Having Weathered Gilets Jaune, Macron Knows He Can Force mRNA Compliance

Guardian |  Within 72 hours of the French learning they would soon need to be vaccinated or tested to go to the cafe, more than 3 million had booked appointments and France had broken its vaccination record, administering 800,000 shots in a single day.

At the same time, daily infections, driven by the more contagious Delta variant, continued to climb, reaching nearly 9,000 on Wednesday – and on Bastille Day, about 20,000 demonstrators nationwide protested against what some called a “dictatorship”.

Polls show more than 65% public support for the range of measures unveiled by Emmanuel Macron on Monday, aimed, in the president’s words, not at “making vaccination immediately obligatory for everyone … but at pushing a maximum of you to go and get vaccinated”.

Critics, however, accuse the government of discriminating against vaccine sceptics and those who will not be fully inoculated before the rules come into effect, while others say the government is effectively imposing general vaccination by stealth, trampling on individual rights and freedoms.

Macron announced that from 21 July, anyone visiting a theatre, cinema, sports venue or festival with an audience of more than 50 people would need a health pass proving they were either fully vaccinated, had tested negative or were immune.

The same requirement will be extended to bars, cafes, restaurants, shopping centres (though not supermarkets), hospitals, long-distance trains, coaches and planes from 1 August, he said – including for children aged between 12 and 17 from 1 September.

People unable to present a valid health pass risk up to six months in prison and a fine of up to €10,000 (£8,500), according to the draft text of the law, while owners of “establishments welcoming the public” who fail to check patrons’ passes could go to jail for a year and be hit with a €45,000 fine.

Meanwhile, non-essential free coronavirus testing will also end in September, “to further encourage vaccination”, and healthcare professionals and retirement home workers who have not been vaccinated by 15 September will be suspended for a month to allow them to do so. Thereafter, they risk dismissal.

The big stick approach to vaccination, which goes further than that adopted by most governments, has had an immediate impact on take-up.

 

Why The Nattering Nabobs Of Nonsense Distract You With TALK About "Race Relations"...,

heisenbergreport |  It’s never capitalism or the hyper-hierarchical society capitalism created in America.

This situation isn’t an accident, of course. The fact is, virtually all of the people who weigh in on the subject — from economists to analysts to bankers to investors — sit somewhere near the top of that hierarchical society. The hierarchy is constructed atop the meritocracy myth, which is used to justify otherwise indefensible manifestations of inequality. Blaming monetary policy for everything obviates the need to face an uncomfortable reality: The hierarchy, like almost all historical hierarchies, isn’t natural. Rather, it’s the product of a system which, over time, evolved and optimized around itself in order to preserve the privileges accorded to the people at (or near) the top of the pyramid.

On the fiscal side of things, a similar cognitive dissonance is observable. Economists, analysts, bankers and market participants of all shapes and sizes habitually bemoan the plight of “Main Street.” How many times have you heard the anecdote about the “average” American not being able to afford a $400 emergency medical bill or home repair? In the same vein, how often have you read derisive takes (always cloaked as concern) bemoaning America’s “bartender and waitress economy”? And so on and so forth.

The concern isn’t always feigned, but it is always disingenuous, if only by accident. The number of economists, analysts, bankers and investors who care about the family that can’t afford to buy a new refrigerator is generally proportionate to the percentage of economists, analysts, bankers and investors who know a family that doesn’t have $400 in spare cash. In other words, zero — or somewhere close to it.

Some of those expressing concern may be genuinely disheartened at the increasingly precarious economic prospects of the American everyman/woman, but generally speaking, one’s position at (or near) the top of the social hierarchy precludes empathy because it doesn’t permit one to acknowledge that the hierarchy itself is almost entirely arbitrary. Consider the following passage from Immanuel Wallerstein’s discussion of universalism:

Universalism means in general the priority to general rules applying equally to all persons, and therefore the rejection of particularistic preferences in most spheres. On the one hand, universalism is believed to ensure relatively competent performance and thus make for a more efficient world-economy, which in turn improves the ability to accumulate capital. Hence, normally those who control production processes push for such universalistic criteria. Of course, universalistic criteria arouse resentment when they come into operation only after some particularistic criterion has been invoked. If the civil service is only open to persons of some particular religion or ethnicity, then the choice of persons within this category may be universalistic but the overall choice is not. If universalistic criteria are invoked only at the time of choice while ignoring the particularistic criteria by which individuals have access to the necessary prior training, again there is resentment. When, however, the choice is truly universalistic, resentment may still occur because choice involves exclusion, and we may get “populist” pressure for untested and unranked access to position. Under these multiple circumstances, universalistic criteria play a major social-psychological role in legitimating meritocratic allocation. They make those who have attained the status of cadre feel justified in their advantage and ignore the ways in which the so-called universalistic criteria that permitted their access were not in fact fully universalistic, or ignore the claims of all the others to material benefits given primarily to cadres. The norm of universalism is an enormous comfort to those who are benefiting from the system. It makes them feel they deserve what they have.

America’s economists, analysts, bankers and (most) investors benefit handsomely from the system and are deeply indebted psychologically to the meritocratic myth. In almost all cases, they fail to acknowledge the extent to which, as Wallerstein put it, “universalistic criteria are invoked only at the time of choice while ignoring the particularistic criteria by which individuals have access to the necessary prior training.”

This makes it impossible to truly empathize with the family for whom a $400 emergency expense is an economic death knell. Sad though it may be, the situation is, in one way or another, attributable to the choices someone made, not to a system which dooms a slim majority of society to economic precarity. That’s how nearly everyone you hear from on the economy thinks about things. Crucially, liberal-minded economists (and politicians) will vociferously deny that accusation. They’ll say they do think the system is at fault. “That was the centerpiece of my campaign!,” they’ll exclaim. Or: “I wrote a whole book about our failed system!” But if you ask them to reconcile the admission that the system doesn’t work with their own success in the same system, rarely will you see any economist or politician shrug their shoulders and say “To be totally honest with you, it’s pure luck.”

Talk About "Race Relations" Deflects Mass Consciousness From The Political Economy

taibbi |  Combating racism becomes a convenient alternative to attacking inequality and inequality, even those inequalities that appear or the manifest themselves as racial disparities. Because the struggle against racism is exactly parallel to the struggle against terrorism… It can go on forever, because the enemy is an abstraction that you can define however you want to define it, at the moment that you wanted to find it.

DiAngelo’s not the first person to do this. There was a woman named Peggy McIntosh who going back to the eighties had the “knapsack of privilege,” or some shit like that. I know people who have had careers at racial sensitivity trainings, and the people that I know, in my world — the people who came out of the movement actually came out of anti-Klan politics, or rather left politics in the seventies, and they started doing this stuff. It makes sense in the same way that people who were graduate students in the late sixties and early seventies who were left theory-inclined people got into the Frankfurt School. That became the cornerstone of their academic careers.

Well, that’s what’s happened in the anti-racism or the racial sensitivity training world. And one of the things that’s happened over time is that the material incentives — and it’s funny, pardon this aside, but it’s funny how many political-economy-oriented leftists we encounter who apply critical political economic thinking to every domain in the world — outside the movement that they’re operating in. So the material incentives evolved, and changed over time. And some of my friends who have done this work have said to me that they used to do it for community groups, used to do it for unions and so forth and so on. Then, as the material incentives change, they want to build and do more for corporations, or for local governments who were under consent decrees.

So this becomes part of the thing. You’re under a consent decree for actual discrimination. One of the remedies that’s likely to be imposed as part of the decree is that you submit to this training. And we see it all the time now. Even the insurgencies within NGOs, right? Where the staff or whatever is going batshit crazy about how the leadership of the organization is all racist, sexist, whatever. And one of the first calls is to bring in some minor-league version of Robin DiAngelo to do the racial sensitivity training. So in that sense, it’s taken hold as part of what I’ve often described as the broader political economy of race relations.

How About Schools Teach Every Student To Read, Write, And Calculate At Grade Level?

WaPo  |  This week at the Oklahoma State Department of Education building, I was schooled in how the stealthy, well-orchestrated movement against teaching honestly about America’s racist history operates. It is fast and furious and determined to steamroll over truth in education.

But Monday morning, one Black woman and a Black high school student tried to hold the line. Though they were on the losing side of that steamroll — this is Oklahoma, after all — their courage and resistance in the face of white supremacy deserve to be celebrated.

The occasion was consideration of item 8(b) on the Oklahoma Board of Education’s meeting agenda: emergency rules for implementing a bill passed in May by the Republican-controlled state legislature limiting what students in the state can be taught on race and gender. Notice of the item was publicly posted only last Friday, giving educators and advocates next to no time to organize a response. The actual rules, too, were made available just minutes before the meeting. They included chillingly harsh penalties, such as teacher suspensions and district defunding, for instruction that makes any individual feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”

Carlisha Williams Bradley arrived knowing she would cast one of the most consequential votes of her professional life. The only Black member of the board, she wondered whether she would be removed from her position for pushing back. But the education advocate and former executive director of Tulsa Legacy Charter School spoke truth: that the right-wing’s current bête noire, “critical race theory” — which the legislature claimed to be responding to — means merely the examination of laws and legislation that uphold racism and oppression. Oklahoma’s new education law and harsh punishment, she said, would serve only to generate fear in teaching an accurate history of the United States.

“We are robbing students of the opportunity to have a high-quality education,” Williams Bradley said.

Done Fscking Around Pissant - WE Will Now Be YOUR SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH!!!

This is so completely fucked. Unbelievable https://t.co/dBnoK9XZEG

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) July 15, 2021

In a 22-page publication intended to allow only one standard for acceptable discussion as sanctioned by the U.S. government, the Surgeon General tells Big Tech what to do:

 

“Prioritize early detection of misinformation “super-spreaders” and repeat offenders. Impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies.”

The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as "problematic" so that Facebook can remove them.

This is the union of corporate and state power -- one of the classic hallmarks of fascism -- that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support. https://t.co/U2Ee3DgXJe

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 15, 2021

(page 12)

 

In other words, silence the opposition.  The Government will be the “single source of truth“.

Is There ANY Reason To Take The Experimental mRNA Jab?

alt-market  |  If there is one rule liberty minded people need to remember, it is that the establishment does not like losing control of the narrative. And when they do, noticeably weird things start to happen. For example, it is becoming painfully obvious that the narrative on the experimental mRNA “vaccines” has slipped right through the fingers of the Biden Administration, and as a consequence they are now in a scramble to get millions of vaccines injected into as many skeptical arms as possible before the public organizes for a full push-back against the agenda. It seems to me that they are in a bit of a panic.

The issue became more evident since January when various government entities and the media began to openly complain about the number of vaccine doses that were being thrown in the garbage because of expiration. Why were the vaccines expiring before use? The media spin suggests that it was due to “government mismanagement”, while officials at the state level have admitted that it has been due to a significant drop in demand.

In the meantime, Biden has shipped over 500 million covid vaccine doses overseas in June while at the same time claiming that the US was on track to meet his 70% vaccination goal by July 4^th. Needless to say this never happened. The Biden admin now claims that the US population is now 67% vaccinated, and if this was actually true then it would be very close to meeting Anthony Fauci’s original guidelines for herd immunity. So why all the frantic hype about unvaccinated people?

Firstly, Fauci has continually moved the goal posts for herd immunity to the point that he is now telling the public to ignore herd immunity altogether and that the only option is to get EVERYONE vaccinated. Many of us in the liberty media said this is exactly what he would do, and he has proven to be incredibly predictable. Secondly, the CDC vaccination numbers seem to be inflated in order to create a manufactured consensus.

While claiming an overall vaccination rate of 67%, CDC stats indicate a maximum of around 184 million Americans with at least one dose, then indicate 160 million people with a double dose. Yet, according to the Mayo Clinic data map, only four states have a vaccination rate of 67% or more, all in the Northeast. Even California and New York are well under 67%, and the vast majority of states are sitting at around 50% or less.

Frankly, I don’t believe the CDC vaccine numbers at all. New dosage numbers are plunging across the US according to state officials; anyone who hasn’t been jabbed by now is not going to get jabbed unless they are forced to. There are no long lines for vaccines. No wait times. The CDC has even removed the wait time between doses. And still, CVS and Walgreens have been throwing away expired doses by the hundreds of thousands.

If we look at the CDC stats for full vaccination we are closer to 51% of the total US population, which matches more accurately with the Mayo Clinic state statistics. There is no indication that this percentage will be growing beyond the 51% mark anytime soon, if the stats are accurate at all.

This means that at least half the US population is in defiance of the program. This is probably why Fauci and Biden have become more aggressive in their vaccination agenda the past month. If they were getting the nearly 70% vax rates they claim, then they would not be stomping their feet indignantly over unvaccinated people. The stats show a HUGE number of Americans are refusing to take the jab – There’s a vast army of us out there, and this is a good thing.

Why? Because there is simply no reason to take the experimental mRNA vaccine.

The Efficacy Of A Drug Being Promoted By "Right Wing Figures" Worldwide - WTF?!?!?!

Guardian |  The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of ivermectin – a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice – in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, was published on the Research Square website in November.

It claimed to be a randomised control trial, a type of study crucial in medicine because it is considered to provide the most reliable evidence on the effectiveness of interventions due to the minimal risk of confounding factors influencing the results. Elgazzar is listed as chief editor of the Benha Medical Journal, and is an editorial board member.

The study found that patients with Covid-19 treated in hospital who “received ivermectin early reported substantial recovery” and that there was “a substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in ivermectin treated groups” by 90%.

But the drug’s promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday “due to ethical concerns”. Research Square did not outline what those concerns were.

A medical student in London, Jack Lawrence, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper, leading to the retraction. He first became aware of the Elgazzar preprint when it was assigned to him by one of his lecturers for an assignment that formed part of his master’s degree. He found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised.

It appeared that the authors had run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. “Humorously, this led to them changing ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ to ‘extreme intense respiratory syndrome’ on one occasion,” Lawrence said.

The data also looked suspicious to Lawrence, with the raw data apparently contradicting the study protocol on several occasions.

“The authors claimed to have done the study only on 18-80 year olds, but at least three patients in the dataset were under 18,” Lawrence said.

“The authors claimed they conducted the study between the 8th of June and 20th of September 2020, however most of the patients who died were admitted into hospital and died before the 8th of June according to the raw data. The data was also terribly formatted, and includes one patient who left hospital on the non-existent date of 31/06/2020.”

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

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

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

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

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

— Steve Edwards (@SDECoxHealth) July 1, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

If The Double-Wide's A Rockin Don't Come A'Knockin With Your Fauci Ouchie!!!!

WaPo | On July Fourth, President Biden celebrated dramatic progress in the war on the coronavirus, with more than 150 million adults fully vaccinated and infections plunging 93 percent since Inauguration Day. “Together, we’re beating the virus,” Biden said at a party on the White House lawn.

But at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, attendees celebrated a different — essentially opposite — milestone: that Biden had missed his goal of vaccinating 70 percent of adults.

“Clearly they were hoping — the government was hoping — that they could sort of sucker 90 percent of the population into getting vaccinated,” activist Alex Berenson told the crowd Saturday, seeming to inflate Biden’s target. “And it isn’t happening.”

The crowd clapped and cheered at that failure.

What began as “vaccine hesitancy” has morphed into outright vaccine hostility, as conservatives increasingly attack the White House’s coronavirus message, mischaracterize its vaccination campaign and, more and more, vow to skip the shots altogether.

The notion that the vaccine drive is pointless or harmful — or perhaps even a government plot — is increasingly an article of faith among supporters of former president Donald Trump, on a par with assertions that the last election was stolen and the assault on the U.S. Capitol was overblown.

Appearing at CPAC, lawmakers like Reps. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) took aim at Biden’s push for “door-to-door” vaccine outreach, framing efforts to boost inoculations as a creeping menace from big government.

“We’re here to tell government, we don’t want your benefits, we don’t want your welfare, don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci ouchie,” Boebert said, referring to Biden’s top medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, her voice rising as she paced the stage and shook her finger. “You leave us the hell alone!”

Macron's Vaccine Passports Equal The Mark Of The Beast In France

reuters  |  Police in Paris clashed with protesters railing against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to require a COVID-19 vaccine certificate or negative PCR test to gain entry to bars, restaurants and cinemas from next month.

Macron this week announced sweeping measures to fight a rapid surge in new coronavirus infections, including the mandatory vaccination of health workers and new health pass rules for the wider public.

In doing so, he went further than most other European nations have done as the highly contagious Delta variant fans a new wave of cases, and other governments are watching carefully to see how the French public responds. (Graphic on global cases)

The police fired tear gas on several occasions as pockets of protesters overturned garbage cans and set a mechanical digger alight. Some protesters away from the skirmishes wore badges saying "No to the health pass".

Some critics of Macron's plan - which will require shopping malls, cafes, bars and restaurants to check the health passes of all patrons from August - accuse the president of trampling on freedoms and discriminating against those who do not want the COVID shot.

"It's totally arbitrary and wholly undemocratic," said one protester who identified himself as Jean-Louis.

Macron says the vaccine is the best way to put France back on the path to normalcy and that he is encouraging as many people as possible to get inoculated.

There were protests in other cities including Nantes, Marseille and Montpellier.

The show of discontent took place on Bastille Day, the anniversary of the 1789 storming of a medieval fortress in Paris which marked the turning point in the French Revolution.

Among other proposals in the government's draft bill is the mandatory isolation for 10 days of anyone who tests positive, with police making random checks, French media reported. The prime minister's office did not respond when asked to confirm the detail.

 

 

Natural Infection vs Submitting To The mRNA Jab Experiment...,

israelnationalnews |  Coronavirus patients who recovered from the virus were far less likely to become infected during the latest wave of the pandemic than people who were vaccinated against COVID, according to numbers presented to the Israeli Health Ministry.

Health Ministry data on the wave of COVID outbreaks which began this May show that Israelis with immunity from natural infection were far less likely to become infected again in comparison to Israelis who only had immunity via vaccination.

More than 7,700 new cases of the virus have been detected during the most recent wave starting in May, but just 72 of the confirmed cases were reported in people who were known to have been infected previously – that is, less than 1% of the new cases.

Roughly 40% of new cases – or more than 3,000 patients – involved people who had been infected despite being vaccinated.

With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID.

By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave.

According to a report by Channel 13, the disparity has confounded – and divided – Health Ministry experts, with some saying the data proves the higher level of immunity provided by natural infection versus vaccination, while others remained unconvinced.

 

The Delta Variant Narrative Eloquently Makes The Case For A Malfeasant Elite Agenda

Data show that:
Experimental mRNA Therapeutic Jabs REDUCE: symptoms, hospital admissions, and fatalities.

Data also show that:
The mRNA jabbed STILL become: infected; symptomatic; infectious; even super spreaders.

So what exactly does the planned vaccination passport aim to achieve other than a backdoor around lockdown protections and to create a two tiered political economy with no genuine biosecurity utility - only seething interpersonal resentment?

Polio vaccine gives a rough approximation of “sterilizing immunity.” You can fight off any infections by the polio virus for pretty much the rest of your life.

The state of the art Coronavirus ‘mRNA Therapeutics’ are showing a steep drop off in effectiveness after six to eight months. Even with that, vaccinated individuals can and do catch Covid and spread Covid.

Have you ever heard or read of someone who has had a polio vaccination giving it to anyone else afterward?

Even when people are willing to get the coronavirus ‘mRNA jab,’ most of the working class in this country cannot afford the opportunity costs of getting the ‘jab.’ No health ‘care,’ no paid, or even unpaid time off to recover from the after effects many experience from having had the shots, etc.

For some as yet unspecified reasons, the American Health Establishment has massively bungled its handling of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Even now, the ‘vaccinated’ are told that they do not need to mask in public, even when the evidence says otherwise; even when they can be the disease vectors that ignite new ‘hot spots’ of infection - simply by not staying masked in public.

I am highly suspicious of the nature of the “bungling” in evidence in Britain and America.

I suspect now that a decision was made to let the disease run wild so as to “cull the herd.” Having survived an infection last year, I've become emotionally detached from the demographic sub-populations targetted for Covid 'culling,’

Some years ago, I would more openly profess my Malthusian predilections. However, now that I can plainly see a cull being effected by Elites via nullification of the Social Contract - I'm much less sanguine about the prospects for population control and much clearer about the utility of plague for human livestock management. 

NYTimes |  Those who have been inoculated against the coronavirus have little to worry about. Reports of infections with the Delta variant among fully immunized people in Israel may have alarmed people, but virtually all of the available data indicate that the vaccines are powerfully protective against severe illness, hospitalization and death from all existing variants of the coronavirus.

Even a single dose of vaccines that require two shots seems to prevent the most severe symptoms, although it is a flimsier barrier against symptomatic illness — making it an urgent priority to give people second doses in places like Britain that opted to prioritize first doses.

“When you have populations of unvaccinated individuals, then the vaccines really can’t do their jobs,” said Stacia Wyman, an expert in computational genomics at the University of California, Berkeley. “And that’s where Delta is really a concern.”

Britain’s experience with the Delta variant has highlighted the importance not just of vaccination, but the strategy underlying it. The country ordered inoculations strictly by age, starting with the oldest and carving out few exceptions for younger essential workers, outside of the medical profession.

 

 

Republicans Push To Ban Discrimination Against The Unvaccinated "New Black" New Black"

axios  |  State Republican lawmakers around the country are pushing bills — at least one of which has become law — that would give unvaccinated people the same protections as those surrounding race, gender and religion.

Why it matters: These bills would tie the hands of private businesses that want to protect their employees and customers. But they also show how deep into the political psyche resistance to coronavirus vaccine requirements has become, and how vaccination status has rapidly become a marker of identity.

The big picture: On a national scale, well-known GOP figures have recently escalated their rhetoric about the vaccination effort, comparing it to Nazi Germany and apartheid.

• At a state level, there's more bite to the bark. Many Republican-led states have enacted some kind of restriction on vaccine mandates or vaccine "passports."
• And some state lawmakers are trying to make it illegal for employers, governments or private businesses to treat unvaccinated people any differently than vaccinated people, using the same language found in federal civil rights law.

“When we think about the normal discrimination statutes…we have protected classes based on something that is sort of inherent to you, with religion maybe being the one that is a choice," said Lowell Pearson, a managing partner at Husch Blackwell, which has been tracking the bills. "But vaccination status you certainly can control."

Between the lines: The states with restrictions on vaccine requirements tend to have lower vaccination rates than those without such laws, and cases are on the rise in several of them.

• Most of the measures are full of loopholes or have limited application, meaning unvaccinated residents may still face consequences for their decision.
• But vaccine requirements aren't very popular in general among employers, experts said, although it is relatively common among private businesses to have different rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated employees or customers.

Rather, the laws and low vaccination rates in states that have them both stem from the politicization of vaccination.

• "It’s difficult to see exactly why there’s such an intense reaction here, except through the lens of hyper-partisan politics; that this has just become another signal of party affiliation," said Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

People Who've Had SARS-Cov2 Do Not Benefit From mRNA Therapeutic Jabs

medrxiv | Background The purpose of this study was to evaluate the necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Methods Employees of the Cleveland Clinic Health System working in Ohio on Dec 16, 2020, the day COVID-19 vaccination was started, were included. Any subject who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 at least 42 days earlier was considered previously infected. One was considered vaccinated 14 days after receipt of the second dose of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine. The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection over the next five months, among previously infected subjects who received the vaccine, was compared with those of previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated, previously uninfected subjects who received the vaccine, and previously uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated.

Results Among the 52238 included employees, 1359 (53%) of 2579 previously infected subjects remained unvaccinated, compared with 22777 (41%) of 49659 not previously infected. The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated, compared with a steady increase in cumulative incidence among previously uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated. Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study. In a Cox proportional hazards regression model, after adjusting for the phase of the epidemic, vaccination was associated with a significantly lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection among those not previously infected (HR 0.031, 95% CI 0.015 to 0.061) but not among those previously infected (HR 0.313, 95% CI 0 to Infinity).

Conclusions Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.

Summary Cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was examined among 52238 employees in an American healthcare system. COVID-19 did not occur in anyone over the five months of the study among 2579 individuals previously infected with COVID-19, including 1359 who did not take the vaccine.

Systemic Lying, Exploitation, and Abuse Of The Masses Is The Nemesis Of Evidence Based Medicine

plos |   Once defined in rhetorical but ultimately meaningless terms as “the conscientious, judicious and explicit use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” [1], evidence-based medicine rests on certain philosophical assumptions: a singular truth, ascertainable through empirical enquiry; a linear logic of causality in which interventions have particular effect sizes; rigour defined primarily in methodological terms (especially, a hierarchy of preferred study designs and tools for detecting bias); and a deconstructive approach to problem-solving (the evidence base is built by answering focused questions, typically framed as ‘PICO’—population-intervention-comparison-outcome) [2].

The trouble with pandemics is that these assumptions rarely hold. A pandemic-sized problem can be framed and contested in multiple ways. Some research questions around COVID-19, most notably relating to drugs and vaccines, are amenable to randomised controlled trials (and where such trials were possible, they were established with impressive speed and efficiency [3, 4]). But many knowledge gaps are broader and cannot be reduced to PICO-style questions. Were care home deaths avoidable [5]? Why did the global supply chain for personal protective equipment break down [6]? What role does health system resilience play in controlling the pandemic [7]? And so on.

Against these—and other—wider questions, the neat simplicity of a controlled, intervention-on versus intervention-off experiment designed to produce a definitive (i.e. statistically significant and widely generalisable) answer to a focused question rings hollow. In particular, upstream preventive public health interventions aimed at supporting widespread and sustained behaviour change across an entire population (as opposed to testing the impact of a short-term behaviour change in a select sample) rarely lend themselves to such a design [8, 9]. When implementing population-wide public health interventions—whether conventional measures such as diet or exercise, or COVID-19 related ones such as handwashing, social distancing and face coverings—we must not only persuade individuals to change their behavior but also adapt the environment to make such changes easier to make and sustain [10–12].

Population-wide public health efforts are typically iterative, locally-grown and path-dependent, and they have an established methodology for rapid evaluation and adaptation [9]. But evidence-based medicine has tended to classify such designs as “low methodological quality” [13]. Whilst this has been recognised as a problem in public health practice for some time [11], the inadequacy of the dominant paradigm has suddenly become mission-critical.

Whilst evidence-based medicine recognises that study designs must reflect the nature of question (randomized trials, for example, are preferred only for therapy questions [13]), even senior scientists sometimes over-apply its hierarchy of evidence. An interdisciplinary group of scholars from the UK’s prestigious Royal Society recently reviewed the use of face masks by the general public, drawing on evidence from laboratory science, mathematical modelling and policy studies [14]. The report was criticised by epidemiologists for being “non-systematic” and for recommending policy action in the absence of a quantitative estimate of effect size from robust randomized controlled trials [15].

Such criticisms appear to make two questionable assumptions: first, that the precise quantification of impact from this kind of intervention is both possible and desirable, and second, that unless we have randomized trial evidence, we should do nothing.

It is surely time to turn to a more fit-for-purpose scientific paradigm. Complex adaptive systems theory proposes that precise quantification of particular cause-effect relationships is both impossible (because such relationships are not constant and cannot be meaningfully isolated) and unnecessary (because what matters is what emerges in a particular real-world situation). This paradigm proposes that where multiple factors are interacting in dynamic and unpredictable ways, naturalistic methods and rapid-cycle evaluation are the preferred study design. The 20^th-century logic of evidence-based medicine, in which scientists pursued the goals of certainty, predictability and linear causality, remains useful in some circumstances (for example, the drug and vaccine trials referred to above). But at a population and system level, we need to embrace 21^st-century epistemology and methods to study how best to cope with uncertainty, unpredictability and non-linear causality [16].

In a complex system, the question driving scientific inquiry is not “what is the effect size and is it statistically significant once other variables have been controlled for?” but “does this intervention contribute, along with other factors, to a desirable outcome?”. Multiple interventions might each contribute to an overall beneficial effect through heterogeneous effects on disparate causal pathways, even though none would have a statistically significant impact on any predefined variable [11]. To illuminate such influences, we need to apply research designs that foreground dynamic interactions and emergence. These include in-depth, mixed-method case studies (primary research) and narrative reviews (secondary research) that tease out interconnections and highlight generative causality across the system [16, 17].

Guess Who's Blocking Ivermectin In Captive "Clinical Trials"?

nakedcapitalism |  The evidence backing ivermectin’s efficacy against Covid-19 continues to stack up, even as most health authorities refuse to approve its use. The last two months have seen the publication of three peer-reviewed meta-analyses demonstrating clear benefits. A review by Pierre Kory et al summarised findings from 18 randomized controlled treatment trials, concluding that ivermectin produced “large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance.” Another study, led by Doctor Andrew Hill, a well-respected international medical researcher reported a 56% reduction in mortality together with favourable clinical recovery and reduced hospitalisation.

A third study, by Andrew Bryant et al, analysed the existing data from clinical trials according to conservative Cochrane meta-analysis standards — a gold-standard in science. Published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, the study found that “ivermectin prophylaxis reduced COVID-19 infection by an average 86%”. The study concluded that “large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin”, adding that “the apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.”

Still in Limbo

But national and supranational health authorities continue to drag their feet. The US Food and Drug Administration, together with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organization, insist that there is still not enough good quality data to approve ivermectin as an off-label treatment against Covid. Its use, they say, should therefore be restricted to well-designed, randomised control trials.

Over 20 countries around the world, including India, Bolivia, Mexico and Slovakia, have ignored that advice and are using the medicine, to some degree or another, largely with significant success. The latest country to do so is Indonesia, which is in the grip of its biggest wave of infections to date. In most countries, however, the drug is still in limbo as their respective health authorities await the outcome of large randomised controlled trials.

The problem is that large randomised trials are prohibitively expensive, costing millions of dollars to conduct. As a result, they tend to be funded by large pharmaceutical companies seeking FDA or EMA approval for the drugs they themselves have developed. It also makes it difficult to secure new indications for generic medications that are already approved for other purposes. After all, who is willing to invest millions of dollars testing a drug that is likely to generate little, if any, financial return?

But with the world fighting a losing battle against a fast-spreading, rapidly evolving coronavirus that has sent the global economy spinning, desperate times call for desperate measures. Money has been found and mobilised. According to Hill et al, there are at least five large, placebo-controlled clinical trials on the use of ivermectin for COVID-19 currently underway.

One of them, dubbed the TOGETHER trial, is being conducted at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. The trial has been running since last summer. The goal, according to the trial’s official website, is to “identify which repurposed therapies are most effective, in order to slow the pandemic while many countries await the delivery of vaccines.”

The trial has already tested and “dropped” hydroxychloriquine, lopinavir/ritonavir (an antiretroviral medication used in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS) and metformin (an anti-diabetes medication). It is currently testing fluvoxamine (an anti-depressant), interferon-lambda (a regulator of intenstinal viruses), doxazosin (used to treat prostatic hyperplasia and hypertension) and ivermectin and will report its findings in the coming months.

Unvaccinated Is The New Black

POLITICO |  Americans are almost evenly divided over whether schools or most private employers should require Covid-19 vaccinations as part of reopening, according to a POLITICO-Harvard survey that shows how politically fraught any kind of mandate would be.

Most Democrats support forcing employees and students to be vaccinated before they return to work or the classroom, and approve of government-issued documents certifying their status. Republicans oppose the government or most employers infringing on their individual choice.

The survey lands as Biden administration officials, desperate to turn around the country’s rapidly declining vaccination rates, are barnstorming the country pleading with people to take the shot. But even as the more transmissible Delta variant is raising alarms, the administration has resisted a more aggressive approach, reiterating this week that it has no plans to ask schools, states or employers to require the vaccine.

The survey results suggest Biden’s prudence is warranted, said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who designed the poll.

“An important takeaway from the poll is that in these [Republican-leaning] areas it is going to be very slow in getting these people to agree to take a vaccine,” he said. “There is a culture in part of the country that is very resistant to having the government tell people how to live their lives.”

Even the president’s suggestion that his administration would go door-to-door to promote the vaccine drew swift rebuke from conservatives, some of whom raised the specter of the federal government keeping a list of unvaccinated Americans that it would soon be targeting. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on Thursday sought to reassure Americans that no such database exists after he said his comments about the government's interest in ensuring people are vaccinated were taken "wildly out of context."