Making Up Shit: When mRNA Gets Broken Through - They Now Call It "Super Immunity"

Forbes |  A breakthrough Covid-19 coronavirus infection may not be “super” to have. But can it actually give you what’s being called “super immunity” on social media? In other words, can a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection after being fully vaccinated against Covid-19 bring you even greater protection? Well, a research letter just published in JAMA offered a small window into this “super” possibility.

If you search for “super immunity” on social media you will find plenty of posts such as the following:

My husband and I were boosted almost a month ago. We (unfortunately) did not gain any superpowers but we DO have super immunity against Omicron which does sound like a supervillain name so I feel like it counts. Get boosted if you are able to prevent major illness <3 https://t.co/HbzYWL2z1M

— Surena Marie 🍓 (@SurenaXMarie) December 17, 2021

You’ll also find mention of the study described by the JAMA research letter. For example, Monica Gandhi MD, MPH, a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and HIV researcher, used the terms “hybrid immunity” and “super immunity” when tweeting about the study:

This study shows this too in delta breakthrough infections from Provincetown. Of note, this study also looks at T cells; JAMA study specifically showed increase in IgA levels which are the mucosal antibodyhttps://t.co/StZ5neUFVc

— Monica Gandhi MD, MPH (@MonicaGandhi9) December 16, 2021

She called it “hybrid immunity,” because the potentially boosted immune protection may come from a combination of vaccination and then subsequent infection. Gandhi also referenced another study described in a pre-print uploaded to MedRxiv that drew blood from 35 vaccinated individuals in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 14 of whom had had subsequent breakthrough infections. This pre-print described how the blood of the breakthrough infection group had 28-fold higher levels of binding antibodies and 34-fold higher levels of neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant than the blood of the rest. This study also looked at another measure of immune protection, how the individual’s T cells responded to the virus, a measure that I described previously for Forbes. Those with breakthrough infections had a 4.4-fold higher Spike protein-specific CD8+ T cell responses against the Delta variant than the rest of the study participants. Take all the results from this pre-print with a Ugg boot full of salt though. Anyone with a laptop, an Internet connection, and opposable thumbs can upload a pre-print. It is not the same as a peer-reviewed study published in a reputable scientific journal.

Elites Getting Nervous About Their Deliberate Suppression Of Treatment Protocols

 covid19criticalcare | Science marches on!

We are a group of expert clinicians who are driven only by our desire to save lives.  We continually update our protocols based on clinical observations as well as the best studies of modes of prevention and treatment therapies for COVID-19.   For our latest, most comprehensive clinical guide to the management of COVID-19, please click the following text, or the box below the logos, to read and download  “An Overview of the MATH+, I-MASK+ and I-RECOVER Protocols, A Guide to the Management of COVID-19”, by Dr. Paul Marik.

Studies recently affecting our protocols:

• Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honored distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19
• Gender‐based disparities in COVID-19 patient outcomes
• Effect of nitazoxanide in adults and adolescents with acute uncomplicated influenza: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, phase 2b/3 trial

In October of 2020, ivermectin was adopted as a core medication in our protocols for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. For more information on ivermectin please go to our new Ivermectin in COVID-19 page. You can also read our review paper, which was published in the May 1, 2021, edition of the American Journal of Therapeutics as the “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19”.

Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine that is on the WHO’s list of essential medicines, has been given 3.7 billion times around the globe, and has won the Nobel prize in 2015 for its global and historic impacts in eradicating endemic parasitic infections in many parts of the world. Ivermectin has proven to be highly potent against COVID-19. It has shown antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties in observational and randomized controlled studies conducted throughout the world. Practitioners and Health Ministries who have adopted Ivermectin in treatment protocols report significant reductions in time to recovery, hospitalizations, and death. The use of Ivermectin as prophylaxis and prevention has also been proven in studies to reduce the spread of infection and offer protection to high-risk individuals.

Support for Ivermectin in the use of prophylaxis can be found here: https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/ivermectin-as-prophylaxis-against-covid19-retrospective-cases-evaluati…

San Francisco Elites Must've Taken London Breed To The Woodshed...,

NYTimes |  The mayor of San Francisco on Friday made a sharp break with the liberal conventions that have guided her city for decades, declaring a state of emergency in one of its most crime-infested neighborhoods.

Mayor London Breed’s announcement came just days after she emphasized the need for the police to clean up what she has described as “nasty streets.” At a news conference at City Hall, steps away from where drug dealers openly peddle fentanyl and methamphetamines, she said, “We are in a crisis and we need to respond accordingly.” She added, “Too many people are dying in this city, too many people are sprawled on our streets.”

The neighborhood, the Tenderloin, has been ground zero for drug dealing, overdose deaths and homelessness for years. But Ms. Breed said in an interview that she reached her “breaking point” in recent weeks after meeting with families with children who live in the Tenderloin and said they felt constantly threatened.

Her actions and startlingly blunt language were a marked change in tone and policy in a city that has been polarized over homeless encampments and open-air drug use. Elected as a liberal Democrat, she spoke this week about “a reign of criminals,” trash strewn across neighborhoods full of “feces and urine,” and shoplifting at high-end stores that she called “mass looting events.”

Joe D’Alessandro, president and chief executive of the San Francisco tourism bureau, said the city had an image problem and praised the mayor for addressing it.

“We are excited and enthusiastic to see some significant steps to make San Francisco a safer city,” he said. “People are just fed up with some of the stuff they’ve seen and want to see some action.”

The announcement of a state of emergency specifically targeted the drug overdose crisis: More than twice as many people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco last year as died from the coronavirus. But Friday’s announcement is part of a broader, aggressive push to crack down on drug dealing and improve conditions. In practical terms, Ms. Breed said the city would no longer tolerate illicit drug users in the streets — giving them a choice between treatment or arrest.

Biden Administration Under Fire For Ignoring "The Science"

WaPo |  The U.S. government, over the past few weeks, has made three important decisions on vaccines without consulting independent panels of experts. On Nov. 19, the Food and Drug Administration authorized boosters for all adults — regardless of their job or any underlying health conditions. On Nov. 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that everyone 18 and above should get a booster shot, a revision of previous guidance that strongly recommended boosters only for those 50 and older. Then, on Dec. 9, the FDA authorized booster shots (of Pfizer) for 16- and 17-year-olds, moving the age of eligibility down from 18.

Before last month, the standard practice was for the agencies to convene standing outside advisory committees, whose members inspect the relevant data, debate it and vote. That did not happen in these cases, meaning that the costs and benefits of these policy moves, from a medical perspective, were not fully aired publicly and discussed in advance.

One of us is the former deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review; the other is a former acting chief scientist at the FDA. We believe that much is lost when decisions like these are made without consulting outside experts — whatever one believes about the merits of the policies in question.

At this point in the pandemic, the world faces a host of new questions related to vaccines and boosting. The recommendations of experts on the outside advisory committees are needed more than ever — so the scientific community can understand the empirical bases for decisions, and so the public can be assured that science, not politics, is driving vaccine policy.

Facing omicron feels like when a patient has relapsed

In each of the recent decisions we’ve mentioned, at least some experts would probably have voiced opposition (based on earlier scientific debates and votes the two committees had taken, which supported different conclusions). That these experts were not given a chance to make their cases could hurt the credibility of these agencies. (In a poll published in May, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 75 percent of American adults said they trusted the FDA a great deal or somewhat, with 24 percent saying they felt not much trust or none.)

This area of research is fast-moving, and much changed between the most recent meetings of the expert committees (on the booster question) and the FDA’s decision to authorize boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds — notably the emergence of the omicron variant. Still, the lack of involvement of the FDA’s expert panel on that question was striking, and observers noticed. Helen Branswell, a senior writer for the health and science publication STAT News, tweeted that the FDA had “authorized Pfizer booster shots for 16- & 17-years olds, without asking its vax expert panel for advice.” She added, “This approach sidesteps what would likely have been lengthy discussion about myocarditis” — an uncommon side effect of the mRNA vaccines, which had drawn careful study in earlier steps of the approval process.

In a news release, the FDA explained that it didn’t convene the outside committee because approving boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds “does not raise questions that would benefit from additional discussion by committee members.” But that is unpersuasive, given the previously expressed views of panel members. The CDC has not explained why it did not convene its own panel of vaccine experts for its recent decision.

Somebody's Gonna Stick Thiel In An Oven For His Degeneracy...,

thescrum  |   Peter Thiel made his initial fortune by cofounding (and then selling) the electronic-payments service PayPal. Since that time, Thiel has created various other enterprises, ranging from venture-capital firms such as Founders Fund to a data-analysis firm named Palantir. In addition to his success as a venture capitalist, Thiel is member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Meeting, an annual conference where European and American elites discuss how to maintain and promote free-market capitalism. He supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a highlight of which was Thiel’s delivery of a pro–Trump speech at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. In that speech, Thiel explained Trump’s rise as a response to national decline resulting from the damaging consequences of free trade, out-of-control militarism, increasingly expensive health care, rising student debt, and stagnant wages. Jamie Galbraith, as noted in Part 1 of this essay, shares many of these concerns.

Thiel’s explanation for our national decline has been delivered, with much more detail, in various other formats over recent years. An essay Thiel wrote for the National Review (2011) elaborates his declinist viewpoint. In that essay, “The End of the Future,” Thiel argues that technological and scientific progress, the basis for economic growth, has stalled out. The lack of innovation in energy, agriculture, medicine, and science in general, he contends, has cut into standards of living that can no longer be attenuated by accumulation of consumer debt and cheap goods from free-trade partners, particularly China. Even gains in the digital tech sector, where Thiel made his initial fortune, he explains as having stalled out and now amount to illusory productivity.

So far, Galbraith and Thiel seem to be traversing similar paths, especially as regards the impediments to growth of rising resource costs and increased digitization. However, Thiel diverges from the progressive Galbraith and speculates that the decline in technological innovation has been concealed by battles over identity politics. It is here Thiel begins to bring questions of culture and psychology into his inquiry. As he puts it:

Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere.

Thiel fleshed out his proposal for dealing with this decline in a speech delivered at the first National Conservativism Conference, in July 2019. In “The Star Trek Computer Is Not Enough,” he retraces the ground covered in his earlier National Review essay while also exploring new themes. He assails Silicon Valley for its lack of innovation and its too-close-for-comfort relationship with China, while also attacking China for its unfair trade practices.

Later in the speech, Thiel also delivers a jeremiad against higher education for handing out overrated, grade-inflated educations and saddling students with debt. He claims that, as mentioned in the National Review piece, the American left ignores national decline by obsessing about identity politics, while the right is in a state of denial about national decline as it insists that the U.S. is “exceptional” and immune to such decay. This is Thiel’s argument for registering a psychological component in any effort to achieve the national solidarity necessary to channel government resources into reversing decline. Indeed, Thiel, who is known for his adherence to libertarian philosophy, acknowledges that government in the past was capable of achieving amazing feats, such the Manhattan Project and the Interstate Highway System. Its shambolic response to the Covid–19 pandemic stands as tragic testimony to the lapse of “can-do” America.

What, then, is this psychological factor that can reverse our national decline, so overcoming the hurdles on right and left? This is Thiel’s question. His reply appears to be the use of René Girard’s famous scapegoat mechanism to break a societal bottleneck.

 

Corporate Media Spreads Most Disinformation And Squeals Loudest About Disagreement

greenwald  |  The war on "disinformation” is now one of the highest priorities of the political and media establishment. It has become the foundational justification for imposing a regime of online censorship. Around the world, new laws are being enacted in its name to empower the state to regulate discourse. Exploiting this cause, a small handful of billionaires are working in unison with Western security state agencies — under the guise of neutral-sounding names like The Atlantic Council — to set the limits of permissible thought and decree what is true and false. Corporate media outlets are attempting to rehabilitate their shattered image by depicting themselves as the bulwark against the rising tide of disinformation.

It is an understatement to say that this righteous cause is a scam. That its motive is power and control over speech and thought — to eliminate dissent and discredit competition — rather than a noble quest for truth is almost too self-evident to require explanation. No human institutions should be trusted with the inherently tyrannical power they seek to arrogate unto themselves: to decree truth and falsity with such authoritative power that views they have decreed "false” become prohibited, off-limits, even worthy of punishment. 

On December 10, MSNBC aired a segment on Morning Joe — a purported news report featuring its host Joe Scarborough, the former GOP Congressman from Florida, and its regular paid contributor Claire McCaskill, the former two-term Democratic Senator from Missouri — that packed one lie after the next into two short minutes. The duo was purporting to explain to its audience the implications of last week's ruling by a British court approving the Biden DOJ's request to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges in connection with the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks, in partnership with numerous mainstream media outlets, of a cache of secret documents revealing various war crimes, lies and corruptions on the part of the U.S. and UK governments and their allies.

Within the span of two minutes, these NBC personalities told four blatant lies about the Assange case. I do not mean that they asserted dubious opinions or questionable narratives or even misleading claims. I mean that they outright lied about four separate matters that are crucial to understanding the Biden administration's attempted extradition and prosecution of Assange. These lies were not just misleading but pernicious, as they were designed not merely to mislead the public but to provoke them to believe that one of the gravest attacks on press freedom in years — the imprisonment of a journalist for the crime of reporting true and accurate information about the crimes of power centers — is something viewers should applaud rather than denounce.

We took the time to dissect this segment and to amass the dispositive proof of their multiple lies not because we think Scarborough and McCaskill will pay any price or will have to retract any of this. Of course they will not. They are doing their job, which is to lie in a way that flatters the ideological preconceptions of NBC viewers, who hate Assange due to the role his reporting played in harming the Democratic Party during the 2016 election, which Hillary Clinton herself claims was one of the two primary reasons she lost.

We did this video report in order to illustrate how easily and reflexively these corporate outlets lie; to demonstrate that the public's view that these outlets are completely untrustworthy and contemptible is valid and correct; and to set the record straight about the Assange case. We realize that not all subscribers here want to watch a one-hour video, and for that reason — as we do with all of the video reports we produce — we will shortly publish a written transcript of the program for our Substack subscribers. But I really hope people will take the time to watch this particular video: since the lies came in the form of video, we therefore concluded that using video to highlight the severity and intentionality of this lying was the most effective way to demonstrate how noxious it really is.

 

Exact Same Words And Patterns Deployed To Describe The Retail Crime Wave...,

THREAD. I noticed something fascinating: many of the reporters concocting the new hysteria over "retail theft" are using the *exact same* words and patterns in each story. It's pretty wild. Let's take a look:

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) December 12, 2021

No Time Or Place Or Space For Thee - But Eternity's For Meeee...,

euronews  |  What if you could live forever? It's a question long pondered by fictional supervillains and Silicon Valley billionaires alike.

Now researchers in Japan say they may have taken a step toward boosting human longevity with successful trials of a vaccine against the cells that contribute to the ageing process.

In laboratory trials, a drug targeting a protein contained in senescent cells - those which have naturally stopped reproducing themselves - slowed the progression of frailty in older mice, the researchers from Tokyo's Juntendo University said.

The vaccine also successfully targeted the senescent cells in fatty tissue and blood vessels, suggesting it could have a positive impact on other medical conditions linked to ageing.

"We can expect that (the vaccine) will be applied to the treatment of arterial stiffening, diabetes and other ageing-related diseases," Juntendo professor Toru Minamino told Japan's Jiji news agency.

What is cellular senescence?

Cells become senescent when they stop duplicating themselves, often in response to naturally-occurring damage to their DNA. Cellular senescence is thought to contribute to the ageing process itself, as well as ageing-related diseases like Alzheimer's and some cancers.

"Senescent cells secrete a series of factors that disrupt the function of the tissue," Dr Salvador Macip, head of the University of Leicester's Mechanisms of Cancer and Ageing Lab, told Euronews Next.

"They 'call' cells from the immune system, in theory to be cleared by them (but that eventually fails) and create a chronic low level inflammation, mixed with fibrosis," Macip said.

Macip was part of an international team of academics from universities in the UK, Spain, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia that published research on another method of tackling senescent cells in October this year.

"The biological process of ageing is very complex, therefore it is unlikely that one single strategy will completely stop it or reverse it. However, there are probably many ways to slow it down, and clearing senescent cells seems to be one of the easiest and potentially more effective," he said.

 

 

 

With VR Now Woke-And-Ruined Toyota Keeps Its Eye On Miniaturized Murder

techxplore |  The main objective of the recent study by Ozaki and his colleagues was to power an insect-size flying robot using no-contact, wireless charging technology. The robot created by the researchers is essentially comprised of a flapping, piezoelectric actuator that is powered through a 5 GHz dipole antenna.

"One of our robot's key features is a highly efficient flapping actuation, which is achieved using high-power single-crystal piezoelectric material and a low-loss layout with two wings facing each other, like clapping hands," Ozaki said. "This design enables a power-to-weight efficiency comparable to that of live insects."

A key challenge encountered by engineers who are trying to create miniature size robots is the thermal runaway caused by power losses. To overcome this challenge, Ozaki and his colleagues optimized their robot's circuit design, ensuring that components that generate heat were not placed closely together or next to each other.

In addition, the researchers used a radiofrequency power receiver with a power-to-weight density that is significantly higher than that of off-the-shelf lithium polymer batteries with a similar mass. This significantly improved the robot's efficiency and operating time.

"I think that our most important finding is that a sub-gram circuit can receive and handle high power of over 1 W at a distance via an RF wave," Ozaki said. "This suggests that not only flying robots but also various other applications that require large power in a small size can be realized without batteries."

To evaluate the effectiveness of their design, Ozaki and his colleagues carried out a series of experiments. In these tests, they were able to make the insect-size robot take off seamlessly and without the need for batteries or wires.

The robot created by this team of researchers weighs only 1.8g, thus it is over 25 times lighter than other radiofrequency-powered micro-sized vehicles developed in the past. In the future, it could thus prove to be highly valuable for conducting complex missions that entail entering cracks, pipes or other highly confined spaces.

"In this paper, we have successfully demonstrated takeoff," Ozaki said. "The next step is to combine this power supply technology with attitude control to make this robot hover and move freely in the air. We believe that this is technically possible, as we have already succeeded in controlling the robot's attitude with wired power."

Metaverse Already Distorted To Accomodate An Infinitesimally Small Slice Of The Mentally Ill

technologyreview |  Last week, Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access to its virtual-reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds. Early descriptions of the platform make it seem fun and wholesome, drawing comparisons to Minecraft. In Horizon Worlds, up to 20 avatars can get together at a time to explore, hang out, and build within the virtual space.

But not everything has been warm and fuzzy. According to Meta, on November 26, a beta tester reported something deeply troubling: she had been groped by a stranger on Horizon Worlds. On December 1, Meta revealed that she’d posted her experience in the Horizon Worlds beta testing group on Facebook.

Meta’s internal review of the incident found that the beta tester should have used a tool called “Safe Zone” that’s part of a suite of safety features built into Horizon Worlds. Safe Zone is a protective bubble users can activate when feeling threatened. Within it, no one can touch them, talk to them, or interact in any way until they signal that they would like the Safe Zone lifted.

Vivek Sharma, the vice president of Horizon, called the groping incident “absolutely unfortunate,” telling The Verge, “That’s good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable.”

It’s not the first time a user has been groped in VR—nor, unfortunately, will it be the last. But the incident shows that until companies work out how to protect participants, the metaverse can never be a safe place.

“There I was, being virtually groped”

When Aaron Stanton heard about the incident at Meta, he was transported to October 2016. That was when a gamer, Jordan Belamire, penned an open letter on Medium describing being groped in Quivr, a game Stanton co-designed in which players, equipped with bow and arrows, shoot zombies.

In the letter, Belamire described entering a multiplayer mode, where all characters were exactly the same save for their voices. “In between a wave of zombies and demons to shoot down, I was hanging out next to BigBro442, waiting for our next attack. Suddenly, BigBro442’s disembodied helmet faced me dead-on. His floating hand approached my body, and he started to virtually rub my chest. ‘Stop!’ I cried … This goaded him on, and even when I turned away from him, he chased me around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened, he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing.

“There I was, being virtually groped in a snowy fortress with my brother-in-law and husband watching.”

Stanton and his cofounder, Jonathan Schenker, immediately responded with an apology and an in-game fix. Avatars would be able to stretch their arms into a V gesture, which would automatically push any offenders away.

Stanton, who today leads the VR Institute for Health and Exercise, says Quivr didn’t track data about that feature, “nor do I think it was used much.” But Stanton thinks about Belamire often and wonders if he could have done more in 2016 to prevent the incident that occurred in Horizon Worlds a few weeks ago. “There’s so much more to be done here,” he says. “No one should ever have to flee from a VR experience to escape feeling powerless.”

VR sexual harassment is sexual harassment, full stop

A recent review of the events around Belamire’s experience published in the journal for the Digital Games Research Association found that “many online responses to this incident were dismissive of Belamire’s experience and, at times, abusive and misogynistic … readers from all perspectives grappled with understanding this act given the virtual and playful context it occurred in.” Belamire faded from view, and I was unable to find her online.

A constant topic of debate on message boards after Belamire’s Medium article was whether or not what she had experienced was actually groping if her body wasn’t physically touched.

“I think people should keep in mind that sexual harassment has never had to be a physical thing,” says Jesse Fox, an associate professor at Ohio State University who researches the social implications of virtual reality. “It can be verbal, and yes, it can be a virtual experience as well.

 

Was The Covid Treatment Protocol A Medical Industrial "Cash For Death" Scheme?

lewrockwell |  The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a private medical organization founded in 1943, has the story — “Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19” (11/17/21), authored by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D.

Here are stunning excerpts:

“Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol…for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate…”

“As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.”

“The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).”

“In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, ‘CMS has granted “waivers” of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.’…The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”

“Creating a ‘National Pandemic Emergency’ provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These ‘bounties’ must paid back if not ‘earned’ by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.”

“The hospital payments include:

* A ‘free’ required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.

* Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

* Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.

* A 20 percent ‘boost’ bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.

* Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.

* More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.

* A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.”

“CMS implemented ‘value-based’ payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.”

“Outside hospitals, physician MIPS [Merit-based Incentive Payment System] quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.”

“Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.”   Fist tap Big Don.

Aerosol Scientist Discovers Failure Of Political Economy And Elite Narrative Strategy All The Way Down

Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. I need to be very clear: vaccines alone will not get any country out of this crisis.
It’s not vaccines instead of masks, distancing, ventilation or hand hygiene.
Do it all. Do it consistently. Do it well. pic.twitter.com/YAVfJXsviQ

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 14, 2021

twitter | 1/ Why is there such EXTREME RESISTANCE by @WHO, @CDCgov and IPC(*) to clearly state that COVID-19 is a dominantly AIRBORNE disease?

TLDR: see slide

*: IPC: Infection Prevention and Control scientists and professionals 

2/ This is extremely puzzling, as it is now extremely obvious that airborne transmission is DOMINANT for COVID-19.

There are mountains of evidence, e.g. as summarized in our @TheLancet publication.

And NO evidence whatsoever for droplets or surfaces!

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1383566908797059078

3/ I've pondered this question a lot. I've been involved in discussions with @WHO, many IPC and public health researchers and practitioners, politicians in multiple countries etc.

This thread summarizes my understanding of the causes of this situation. I look forward to comments

4/ Early in pandemic, a major historical error in the understanding of the IPC field played a major role

"Droplet transmission" was an important concept in that field... and it is an error that dates from 1910!!

This thread has long version (here short):

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708

5/ The concept of "sprayborne droplet transmission" was used by Charles Chapin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V…), a prominent US Public Health researcher (later pres. of APHA), to explain the EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION that transmission increases in close proximity and decreases with distance

Charles V. Chapin - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V._Chapin

6/ As of the start of the pandemic, @WHO and @CDCgov were completely stuck on the concepts from Chapin (e.g. his seminal 1910 book: ), as exemplified by this @WHO video showing the sprayborne droplets as explanation why distance reduces transmission:

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1244258441880797184

7/ The problem is that Chapin had made an error. He was pushing "contact infection" that he had conceptualized, and encountered a lot of resistance (his book: archive.org/details/source…).

The sources and modes of infection : Chapin, Charles V. (Charles Value), 1856-1941 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/sourcesmodesofin00ch

8/ Chapin was very intelligent, and was well aware that short-range airborne transmission could also explain why distance reduced transmission: we breathe less exhaled air from someone else as we increased distance

Curious: Delta Wave Was Driven By The Vaxxed Old, Omicron By The Vaxxed Young....,

💉 The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people, according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa https://t.co/bTRIBFsCc7

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) December 14, 2021

telegraph | The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people, according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa.

The new variant has now been detected in more than 60 countries, including 24 in Europe, with a similar pattern of infection and characteristics being reported across the globe.

But while the speed and the vaccine evading properties of the virus are now established, there is as yet no firm verdict on its virulence or severity.

“Generally those first cases are in relatively young, relatively healthy and – in the context of Europe – in relatively highly vaccinated groups,” Dr Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergency officer at the World Health Organization’s Europe office, told the Telegraph.

Data from Denmark – a world leader in genetic sequencing – shows that, of 3,437 omicron cases detected, just over 70 per cent have been among those younger than 40, according to the breakdown from the Statens Serum Institut published on Monday.

Some 75 per cent of these cases were in fully vaccinated individuals, the institute added, confirming that even the double jabbed can carry the virus.

Daily cases in Denmark have surged by a third since early December, despite almost 80 per cent of the population being double vaccinated.

The country tightened restrictions at the end of last week – introducing a midnight curfew on bars and restaurants and closing schools early for the Christmas holidays – but experts estimate omicron could become the dominant variant as soon as Wednesday.

Neighbouring Norway, which has so far reported 958 cases, also introduced new Covid control measures on Monday, with the Prime Minister warning that the situation is “serious”.

Preliminary data suggests the pattern of spread is, so far, similar worldwide.

Analysis from the European Centre for Disease Control found 72 per cent of early cases were in those under 40, while the US said the majority of the 43 infections detected so far were in this same age bracket. American authorities also revealed that 79 per cent of people infected were vaccinated.

Prof Emmanuel Andre, head of the national reference lab for Covid-19 in Belgium, said the country is two weeks behind the UK, where omicron cases jumped by 50 per cent on Monday and the first death with the variant was confirmed.

“Most infections documented at this early stage are among younger age groups,” he told the Telegraph, citing work, travel, sports competitions and schools as possible explanations. But Prof Andre added that Christmas celebrations could “amplify” omicron’s spread.

 

 

Stigmatizing The UnVaxxed An Egregious "Identity Politics" Overreach And Governance FAIL!

opendemocracy  |  Neoliberalism was the form of capitalism that came, chronologically, after colonialism, driving markets back into the public sectors of the former colonial powers, allowing capital to monetise and extract wealth from their soft underbellies. Surveillance capitalism, led by the data giants, is taking its place.

As academic and writer Shoshana Zuboff has argued, under surveillance capitalism, the new biggest companies on the planet make money from drilling markets into our souls. Facebook, Google and Amazon profit by turning each of us into an individual cell of their vast, multidimensional spreadsheets, and pinning us into these corners with endless streams of advertisements telling us who we are and what we need to buy to make us whole.

As cultural politics lecturer Ben Little points out to me, it shouldn’t be any surprise that people respond to a breed of capitalism that exists to sell them new versions of their own identities by pushing back, by insisting that that’s not who they are, nor what it means to be who they are.

Data giants, Little says, want our identities to be hard, static and regimented, so we “align more neatly with commodities”. Anything that challenges this, he argues, “becomes a form of resistance not just to traditional forms of conservative hierarchy” but also to the very logic of modern capitalism.

Largely, this resistance isn’t done individually: it’s done through collective exploration and expression. Because while social media tries to profit by selling people versions of who they might be, it also creates opportunities for connections that allow people to discuss and discover other versions of themselves.

Ultimately, identity is never an individual matter. It’s always about how we relate to each other and make sense of society: if I was the only person I’d ever met, I wouldn’t see myself as having a race or a class or a gender. But it’s also about how we’re related to, and made by, society. The construction of how we see ourselves in the world is always an iterative process – Facebook imposes its algorithm and we build our own groups.

And this isn’t new. National identities were largely invented when capitalist printing presses convened communities in the 19th century. Social media allows people to gather from across the planet in their own communities. Gender roles were foisted on people by church, state and capital. More than ever, we are getting together and reinventing them. The class system was built to facilitate control, and racial hierarchies to justify empire, and people like the Common Sense Group feel a deep sense of moral panic when these identities are prodded, poked and pulled apart.

 

The Show Me State Says "Let Her Rip!"

arstechnica  |  As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise sharply in Missouri, local health departments are abandoning efforts to stop the spread of the pandemic disease, saying their hands have been tied by the state's attorney general and a recent court ruling.

One local agency, the Laclede County Health Department, northeast of Springfield, announced that it has ceased all COVID-19-related work, including case investigations, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and public announcements of current cases and deaths.

"While this is a huge concern for our agency, we have no other options but to follow the orders of the Missouri Attorney General at this time," the department wrote in a Facebook post on December 9.

Laclede county, which has around 35,000 residents, is averaging 17 new cases per day, a 71 percent increase over two weeks, and test positivity sits at around 9 percent. Hospitalizations have risen 48 percent in the last two weeks. Only 35 percent of the county is fully vaccinated.

Overall, Missouri is currently seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases. The state is averaging over 2,700 new COVID-19 cases per day, a 68 percent increase over the past two weeks. Daily hospitalizations are averaging over 1,700, a 45 percent increase over the past two weeks. Approximately 52 percent of the state is fully vaccinated, well below national coverage, and around a dozen of the state's 114 counties have vaccination percentages in the 20s. 

Still, health officials in Laclede and elsewhere are pulling back rather than ramping up health prevention measures, citing a December 7 letter from state Attorney General Eric Schmitt. The letter informed them of a recent court ruling that stripped state health agencies of a variety of disease-prevention powers, particularly regarding issuing isolation and quarantine orders. "You should stop enforcing and publicizing any such orders immediately," the letter read.

Further Reading

Missouri AG wages war on masks as state blazes with delta cases

The ruling comes from Judge Daniel Green of the Cole County Circuit Court, who entered a judgment on November 22 in the case of Shannon Robinson, et. al., v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). Robinson and her co-plaintiffs challenged health agencies' powers to issue restrictions to prevent the spread of disease, such as ordering quarantines. Attorney General Schmitt defended DHSS in the case and has refused to appeal its outcome.

Green ruled, essentially, that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate disease prevention powers to unelected health officials.

"The authority that the DHSS regulations purport to grant to an administrative official to implement control measures and create and enforce orders is open-ended discretion—a catch-all to permit naked lawmaking by bureaucrats throughout Missouri," Green wrote in his judgment.

Specifically, Green ruled that regulations 19 CSR 20-20.040(2) G-I, 19 CSR 20-20.040(6), and 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) all violate the state's constitution (codes found here, highlighted in yellow). Collectively, those regulations charge local health authorities with the responsibility of establishing disease-control measures, investigating clusters or outbreaks of illness, and implementing appropriate control measures when necessary. Those control measures can include isolation, quarantine, disinfection, immunization, establishment closures, notification of people potentially exposed, and communication with the public over potential risks and prevention strategies. Regulation 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) specifically deals with quarantine and isolation powers and authorizes closures of schools and other public and private gathering places.

Green wrote in his judgment that local health officials should refrain from taking actions on communicable disease prevention "that require independent discretion in a manner inconsistent with this opinion."

 

Jackson County Mask Mandate Gets Slapped To The Pavement

fox4kc  |  The Jackson County Legislature voted against a mask mandate Monday morning. The resolution failed by a vote of 5-4.

Supporters of the resolution cited an increase in COVID-19 cases in the county as one of the reasons the mandate was necessary.

“Jackson County, as well as the surrounding counties, are classified as high transmission areas,” Bridgette Shaffer, director of the Jackson County Health Department, told legislators before the vote.

Shaffer also said Jackson County has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases for six weeks in a row with a 150% case rate increase. She reported that every age group has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases from October to November. Because of that, the Jackson County Health Department said it recommends masking.

Jackson County Executive Frank White said he also supports the resolution.

“Politics is temporary; health care is forever. So we just have to remember that this is an issue that has become publicized and politicalized,” White said.

“I think we have to do everything we possibly can to save lives,” Jackson County Legislator Ronald Finley said.

But not everyone agreed with the idea during Monday’s meeting.

“There are a number of issues with this legislation that makes it even inappropriate for us to consider a vote on. First of all, it is against state Statute 67.265, which places a 180-day prohibition on expired or terminated health orders,” Jackson County Legislator Jeanie Lauer said.

Monday’s vote came a month after Jackson County Legislators voted to end the county’s mask mandate.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also said the mask mandate is illegal and warned legislators in a letter on Friday.

 

Pfizer Bets On Bowel Disease

cnbc  | Pfizer said on Monday it would buy drug developer Arena Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion in cash, to add a promising treatment candidate that targets diseases affecting the stomach and intestine.

The $100 per share offer is double the last closing price of Arena’s shares, which surged 92% to $95.90 in premarket trading.

This is the latest deal Pfizer has struck this year to expand its treatment pipeline. The company last month acquired immuno-oncology company Trillium Therapeutics for about $2.22 billion to strengthen its arsenal of blood cancer therapies.

Arena is developing several treatments for gastroenterology, dermatology and cardiology. Its lead candidate, etrasimod, is being tested in a late-stage study in ulcerative colitis, as well as a mid-to-late stage study in Crohn’s disease, both types of inflammatory bowel diseases that cause ulcers in the digestive tract.

Pfizer is also developing a treatment for ulcerative colitis, a chronic and inflammatory bowel disease that affects 3 million people in the United States. The candidate is currently in a mid-stage study, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

“The proposed acquisition of Arena complements our capabilities and expertise in inflammation and immunology,” Pfizer executive Mike Gladstone said, adding the company plans to accelerate the clinical development of etrasimod.

″(Arena) was our top pick for 2022, so Christmas came a bit early... We would not expect another bidder to come in at this point,” said Wells Fargo analyst Derek Archila.

Archila said he expects positive data from the late-stage trial based on etrasimod’s performance in an earlier study. He estimated peak sales of $2.5 billion, assuming the treatment is approved and is found to be more effective than Bristol Myers Squibb’s currently-approved Zeposia.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.  Fist tap Big Don.

 

Rep. Jonathan Carroll Told To Stick His Unvaxxed Tax Straight Up His Funky Ass..,

suntimes  |  After receiving “violent threats,” a state rep from suburban Cook County won’t pursue a proposal requiring unvaccinated Illinoisans to pay their health care expenses — including hospital bills — out of pocket if they contract COVID-19.

State Rep. Jonathan Carroll, D-Northbrook, said in a statement Thursday that he decided not to pursue the legislation he filed earlier in the week because of the “unintended divisive nature” of the proposal. He has since filed a motion with the clerk of the Illinois House to table the measure.

He added that based on feedback and further reflection on the legislation “we need to heal as a country and work together on commonsense solutions to put the pandemic behind us.”

“Since taking office, I’ve always tried to have civil discourse with those who’ve disagreed with me,” Carroll said. “However, violent threats made against me, my family and my staff are reprehensible. I hope we can return to a more positive discourse on public health, especially when it comes to this pandemic that has tired us all.”

In an interview with the Sun-Times, Carroll said the violent threats from a “bunch of different people” included death threats and racial slurs and mentioned Carroll’s wife and children. Someone even sent an email to Carroll’s rabbi, threatening the synagogue he attends. Carroll said he reported the threats to the Illinois State Police, who declined to comment.

Someone also published his home address on Twitter; Carroll reported that to the social media site and the information was removed. 

“This is ridiculous,” Carroll said. “We just can’t have a reasonable conversation anymore, we can’t have conversations with people about these things. I’ve heard from reasonable people that do disagree with my bill — and I appreciate them being reasonable and I appreciate them making their point — but if you want to just go the route of calling people names, and calling people like racial slurs, and threatening them and things like that, it’s impossible to have conversations at that point.”

 

Google "Frist HCA" If You Want To Appreciate The Irony Of Frist Interviewing Faulkner...,

LATimes  |  Ridiculous, seemingly arbitrary price markups are a defining characteristic of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system — and a key reason Americans pay more for treatment than anyone else in the world.

But to see price hikes of as much as 675% being imposed in real time, automatically, by a hospital’s computer system still takes your breath away.

I got to view this for myself after a former operating-room nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas shared with me screenshots of the facility’s electronic health record system.

The nurse asked that I not use her name because she’s now working at a different Southern California medical facility and worries that her job could be endangered.

Her screenshots, taken earlier this year, speak for themselves.

What they show are price hikes ranging from 575% to 675% being automatically generated by the hospital’s software.

The eye-popping increases are so routine, apparently, the software even displays the formula it uses to convert reasonable medical costs to billed amounts that are much, much higher.

For example, one screenshot is for sutures — that is, medical thread, a.k.a. stitches. Scripps’ system put the basic “cost per unit” at $19.30.

But the system said the “computed charge per unit” was $149.58. This is how much the patient and his or her insurer would be billed.

The system helpfully included a formula for reaching this amount: "$149.58 = $19.30 + ($19.30 x 675%).”

You read that right. Scripps’ automated system took the actual cost of sutures, imposed an apparently preset 675% markup and produced a billed amount that was orders of magnitude higher than the true price.

This is separate from any additional charges for the doctor, anesthesiologist, X-rays or hospital facilities.

Call it institutionalized price gouging. And it’s apparently widespread because the same or similar software is used by other hospitals nationwide, including UCLA, and around the world.

Why The American Military Industrial Complex Is In A Costly Freefall

spectator |  (Ret.) Col. Doug Macgregor, writing in the American Conservative in October:

The generals always knew that the public admission of failure would not simply throw 20 years of graft and deceit into sharp relief; such an admission would expose the four stars themselves to serious scrutiny. To explain the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan state and the inexcusable waste of American blood and treasure, the American people would discover the long process of moral and professional decline in the senior ranks of the Army and the Marines, their outdated doctrine, thinking, and organization for combat. For the generals it was always better to preserve the façade in Kabul, propping up the illusion of strength, than face the truth.

It was as if the Afghanistan debacle had finally ripped the last scab off the military’s role in the failed enterprise. Suddenly the superstar warrior/monk generals for whom the mainstream media had written endless paeans, before which members of Congress had bowed and scraped, were under the garish light of delayed circumspection.

As a result, there is plenty of talk about what went wrong and what shape the military is in for the future. And certainly just focusing on “the generals” would be shortsighted. This is about the institution — for which America’s trust is actually plummeting. So can the military really afford not to take stock of the cultural, institutional — and yes, political — changes that have swept over it in the last 20 years or more?

“My major concern is military effectiveness,” says (Ret.) Marine Corps. Capt. Dan Grazier, who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in a tank battalion and is now a military analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, “that in the rare event where the military does need to be deployed that we can be the most effective, lethal force possible when the situation calls for it.”

After interviews with several infantry veterans who served in the post-9/11 wars, The American Spectator picked up on a familiar theme as the main obstacle for rebuilding the forces and the faith: leadership corrupted by careerism and influenced by outside interests that don’t always coincide with the interests of the national defense.

The forces aren’t healthy: whose fault?

To Grazier’s mind, after 20 years of constant deployments the military is “going to naturally decay.” It’s impossible to sustain systems on a tempo of that measure without undergoing entropy. According to the most recent RAND Corporation study on deployments, 2.7 million service members have served in 5.4 million deployments across the globe since 2001. The National Guard and reserves account for about 35 percent of the total (as of 2015). In fact, thanks to COVID, wildfires, border patrol, and the extra security put on the nation’s capital in January, the Guard was used in 2020 more than any time since World War II. Missions peaked in June when more than 120,000 of its 450,000 members were on duty here or abroad.

Gil Barndollar, who served in Afghanistan with the Marines and is now a fellow with Defense Priorities, says retention will be a concern. These “citizen soldiers” have “become an operational reserve, not the strategic reserve they were originally intended to be,” he told the Spectator. “Manpower is a rollercoaster, the effects on recruiting and retention always have a lag after events and policy decisions.”

He laments that the Guard, of which he is currently a member, has been used to augment the active duty force so that it can maintain what has become protracted, unending overseas conflicts, often using resources and equipment that are needed stateside, particularly helicopters necessary to fight wildfires in western states.

“It hasn’t been just a long year, it’s been a long 20 years,” Army Maj. Gen. Bret Daugherty, commander of the Washington state Guard, said back in January. “I just want to focus on that. We’re all consumed with our domestic operations right now, but it is simultaneous with our overseas deployments, which have not let up one iota.”

Unfortunately, instead of pouring resources and energy into maintaining readiness, much of Washington’s zeal today is about throwing money at shiny new objects: big-ticket weapons systems, ships, and aircraft that either take years to build, become obsolete, or don’t work. A boon to the Beltway defense lobby, not so much for the fighting forces.

“The military has gotten into a lot of bad habits over the last 20 years. If you look at the amount of money that was thrown at the Pentagon, it’s created a lack of discipline,” Grazier charges. “After 9/11 the floodgates were opened wide. That played to the worst tendencies of the military industrial congressional complex.”

Out Of Office, What Do The Hard-Grifting Clintons Have Left To Peddle?

dailycaller |  The Clinton Foundation’s rapid decline in donor cash has alarmed top ethics watchdogs who say it shows clear red flags of political corruption.

Financial disclosures show a precipitous decline in contributions to the Clinton Foundation in the years following former president Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton’s fall from the heights of their political power.

The Clinton Foundation received roughly $16.3 million in contributions in 2020, according to their newly released Form 990. This was a 93.6% decrease from the nearly $250 million the charitable organization raked in during 2009 after Hillary Clinton was appointed Secretary of State.

“For years, the Clinton Foundation raised ethical concerns and blurred lines between the foundation, private entities, and the State Department,” said Scott Amey, General Counsel for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan, independent government corruption watchdog organization.

“Money was pouring in when Hillary Clinton was a senior official and a candidate for president. The fact that foundation donors received special access to the Secretary of State isn’t surprising, nor is the fall in foundation funding after her 2016 election loss. Many people thought people were supporting the former president, but it really looks like they were cozying up to who they thought was going to be the future president — a situation that can’t be repeated,” the POGO General Counsel told the Daily Caller.

“Now, with ethics concerns raised about Mnuchin and Kushner, as well as judges, it is vital that Congress put politics aside and pass an ethics reform package for all three branches of government. Congress must eliminate conflicts of interest, restrict special access, prevent trading on insider knowledge, and stop public servants who cash in for personal or private gain. Recent surveys show that corruption is a major public concern, but with the foxes guarding the henhouse, I’m unsure who will step forward to fix the problem,” said Amey.

“We’ve been seeing a decline in the cash flow to the Clinton Foundation since the 2016 presidential election,” Anna Massoglia told the Daily Caller. Massoglia is an Investigative Researcher at OpenSecrets, a non-profit transparency organization that tracks money in politics.

The Investigative Researcher said that when OpenSecrets spoke with the Clinton Foundation, they explained the strained revenue stream was “due to a lack of events due to an inability to have conferences” and “receiving less money from fundraising events, programs, and services.” Massoglia reasoned that “it would make sense for there to be a significant decrease in 2020 since there were even less in-person events around that time.”

“During the presidential election, of course, Clinton had said that they were going to step back from the foundation for the duration of the election, and if she came into office, that they would wind things down. However, because she was not elected, it was not expected that the foundation would get smaller for any other reason, at least externally,” added Massoglia.

In 2018, Massoglia and OpenSecrets were the first to obtain the Clinton Foundation’s annual 990 Form that showed a $38.4 million revenue stream. While slightly higher than the previous year, donations were still significantly lower than in years when Hillary or Bill Clinton were more influential in American politics.