and other variants, everyone’s eventually going to get vaccinated or COVID.”
NO. Since the neo-vaccinoids are not sterilizing, everyone is going to get COVID, neo-vaccinoided or not.
So Stop Lying...,
Children face much less risk from the virus and
face much higher risk from the neo-vaccinoids.
Fortunately many pediatricians
understand
this and are not pushing neo-vaccinoids, which begs the question, why is the
Slate framing the decision to do so in such a net positive when the
science is far from certain?
How many parents trusted the doctors who said, with
authority, that pain is the sixth vital sign, filled the miracle opioid
Rx they were given, and had their kids turn into opioid addicts?
slate |Why
do you think there’s this disconnect that might exist between what a
vaccinated parent is willing to do for themselves and what they might be
willing to do for their kid?
One
is that you feel a sense of responsibility to your children that
sometimes feels harder than to yourself, because you’ve been taking
risks with yourself your whole life. You’ve probably made some
reasonably risky decisions in your 20s, both with respect to sexual
activity and perhaps with substances—you’re used to understanding
tradeoffs. With kids however, we’re much more restrictive. And we feel
that we could be blamed. The dangers seem much bigger and the benefits
sometimes pale in comparison.
Of
course, weighing benefits and risks of vaccines is nothing new. That’s
why families turn to their pediatricians for advice. For years, doctors
have tried to increase vaccination rates and fight hesitancy. Did this
same struggle occur with earlier vaccines?
When
the varicella vaccine got approved in the ’90s, lots of parents were
like, “Why should I vaccinate my kid against chicken pox? It’s a nothing
big, minor illness. Everybody gets it.” And for a lot of people, that’s
true. But when adults get chicken pox, it’s massively bad.
Plus, some number of babies died every year of varicella infection. It
wasn’t huge numbers, but they were real numbers.
And
just a couple of years after we really started vaccinating kids, in the
early 2000s, zero babies died of chicken pox. That’s a huge win, given
that zero babies are immunized against chicken pox. You can’t get it
until you’re 1 year of age. But by vaccinating children, we’ve protected
everyone. And now today we have like 86 percent of eligible children
vaccinated, and chicken pox has largely gone away.
You wrote about your experience
as a young pediatrician, vaccinating kids with the varicella vaccine
against chicken pox. How did you break through to skeptical parents?
I
think it’s time and effort and it’s building up trust. I would talk
about risk and benefits. In fact, this is part of what we do with
everything. When parents are like, “I want an antibiotic for my kid’s
ear infection,” I talk about these are the benefits of it and these are
the risks. It’s negotiation. It’s making sure people feel heard,
making sure that you understand what they’re going through, that it’s
not unreasonable and trying to find a solution that works.
In
your writing about varicella, I noticed that you said in 2008, only
about 34 percent of eligible adolescents were fully immunized. And by
2018, about 90 percent of kids have been vaccinated. That seems both
great, and made me think: Are we talking about immunizing kids against
COVID on a decade long timeframe? Is it going to take us 10 years?
Unless
we have mandates, yeah, I think it is because, and, to be honest with
you, we won’t get all the way there without mandates. Let’s be clear
too. I can’t win 90 percent as a pediatrician. I just own that. It’s not
going to happen. You need these to become so expected that the school
system’s requiring it. The default has to be “vaccinated,” so that most
people will do it.
self | Following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official recommendation of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 last week, NPR
host Mary Louise Kelly asked Dr. Fauci for his take on how parents who
are still weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination for their newly
eligible kids should think the decision through. “Well, first of all,
we have to always respect when parents have questions, reasonable
questions about this,” Dr. Fauci said. “And what you do is you take them
to the data.”
Dr. Fauci cited evidence from the clinical trial studying the first COVID-19 vaccine for kids,
which the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration used in their
decision-making about the first pediatric COVID-19 vaccine. “This is a
study that very clearly showed a high degree of efficacy,” Dr. Fauci
said. In the trial, which included about 3,100 children who received the
vaccine and about 1,500 who received a placebo, vaccination was found
to be nearly 91% effective at preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19.
“That is really very good for a vaccine,” Dr. Fauci said. He noted that
the study found the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine also has a very good
safety profile.
Another key data point Dr. Fauci believes parents should consider is the prevalence of COVID-19 infections among children—and
the real risks of serious illness, long-term effects, or death. “I
would tell the parents [that] although it is less likely for a child to
get a serious result from infection than an adult, particularly an
elderly adult, it is not something that’s trivial with children,” Dr.
Fauci said.
There
have been about 1.9 million reported cases of COVID-19 in children ages
5 to 11 in the U.S., including approximately 8,300 hospitalizations and
100 deaths, according to Dr. Fauci. There have also been over 2,000
cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in U.S. children, “which can
really be quite severe,” Dr. Fauci said. The rare but serious (and still
poorly understood) syndrome can cause inflammation in a variety of body
organs and systems, including the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain,
digestive system, skin, and eyes, according to the CDC.
During
the interview, Dr. Fauci also addressed another key question parents
may have: whether children who have already had COVID-19 still ought to
be vaccinated. The added protective benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in
kids who have already been infected can’t be demonstrated yet, since the
FDA just authorized the two-dose mRNA vaccine. But based on mounting data on vaccinated adults, the answer is yes, as SELF has reported.
mises | If people who torture animals are psychopaths, then what are
government officials who use taxpayer dollars to fund animal torture?
Many are asking this question in the wake of revelations that the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Dr.
Anthony Fauci—high priest of the COVID cult—funded medical “research”
involving the torture of puppies. This led “Fire Fauci” to trend on
Twitter, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to call
for his resignation.
The puppy torture story was followed by disclosures that the federal
government funded the testing of experimental AIDS vaccines on orphans.
Many of the orphans used as human guinea pigs subsequently died, and
nurses who assisted in these experiments reported that many children got
sick immediately after receiving the vaccines.
Testing dangerous drugs on orphans and torturing puppies in the name
of “science” is certainly shocking, but is it really surprising that
government would fund these types of activities? What is the difference
between using orphans and puppies for cruel experiments in the name of
protecting public health and killing innocent children in drone attacks
in the name of stopping terrorism?
Ironically, these revelations come when Congress is on the verge of
allowing the federal bureaucracy to destroy what remains of our medical
privacy. Both the Senate and House versions of the Labor, Education, and
Health and Human Services Appropriations bill remove the prohibition on
the development of a “unique patient identifier.”
The prohibition on funding for the unique patient identifier, which I
sponsored, has been in place since 1998. The push to allow the
government to force every American to obtain a unique patient identifier
is being justified as a means to efficiently monitor Americans’
“contact and immunization” status.
When I began fighting the unique patient ID in the 1990s, my
opponents denied that medical identifiers would make it impossible to
ensure confidentiality of medical records. Now, they are saying we
should support medical identifiers because they allow government
officials, employers, schools, airlines, and even stores and restaurants
to discover what, if any, vaccinations or other medical treatments we
have or have not received. The result of the identifier will be a
medical caste system, where those who refuse to follow the mandates or
advice of the “experts” are denied opportunities to work, receive an
education, or even go to church or enjoy a night out on the town.
unlimitedhangout | How did Moderna know that COVID-19 would create those conditions months
before anyone else, and why did they later claim that their vaccine
being tested in NIH trials was different than their commercial
candidate?
In late 2019, the biopharmaceutical company Moderna was facing a
series of challenges that not only threatened its ability to ever take a
product to market, and thus turn a profit, but its very existence as a
company. There were multiple warning signs that Moderna was essentially
another Theranos-style fraud, with many of these signs growing in
frequency and severity as the decade drew to a close. Part I of
this three-part series explored the disastrous circumstances in which
Moderna found itself at that time, with the company’s salvation hinging
on the hope of a divine miracle, a “Hail Mary” save of sorts, as stated
by one former Moderna employee.
While the COVID-19 crisis that emerged in the first part of 2020 can
hardly be described as an act of benevolent divine intervention for
most, it certainly can be seen that way from Moderna’s perspective. Key
issues for the company, including seemingly insurmountable regulatory
hurdles and its inability to advance beyond animal trials with its most
promising—and profitable—products, were conveniently wiped away, and not
a moment too soon. Since January 2020, the value of Moderna’s
stock—which had embarked on a steady decline since its IPO—grew from
$18.89 per share to its current value of $339.57 per share, thanks to
the success of its COVID-19 vaccine.
Yet, how exactly was Moderna’s “Hail Mary” moment realized, and what
were the forces and events that ensured it would make it through the
FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) process? In examining that
question, it becomes quickly apparent that Moderna’s journey of saving
grace involved much more than just cutting corners in animal and human
trials and federal regulations. Indeed, if we are to believe Moderna
executives, it involved supplying formulations for some trial studies
that were not the same as their COVID-19 vaccine commercial
candidate, despite the data resulting from the former being used to sell
Moderna’s vaccine to the public and federal health authorities. Such
data was also selectively released at times to align with preplanned
stock trades by Moderna executives, turning many of Moderna’s
highest-ranking employees into millionaires, and even billionaires,
while the COVID-19 crisis meant economic calamity for most Americans.
Not only that, but—as Part II of this three-part series will show,
Moderna and a handful of its collaborators at the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) seemed to know that Moderna’s miracle had arrived—well
before anyone else knew or could have known. Was it really a
coincidental mix of “foresight” and “serendipity” that led Moderna and
the NIH to plan to develop a COVID-19 vaccine days before the viral
sequence was even published and months before a vaccine was even
considered necessary for a still unknown disease? If so, why would
Moderna—a company clearly on the brink—throw everything into and gamble
the entire company on a vaccine project that had no demonstrated need at
the time?
phys.org | Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to
selectively turn on gene therapies in target cells, including human
cells. Their technology can detect specific messenger RNA sequences in
cells, and that detection then triggers production of a specific protein
from a transgene, or artificial gene.
Because transgenes can have negative and even dangerous effects when expressed in the wrong cells,
the researchers wanted to find a way to reduce off-target effects from
gene therapies. One way of distinguishing different types of cells is by
reading the RNA sequences inside them, which differ from tissue to
tissue.
By finding a way to produce transgene only after "reading" specific
RNA sequences inside cells, the researchers developed a technology that
could fine-tune gene therapies
in applications ranging from regenerative medicine to cancer treatment.
For example, researchers could potentially create new therapies to
destroy tumors by designing their system to identify cancer cells and
produce a toxic protein just inside those cells, killing them in the
process.
"This brings new control circuitry to the emerging field of RNA
therapeutics, opening up the next generation of RNA therapeutics that
could be designed to only turn on in a cell-specific or tissue-specific
way," says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering
and Science in MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
(IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of
the study.
This highly targeted approach, which is based on a genetic element
used by viruses to control gene translation in host cells, could help to
avoid some of the side effects of therapies that affect the entire
body, the researchers say.
Evan Zhao, a research fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically
Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and Angelo Mao, an MIT
postdoc and technology fellow at the Wyss Institute, are the lead
authors of the study, which appears today in Nature Biotechnology.
RNA detection
Messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules are sequences of RNA that encode the
instructions for building a particular protein. Several years ago,
Collins and his colleagues developed a way to use RNA detection as a
trigger to stimulate cells to produce a specific protein in bacterial
cells. This system works by introducing an RNA molecule called a
"toehold," which binds to the ribosome-binding site of an mRNA molecule
that codes for a specific protein. (The ribosome is where proteins are
assembled based on mRNA instructions.) This binding prevents the mRNA
from being translated into protein, because it can't attach to a
ribosome.
The RNA toehold also contains a sequence that can bind to a different
mRNA sequence that serves as a trigger. If this target mRNA sequence is
detected, the toehold releases its grip, and the mRNA that had been
blocked is translated into protein. This mRNA can encode any gene, such
as a fluorescent reporter molecule. That fluorescent signal gives
researchers a way to visualize whether the target mRNA sequence was
detected.
In the new study, the researchers set out to try to create a similar
system that could be used in eukaryotic (non-bacterial) cells, including
human cells.
RT | Hitherto-revered US leftist Noam Chomsky’s call for the
unvaccinated to be ‘isolated’ from the rest of society, and his cold
dismissal of concerns over how they would even get food, is deeply
shocking. How the mighty have fallen.
The one good thing about
the last 18 months is that it has exposed who were the genuine
supporters of basic human freedoms and who were not. Goodness me,
there've been quite a few surprises, haven‘t there?
If I had said to you back in 2019 that, under the guise of fighting a virus
with an IFR of 0.096% states across the western world would impose the
greatest peace-time restrictions on civil liberties ever seen, with
people even prevented from attending the funerals of loved ones or
visiting them when they were seriously ill in hospital, you’d have
probably said ‘I bet that socialist-libertarian Noam Chomsky will
speak out strongly against it. I don’t agree with everything he says,
but he’s always against tyranny and disproportionate government
measures.’
But Chomsky not only didn’t speak out against lockdowns and mandatory
face-masks (if he did, I missed it), he actually went a whole lot
further. Showing a level of authoritarianism that would make even Joseph
Stalin blanch, he said in a recent viral interview that the “right response” towards those who did not wish to take vaccines was to “insist that they be isolated”
from the rest of society. Then, as Max Blumenthal highlighted on
Twitter, far from showing contrition, he doubled down. When asked ‘How
can we get food to them?’ (i.e. the unvaccinated), he chillingly
replied: “Well, that’s actually their problem.”
He went on to say that if they “really did become destitute” then the state would have to move in with “some measure to secure their survival,” as was done with people in jail. Thanks for being so charitable, Noam.
To
justify his extreme position, the much-lauded ‘great thinker’ then made
a quite ludicrous analogy. He compared the unvaccinated to people who
don‘t want to stop at red lights at traffic junctions.
While the vaccines have been shown to reduce transmission of the virus, they don’t entirely prevent it spreading, or people becoming sick or even dying from Covid. Never mind the scientific research
from Israel which shows that natural immunity confers “longer lasting
and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and
hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to
the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.”
No, the great
Noam Chomsky actually compared people who had made perfectly rational
science-based decisions not to take the new-on-the-market vaccines, with
nutters who drive through red lights and who really do put themselves
and others at risk. It’s a comparison that you might expect a
dumbed-down shock-jock to make when they’re desperate to boost radio
ratings, but... Professor Chomsky? Laureate Professor of Linguistics at
the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology? How the mighty have fallen.
Chomsky’s
remarks would have been appalling at any time, but against the backdrop
of what is actually happening they are really quite horrific. Because
what he is calling for is actually being rolled out in a number of
so-called ‘democracies.’ Fist tap Dale.
c&en |For small biotech companies hoping to strike a deal with larger drug developers, there’s no greater destination than the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. In early January 2020, leaders from the start-up Shape Therapeutics
made the annual pilgrimage to this mecca of biotechnology networking in
San Francisco to make a pitch: What if you could edit someone’s genetic
code without ever touching their DNA?
The biotech industry is awash in companies using tools like CRISPR gene editing
to fix or turn off problematic DNA. If gene editing works, it could
provide a one-and-done cure. But some researchers are worried that if
CRISPR slips up and cuts DNA at the wrong site,
the damage could also be permanent. “Targeting DNA has a lot of
all-or-nothing consequences,” says David Huss, head of research at
Shape.
At the conference, Huss explained to potential partners that Shape’s
solution was to edit RNA instead of DNA. Our cells constantly produce
short-lived RNA molecules that convert the DNA code into functional
proteins. Incredibly, our bodies have already evolved an ingenious tool for editing RNA:
an enzyme called ADAR—adenosine deaminase acting on RNA. The enzyme
converts select adenosine (A) bases, one of four letters that compose
the messenger RNA (mRNA) code, into another base that the cell
interprets as guanosine (G). Shape was founded in 2018 on the basis of
academic work showing that synthetic molecules called guide RNAs could
recruit ADAR and direct it to make these A-to-G edits at precise sites.
Scientists estimate that A-to-G editing could fix mutations
responsible for nearly 50% of genetic diseases. “We have a tool that can
be applied to so many diseases that we couldn’t possibly do them all
ourselves,” Huss says. When Shape executives pitched their RNA-editing
technology to the Big Pharma company Roche, the two teams clicked, says
Sylke Poehling, head of therapeutic modalities at Roche.
summit | Earlier Paul had tweeted “I told you so doesn’t even begin to cover it
here,” after NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak admitted in a letter
to Rep. James Comer (R-KY) that a “limited experiment” was conducted to
determine whether “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat
coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human
ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.”
Senator Rand Paul, who was again proven right after the
National Institutes of Health admitted it did fund gain of function
experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, has blasted Anthony Fauci for
lying for a year and a half about research that “could destroy
civilization.”
Appearing on Fox News Thursday, Paul urged that Fauci has
intentionally “been parsing words” as a way of never admitting that gain
of function took place in NIH funded Chinese labs.
“They still to this day are trying to get around the truth,” Paul
said, adding “They say ‘well it was unexpected that it gained
function’.”
The Senator continued, noting that Fauci’s “declination is this: it’s
inadvertent, we didn’t know they were going to gain function. That is
what a gain of function experiment is,'” Paul explained.
“You don’t know when you combine two viruses that they will be more
deadly, but it might be if you have half a brain you know if you combine
two viruses it might be more deadly,” Paul proclaimed.
The Senator also noted that while he has referred Fauci to the
Justice Department for investigation, Attorney General Merrick B.
Garland is more concerned with targeting “moms complaining about what
they are teaching in school.”
slate | On
Thursday, President Joe Biden went to Chicago to make his case for
COVID-19 vaccination mandates. He warned that unvaccinated Americans
were “overrunning”
hospitals—thereby crowding out patients who needed care for heart
attacks or cancer—and he accused them of jeopardizing the economy by
scaring people away from shops and restaurants. Getting vaccinated, said
the president, was a simple matter of “being patriotic, doing the right
thing.”
Biden
has been using this kind of language—moralizing the COVID debate and
vilifying noncompliant Americans—for the past month. It’s a formula that
Republicans have often exploited in other contexts. Here’s how it
works: First, you identify a politically vulnerable minority. Then you
accuse that minority of deviant behavior. You depict these people as a
threat to everyone else, and you blame them for the country’s troubles.
Over the years, conservatives have cynically applied this algorithm to
many topics, such as homosexuality, welfare, immigration, Islam, and
kneeling for the national anthem. But now it’s being turned against
Republicans, because they’ve chained their party to a genuinely deviant
minority: vaccine refusers.
For
months, Biden was patient with people who resisted vaccination. He
offered them retail discounts and paid time off from work to get a shot.
He appealed to their altruism, arguing
that most would “be convinced by the fact that their failure to get the
vaccine may cause other people to get sick and maybe die.” After four
years of Donald Trump’s divisiveness, Biden wanted unity. “We’ve had too
much conflict, too much bitterness, too much anger, too much
polarization,” he lamented in May, referring to the debate over masks. “Let’s remember that we are all in this together.”
Vaccination requirements work. They drive up vaccination rates, which makes our communities and schools safer, along with strengthening our economic recovery. Vaccine requirements are widely supported, proven successful, and quickly becoming the standard across the country. pic.twitter.com/qo1swxjbYg
Barrons |Merck
‘s announcement that its antiviral molnupiravir had halved hospitalizations
in a trial of high-risk Covid-19 patients was met with enthusiasm on
Friday, inspiring a vision of a world in which treating a Covid-19
infection could be as trivial as swallowing a few pills.
Some
scientists who have studied the drug warn, however, that the method it
uses to kill the virus that causes Covid-19 carries potential dangers
that could limit the drug’s usefulness.
Molnupiravir works by incorporating itself into the genetic material
of the virus, and then causing a huge number of mutations as the virus
replicates, effectively killing it. In some lab tests, the drug has also
shown the ability to integrate into the genetic material of mammalian
cells, causing mutations as those cells replicate.
If that were
to happen in the cells of a patient being treated with molnupiravir, it
could theoretically lead to cancer or birth defects.
Merck
(ticker: MRK) says it has run extensive tests in animals that show that
this isn’t an issue. “The totality of the data from these studies
indicates that molnupiravir is not mutagenic or genotoxic in in-vivo
mammalian systems,” a Merck spokesperson said.
Scientists who have studied NHC, the compound that molnupiravir
creates in the body after it is ingested, however, say that Merck needs
to be careful.
“Proceed with caution and at your own peril,”
wrote Raymond Schinazi, a professor of pediatrics and the director of
the division of biochemical pharmacology at the Emory University School
of Medicine, who has studied NHC for decades, in an email to Barron’s.
Scientists
are split on how serious a risk this is, and in the absence of detailed
data on Merck’s animal tests, and long-term human safety data, it’s
difficult to know for sure.
The safety concerns suggest that the
stock market’s reaction to the positive molnupiravir data on Friday
might have been overblown. Shares of Merck jumped 8.4% Friday, while
shares of Covid-19 vaccine maker
Moderna
(MNRA) fell 11.4%, and shares of
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
(REGN), which developed one of the leading monoclonal antibodies for Covid-19, fell 5.7%.
Vir Biotechnology
(VIR), which developed another of the monoclonal antibodies in partnership with
GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK), was down 21.1%.
“It was sort of, in effect, wishful thinking,” says SVB Leerink analyst Dr. Geoffrey Porges of investors’ reactions on Friday.
desertreview | Now is the right moment to notice the onslaught of United States
poison control articles attempting to smear Ivermectin, a drug proven
safe and effective in the Uttar Pradesh test-and-treat program
administered under the auspices of both the WHO and CDC.
It is
appropriate to remind the reader that the WHO and CDC possess direct and
recent knowledge of Ivermectin use for COVID-19 in India. Moreover,
they know better than anyone the colossal effectiveness and overwhelming
safety of Ivermectin used in those millions of Uttar Pradesh test and
treat kits.
Perhaps it is also time to ask why exactly Dr. Tess
Lawrie’s peer-reviewed meta-analysis was given an Altimetric score of
26,697, making it number eight out of some 18 million publications.
This
rank is far better than the top 1%, which would only need a ranking of
180,000 for it to rank in the top 1%. It would only need 18,000 for it
to rank in the top .1%. Ranking in the top .001% would mean #180.
Therefore, at number eight, it is 8/180 of the top .001% or roughly the
top 4.4% of the top .001%. This article ranks in the top 5% of the top
.001%!
In other words, only seven articles in the world out of those 18 million are ranked higher.
This
peer-reviewed paper is one of the most cited of medical references of
all time – period. That should alert any reader – immediately - to its
historical significance. Dr. Tess Lawrie is a 30-year veteran WHO
evidence synthesis expert. Her conclusion is every bit as meaningful as
the article's rank. Here are those words,
“Moderate-certainty
evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible
using Ivermectin. Using Ivermectin early in the clinical course may
reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and
low cost suggest that Ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact
on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.”
Maybe
it is time to ask why Dr. Pierre Kory’s peer-reviewed narrative review
of Ivermectin ranks #38 out of the same 18 million publications.
He
concludes, “Finally, the many examples of Ivermectin distribution
campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and
mortality reduction indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases
of COVID-19 has been identified.”
If
Dr. Lawrie’s paper is ranked in the top 5% of the top .001% of all such
published medical articles of all time, then Dr. Kory’s is not far
behind. His is 38/180 of the top .001% or the top 21% of the top .001%
Thus, both articles would rank in the rarified atmosphere of nearly one in a million.
Therefore,
the reader must now ask why two magnificent independent reviews from
two different continents, coming to the same conclusion, are both
ignored by our world’s medical leaders?
Uttar
Pradesh is one such population that experienced a considerable drop in
COVID-19 morbidity and mortality months AFTER Dr. Kory’s article was
published on April 22, 2021. Therefore, one must ask that if Ivermectin
so predictably and safely eradicates COVID-19, then why is it not being
systematically deployed over all the world, as Dr. Kory and Dr. Lawrie
suggest?
Perhaps every reader needs to ask themselves this
question - Why is it that BOTH Dr. Lawrie’s and Dr. Kory’s
supremely-rated expert review articles, published in the medical
literature on PubMed, the National Library of Medicine, are BANNED from
Wikipedia?
Although
India’s Ivermectin victory over COVID may have been lost on
bent-on-vaccinating-everyone Big Pharma and Big Regulators, the message
seems to have gotten through to the man on the street. If Google Trends
is any indicator, interest in Ivermectin is exploding, and for good
reason. We are all being systematically deceived by influential
organizations in the name of profits.
Interest
in Ivermectin and India is only increasing and has now reached an
all-time high. India’s conquest of COVID-19 is concealed no longer. The
secret is out. And perhaps, at long last, that much-anticipated WHO
Final Report detailing the most successful Pandemic campaign of any
place on earth will be published.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
