detroitnews | Spectrum Health will grant temporary exemptions
from its employee vaccine mandate to individuals who can prove they have
naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19.
The west Michigan hospital system, which is in the process of merging with Southfield-based Beaumont Health,
will grant an exemption to those who have a positive PCR or antigen
test for COVID-19 plus a positive antibody test from within the past
three months, the health system said in a statement Thursday.
The exemption, the first for a major health system in Michigan, was developed "as new research has emerged" on natural immunity.
"While
we still recommend vaccination for people with prior COVID-19
infection, according to this new research, there is increasing evidence
that natural infection affords protection from COVID-19 reinfection and
severe symptoms for a period of time," the statement said. "Current
studies are not clear on how long natural immunity protects from
reinfection."
The policy could be updated if future evidence
shows naturally acquired protection is waning or longer lasting, or if
there is a validated antibody test result showing immunity, the
statement said.
Spectrum announced in late July
that it would require the COVID-19 vaccine within eight weeks of the
Food and Drug Administration approving a vaccine, but noted it would
consider some exemptions.
Those exemptions
include religious exemptions and medical exemptions determined by a
medical exemption committee. The hospital system's medial exemption
committee recommended the health system allow for a temporary exemption
for naturally acquired immunity based on available research, the
statement said.
This thread from Dr. Strangetweet made this editor angry cry.
Going through the history of what Americans have done in the name of public health and why so many of us may not be too hip on any more mandates or rules or regulations to ‘protect us’ because we’re apparently too stupid to protect ourselves is absolutely infuriating.
You ever been so mad you cried?
Take a look:
We.
All.
Stayed.
Home.
BOOM.
Yup.
Awww yes, because apparently, you can’t catch COVID if you’re protesting or looting. The virus is super woke and stuff.
Fauci has changed his mind and his guidance more than anyone.
It didn’t work.
This this this!
YUP. WE FEEL THIS.
Maybe Team Biden should try listening to the ‘unvaccinated’ for once.
Hospital administrators are firing nurses and screaming at the same time that hospitals are overflowing with unvaccinated patients? THIS clearly indicates a malevolent agenda to me.
Hospitals getting overwhelmed is a red herring.
Last year, hospitals and pubic health agencies stood up hundreds of beds at the Javits Center in weeks.
No one made use of any of this excess capacity.
It is not difficult to add emergency capacity in hotels, in parking lots, convention centers and elsewhere.
The excess capacity capability was amply demonstrated in 2020.
Since the preponderance of hospitalizations are the old and the sick, if there is to be a mandatory vaccination program it should be targetted toward the old and the sick.
Instead of the hundreds of billions going to feed the market cap of Big Pharma - maybe Cornpop could spend a fraction on treatments. It makes no sense to waste billions on jabs for those unlikely to land in the hospitals - like working people below the age of 50 and in reasonably good health.
Where hospitals are overwhelmed they are overwhelmed because they are designed to run ICU beds at maximum capacity. It has ALWAYS been common for ICUs to be “overrun “ at times. Having had parents who were old and sickly for years, I have stood in many a hallway with a parent on a stretcher waiting for a bed to open in the ICU.
Secondly, a hospital can only claim an open bed if that hospital has enough staff to use it. An ICU may have 30 beds and 18 patients, but cannot claim to have 12 open beds if the staff is not there to service those 12 beds. So that 19th patient is declined, and sent somewhere else. That 30 bed ICU is “full” at 18.
In my major medical city, we have seen the opening of 4 large, new hospitals in the last 5 years. What do you think that does to staffing in the older hospitals? This country has had a nursing shortage since my mom was a nurse in the 1970s. We always need more.
Every nurse knows that if he or she isn’t happy, there are 5 facilities begging for her services. I get postcards daily for offers in local hospitals, facilities, often offering thousands of dollars to sign on. It’s become a very transient career.
In the facility I work, the ONLY staff and residents that have tested positive for covid in the last 8 to 10 weeks are “fully vaccinated”. And the “unvaccinated” are tested 2 times a week. The “pandemic of the unvaccinated “ is a bald faced lie.
People need to be careful when they listen to “statistics” and realize that they are not always being told the whole picture. There is often a reason for that, a bigger agenda is at play.
dossier | Policymakers within the Biden Administration have clearly seen the
COVID-19 data out of Israel, the first country that went all in on
population-wide mRNA shots. It shows that mRNA injection efficacy is
waning, which is why Israel went full steam ahead with the 3rd booster
shot. It’s too early to tell exactly how that will pan out, but in the
meantime, the Biden Administration needs to find a way to shimmy their
way out of declaring victory over COVID just a couple months ago, given its clear resurgence throughout our nation among both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
Instead of owning up to the reality that we cannot eliminate a
submicroscopic infectious particle from existence, and perhaps admitting
that government officials wildly oversold an innovative “cure” to the disease, they’re continuing with the dictatorial insanity.
With
respiratory season just around the corner, the “unvaccinated” are going
to be scapegoated for when our government has once again failed to
achieve the impossible task of stopping an endemic virus from
circulating among a massive population.
At first, they took a
somewhat more diplomatic approach, blaming the “Delta variant” for their
failures to deliver. But now, they’ve shifted their wrath onto fellow
Americans, specifically, the 25% of “unvaccinated” individuals in
America who refuse to submit to the “health” demands of the regime. None
of it makes scientific sense, but it doesn’t have to, because it’s no
longer about health or science, but in protecting the reputation of the
White House.
The Biden Administration is losing its unwinnable
“War on COVID,” and as its ratings go down in flames, it has backed
itself into a corner. Instead of being honest about their failures with
the American people, Biden officials are choosing to triple and
quadruple down on these broken policy measures. They’re purposely
pitting Americans against each other, and labeling the “unvaccinated” as
the ultimate scapegoat for their failures. Time will tell if they
succeed, or if Americans decide to find the courage to reject the latest
series of unconstitutional edicts.
redstate |Dr. Anthony Fauci is a liar. That much has been clear for a very long time, though, it’s become more in your face as the months have worn on. The latest example comes courtesy of documents that prove Fauci lied about NIH funding going to gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.
So has the good doctor been humbled by his recent pantsing? Of course
not. Instead, he’s continued his streak of dishonesty, with this latest
example being especially egregious given the facts as we know them.
So let me get this straight. The head of NIAID and the face of the
pandemic response has no idea whether natural immunity exists or is
durable? He’s seen none of the studies
that show natural immunity confers stronger protection than two doses
of the vaccine? He hasn’t looked at any of the real-world data sets? He
hasn’t seen any of the numbers from the United Kingdom or Israel? Really?
No one believes this garbage. Rather, Fauci is lying again, in my
opinion, because if he acknowledges natural immunity and how strong it
is, he acknowledges how ridiculous Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is. Any
mandate that doesn’t include carveouts for natural immunity is logically
asinine and spitting in the face of the science. So instead of just
telling the truth and noting that there should be exceptions, Fauci
plays dumb as if the freaking head of NIAID just has no idea about how
natural immunity works.
It’s enough to make someone want to punch a wall. Deep breaths and all that.
We are led by dishonest hacks who are putting politics above the
health of Americans. That is why there’s vaccine hesitancy, not because
of Fox News or Donald Trump. No one trusts these people because they do
not deserve any trust. They continually mislead and make decisions based
on what fits the narrative they want and not based on where the facts
lead.
In short, Fauci should be fired, but we’ve known that since the first month of the pandemic.
jonathanturley | In the law, it is called an admission against interest
or an out-of-court statement by a party that, when uttered, is against
the party’s pecuniary, proprietary, or penal interests. In politics, it
is called just dumb. White House chief of staff Ronald Klain offered a
doozy this week when he admitted that the announced use of the authority
of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for a
vaccine mandate was a mere “work around” of the constitutional limit
imposed on the federal government. The problem is that the thing being
“worked around” is the Constitution. Courts will now be asked to ignore
the admission and uphold a self-admitted evasion of constitutional
protections.
Notably, before inauguration, Klain publicly assured the public that Biden would that, on “his first day in office, I will issue a nationwide masking mandate, requiring that people wear masks where the federal authority extends and then urging governors and other local officials to impose mask mandates in their states.” That statement was then walked back due to the lack of legal authority to issue such a mandate.
Klain retweeted MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who posted, “OSHA doing this
vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate
work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.”
The “work around” was needed because, as some of us have previously during both the Trump and Biden Administration,
the federal government does not have clear authority to impose public
health mandates. Authority for such mandates has traditionally been
recognized within state authority.
Make no mistake about it. This is a clever move to use the OSHA as
the vehicle for the mandate to avoid the federalism issues of a direct
mandate. President Joe Biden has been ping ponging on the issue for over a year
in first suggesting that he could impose a national mandate and then
admitting that he probably could not. Ironically, this move comes on the
same day that Attorney General Merrick Garland denounced the “clever”
use of the Texas abortion law to make it more difficult to challenge.
Judging from the praise for Garland, it appears that such work arounds
are noble when done for the right cause.
The question is whether this clever work around will in fact work. It
might, but there are ample grounds from challenge. Under this
interpretation OSHA could impose a federal mandate for any measure that
impacts workers, including public health measures not directly linked to
a given workplace or job. That may be more of a sticker shock for some
on the federal bench, including some justices.
The move is unnecessary and therefore reckless. There are already
challenges to the law which the Justice Department could join as
amicus. It would then not have to risk the creation of additional
losses in court after the impressive litany of losses
of the Biden Administration. This was another filing that followed a
public call from the President. It is again politics driving litigation
by the Justice Department. The media covered such pressure extensively
during the Trump Administration and legal experts objected that the
Trump White House was attacking the independence of the Justice
Department and other agencies. There is little attention to his pattern
that extends from immigration to debt relief to the eviction moratorium.
NYTimes | In December 2020, as the prospect of
imminent mass vaccination against Covid-19 was finally becoming a
reality, Mr. Biden leveled with the American people: He said he would
not force anyone to get the jab. “No, I don’t think it should be
mandatory,” he told reporters. “I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory.”
Jen
Psaki, the White House press secretary, recently reiterated Mr. Biden’s
position. “That’s not the role of the federal government,” she declared
on July 23, referring to the idea of a government mandate. Rochelle
Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, said the same thing a week later: “There will be no nationwide mandate.”
So
much for that. On Thursday, Mr. Biden announced a far-reaching vaccine
mandate that applies to most federal workers, hospitals, public schools
and 80 million employees of private companies. Under the White House’s presumptuous plan,
workplaces that employ more than 100 people must require their
employees to either get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing — a
burden so onerous that for many businesses, it will not be a choice at
all.
The
president’s plan is certainly well intentioned. The vaccines are the
only tried-and-true strategy for defeating Covid; government officials
should both encourage vaccination and make it easier to get vaccinated.
Health officials must continue selling people on the vaccines by
emphasizing the considerable upside: Vaccination decreases transmission
of the virus and turns hospitalization and death into very unlikely
outcomes. It provides such robust protection that 99 percent of
coronavirus fatalities in the United States now occur in the unvaccinated population. Vaccination works, and it’s the right option for a vast majority of Americans.
But
forcing vaccines on a minority contingent of unwilling people is a huge
error that risks shredding the social fabric of a country already being
pulled apart by political tribalism.
The
president should not — and most likely does not — have the power to
unilaterally compel millions of private-sector workers to get vaccinated
or risk losing their jobs: Mr. Biden is presiding over a vast expansion
of federal authority, one that Democrats will certainly come to regret
the next time a Republican takes power. Moreover, the mechanism of
enforcement — a presidential decree smuggled into law by the Department
of Labor and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration — is
fundamentally undemocratic. Congress is supposed to make new laws, not
an unaccountable bureaucratic agency.
While
more than 70 percent of American adults have received a shot, a smaller
but sizable group of people, for various reasons, are unvaccinated.
Some members of this group have antibodies from a previous Covid case
and are reasonably protected from future illness, according to recent data.
There is little benefit to forcing vaccination on such people, and Mr.
Biden’s decision to not exempt them is a significant misstep.
Unvaccinated
individuals who were never infected by Covid would certainly benefit
from vaccination. But the coercive approach has major downsides. The
most anti-vaccine Americans — those who are adamantly refusing the jab
because of a misguided belief that it’s dangerous — will probably not
change their minds because the government is strong-arming employers. On
the contrary, the federal mandate might actually be taken as
confirmation of their paranoid suspicions that the vaccines have less to
do with their health and more to do with social control.
As
a practical matter, it’s undeniable that the federal mandate will
engender a titanic backlash and create a spate of lawsuits. Vaccine
holdouts have already taken legal action against employers requiring
vaccination: Todd Zywicki,
a law professor at George Mason University in Virginia who had
recovered from Covid and has antibodies, recently fought his
institution’s mandate and prevailed. And Republican governors are
certain to battle Mr. Biden over this policy. Gov. Kristi Noem of South
Dakota, a Republican, tweeted at the president, “See you in court.”
It’s true that courts have upheld vaccine mandates in certain circumstances: In a 1922 case,
the Supreme Court famously ruled that a city ordinance could deny
admission to students who failed to get the smallpox vaccine. But the
assertion that a public official can completely sidestep the legislative
process and enact a much farther-reaching vaccine mandate via
administrative action should elicit skepticism from even those who
vigorously support vaccination.
LATimes |As Biden said
in introducing his program Thursday, COVID vaccination “is not about
freedom or personal choice. it’s about protecting yourself and those
around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the
people you love.”
That said, there are still some questions and issues about the
program that deserve answers. Here are some of the most important
points.
The court
The Supreme Court has endorsed vaccination mandates for more than 105
years. The court first weighed in on mandates in 1905, with a 7-2
decision in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, upholding a fine imposed by the city of Cambridge, Mass., on a resident who refused to get inoculated against smallpox.
“Upon
the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has
the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which
threatens the safety of its members,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote
for the majority.
Harlan saw no problem with constraining
“liberty” in the name of public welfare: “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.”
The Jacobson decision has been the linchpin of
vaccine requirements coast to coast and at almost all levels of American
society. As Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University Law School
observed late last year, “All states require childhood vaccines
as a condition of school entry.” Adult mandates may be rare, but “at
least 16 states require influenza or hepatitis B vaccinations for
postsecondary education.”
It’s true that Jacobson has sometimes been exploited to support
noxious public policies — Oliver Wendell Holmes cited it as precedent,
for instance, in Buck vs. Bell,
the 1927 opinion in which he upheld Virginia’s forced sterilization law
with the notorious comment, “Three generations of imbeciles are
enough.”
It’s also true that the court’s approach to questions of
individual rights has evolved over the last century, generally in the
direction of narrowing government’s ability to restrict them. But
constitutional scholars tend to find that the pandemic is sufficiently
dangerous to warrant the constraints Harlan endorsed.
“A law that
authorizes mandatory vaccination during an epidemic of a lethal disease
... would undoubtedly be found constitutional,” Wendy Mariner of Boston University wrote in 2005.
“However, the vaccine would have to be approved by the FDA as safe and
effective, and the law would have to require exceptions for those who
have contraindications to the vaccine.” Those conditions would appear to
be met by the Biden program.
Federal powers
Biden is relying on the power of federal funding and federal
workplace laws. The government’s power to set conditions on its funding
are largely unquestioned.
In mentioning an earlier order he
issued requiring vaccinations of all nursing home workers who treat
Medicare and Medicaid patients, he stated, “I have that federal
authority.” The administration’s position is that the same authority
extends to firms holding federal contracts and employees of the federal
government, as well as 300,000 workers in federally funded Head Start
preschool programs.
There is a highlighted sentence directly under the title of the
article ( I am not a journalist – I am sure this sentence in the layout
has a name – do not know what it is, though).
Complete protection against infection has long been hailed as the holy grail of vaccination. It might simply be unachievable.
The very instant I read that sentence – as a medical doctor and a
medical historian – I know instantly that this person has no idea what
they are talking about – and has not bothered to do the most basic of
research in the topic.
One word –
SMALLPOX
It has been achieved – it is not unachievable. But it took a
STERILIZING vaccine. And ON TOP OF THE VACCINE, all kinds of other
efforts which were completely different based on the part of the world.
The top priority – Truth being told to the population at all times.
A concerted effort with non-compromised leaders and spokespeople. And
to have the entire health system on board in an organized manner. Also,
not a small amount of PR was required then, because the vaccinations
left permanent scars on the skin. The authorities got out ahead
in front of this issue – and did not wait until it detonated when people
started noticing it and sharing it with friends. Furthermore,
smallpox vaccination rates were nowhere near 100% – but when you have a
sterilizing vaccine, it does not need to be so. Political and health
leaders did absolutely no kind of shaming or belittling. The messaging
was almost all positive and congratulatory. It is also important to
realize that this eradication occurred in an era of mass media but long
before we had the Internet and especially social media. I do not think
we can even begin to overestimate the absolutely horrific effect social
media has had on our response this time. Most patients I see every day
literally want to throw their hands in the air – they have completely
given up.
There is ZERO wild smallpox on the face of this planet today. ZERO.
The only place it is left intact is purportedly in the freezers of viral
labs at the CDC and in Russia. I am not even certain about that.
Polio is a very similar story, but is not completely eradicated from
the planet – just a sliver is left. And one could argue the same about
measles, mumps, and others that have been made so uncommon that young
doctors would not recognize the symptoms if seen in the ER.
Coronaviruses are a completely and totally unique virus family in
almost every way conceivable. The pox viruses are much more amenable to
vaccination efforts. But that in no way means that science will never
find a way to eradicate a coronavirus aided by vaccinatinon.
But ERADICATION via vaccination would require a STERILIZING vaccine.
And that is not where we are today. The sooner our health agencies and
media begin to level with the people and not put out this kind of
article the better we will all be. I was gravely concerned when the
messaging earlier this year was so misleading that it was giving people
the idea that the vaccines were causing eradication. The mainstream
narrative today saying this was never the case just 4 months ago is
totally deluding itself just like with so many other issues. “Why we
never said that – everyone always knew it was never going to prevent you
from getting it” – all over the news today – is belied by the statement
on my vaccination consent form right in front of me – THIS VACCINATION
WAS GIVEN AN EUA for PREVENTION of COVID-19. Right there on the form. It
was a classic case of miscontruing concepts without actually lying that
misled the vast majority of my patients. Big Pharma is very very good
at that.
I am of the firm belief, that after the Biden performance last night,
unless an intense leveling is done with the American people about
appropriate expectations and soon – there will be enormous political
consequences for his administration. More than half the country thinks
that forced vaccination of these NON-STERILIZING vaccines is going to
end this pandemic. That is not the case at all. And I can see a future
of a lot of disappointment and anger.
There is precedent for where we are today – the FLU shots. Also
non-sterilizing. But nobody discusses the flu vaccination in terms of
eradication – because it is simply impossible with non-sterilizing
vaccines. Level with the people. They clearly understand the flu shot.
They clearly get it – the flu shot will not eradicate the virus from
earth – it will however make you less likely to get really sick – WHEN
YOU GET THE FLU. And we have learned to live with the flu with the
tens/hundreds of thousands of casualties every year. Until something
much better comes for COVID, it is going to be a similar story.
Until we begin to treat the citizens of the world as adults, and not
kids – and quit bamboozling – we are never going to have buy in from
every group as has happened in the past.
My two cents.
I would suggest – that making statements such as that sentence are
really misleading to everyone but those who have been schooled in
virology and vaccinology. Those words mean something completely
different to me than my patients. The difference between an “infection”
and a “transmissible infection” is debating angels on a pinhead for most
people.
I get the feeling that they are realizing that the whole COVID
vaccination story is getting shot through with holes – and they are
pulling at straws.
I just had my front desk person read this article. A college graduate
in English. She did not understand it the way it is being presented.
Again – this is common BIG PHARMA dissembling.
It seems to me the argument here that most people get that the writer
is trying to convey – is OH well – the COVID vaccine is not working out
as well as we would hoped – but no big deal – neither did any other,
when you really think about it and use arcane terms.
Nothing could be further from the truth –
When is the last time I saw a polio infection or a transmissable polio infection? NEVER
When is the last time I saw a smallpox infection or a transmissable smallpox infection? NEVER
I can go on with measles mumps, etc.
When is the last time I saw a COVID infection or a transmissable
COVID infection – well I have seen 8 this AM – all in vaccinated
patients.
And most people get that – and look sideways at articles like this trying to explain this away via word
Pay careful attention to the endpoints and definitions. The vaccines
were never tested to prevent infection and transmission – only
symptomatic illness and severe disease.
neuberger | But all this public panic, anger and shaming of the unvaccinated by the vaccinated — what the Sun-Times calls “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”,
for example — hides another fact. The Covid vaccines, as good as they
are, were not designed to prevent infection in the first place, only
symptoms.
Let that sink in. The current Covid vaccines were not designed to prevent infection. That's a major reason why "breakthrough infections" occur. In addition, because the vaccines do
prevent severe symptoms and a vast majority of cases, the number of
breakthrough infections must, by definition, be under-counted.
When the virus is circulating in a vaccinated population, variants that are more rapidly transmitting are selected for --- those are vaccine evading variants.
By vaccinating without shutting down transmission we are promoting vaccine evading variants.
This,
from September 2020, was written by Dr. William Haseltine, formerly of
the Harvard Medical School and a hero in the fight to genetically
characterize AIDS (bio here and here):
Prevention of infection must be a critical endpoint.
Any vaccine trial should include regularantien testing every three
days to test contagiousness to pick up early signs of infection and PCR
testing once a week to confirm infection by SARS-CoV-2 test the ability
of the vaccines to stave off infection. Prevention of infection is not a
criterion for success for any of these vaccines. In fact, their
endpoints all require confirmed infections and all those they will
include in the analysis for success, the only difference being the
severity of symptoms between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Measuring
differences amongst only those infected by SARS-CoV-2 underscores the
implicit conclusion that the vaccines are not expected to prevent
infection, only modify symptoms of those infected.
We all
expect an effective vaccine to prevent serious illness if infected.
Three of the vaccine protocols—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca—do not
require that their vaccine prevent serious disease[,] only that they
prevent moderate symptoms which may be as mild as cough, or headache.
[emphasis added]
It may well be true that these vaccines, to some degree, do protect against infection,
but (to use a club brandished against those who recommend studying
ivermectin) no clinical studies, to my knowledge, have established that,
or have established the degree of that protection.
It's
certainly true that the world wanted these vaccines on the market on the
fastest schedule possible. And it's also true that they have saved a
great many lives. Just look at the ratio of infections-to-deaths prior
to the vaccine rollout, and the same ratio afterward (chart above).
Which
means that, even if the world were 100% vaccinated with these vaccines,
the vaccinated who host the virus would provide ample breeding ground
for variants.
theorganicprepper |The most frustrating thing to me, the past year and a half, has been the constantly changing narrative
and the dismissal of formerly well-understood scientific truths.
Natural immunity is one of those concepts from freshman biology that
many seem to completely disregard these days.
I think this is a natural effect
of the “cult of expertise” we have in the United States. Seemingly,
anyone with specific credentials is automatically deferred to,
regardless of how competent they are… or more insidiously, where their
financial interests lie.
I’ve gotten into some discussions
with medical professionals about whether people who have recovered from
the disease need to be vaccinated. These conversations would have been
seen as utterly ridiculous three years ago. However, now, it seems, we
all need to relearn freshman biology. So I’d like to review the concept
of natural immunity to help organize my thoughts and maybe help others
that feel like their heads are in a whirl.
I’ve got my old college biology textbook-Life: The Science of Biology,
by Purves, Sadava, Orians, and Heller. I’ve got the sixth edition,
published in 2001, so it’s about 20 years old. I also have a newer
college biology textbook because I’m a big nerd. It’s Campbell Biology,
by Reece, Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, and Jackson, published in
2014. Both textbooks detail how our immune systems work, and both say
pretty much the same thing.
Our bodies have two major ways of defending against disease.
Our innate defenses are things like our skin and mucus. We’re
born with these, and they make it difficult for various pathogens such
as bacteria, viruses, and multicellular parasites to enter our bodies.
Our bodies also have an immune system that recognizes and attacks any
infectious agents that make it past our innate defenses.
Our immune system is really
sophisticated, and in healthy individuals, it works pretty well. Suppose
some kind of pathogen makes it past the body’s innate defenses and
begins infecting cells within the host. In that case, the host’s body
will, in turn, start producing antibodies that will specifically attack
the invading pathogen. The host body will continue producing antibodies
until either the host dies or the invading cells die, and the patient’s
body can return to normal.
The best part is, even after the
active infection is over, the host’s body will retain the memory of the
antibodies it produced during the infection. So if the formerly infected
person reencounters the pathogen, the body will immediately have the
antibodies to kill the pathogen. They rarely get sick gain, and if they
do, it’s generally very mild.
Even the incredibly pro-vaccine Wall Street Journal had an article on this recently.
Usually, the WSJ leaves their articles up on the Opinion Page for about a week. However, within twenty-four hours, WSJ buried this article on natural immunity. Jeff had a great article about alternative media just the other day. This definitely feeds into his narrative about how much good info is getting buried right now.
Anyway, the WSJ article discusses mucosal immunity vs. internal immunity.
The author (a neurologist) states that while vaccines stimulate
internal immunity, they do nothing to address mucosal immunity. The
viruses don’t penetrate the host’s organs, which is why most vaccinated
people don’t get really sick. But, the viruses still live and reproduce
in mucus-lined mouths and nasal passages. That is why vaccinated people
with no symptoms are still spreading Covid like crazy. However, those of
us that have recovered have both mucosal and internal immunity.
In case you needed further proof of the efficacy of natural immunity.
An Israeli study showed recently
that vaccinated people were 13 times as likely to become infected and
27 times as likely to have symptomatic infections as people with natural
immunity.
Alex Berenson posted this information on Twitter on August 25, and the platform permanently banned him on August 28. However, medical professionals are starting to make noise about it, such as Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard epidemiologist. Hopefully, more people begin to listen.
Even if the world were 100% jabbed with these mRNA neo-vaccinoids, the jabbed - who host the virus - would provide ample breeding ground for variants.
It's likely much worse than this. It has been claimed that widespread distribution of a non-sterilizing mRNA goo into a population with high levels of infection and transmission is likely to select for variants that escape the goo induced immune response.
If that’s right, it looks like a colossal blunder to have relied on “symptom reduction for wild type-caused disease” as the primary public health response to the pandemic.
If the neo-vaccinoids don’t impact infections or transmission, or barely do so, how will they select for jab evasion? Someone, jabbed or not, gets infected and passes it on – where’s the selection pressure? Masks and distancing, on the other hand, would be expected to select for more transmissible variants.
Don’t masks and distancing stop transmission? If the virus doesn’t transmit then it doesn’t seem it can mutate – it would just die out, wouldn’t it? As I understand it, masks and distancing don’t stop transmission, they make it harder – thus favoring virus strains that are more transmissible.
It seems as though you’re saying that we are trading a short term benefit by masking and social distancing for a long term consequence of enhanced virulence of the virus. Would you suggest that it might be better (in the long run) not to mask and distance?
My understanding is viruses only survive and replicate in a host cell so it would seem the best way to get rid of this is to deny it host cells by masks and distancing and in some cases lock downs. The jabs as they are now seem like they are more a way to lead some facsimile of normal but they don’t really address the issue that the virus is still here and replicating in both jabbed and unjabbed.
What this will mean over time – who knows? I personally don’t have a whole lot of confidence in the government which seems more made to protect an economy than to save lives.
I’ve seen this exact argument applied to the neo-vaccinoids as they are non-sterilizing. It seemed like a sound argument not to rush out these neo-vaccinoids as they may create vaccine resistant strains like we might be seeing with Mu. I’ve not seen this about masking and distancing before. Do you think we are seeing these more virulent strains are occurring because we’ve been masking and distancing and not because we’re using non-sterilizing neo-vaccinoids?
dailymail | President Joe Biden on
Thursday declared war on the 80 million Americans who have yet to get a
COVD vaccine and asked them 'what more is there to wait for' as he
announced mandates covering two thirds of all workers.
'This
is not about freedom or personal choice. It's about protecting yourself
and those around you, the people you work with, the people you care
about, the people you love. My job as president is to protect all
Americans,' he said in remarks in the State Dining Room at the White House.
'We've
been patient but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has
cost all of us. So please do the right thing,' he said.
Greenwald |The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised even
many of its harshest critics this week when it strongly defended
coercive programs and other mandates from the state in the name of
fighting COVID. “Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually
further civil liberties,” its Twitter account announced, adding that “vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public."
If you were surprised to see the ACLU
heralding the civil liberties imperatives of "vaccine mandates” and
"vaccine requirements” — whereby the government coerces adults to inject
medicine into their own bodies that they do not want — the New York Times op-ed
which the group promoted, written by two of its senior lawyers, was
even more extreme. The article begins with this rhetorical question: “Do
vaccine mandates violate civil liberties?” Noting that "some who have
refused vaccination claim as much,” the ACLU lawyers say: “we disagree.”
The op-ed then examines various civil liberties objections to mandates
and state coercion — little things like, you know, bodily autonomy and
freedom to choose — and the ACLU officials then invoke one authoritarian
cliche after the next (“these rights are not absolute") to sweep aside
such civil liberties concerns:
[W]hen it comes to
Covid-19, all considerations point in the same direction. . . . In fact,
far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. . . . .
[Many
claim that] vaccines are a justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily
integrity. That may sound ominous, because we all have the fundamental
right to bodily integrity and to make our own health care decisions. But
these rights are not absolute. They do not include the right to inflict
harm on others. . . . While vaccine mandates are not always
permissible, they rarely run afoul of civil liberties when they involve
highly infectious and devastating diseases like Covid-19. . . .
While
limited exceptions are necessary, most people can be required to be
vaccinated. . . . . Where a vaccine is not medically contraindicated,
however, avoiding a deadly threat to the public health typically
outweighs personal autonomy and individual freedom.
The
op-ed sounds like it was written by an NSA official justifying the need
for mass surveillance (yes, fine, your privacy is important but it is
not absolute; your privacy rights are outweighed by public safety; we
are spying on you for your own good). And the op-ed appropriately ends
with this perfect Orwellian flourish: “We care deeply about civil
liberties and civil rights for all — which is precisely why we support
vaccine mandates.”
What makes the ACLU's position so remarkable — besides the inherent shock of a civil liberties organization championing state mandates overriding individual choice
— is that, very recently, the same group warned of the grave dangers of
the very mindset it is now pushing. In 2008, the ACLU published a comprehensive report
on pandemics which had one primary purpose: to denounce as dangerous
and unnecessary attempts by the state to mandate, coerce, and control in
the name of protecting the public from pandemics.
RT | The CEO of a health food company has learned the hard way that
reciting medical data and coming to logical conclusions, like favoring a
health mandate to prevent obesity, will bring out the corporate beast
in the woke mob.
‘If you wish to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,’
goes the famous saying. If that is true, then Americans are being ruled
by a truly domineering tyrant, who can’t bear to hear advice that just
might save the entire kingdom.
Jonathan Neman, CEO of the
upscale salad chain Sweetgreen, broke some uncomfortable truths to the
millions of Americans who are bursting around the waistline: being obese
in the age of Covid could lead to their even more untimely death.
“78% of hospitalizations due to COVID are Obese and Overweight people,” Neman stated in a LinkedIn post that went viral. “Is
there an underlying problem that perhaps we have not given enough
attention to? Is there another way to think about how we tackle
‘healthcare’ by addressing the root cause?”
“We have been quick to put in place Mask and Vaccine Mandates but zero conversation on HEALTH MANDATES,” continued the CEO, as he waded unknowingly into alligator-infested swamp water. “All the while we have printed unlimited money to soften the blow the shutdowns have caused to our country.”
Despite
prefacing his argument with as much virtue signaling padding as
possible, emphasizing that he was not an anti-vaxxer and thought
vaccines a grand idea, it didn’t matter to the woke pack. Neman had
committed the unforgivable crime of stating facts at a deranged moment
in American history when the infantile, self-consumed audience has no
other desire than to be lulled asleep with a candy-coated simulacrum of
reality.
And it wasn’t as though the CEO was misrepresenting the truth. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, described the grim reality facing overweight and obese Americans as thus: “As
clinicians develop care plans for COVID-19 patients, they should
consider the risk for severe outcomes in patients with higher BMIs [Body
Mass Index], especially for those with severe obesity…[which is] a risk
factor for both hospitalization and death.”
swprs |Israel is reporting the highest coronavirus infection rate in
the world, showing that neither vaccine mandates nor “vaccine
passports” are suitable means to limit or end the pandemic.
Israel has been a global pioneer in covid mass vaccinations as well
as in introducing the highly controversial “vaccine passport” (Green
Pass). Nevertheless, since late August 2021, Israel has been reporting
the highest coronavirus infection rate in the entire world (see chart
above).
The Israeli case clearly shows that neither covid vaccine mandates
nor “vaccine passports” are suitable means to limit or end the pandemic.
This is because covid vaccines are unable to reduce coronavirus infections and transmission, and they lose much of their effectiveness even against severe disease within a few months, a medical fact already known from influenza vaccines.
It should be noted that even in Israel, covid vaccines continue to
provide some protection against hospitalization and severe disease (about 50%). Nevertheless, double-vaccinated Israeli citizens will again be counted as ‘unvaccinated’ and will require a third dose. It may well be, however, that “booster shots” have in fact increased recent coronavirus infections (“post-vaccination spike”).
On the positive side, Israeli data confirms that natural immunity, acquired through previous infection, is much stronger and long-lasting – providing a protection up to 27 times higher than vaccination – thus opening up a realistic perspective to end the pandemic. Depending on the country, between 5% and 75% of the population have already acquired natural immunity.
In addition, Israel was the first country to confirm the rather troubling safety profile of covid vaccines, reporting a “murky wave of heart attacks” and an increase in all-cause mortality
– even in young people – already back in March and April 2021. By now,
serious and fatal cardiovascular and neurological covid vaccine adverse
events have been well documented (see updated overview). Globally, covid vaccines may already have killed or severely injured more than 100,000 people. Fist tap Dale.
nakedcapitalism | Hatred of The Other was supposed to a hallmark of the uneducated,
provincial, and intolerant. Yet we now see bloody, vicious fantasies
about what should happen to Them for being wrong-thinking and
wrong-acting being not just voiced freely, but even applauded.
The immediate manifestation is open hatred for the unvaxxed. The
Othering of them takes the form of depicting them as white Trump voting
Bubbas, when vaccination rates happen to be relatively low also among
blacks, Hispanics, and curiously, PhDs. In a belated admission that the
media stereotyping of the unvaxxed is too narrow, minority
vaccine-shunners are being rebranded as “vaccine deliberate.”1
One of the new big ways to despise The Bad (Presumed White) unvaxxed
is to depict them as unworthy of receiving medical care for Covid
because it’s supposedly their fault that they are in this fix. Yet no
one bats an eye at treating smokers for cancer and COPD, or STD victims
who presumably couldn’t be bothered to use a condom, or the overweight
for heart attacks and diabetes or drunks who smash themselves up with
their cars, or attempted suicides. If we’re going to go strong form
“only the deserving get treated,” we could probably shrink the size of
the medical industry by two-thirds.
And this sentiment is getting a following. Our IM Doc practices in one of the bluest counties in the US. A recent report:
During lunch in the doctor’s lounge word came that an
unvaccinated patient had died at the tertiary center he was sent last
night. 3 MDs sat at the table next to me and out loud something like
this – “WELL THAT DUMB ASS HAD IT COMING”. I sat for a moment and no one
else said a word. I could not believe it. I finally had to say
something – “My Chairman [a superstar of academic medicine and renown
medical ethicist] would have fired my ass on the spot for even thinking
something like that about an AIDS patient. That is completely
unprofessional and inappropriate to say that out loud.” THAT IS YOUR
OPINION, THESE DUMB BUTTS HAVE IT COMING – was the reply.
They are getting meaner and more brazen by the day – as the whole vaccine narrative continues to become unhinged more every day.
I am feeling that I am getting the idea what it was like to watch normal happy German citizens turn into the SS.
Admittedly I wasn’t there, but particularly coming from a clutch of doctors, this line of talk sounds a bit too much like Lebensunwertes Lebenfor my comfort.
The other justification for punishing the yahoos is that they pose a contagion threat.
The fury of self-designated members of the
elite towards people they don’t know or know only as stereotypes comes
off as a parent or authority who is enraged that they are being defied.
It’s not as if many or any are angry that hospital workers are being
driven to the breaking point, for instance, It’s because their sense of
how things should work is being defiled.
And that goes back to 2016. A big chunk of the folks who think they
are in charge by virtue being deserving had their collective Great Chain
of Being upended when Trump won. Trump then compounded his sin by
having a revolving collection of incompetents and loud-mouths in his
Administration. What was remarkable is that rather than coolly plotting
their comeback, the out group spent four years whining at the loudest
warble imaginable and focusing tremendous energy on the supposed Trump
show-stopper, Russiagate, that delivered a big fat squib.
If push comes to shove, the professional-managerial class cannot rely
on the support of the police. Look at how New York City’s finest openly
dissed De Blasio. The military are not supposed to operate domestically
and would likely use that prohibition to stand aside. The
professional-managerial class does not control the ports, trucking, or
rail operations. The crop-growing areas of California are under
conservative control. Etc.
So the members of the professional-managerial class are correct to be
insecure about their authority and claims of legitimacy. But going
authoritarian when they lack adequate control of supply lines and
enforcement mechanisms is an exceedingly risky wager.
permaculturenews | The next circle of denial revolves around what must inevitably come
to pass if the Goddess of Technology were to fail us: a series of wars
over ever more scarce resources. Paul Roberts, who is very well informed
on the subject of peak oil, has this to say: "what desperate states
have always done when resources turn scarce… [is] fight for them." [
MotherJones.com, 11/12 2004] Let us not argue that this has never
happened, but did it ever amount to anything more than a futile gesture
of desperation? Wars take resources, and, when resources are already
scarce, fighting wars over resources becomes a lethal exercise in
futility. Those with more resources would be expected to win. I am not
arguing that wars over resources will not occur. I am suggesting that
they will be futile, and that victory in these conflicts will be barely
distinguishable from defeat. I would also like to suggest that these
conflicts would be self-limiting: modern warfare uses up prodigious
amounts of energy, and if the conflicts are over oil and gas
installations, then they will get blown up, as has happened repeatedly
in Iraq. This will result in less energy being available and,
consequently, less warfare.
Take, for example, the last two US involvements in Iraq. In each
case, as a result of US actions, Iraqi oil production decreased. It now
appears that the whole strategy is a failure. Supporting Saddam, then
fighting Saddam, then imposing sanctions on Saddam, then finally
overthrowing him, has left Iraqi oil fields so badly damaged that the
"ultimate recoverable" estimate for Iraqi oil is now down to 10-12% of
what was once thought to be underground (according to the New York
Times).
Some people are even suggesting a war over resources with a nuclear
endgame. On this point, I am optimistic. As Robert McNamara once
thought, nuclear weapons are too difficult to use. And although he has
done a great deal of work to make them easier to use, with the
introduction of small, tactical, battlefield nukes and the like, and
despite recently renewed interest in nuclear "bunker busters," they
still make a bit of a mess, and are hard to work into any sort of a
sensible strategy that would reliably lead to an increased supply of
energy. Noting that conventional weapons have not been effective in this
area, it is unclear why nuclear weapons would produce better results.
But these are all details; the point I really want to make is that
proposing resource wars, even as a worst-case scenario, is still a form
of denial. The implicit assumption is this: if all else fails, we will
go to war; we will win; the oil will flow again, and we will be back to
business as usual in no time. Again, I would suggest against waiting
around for the success of a global police action to redirect the lion’s
share of the dwindling world oil supplies toward the United States.
Outside this last circle of denial lies a vast wilderness called the
Collapse of Western Civilization, roamed by the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, or so some people will have you believe. Here we find not
denial but escapism: a hankering for a grand finale, a heroic final
chapter. Civilizations do collapse – this is one of the best-known facts
about them – but as anyone who has read The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire will tell you, the process can take many centuries.
What tends to collapse rather suddenly is the economy. Economies,
too, are known to collapse, and do so with far greater regularity than
civilizations. An economy does not collapse into a black hole from which
no light can escape. Instead, something else happens: society begins to
spontaneously reconfigure itself, establish new relationships, and
evolve new rules, in order to find a point of equilibrium at a lower
rate of resource expenditure.
Note that the exercise carries a high human cost: without an economy,
many people suddenly find themselves as helpless as newborn babes. Many
of them die, sooner than they would otherwise: some would call this a
"die-off." There is a part of the population that is most vulnerable:
the young, the old, and the infirm; the foolish and the suicidal. There
is also another part of the population that can survive indefinitely on
insects and tree bark. Most people fall somewhere in between.
Economic collapse gives rise to new, smaller and poorer economies.
That pattern has been repeated many times, so we can reason inductively
about similarities and differences between a collapse that has already
occurred and one that is about to occur. Unlike astrophysicists, who can
confidently predict whether a given star will collapse into a neutron
star or a black hole based on measurements and calculations, we have to
work with general observations and anecdotal evidence. However, I hope
that my thought experiment will allow me to guess correctly at the
general shape of the new economy, and arrive at survival strategies that
may be of use to individuals and small communities.
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I would suggest – that making statements such as that sentence are really misleading to everyone but those who have been schooled in virology and vaccinology. Those words mean something completely different to me than my patients. The difference between an “infection” and a “transmissible infection” is debating angels on a pinhead for most people.
I get the feeling that they are realizing that the whole COVID vaccination story is getting shot through with holes – and they are pulling at straws.
I just had my front desk person read this article. A college graduate in English. She did not understand it the way it is being presented. Again – this is common BIG PHARMA dissembling.
It seems to me the argument here that most people get that the writer is trying to convey – is OH well – the COVID vaccine is not working out as well as we would hoped – but no big deal – neither did any other, when you really think about it and use arcane terms.
Nothing could be further from the truth –
When is the last time I saw a polio infection or a transmissable polio infection? NEVER
When is the last time I saw a smallpox infection or a transmissable smallpox infection? NEVER
I can go on with measles mumps, etc.
When is the last time I saw a COVID infection or a transmissable COVID infection – well I have seen 8 this AM – all in vaccinated patients.
And most people get that – and look sideways at articles like this trying to explain this away via word