The U.K. KARENWAFFEN Caroline Dinenage And Mark Lancaster

thegrayzone  |   Caroline Dinenage served as the UK government’s Digital and Culture minister from February 2020 to September 2021, making her de facto chief of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). 

In this capacity, she was personally responsible for overseeing construction of the repressive, World Economic Forum-endorsed Online Safety Bill, which has been criticized by rights groups for threatening the rights to free expression, and privacy. For her leading role in crafting the speech-muzzling bill, Dinenage was honored by Princess Royal with the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire.

Moreover, during this period, the DCMS was home to the shadowy, intelligence official-run Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), which policed “COVID-19 disinformation narratives” online.

Investigations by the civil liberties organization Big Brother Watch have revealed that instead of suppressing content that posed risks to public health, the CDU was preoccupied with censoring and deplatforming reasonable online criticisms of the British government’s Covid-19 response, including opposition to lockdowns and vaccine passports. 

According to an official fact sheet, the CDU’s focus turned to the Ukraine proxy war in 2022, and particularly to targeting content suggesting “the Bucha massacre and the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, were both hoaxes.”

Dinenage’s husband is Mark Lancaster, a fellow information warrior dedicated to advancing the propaganda goals of the British government. Lancaster reportedly left his wife and four-month-old daughter in 2013 when he began dating Dinenage, who was herself married at the time to a British Naval officer.

A former Conservative MP and Armed Forces minister, Lancaster helped lead London’s blitz on pandemic dissent as deputy commander of the British Army’s 77th Brigade between June 2018 and July 2022.

Specialized in “behaviour and attitudinal change,” the 77th Brigade maintains a vast militia of real, fake, and automated social media accounts to disseminate and amplify pro-state messaging, and discredit domestic and foreign enemies.

During the pandemic, the 77th Brigade targeted people within Britain and across the West with advanced psychological manipulation strategies honed on battlefields against enemy militaries. The online profile of a 77th Brigade veteran notes they were deployed straight from a tour of the Middle East – where they “successfully implemented behavioral change strategies against ISIS” – to “countering dis- and misinformation during the Covid-19 crisis.”

However, in January, an ex-Brigade whistleblower revealed how the Ministry of Defence and RRU routinely circumvented British law to advance the government’s crusade against pandemic dissent:

“To skirt the legal difficulties of a military unit monitoring domestic dissent, the view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality, they could be a foreign agent and were fair game. But it is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population…These posts did not contain information that was untrue or coordinated [emphasis added].”

As The Grayzone revealed in June 2023, British journalist Paul Mason had attempted to submit a “formal complaint” about The Grayzone to DCMS, believing it would trigger a government investigation into this outlet’s “funding and activities,” and ultimately its deplatforming. Mason’s handler, a British intelligence agent named Andy Pryce, boasted in leaked emails of his personal role in YouTube’s banning of “Russian stuff” in Britain. The CDU has been confirmed as the government body responsible for these censorship demands.

Now, this shadowy, intelligence-linked entity appears to be the spearhead of the campaign to silence Russell Brand.

WaPo Tripling-Down On The Failed Covid Control Narrative

WaPo |  Here’s why I support a vaccine passport: Because it’s time for people who follow best practices and science — a vast majority of our state by any measure — to be able to return to their daily lives and routines. As the coronavirus evolves, so must our strategies.

We cannot continue in this climate where the small percentage of the unvaccinated determine the course of life for the overwhelming majority of people who did the right thing and got vaccinated. We must work collaboratively to find the best solutions that ensure the safety of all Marylanders.

There have been numerous, well-intended campaigns to counter misinformation about vaccines. However, the reality is that even though a small minority of Maryland adults remain unvaccinated, these unvaccinated individuals perpetuate unnecessary challenges and have allowed variants such as omicron to develop at faster rates. To date, these actions have directly contributed to the 938,314 confirmed cases and 12,904 deaths our neighbors have suffered. More than 2,000 Marylanders are hospitalized from the effects of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The overwhelming majority of those hospitalized are unvaccinated patients.

Vaccine passports not only encourage people to do the right thing, but they also could mitigate even more negative impacts to households and Maryland’s economy. Vaccine passports would require people to provide proof of vaccination before entering public spaces such as restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bowling alleys, museums, concert venues and fitness facilities.

Valid credentials that would be recognized as having “passport status” include Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records, a digital photo of CDC documentation or a certificate from MD MyIR (a mobile vaccination record service).

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s (D) proposal to make this a requirement comes before the County Council for a vote Tuesday. Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott (D) also is considering vaccine passports. D.C. began requiring proof of vaccine starting Jan. 15. The European Union has even instituted a multinational vaccine passport for its member states. Though I commend the initiative and leadership of Elrich and Scott, this virus knows no borders. Our county leaders deserve the support of a truly statewide effort that can ensure a broad range of access and a streamlined means of verification.

I recognize there are valid logistical concerns, such as the lack of staffing for businesses to enforce passports and the impact on families and children who might not have the proper identification to show with their vaccination passport. As a consistent advocate for keeping Maryland businesses open and safe, I believe this is when it is up to the state to step in to support our businesses and protect our communities, whether by providing subsidies that aid in implementation or allowing businesses to opt-in so that customers can choose to patronize establishments that provide them a comfortable and safe environment. It is critical for our leadership to push to the front and meet the occasion to secure a safer, thriving and equitable future. I am confident we can do so.

 

 

Brandon's Karenwaffen NeoVaccinoidal Schismogenesis

theatlantic |  To understand how ideologically scrambling the Omicron wave has been, consider this: Some 2022 Democrats are sounding like 2020 Republicans. In spring 2020, many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, insisted that COVID was hardly worse than the flu; that its fatality risk was comparable to an everyday activity, like driving in a car; and that an obsessive focus on cases wouldn’t give an accurate picture of what was going on in the pandemic.

In the current Omicron wave, these Republican talking points seem to have mostly come true—for most vaccinated non-senior adults, who are disproportionately Democrats.

But Democratic talking points about the severity of COVID and the need for commensurate caution remain valid and not only for the sick and elderly. Ironically, they are especially true for the unvaccinated—a disproportionately Republican group that has seen their hospitalization rates soar this winter to all-time highs. About 9,000 Americans are dying of COVID every week. Preliminary state data suggest that more than 90 percent of today’s deaths are still among unvaccinated people. This year, COVID is on pace to kill more than 300,000 unvaccinated people who would, quite likely, avoid death by getting two or three shots.

Read: Should I just get Omicron over with?

The messiness of Omicron data—record-high cases! but much milder illness!—has deepened our COVID Rashomon, in which different communities are telling themselves different stories about what’s going on, and coming to different conclusions about how to lead their lives. That’s true even within populations that, a year ago, were united in their desire to take the pandemic seriously and were outraged by those who refused to do so.

A virus that seems both pervasive and mild offers an opening to people who are, let’s call them, “vaxxed and done.” The attitude of the VADs is this:

For more than a year, I did everything that public-health authorities told me to do. I wore masks. I canceled vacations. I made sacrifices. I got vaccinated. I got boosted. I’m happy to get boosted again. But this virus doesn’t stop. Year over year, the infections don’t decrease. Instead, virulence for people like me is decreasing, either because the virus is changing, or because of growing population immunity, or both. Americans should stop pointlessly guilting themselves about all these cases. In the past week, daily confirmed COVID cases per capita were higher than the U.S. in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Denmark, France, the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and even Australia, one of the most COVID-cautious countries in the world. As the coronavirus continues its unstoppable march toward endemicity, our attitude toward the virus should follow a similar path toward stoicism. COVID is becoming something like the seasonal flu for most people who keep up with their shots, so I’m prepared to treat this like I’ve treated the flu: by basically not worrying about it and living my life normally.

It’s hard to put a number on how many people are in this group, but we have some hard data to prove that their ranks are growing. This past December, airports processed twice as many travelers compared with the same period in 2020, despite many flights being canceled. On several days, TSA-checkpoint numbers exceeded their totals from pre-pandemic 2019. This is not the picture of a country that is hunkering down for Omicron. It is the limited snapshot of a mostly vaccinated population with millions of people who are eager to move on.

I have a lot of sympathy for this group’s case, especially as it relates to schools. The risk of COVID to vaccinated teachers and even unvaccinated students seems lower than we initially thought. Meanwhile, the costs of remote schooling seem higher than we feared. The White House and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona have come out strongly in support of keeping schools open. Other Democratic leaders, like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are fighting reluctant teachers to keep school in person. Even among pro-vaccine Americans, a growing number of people seem to be saying they are done with remote school as a baseline COVID policy.

Fat Diabetic Sotomayor Clowns Herself With Vaxnation Mandate Behavior And Remarks..,

reuters | The 63-year-old Sotomayor, one of the nine-member court’s four liberal justices, was diagnosed as a child with type 1 diabetes and has openly discussed her experience with the chronic illness in the past. She was named to the court in 2009 by Democratic former President Barack Obama.

 

“Justice Sotomayor experienced symptoms of low blood sugar at her home this morning. She was treated by D.C. Emergency Medical Services and is doing fine,” spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a statement. “She came to work, resumed her usual schedule, and will be participating in planned activities over the weekend.”

 

When she was appointed, Sotomayor became the first Hispanic justice and the third woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.

 

She manages her diabetes through insulin injections, glucose tablets and regular testing of her blood sugar. Sotomayor has been candid about her previous struggles and scares that led her to be more open about the disease. 

***********************************************************************************

Justice Sotomayor, fully vaccinated and boostered according to news reports, decided to hear the case in her own office over Zoom. This is an appropriate medical decision based on what we know about the inability of these vaccines to prevent COVID transmission. And again, regardless of her vaccination status, she should do all she can to protect herself from COVID. Because of her obesity status, on an individual level, vaxnation will absolutely decrease her chance of ending up in the ICU. 

 

It will do absolutely nothing to decrease her risk of catching or transmitting the virus. Nor will it decrease the outpatient illness that people seem to get. There is ZERO difference in the outpatient illness between those vaxxed or not. It is about the same. A mild illness for many, a severe “knock you out for a few days” illness for many. Vaxnation status seems to not make a difference in the outpatient illness.

 

That said, Sonia Sotomayor stated in her remarks and questions, that the vaccines are essential for protecting workers from spreading the virus. And by inference, this vaccine efficacy is worth firing millions of hard-working Americans from their jobs. Fully vaccinated and boostered, sitting in her office so she did not come into contact with the other justices – all of whom are at least fully vaccinated - this fat diabetic paid-for-life supreme asked these questions pretending one thing, while her own fearful behavior betrayed the truth of what even she knows about these pathetic neovaccinoids. 

 

Sotomayor is admitting something wrong with the narrative, betrayed by her own behavior while simultaneously contemplating millions of Americans losing their livelihood - to protect the vanated co-workers from what exactly?

 

Is this how vaxnations are supposed to work?

 

Am I missing something?

CDC Provokes Great Salty Tears Of Karenwaffen Betrayal

A more accurate portrayal of the CDC in zombie movies pic.twitter.com/JaTcFiJwAM

— Ryan Ken (they/them) (@Ryan_Ken_Acts) December 28, 2021

wsws  |  Anger is growing in the working class in the United States in response to Monday’s announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that it was shortening its guidelines for quarantining for positive cases from 10 days to five. In remarks to the press, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and Biden’s top COVID adviser Anthony Fauci admitted that the purpose of loosening the restrictions is to ensure the supply of labor for American businesses. This occurs while the surge of the Omicron variant is expected to infect 140 million Americans in the next three months, more than 40 percent of the country.

The announcement amounts to an abdication by the federal government of any pretense of attempting to contain the pandemic. Instead, workers are being told that they must learn to live—and to die—with the virus, in the name of protecting the “economy,” a euphemism for the profit margins and share values of the major corporations. It follows a televised address last week by President Biden in which he rejected new lockdowns of schools and workplaces, and even encouraged Americans not to cancel their holiday travel plans.

However, the spread of the virus itself among airline workers forced the cancellation of thousands of flights. An appeal to the CDC by the heads of major airlines is what immediately prompted the change to quarantine guidelines.

The announcement has stunned and angered workers, who are being confronted with the fact that the corporate and political establishment consider their lives and those of their friends and relatives expendable. One tweet by a worker who was instructed to come to work even though his roommate tested positive was liked more than 360,000 times and retweeted 44,000 times. Workers flooded the replies to the tweet with their own horror stories from work and school.

One such tweet read, “I'm a high school teacher and when I was told two weeks ago during lunch that the group of people I had dinner with tested positive I told my admin that I was leaving to get tested. The [New York City Department of Education] told me if I didn't have any symptoms, I would be docked a half day. I was positive.”

Another tweet read, “My granddaughter’s Daycare sent a text last night that said one of the care givers had tested positive but is asymptomatic and will still be coming to work. Just a heads up in case someone didn’t want their kid exposed. Unbelievable.” Another said, “My sister's workplace told her to just come to work because you could test positive for 3 months so it doesn't matter if you come to work. and they didn’t tell other employees when someone got covid. gotta love america.”

Workers across the country spoke to the World Socialist Web Site.

One Southern California nurse said, “To be honest, I have lost a lot of trust in the CDC. This is the same organization that told us it was okay to come to work wearing a bandana [in the opening weeks of the pandemic, in response to widespread mask shortages]. I get it—the country wasn’t prepared and there weren't enough N95s, but they put us at risk and a lot of people got sick.

“Then we were told by Fauci, ‘If you’re vaccinated you won’t get it and you won’t spread it.’ That was also a lie and they have really undermined the legitimacy of the CDC. This is a big issue because it has played into the hands of people denying that COVID exists.”

 

Kidney Stone Ron Brownstein Sez The LGB Community Is About "Insurrection"

CNN is PISSED that a parent would say "Let's Go Brandon" to Biden directly. Analyst says it's ungracious. It's juvenile. It's reprehensible...and (this is CNN)...it's about "insurrection." pic.twitter.com/vRRIZagEvb

— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) December 26, 2021

dailycaller |  A CNN panelist claimed that a father of four, who tagged a phone call with President Joe Biden with the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon,” was not only being impolite but also harboring feelings “about insurrection.”

Ron Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic, joined a CNN panel to discuss a phone call between Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, and an Oregon father Jared Schmeck who ended his live-streamed phone call with a less vulgar substitute for “f*** Joe Biden.”

The CNN host dubbed the interaction between Schmeck and the Bidens “disrespectful,” “juvenile” and “reprehensible.” He also asked Brownstein for his opinion on the matter.

“I don’t think it’s fundamentally about incivility. I think it’s fundamentally about insurrection,” Brownstein said.

“The whole ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ motif is the reflection of the view [that] two-thirds of the Republican base — driven by Trump’s false claims and the Big Lie that Biden is an illegitimate President,” he continued. “And, it reflects the findings in multiple polls by the American Enterprise Institute, Vanderbilt University, and others, that a majority of Republican voters now say the American way of life is disappearing so fast that … we may have to use force to save it.”

Schmeck told The Oregonian that he is now being “attacked” for his “joke” on the phone call. Schmeck claims he is not a “Trumper,” though he is frustrated with Biden’s political preferences and policy choices such as federal vaccine mandates, inflation, and supply chain problems.

“At the end of the day, I have nothing against Mr. Biden, but I am frustrated because I think he can be doing a better job,” Schmeck said. “I mean no disrespect to him.”

 

New York Legislators In A New Zealand State Of Mind...,

trendingpolitics |  In a brazen attempt to punish those who choose to resist the edicts coming from the state legislature and governor’s office, a proposed bill by the New York state legislature would allow the government to forcibly detain anyone without trial if they’re deemed a public health threat.

The bill, A.416, is among a trove of new draconian Covid restrictions and vaccine mandate bills set to be voted on during the next legislative session starting on January 5th.

According to the bill’s text, A.416 would “allow the governor or the appropriate health official to order the removal and detention of any person afflicted with a communicable disease in the event that there is a state of health emergency declared by the governor in relation to such disease.”

NY’ers: Pay ATTENTION! This is the plan Democrats have for the entire country. pic.twitter.com/hbgeGeG8x4

— Sunnyday (@Sunnyda04530056) December 13, 2021

“[A]ny person or group removed or detained by order of the governor or his or her delegate shall be detained for as long as the department may direct,” subdivision 3 of the bill further states.

As if this draconian legislation wasn’t enough, New Yorkers on Twitter are also highlighting several more bills up for a vote next session that is would empower the government to forcibly make state residents comply, using mental and physical duress as they deem fit.

Kyrie Irving Hands The NBA Its Karen-Ass - Stephen A's Cooning Will Be Priceless...,

WSJ  |   “Kyrie has made a personal choice, and we respect his individual right to choose,” Nets general manager Sean Marks said in October. “Currently the choice restricts his ability to be a full-time member of the team, and we will not permit any member of our team to participate with part-time availability.” 

The Nets changed their mind about Irving’s availability with Covid ripping through their locker room in a spike that coincides with a sharp increase in cases across the league and the Omicron variant’s arrival in New York. Brooklyn executives cited a roster that has been depleted by the coronavirus to explain the unexpected backtracking by a team sitting in first place in the Eastern Conference even without Irving. As coach Steve Nash expressed misgivings about pushing the workload of Durant, who nearly leads the league in minutes after rupturing his Achilles’ tendon in 2019, the Nets softened their position. 

“We believe that the addition of Kyrie will not only make us a better team, but allow us to more optimally balance the physical demand on the entire roster,” Marks said. “We look forward to Kyrie’s return to the lineup.” 

They are likely to be waiting even longer now. The Nets have 53 games left in the regular season. Irving is currently eligible to play in 24 of them outside of New York and Canada, but that number will shrink to 21 after the new year. 

The whiplash of Irving’s availability wasn’t the only Covid-related turn of events for the Nets on Saturday. They had managed to win two straight games while extremely shorthanded this week—they fielded eight players in one win, the minimum required by the league—in large part because Durant was sublime. Then he, too, was sidelined. Durant has said that he is vaccinated and was one of the first public figures to share that he had Covid in March 2020. 

Irving, who has declined to comment on his vaccination status, remained mostly silent during his absence with the exception of cryptic messages on social media, including an Instagram video this week that showed him lacing up his sneakers. He was also spotted at high-school and college games in New Jersey and Los Angeles while his NBA team was playing in Brooklyn. 

The league’s Covid rules were significantly more onerous for the tiny minority of unvaccinated players even before the NBA issued a stricter round of guidance this week in response to the uptick of cases: There are nearly 60 players out now, including more than a dozen on the Nets and Knicks alone.

Impotent Mask-Compliant Rage...,

theguardian  |  High among the unexpected, non-health compensations of masks is their value as shorthand. At the same time as they impede communication, they offer, anywhere that people exhibit extreme non-compliance, a rapid non-verbal personality indicator that is rivalled only, I would argue, by manspreading. Of course there are many other single but baleful inducements to run for the hills – personalised number plates, not tipping, devotion to the works of Ayn Rand or Judith Butler – but these may take time to discover or may even, on rare occasions, be redeemable.

Mask aversion once fell, just about, into that category. Last summer, anti-maskers could argue that they preferred the previous official guidance. Jenny Harries, now head of the UK Health Security Agency, had indeed treated the world’s mask-wearing nations to her superior, anti-mask theory in March 2020. “You can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in,” she said. Incredibly, or perhaps as a result if Johnson was involved, she was promoted.

As evidence has mounted to back mask efficacy, Johnson, even with this stimulus to lead by example, has treated masks as if they were a lefty plot against his face. A masked audience watching Macbeth recently noticed that the prime minister, squished into a crowded little theatre, preferred to follow the on-stage psychopathy with his face uncovered. In doing so, he perhaps revealed more about himself than idiot contrariness. Low compliance with containment measures was directly associated in one study with “antisocial traits, especially lower levels of empathy and higher levels of callousness, deceitfulness and risk-taking”. Though it’s too late to save us from Johnson, the psychology of mask behaviour might help to screen out another leader who shouts, when discouraged: “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

Meanwhile, we may be getting closer to understanding the MPs who last week voted, in defiance of scientific advice and majority opinion, against protecting public health. Weren’t they once great respecters of majorities, even narrow ones? But it’s pointless to expect logic. Like the Macbeths, they simply couldn’t help themselves.

MatterDaddy KarenWaffen Twitter Celebrates Fallout From The NeoVaccinoid Mandate

holy fucking shit, vaccine mandates are causing teachers who don't believe in science to quit, nurses who don't believe in medicine to quit, and cops who don't believe in public safety to quit. I'm failing to see the downside to this...,

folks: I hate tweet thieves and I hate it even more when the tweet thief turns out to be me. I have no memory of seeing @mbeisen's tweet but clearly I must have, and then regurgitated it as my own. UGH. folks, please retweet the hell out of the original: https://t.co/CBTmfH9JDe

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) October 13, 2021

Until The Neovaccinoid Mandate - I Had No Idea Bomani Jones Is Such A Shrivelled Little Sellout....,

Slate |  S1: Today on the show, will the NBA find its season reshaped by COVID again? I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to what next? Stick around. During the last two seasons, it seemed like the NBA was handling the pandemic pretty well. The 2020 season got cut short, but it finished up inside the Disney bubble. The 2021 season had a pretty stringent testing regimen and pretty much went off without a hitch. But when negotiations happened over this season, the players union said a vaccine mandate was unequivocally off the table, even though referees and other NBA employees had agreed to one. When did you first hear that vaccination could be an issue with some of the players?

S2: I didn’t actually hear that it could be an issue, but I figured that it might cause is an issue for everybody else. Like, there was no reason for me to expect this particular group of people to be more or less enlightened than anybody else is on this matter. There are some things that a union is going to push back on, particularly in an industry like this one. And in this industry, you have to put this in your body is something that is never, ever going to be able to fly. It really is a slippery slope. I think for them in particular, because so much of their job does involve putting things in your body, you got at least had the option to say no if you want to do that. And so this is somewhere where as much as people can talk about the weakness of the National Basketball Players Association in different negotiations, this is one that they had to stand on and they stood on it. And I think that the owners ultimately understood that it was necessary that the players are going to stand on it because they didn’t try to bring them to the ground, right?

S1: Because your body is your livelihood. Right, right. What are the rules exactly for NBA players at this point? I mean, I recognize it’s different in different places because of the regional differences. But what did they eventually agree to after this tense negotiation with the players union?

S2: It’s increased testing. If you were not vaccinated, your locker, for example, has to be. I think it is literally as far as possible away from the rest of the team if you were not going to be vaccinated. I think there’s increased masking requirements if you’re not going to be vaccinated. I mean, they make it sound really inconvenient if there’s going to be the case now of what’s happened with the travel in the legs. And this is I actually think people are paying enough attention to this. So in New York City and in San Francisco, there have been local ordinances passed that basically you can’t come inside to a large indoor event. If you have not been vaccinated in New York, it requires one shot in San Francisco. I believe you have to be fully vaccinated in order to do that. Now we talk about this strictly in the context of those two places, but I don’t know why we’re assuming that that won’t be adopted by other places. If the delta or whatever else starts raging even more. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you saw those places then make the same calls as these other cities have. And then when that happens, it’s going to be a lot to do is caught flat footed.

S1: That’s because whatever rules the NBA’s got in place, players are also going to be bound by the laws of whatever state they happen to be playing in. For some unvaccinated stars like Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn, restrictions in their home states mean they could be barred from home games. Let’s talk about some of the reasons people are giving, because I think it’s useful to just kind of listen to the players a little bit here. We’ve got Jonathan Isaac from Orlando Magic. He’s talking about natural immunity. He’s had COVID and he actually, I listen to this press conference he gave. He was incredibly clear and straightforward, and he was very angry at being misrepresented by some journalists he felt in this process.

S5: I would just I would start by saying that that I was pretty badly misrepresented. I’m not anti-vax, I’m not anti medicine, I’m not anti science.

S1: But he was basically saying, I have the utmost respect for health care workers. I’m not anti-vax, I’m making a choice for me.

S5: With that being said, it is my belief that the vaccine status of every person should be their own choice.

S1: And by the way, I already had COVID, and so I’m protected a little bit. What did you make of that?

S2: Well, the I already had it unprotected, like that’s that that begs follow up questions, right? Like how protected are you? When did it happen? Is not like, this is a it’s not like the chicken pox, right? You’re not about to be like, I’m good from here on out. Yeah, you can’t get it twice. Yeah, I mean, Lamar Jackson to tell you that, like, that’s not really how that one works. I. As someone who has heard Jonathan Isaac taught before and found him to sound ridiculous, I did not think that he necessarily sounded ridiculous on this one, even though he is taking an approach that I do not agree with. Where where I look at him and I’m like, OK, I get that you’re not worried about you. But this isn’t just about you. And I think that the the libertarian streak of a lot of the non the not even anti-vax broadly, but anti this particular vaccine right here is purely looking at it through the prism of themselves and not thinking about anybody else, like when we were doing the super hardcore social distancing thing, when the test was short and everything else reason was everyone was supposed to assume that they were an asymptomatic carrier and that to stop the spread is by not interacting any more than you absolutely had. Two people instead looked at that is, stay inside so you don’t catch it as opposed to stay inside so you don’t spread it. So you get guys like him who are only thinking about this in the context of catching it, not in the context of transmitting it.

 

 

Of Course The Voice Of Youtube Community Guidelines Is A Nasally Effeminate Soy Boy

youtube |  Crafting policy around medical misinformation comes charged with inherent challenges and tradeoffs. Scientific understanding evolves as new research emerges, and firsthand, personal experience regularly plays a powerful role in online discourse. Vaccines in particular have been a source of fierce debate over the years, despite consistent guidance from health authorities about their effectiveness. Today, we're expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the WHO.

Our Community Guidelines already prohibit certain types of medical misinformation. We've long removed content that promotes harmful remedies, such as saying drinking turpentine can cure diseases. At the onset of COVID-19, we built on these policies when the pandemic hit, and worked with experts to develop 10 new policies around COVID-19 and medical misinformation. Since last year, we’ve removed over 130,000 videos for violating our COVID-19 vaccine policies.

Throughout this work, we learned important lessons about how to design and enforce nuanced medical misinformation policies at scale. Working closely with health authorities, we looked to balance our commitment to an open platform with the need to remove egregious harmful content. We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we're now at a point where it's more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines. 

Specifically, content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed. This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them. Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines.

As with our COVID guidelines, we consulted with local and international health organizations and experts in developing these policies. For example, our new guidance on vaccine side effects maps to public vaccine resources provided by health authorities and backed by medical consensus. These policy changes will go into effect today, and as with any significant update, it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up enforcement.

 

But, But.., Ivermectin Formulated And Prescribed For Humans Is As Cheap And Harmless As Aspirin....,

abcnews  |  Washington County's sheriff confirmed Tuesday night that jail inmates had been prescribed ivermectin, but did not say how many. It wasn't clear if all the inmates who were prescribed the medication had tested positive for COVID-19.

“There is an open investigation and we can’t comment on it right now," Embry told The Associated Press.

Dr. Rob Karas, the jail's physician, has said no inmates were forced to take the drug.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ivermectin for use by people and animals for some parasitic worms, head lice and skin conditions. The FDA has not approved its use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans. According to the FDA, side effects for the drug include skin rash, nausea and vomiting.

“Using any treatment for COVID-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” the FDA said in a warning about the drug.

Embry declined to say who was the target of the board's investigation. The board has authority over physicians, but not jail facilities.

Sheriff Tim Helder did not return a message Thursday, and a spokesperson for the sheriff's office did not immediately respond to questions about the drug's use.

In a lengthy statement released to the AP Thursday, Karas defended the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Karas said he has prescribed it to inmates and patients at his clinics who are significantly sick with COVID-19 since late 2020. He did not respond to questions about the investigation and the number of inmates who have have been prescribed the drug.

“I do not have the luxury of conducting my own clinical trial or study and am not attempting to do so," Karas wrote. “I am on the front line of trying to prevent death and serious illness."

The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the sheriff's office said Helder had learned of the drug's use at the jail on Tuesday. In a July 20 email to Helder, Karas recommended the sheriff's staff take it as a preventive measure against COVID-19 but did not mention its use on inmates. Karas has said he's taken the drug, as have members of his family.

Arkansas Karenwaffen Justice Of The Peace BIG MAD About MD Prescribing Ivermectin For Covid

dailymail  |  A jail doctor in Washington County, Arkansas, has been using an animal deworming drug to treat inmates with Covid-19 even though the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has specifically warned against it.

Ivermectin is often used as a dewormer in animals including cows and horses, and is not recommended for treating the virus. The FDA said it 'can cause serious harm'.

During a finance and budget committee meeting for Washington County on Tuesday night the jail's physician Dr Rob Karas asked for a 10 per cent increase in the medical services contract, even after the county sheriff confirmed that the jail health provider had been prescribing the drug. 

Dr Karas has faced calls to resign over the revelation.  

County-elected Justice of the Peace Eva Madison brought the issue back up towards the end of the meeting after jail officials presented their 2022 budget. 'I learned today that Dr Karas is giving ivermectin - cow dewormer - to the inmates at the jail,' she said.

Madison told members of the Washington County quorum court - the county's governing body - that a jail official and county employee, who asked to stay anonymous, told her they had been sent to the jail's clinic to get tested for Covid-19. 

When the unidentified person tested negative they told Madison they were given a $76 prescription for ivermectin, as reported by CBS News.

'They were concerned about the prescription, asked their primary care physician about it and the doctor told him to 'throw that in the trash,' she said.

'(The person) tested negative, was given a prescription for ivermectin, was told to go to Dr Karas's pharmacy just off campus to have it filled,' Madison told the committee. 

She added: 'He's out $76 because of Dr Karas prescribing dewormer to a county employee for treatment of a condition that he didn't have.

'The employee had the good fortune to have a physician that he could go to and ask for a second opinion. Our inmates do not have that choice.'

Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder did not say how many inmates at the 710-bed facility had been given ivermectin and defended Dr Karas, who has been prescribing the medication.

 

Political Livestock Management Continues To Devolve EXACTLY How The Archdruid Said It Would...,

ritholtz |  “In every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members, the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”

-Justice John Marshall Harlan, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905)

I noted back in February that America’s CEOs were “Having a Good Year.” Not just in their response to a deadly pandemic, or to the logistical challenges of remote work or feeding a nation stuck at home, but even their response to the January 6^th attempted coup (Let’s stop pussyfooting around with equivocal words like “insurrection”).

The CEO crew congratulated the legitimate victor, dismissed nonsensical conspiracy theories, froze contributions to elected Capitol rioters, and generally behaved like responsible citizens facing a credible crisis of Democracy. Of course, there was some backsliding – I crossed Toyota off of my list never to be purchased or recommended again – but generally speaking, the corporate sector behaved rather well.

The Vaccine hesitancy that has been stoked by bad actors – an unseemly mix of malicious, opportunistic, and plain old stupid – has presented another chance for the corporate sector to demonstrate leadership. The track record is at best mixed.

If for no other reason than self-interest, it’s time for Corporate America to step up its Vax game – and fast. More than their new hires, companies need to get their customers, aka the public, vaccinated. Otherwise, we are going to be living through an echo of 2020, with Covid as an ongoing and perhaps even long-term drag on the economy. This will affect revenue and earnings at all companies.

Even better, as an exercise, let’s name names. Consider these 10 companies as well-situated to effect real social change relative to Vaccines. But really, any company can show leadership.

Karen Says It's Time To "Round Up These Gottdayyum Spreadnecks!!!"

NYTimes |   Many vaccinated Americans are tired, disgusted and eager to assign blame. Public health experts and government officials, including some Republicans, have shifted from sensitive prodding to firm condemnation of those forgoing vaccination. Private conversations among the inoculated take an even less diplomatic turn: “We were so close, and these stupid, unvaccinated jerks ruined it for the rest of us.”

Fatigue and outrage are appropriate emotions, considering all that has been lost to Covid-19: lives, jobs, experiences, money, physical and mental health. But those feelings, if not properly channeled, can themselves take a heavy toll. What do we do with our anger?

I am a progressive woman who resides in a conservative state. I am on record in this fractured political era as a proponent of maintaining connection across gulfs of understanding, with the caveat that this civic burden falls to people whose social privileges allow them to engage safely with “the other side.” But seeking to understand dangerous behaviors and beliefs is quite different than permitting them. I myself, by many accounts an amiable person, once yelled at a truck stop full of unmasked people to read the sign on the goddamn door.

Fury — collective, generational, political, cultural, individual — is utterly familiar to me, more so than the happy serenity of my current life. I was a child in poverty during the 1980s “farm crisis,” when federal policies favoring big corporations devastated rural communities. Everywhere I turned, something was dying: the local grocery store, the family farm, the cancer victims whose water supply contained agricultural runoff. There was joy in my family, but there was also addiction, abuse and neglect that drew from a deep well of justifiable rage and sorrow.

Anger is a contagious energy that jumps quickly from one person to the next. It will seize your mind and body as its host. If allowed to explode, it will hurt others. If allowed to implode, it will hurt you. I had to learn early how to transmute it for the sake of my own survival. I found that it can be the source of a powerful alchemy. If we are up to the task, it could help us create something good together.

Our national conversation has reached the point where many Americans are done with any and all excuses offered by the unvaccinated. Some of the inoculated are not just self-righteous but downright venomous, arguing on social media that hospitals should refuse to admit unvaccinated Covid-19 patients, calling them trash and wishing them a painful death. Residents of blue America have pronounced this a red-America problem. “Our state did a great job fighting the pandemic,” one person tweeted. “Our reward? The mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers in adjacent red states flooded their hospitals and spilled over into ours.”

Old political resentments have found a new outlet in the fraught vaccine debate. “I’ve been pissed off since Reagan was elected,” another Twitter user quipped in a thread parsing the emotions of the vaccinated. Exhausted, despairing minds find comfort in turning complex realities into simple, opposing categories. The noble, upstanding vaccinated American and the selfish, stupid, unvaccinated one. The good liberal citizen and the far-right anti-vaxxer.

 

 

Liberal Corporatist Groupthink Is The Worst And Most Insidious White Supremacy

Nymag  |  As we sift through the lab-leak debacle, the good news is that the healthy antibodies in the system are still strong enough to overcome the groupthink that produced the original error. News media are investigating a hypothesis they once dismissed, and the government has announced an investigation to find the truth.

The bad news is that the problem is turning out to be worse than it initially seemed — and worse still, the source of the failure is not going away. The implications of this episode are much broader than understanding the source of the pandemic. It is a question about whether institutions like the media and government can withstand the pressure of ideological conformity.

A recent Washington Post story, looking back at the government’s response to virus’s origination, reported that many officials refused to explore the lab-leak hypothesis because it was associated with right-wing politics. “For some of the officials who were privately suspicious of the Wuhan lab, Trump’s and Navarro’s comments turned the lab-leak scenario into a fringe conspiracy theory,” the Post found, “It became nearly impossible to generate interest among health experts in a hypothesis that Trump had turned into a political weapon, they said.”

That is an extraordinarily damning admission. Health experts who understood all along that it was entirely possible that the virus emerged from a lab simply refused to examine the hypothesis because it had become associated with the likes of Donald Trump.

Openness to evidence is the historical strength of American liberalism. This is why, for all the errors liberals have committed since the Progressive Era, a capacity for self-correction has given continued vitality to their — our — creed. The lab-leak fiasco ought to be a warning sign of what happens if the urge to not be defeated or manipulated by the right turns into an emulation of its methods. The only thing worse than having a hack gap would be not having one.

Cornpop And The Karenwaffen Don't Want "Unity" They Want Compliance And Obedience

realclearpolicy |  We hear a lot about “unity” these days. The Biden administration promises and even demands it. Meanwhile, Republicans (and some Democrats) charge the administration with hypocrisy because its radical programs can’t garner a legislative majority — let alone the consensus support the word “unity” implies. But the charge of hypocrisy misses the point: The demand for unity is dangerous because it aims to undermine the genuine diversity that is essential to a free people.

To call for unity is, in effect, to call for obedience. But free people are not obedient. Free people should obey the law, of course, but they do so only because they have consented to the law. And before consent comes debate: Free people air differing opinions that reflect their differing backgrounds and experiences, rather than bowing to those who claim they know what’s best. Free and open debate — and the diversity of viewpoint such debate implies — is therefore essential to lawmaking in a democratic republic.

This is our constitutional inheritance. Our lawmaking process is structured by mechanisms — such as the separation of powers, checks and balances, and lesser rules like the Senate filibuster — that ensure the views of the minority are not simply brushed aside by a fleeting political majority. Of course, from time to time, Americans do come together as one nation, for instance in the face of great tragedies or crises. Yet, unfortunately, such crises can easily be exploited or manipulated to stifle dissent and centralize political power.

 

Data Show The Hysterical Karenwaffen Greatly Amplified Covid Gain Of Function

theatlantic |  Lurking among the jubilant Americans venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more worry about the pandemic than Republicans do. People who describe themselves as “very liberal” are distinctly anxious. This spring, after the vaccine rollout had started, a third of very liberal people were “very concerned” about becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, compared with a quarter of both liberals and moderates, according to a study conducted by the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington. And 43 percent of very liberal respondents believed that getting the coronavirus would have a “very bad” effect on their life, compared with a third of liberals and moderates.

Last year, when the pandemic was raging and scientists and public-health officials were still trying to understand how the virus spread, extreme care was warranted. People all over the country made enormous sacrifices—rescheduling weddings, missing funerals, canceling graduations, avoiding the family members they love—to protect others. Some conservatives refused to wear masks or stay home, because of skepticism about the severity of the disease or a refusal to give up their freedoms. But this is a different story, about progressives who stressed the scientific evidence, and then veered away from it.

For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump. Some of this reaction was born of deeply felt frustration with how he handled the pandemic. It could also be knee-jerk. “If he said, ‘Keep schools open,’ then, well, we’re going to do everything in our power to keep schools closed,” Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Gandhi describes herself as “left of left,” but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a clear timeline for the end of mask mandates. “We went the other way, in an extreme way, against Trump’s politicization,” Gandhi said. Geography and personality may have also contributed to progressives’ caution: Some of the most liberal parts of the country are places where the pandemic hit especially hard, and Hetherington found that the very liberal participants in his survey tended to be the most neurotic.

The spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, though. Scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t. Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information. And in their eagerness to protect themselves and others, they may be underestimating other costs. Being extra careful about COVID-19 is (mostly) harmless when it’s limited to wiping down your groceries with Lysol wipes and wearing a mask in places where you’re unlikely to spread the coronavirus, such as on a hiking trail. But vigilance can have unintended consequences when it imposes on other people’s lives. Even as scientific knowledge of COVID-19 has increased, some progressives have continued to embrace policies and behaviors that aren’t supported by evidence, such as banning access to playgrounds, closing beaches, and refusing to reopen schools for in-person learning.

 

Culture WAR! What Is The Gentrified Karenwaffen Good For? Absolutely Nothing....,

oftwominds  |  Those who lived through The Cultural Revolution are reticent about revealing their experiences. Even in the privacy of their homes in the U.S., their voices become hushed and their reluctance to give voice to their experiences is evident.

The unifying thread in my view is the accused belonged to some "counter-revolutionary" elite --or they were living vestiges of a pre-revolutionary elite (children of the landlord class, professors, etc.)--and it was now open season on all elites, presumed or real.

What generates such spontaneous, self-organizing violence on a national scale? My conclusion is that cultural revolutions result from the suppression of legitimate political expression and the failure of the regime to meet its lofty idealistic goals.

Cultural revolutions are an expression of disappointment and frustration with corruption and the lack of progress in improving everyday life, frustrations that have no outlet in a regime of self-serving elites who view dissent as treason and/or blasphemy.

By 1966, China's progress since 1949 had been at best uneven, and at worst catastrophic: the Great Leap Forward caused the deaths of millions due to malnutrition and starvation, and other centrally planned programs were equally disastrous for the masses.

Given the quick demise of the Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom movement of open expression, young people realized there was no avenue for dissent within the Party, and no way to express their frustration with the Party's failure to fulfil its idealistic goals and promises.

When there is no relief valve in the pressure cooker, it's eventually released in a Cultural Revolution that unleashes all the bottled-up frustrations on elites which are deemed politically vulnerable. These frustrations have no outlet politically because they're threatening to the status quo.

All these repressed emotions will find some release and expression, and whatever avenues are blocked by authorities will channel the frustrations into whatever is still open.

A Cultural Revolution takes the diversity of individuals and identities and reduces them into an abstraction which gives the masses permission to criticize the abstract class that "deserves" whatever rough justice is being delivered by the Cultural Revolution.

As the book review excerpt noted, the definition of who deserves long overdue justice shifts with the emergent winds, and so those at the head of the Revolution might find themselves identified as an illegitimate elite that must be unseated.

I submit that these conditions exist in the U.S.: the systemic failure of the status quo to deliver on idealized promises and the repression of dissent outside "approved" (i.e. unthreatening to the status quo) boundaries.

What elite can be criticized without drawing the full repressive powers of the central state? What elite will it be politically acceptable to criticize? I submit that "the wealthy" are just such an abstract elite.

To protect itself, a repressive status quo implicitly signals that the masses can release their ire on an abstract elite with indistinct boundaries--a process that will divert the public anger, leaving the Powers That Be still in charge.

But just as in China's Cultural Revolution, central authorities will quickly lose control of conditions on the ground. They will maintain the illusion of control even as events spiral ever farther from their control. The falcon will no longer hear the falconer.