3 lies in a row from huge news platforms. I cited my young child as why I didn’t want to travel. But notice how NONE of them mentioned that? Ask yourself why that was. pic.twitter.com/vQjorbKCCO
— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021
The two white men sittin there nodding their heads cuz this uncle tomiana doing the work chile. How sad. https://t.co/4UviONyTHy
— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021
NEW - Israeli Ministry of Health (right) recorded saying to the Minister of Interior (left) "there is no medical or epidemiological justification for the Covid passport, it is only intended to pressure the unvaccinated to vaccinate".pic.twitter.com/c3oAOpZdEE
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 13, 2021
mako.co.il | Anger among restaurateurs and pool operators following Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz's recording: In a recording released last night (Sunday) in the "Main Edition", the minister admitted that the green label is in some cases intended to put pressure on vaccine opponents, and is not always based on epidemiological motive. Restaurateurs and pool owners, to whom Horowitz specifically referred, claim to have known all along that they serve as "Pfizer sales promotions," and that there is no other reason to ban outdoor seating or the use of public pools. Some parents and medical officials have also expressed opposition to the use of the green label, especially on children.
"We were not surprised by the Health Minister's statement last night, it is quite clear to us that the Israeli government has made us Pfizer's sales promoters," Shai Berman, CEO of the Restaurant Association, told N12. Tens of percent in redemptions. "Unfortunately, the Israeli government has chosen to dump its water on us and we expect a constitutional committee to convene tomorrow to immediately repeal the green label, at least in everything related to outer spaces, for which there is no epidemiological basis for limiting a green label."
Nir Oz, chairman of the organization of swimming pools and sports centers, also did not like what he heard. "There is no doubt that we have become the executive arm of the Ministry of Health and the enforcement arm of the Israel Police," Oz claimed. We need to check who is not vaccinated and send home. We have become the black workers of law enforcement. "
"We
are unable to raise our heads. And the health minister's call has
revealed the truth we have been shouting about for months. The swimming
pools and sports centers have been slammed and collapsed one by one in
vain. It is already clear that there are no
infections in swimming pools."
Although business owners from other industries understood the importance of the green label in its role as a promoter of immunization, they argued that one way or another they should make sure that they deserve the appropriate compensation for any harm to activity. "As someone who has vaccinated myself, I believe that the solution to the corona crisis lies in vaccines, so I understand the rationale behind the Minister of Health's decision," Adv. Roi Cohen, president of Lahav, the Chamber of Independent and Business Organizations in Israel, told N12.
"At the same time, it should be understood that any such decision has a heavy economic significance that falls mainly on the self-employed and business owners in Israel. "The heat of summer and the holidays. Therefore, Lahav's demand on all 64 member organizations is to price any restriction that harms the business sector. Compensation for every character."
Yaron Sela, from the gym organization, added: "The health and fitness industry has long depended between heaven and earth in an impossible situation of uncertainty. Blaming one government office or another is irrelevant, the Corona plague is an ongoing event and the economic struggle must receive the attention of the government. "Just like the health deal. I met with Finance Minister Lieberman, who understands the incident. I am convinced that he will act correctly for the benefit of businesses that are harmed over time due to the corona crisis."
Even in the medical world there are those who claim that if the green mark is intended to increase immunization, there is no reason to apply it to children aged 12-3, who cannot be vaccinated and are required to perform corona tests daily. "The green mark is unnecessary. There is no other country in the world that requires a green mark in schools from the age of three onwards. This is a phenomenon that does not exist and is completely absurd," Prof. Shoshi Altuvia, a researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the Hebrew University and Hadassah Ein School of Medicine, told N12. -vineyard.
"We tell those who carry the green label that they are ostensibly protected, while in practice there is no protection and infection continues even among the vaccinated. This is not the practice all over the world and this is not a democratic state. On the move - the green mark today is meaningless and misses the mark. "
The current situation is particularly troubling for parents who are forced to check on their children frequently. Eric Kaplan, a father of four and chairman of the parents' leadership in Jerusalem, told N12: "If the purpose of the green label is to encourage immunization, it's a bit delusional that children of these ages are required to be tested every day. "Tests are important, which cannot be ignored, but ways must be found to enable as normal a life as possible."
detroitnews | Spectrum Health will grant temporary exemptions from its employee vaccine mandate to individuals who can prove they have naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19.
The west Michigan hospital system, which is in the process of merging with Southfield-based Beaumont Health, will grant an exemption to those who have a positive PCR or antigen test for COVID-19 plus a positive antibody test from within the past three months, the health system said in a statement Thursday.
The exemption, the first for a major health system in Michigan, was developed "as new research has emerged" on natural immunity.
"While we still recommend vaccination for people with prior COVID-19 infection, according to this new research, there is increasing evidence that natural infection affords protection from COVID-19 reinfection and severe symptoms for a period of time," the statement said. "Current studies are not clear on how long natural immunity protects from reinfection."
The policy could be updated if future evidence shows naturally acquired protection is waning or longer lasting, or if there is a validated antibody test result showing immunity, the statement said.
Spectrum announced in late July that it would require the COVID-19 vaccine within eight weeks of the Food and Drug Administration approving a vaccine, but noted it would consider some exemptions.
Those exemptions
include religious exemptions and medical exemptions determined by a
medical exemption committee. The hospital system's medial exemption
committee recommended the health system allow for a temporary exemption
for naturally acquired immunity based on available research, the
statement said.
This thread from Dr. Strangetweet made this editor angry cry.
Going through the history of what Americans have done in the name of public health and why so many of us may not be too hip on any more mandates or rules or regulations to ‘protect us’ because we’re apparently too stupid to protect ourselves is absolutely infuriating.
You ever been so mad you cried?
Take a look:
We.
All.
Stayed.
Home.
BOOM.
Awww yes, because apparently, you can’t catch COVID if you’re protesting or looting. The virus is super woke and stuff.
Fauci has changed his mind and his guidance more than anyone.
It didn’t work.
This this this!
YUP. WE FEEL THIS.
Maybe Team Biden should try listening to the ‘unvaccinated’ for once.
Hospital administrators are firing nurses and screaming at the same time that hospitals are overflowing with unvaccinated patients? THIS clearly indicates a malevolent agenda to me.
Hospitals getting overwhelmed is a red herring.
Last year, hospitals and pubic health agencies stood up hundreds of beds at the Javits Center in weeks.
No one made use of any of this excess capacity.
It is not difficult to add emergency capacity in hotels, in parking lots, convention centers and elsewhere.
The excess capacity capability was amply demonstrated in 2020.
Since the preponderance of hospitalizations are the old and the sick, if there is to be a mandatory vaccination program it should be targetted toward the old and the sick.
Instead of the hundreds of billions going to feed the market cap of Big Pharma - maybe Cornpop could spend a fraction on treatments. It makes no sense to waste billions on jabs for those unlikely to land in the hospitals - like working people below the age of 50 and in reasonably good health.
Where hospitals are overwhelmed they are overwhelmed because they are designed to run ICU beds at maximum capacity. It has ALWAYS been common for ICUs to be “overrun “ at times. Having had parents who were old and sickly for years, I have stood in many a hallway with a parent on a stretcher waiting for a bed to open in the ICU.
Secondly, a hospital can only claim an open bed if that hospital has enough staff to use it. An ICU may have 30 beds and 18 patients, but cannot claim to have 12 open beds if the staff is not there to service those 12 beds. So that 19th patient is declined, and sent somewhere else. That 30 bed ICU is “full” at 18.
In my major medical city, we have seen the opening of 4 large, new hospitals in the last 5 years. What do you think that does to staffing in the older hospitals? This country has had a nursing shortage since my mom was a nurse in the 1970s. We always need more.
Every nurse knows that if he or she isn’t happy, there are 5 facilities begging for her services. I get postcards daily for offers in local hospitals, facilities, often offering thousands of dollars to sign on. It’s become a very transient career.
In the facility I work, the ONLY staff and residents that have tested positive for covid in the last 8 to 10 weeks are “fully vaccinated”. And the “unvaccinated” are tested 2 times a week. The “pandemic of the unvaccinated “ is a bald faced lie.
People need to be careful when they listen to “statistics” and realize that they are not always being told the whole picture. There is often a reason for that, a bigger agenda is at play.
dossier | Policymakers within the Biden Administration have clearly seen the COVID-19 data out of Israel, the first country that went all in on population-wide mRNA shots. It shows that mRNA injection efficacy is waning, which is why Israel went full steam ahead with the 3rd booster shot. It’s too early to tell exactly how that will pan out, but in the meantime, the Biden Administration needs to find a way to shimmy their way out of declaring victory over COVID just a couple months ago, given its clear resurgence throughout our nation among both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
Instead of owning up to the reality that we cannot eliminate a submicroscopic infectious particle from existence, and perhaps admitting that government officials wildly oversold an innovative “cure” to the disease, they’re continuing with the dictatorial insanity.
With respiratory season just around the corner, the “unvaccinated” are going to be scapegoated for when our government has once again failed to achieve the impossible task of stopping an endemic virus from circulating among a massive population.
At first, they took a somewhat more diplomatic approach, blaming the “Delta variant” for their failures to deliver. But now, they’ve shifted their wrath onto fellow Americans, specifically, the 25% of “unvaccinated” individuals in America who refuse to submit to the “health” demands of the regime. None of it makes scientific sense, but it doesn’t have to, because it’s no longer about health or science, but in protecting the reputation of the White House.
The Biden Administration is losing its unwinnable “War on COVID,” and as its ratings go down in flames, it has backed itself into a corner. Instead of being honest about their failures with the American people, Biden officials are choosing to triple and quadruple down on these broken policy measures. They’re purposely pitting Americans against each other, and labeling the “unvaccinated” as the ultimate scapegoat for their failures. Time will tell if they succeed, or if Americans decide to find the courage to reject the latest series of unconstitutional edicts.
redstate | Dr. Anthony Fauci is a liar. That much has been clear for a very long time, though, it’s become more in your face as the months have worn on. The latest example comes courtesy of documents that prove Fauci lied about NIH funding going to gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.
So has the good doctor been humbled by his recent pantsing? Of course not. Instead, he’s continued his streak of dishonesty, with this latest example being especially egregious given the facts as we know them.
So let me get this straight. The head of NIAID and the face of the pandemic response has no idea whether natural immunity exists or is durable? He’s seen none of the studies that show natural immunity confers stronger protection than two doses of the vaccine? He hasn’t looked at any of the real-world data sets? He hasn’t seen any of the numbers from the United Kingdom or Israel? Really?
No one believes this garbage. Rather, Fauci is lying again, in my opinion, because if he acknowledges natural immunity and how strong it is, he acknowledges how ridiculous Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is. Any mandate that doesn’t include carveouts for natural immunity is logically asinine and spitting in the face of the science. So instead of just telling the truth and noting that there should be exceptions, Fauci plays dumb as if the freaking head of NIAID just has no idea about how natural immunity works.
It’s enough to make someone want to punch a wall. Deep breaths and all that.
We are led by dishonest hacks who are putting politics above the health of Americans. That is why there’s vaccine hesitancy, not because of Fox News or Donald Trump. No one trusts these people because they do not deserve any trust. They continually mislead and make decisions based on what fits the narrative they want and not based on where the facts lead.
In short, Fauci should be fired, but we’ve known that since the first month of the pandemic.
jonathanturley | In the law, it is called an admission against interest or an out-of-court statement by a party that, when uttered, is against the party’s pecuniary, proprietary, or penal interests. In politics, it is called just dumb. White House chief of staff Ronald Klain offered a doozy this week when he admitted that the announced use of the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for a vaccine mandate was a mere “work around” of the constitutional limit imposed on the federal government. The problem is that the thing being “worked around” is the Constitution. Courts will now be asked to ignore the admission and uphold a self-admitted evasion of constitutional protections.
Notably, before inauguration, Klain publicly assured the public that Biden would that, on “his first day in office, I will issue a nationwide masking mandate, requiring that people wear masks where the federal authority extends and then urging governors and other local officials to impose mask mandates in their states.” That statement was then walked back due to the lack of legal authority to issue such a mandate.
Klain retweeted MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who posted, “OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.”
The “work around” was needed because, as some of us have previously during both the Trump and Biden Administration, the federal government does not have clear authority to impose public health mandates. Authority for such mandates has traditionally been recognized within state authority.
Make no mistake about it. This is a clever move to use the OSHA as the vehicle for the mandate to avoid the federalism issues of a direct mandate. President Joe Biden has been ping ponging on the issue for over a year in first suggesting that he could impose a national mandate and then admitting that he probably could not. Ironically, this move comes on the same day that Attorney General Merrick Garland denounced the “clever” use of the Texas abortion law to make it more difficult to challenge. Judging from the praise for Garland, it appears that such work arounds are noble when done for the right cause.
The question is whether this clever work around will in fact work. It might, but there are ample grounds from challenge. Under this interpretation OSHA could impose a federal mandate for any measure that impacts workers, including public health measures not directly linked to a given workplace or job. That may be more of a sticker shock for some on the federal bench, including some justices.
The move is unnecessary and therefore reckless. There are already challenges to the law which the Justice Department could join as amicus. It would then not have to risk the creation of additional losses in court after the impressive litany of losses of the Biden Administration. This was another filing that followed a public call from the President. It is again politics driving litigation by the Justice Department. The media covered such pressure extensively during the Trump Administration and legal experts objected that the Trump White House was attacking the independence of the Justice Department and other agencies. There is little attention to his pattern that extends from immigration to debt relief to the eviction moratorium.
NYTimes | In December 2020, as the prospect of imminent mass vaccination against Covid-19 was finally becoming a reality, Mr. Biden leveled with the American people: He said he would not force anyone to get the jab. “No, I don’t think it should be mandatory,” he told reporters. “I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory.”
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, recently reiterated Mr. Biden’s position. “That’s not the role of the federal government,” she declared on July 23, referring to the idea of a government mandate. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the same thing a week later: “There will be no nationwide mandate.”
So much for that. On Thursday, Mr. Biden announced a far-reaching vaccine mandate that applies to most federal workers, hospitals, public schools and 80 million employees of private companies. Under the White House’s presumptuous plan, workplaces that employ more than 100 people must require their employees to either get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing — a burden so onerous that for many businesses, it will not be a choice at all.
The president’s plan is certainly well intentioned. The vaccines are the only tried-and-true strategy for defeating Covid; government officials should both encourage vaccination and make it easier to get vaccinated. Health officials must continue selling people on the vaccines by emphasizing the considerable upside: Vaccination decreases transmission of the virus and turns hospitalization and death into very unlikely outcomes. It provides such robust protection that 99 percent of coronavirus fatalities in the United States now occur in the unvaccinated population. Vaccination works, and it’s the right option for a vast majority of Americans.
But forcing vaccines on a minority contingent of unwilling people is a huge error that risks shredding the social fabric of a country already being pulled apart by political tribalism.
The president should not — and most likely does not — have the power to unilaterally compel millions of private-sector workers to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs: Mr. Biden is presiding over a vast expansion of federal authority, one that Democrats will certainly come to regret the next time a Republican takes power. Moreover, the mechanism of enforcement — a presidential decree smuggled into law by the Department of Labor and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration — is fundamentally undemocratic. Congress is supposed to make new laws, not an unaccountable bureaucratic agency.
While more than 70 percent of American adults have received a shot, a smaller but sizable group of people, for various reasons, are unvaccinated. Some members of this group have antibodies from a previous Covid case and are reasonably protected from future illness, according to recent data. There is little benefit to forcing vaccination on such people, and Mr. Biden’s decision to not exempt them is a significant misstep.
Unvaccinated individuals who were never infected by Covid would certainly benefit from vaccination. But the coercive approach has major downsides. The most anti-vaccine Americans — those who are adamantly refusing the jab because of a misguided belief that it’s dangerous — will probably not change their minds because the government is strong-arming employers. On the contrary, the federal mandate might actually be taken as confirmation of their paranoid suspicions that the vaccines have less to do with their health and more to do with social control.
As a practical matter, it’s undeniable that the federal mandate will engender a titanic backlash and create a spate of lawsuits. Vaccine holdouts have already taken legal action against employers requiring vaccination: Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University in Virginia who had recovered from Covid and has antibodies, recently fought his institution’s mandate and prevailed. And Republican governors are certain to battle Mr. Biden over this policy. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a Republican, tweeted at the president, “See you in court.”
It’s true that courts have upheld vaccine mandates in certain circumstances: In a 1922 case, the Supreme Court famously ruled that a city ordinance could deny admission to students who failed to get the smallpox vaccine. But the assertion that a public official can completely sidestep the legislative process and enact a much farther-reaching vaccine mandate via administrative action should elicit skepticism from even those who vigorously support vaccination.
LATimes | As Biden said in introducing his program Thursday, COVID vaccination “is not about freedom or personal choice. it’s about protecting yourself and those around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love.”
That said, there are still some questions and issues about the program that deserve answers. Here are some of the most important points.
The Supreme Court has endorsed vaccination mandates for more than 105 years. The court first weighed in on mandates in 1905, with a 7-2 decision in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, upholding a fine imposed by the city of Cambridge, Mass., on a resident who refused to get inoculated against smallpox.
“Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for the majority.
Harlan saw no problem with constraining “liberty” in the name of public welfare: “In every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”
The Jacobson decision has been the linchpin of vaccine requirements coast to coast and at almost all levels of American society. As Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University Law School observed late last year, “All states require childhood vaccines as a condition of school entry.” Adult mandates may be rare, but “at least 16 states require influenza or hepatitis B vaccinations for postsecondary education.”
It’s true that Jacobson has sometimes been exploited to support noxious public policies — Oliver Wendell Holmes cited it as precedent, for instance, in Buck vs. Bell, the 1927 opinion in which he upheld Virginia’s forced sterilization law with the notorious comment, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
It’s also true that the court’s approach to questions of individual rights has evolved over the last century, generally in the direction of narrowing government’s ability to restrict them. But constitutional scholars tend to find that the pandemic is sufficiently dangerous to warrant the constraints Harlan endorsed.
“A law that authorizes mandatory vaccination during an epidemic of a lethal disease ... would undoubtedly be found constitutional,” Wendy Mariner of Boston University wrote in 2005. “However, the vaccine would have to be approved by the FDA as safe and effective, and the law would have to require exceptions for those who have contraindications to the vaccine.” Those conditions would appear to be met by the Biden program.
Biden is relying on the power of federal funding and federal workplace laws. The government’s power to set conditions on its funding are largely unquestioned.
In mentioning an earlier order he issued requiring vaccinations of all nursing home workers who treat Medicare and Medicaid patients, he stated, “I have that federal authority.” The administration’s position is that the same authority extends to firms holding federal contracts and employees of the federal government, as well as 300,000 workers in federally funded Head Start preschool programs.
IMDoc | With regard to The Atlantic article about vaccination –
There is a highlighted sentence directly under the title of the article ( I am not a journalist – I am sure this sentence in the layout has a name – do not know what it is, though).
Complete protection against infection has long been hailed as the holy grail of vaccination. It might simply be unachievable.
The very instant I read that sentence – as a medical doctor and a medical historian – I know instantly that this person has no idea what they are talking about – and has not bothered to do the most basic of research in the topic.
One word –
SMALLPOX
It has been achieved – it is not unachievable. But it took a STERILIZING vaccine. And ON TOP OF THE VACCINE, all kinds of other efforts which were completely different based on the part of the world. The top priority – Truth being told to the population at all times. A concerted effort with non-compromised leaders and spokespeople. And to have the entire health system on board in an organized manner. Also, not a small amount of PR was required then, because the vaccinations left permanent scars on the skin. The authorities got out ahead in front of this issue – and did not wait until it detonated when people started noticing it and sharing it with friends. Furthermore, smallpox vaccination rates were nowhere near 100% – but when you have a sterilizing vaccine, it does not need to be so. Political and health leaders did absolutely no kind of shaming or belittling. The messaging was almost all positive and congratulatory. It is also important to realize that this eradication occurred in an era of mass media but long before we had the Internet and especially social media. I do not think we can even begin to overestimate the absolutely horrific effect social media has had on our response this time. Most patients I see every day literally want to throw their hands in the air – they have completely given up.
There is ZERO wild smallpox on the face of this planet today. ZERO. The only place it is left intact is purportedly in the freezers of viral labs at the CDC and in Russia. I am not even certain about that.
Polio is a very similar story, but is not completely eradicated from the planet – just a sliver is left. And one could argue the same about measles, mumps, and others that have been made so uncommon that young doctors would not recognize the symptoms if seen in the ER.
Coronaviruses are a completely and totally unique virus family in almost every way conceivable. The pox viruses are much more amenable to vaccination efforts. But that in no way means that science will never find a way to eradicate a coronavirus aided by vaccinatinon.
But ERADICATION via vaccination would require a STERILIZING vaccine. And that is not where we are today. The sooner our health agencies and media begin to level with the people and not put out this kind of article the better we will all be. I was gravely concerned when the messaging earlier this year was so misleading that it was giving people the idea that the vaccines were causing eradication. The mainstream narrative today saying this was never the case just 4 months ago is totally deluding itself just like with so many other issues. “Why we never said that – everyone always knew it was never going to prevent you from getting it” – all over the news today – is belied by the statement on my vaccination consent form right in front of me – THIS VACCINATION WAS GIVEN AN EUA for PREVENTION of COVID-19. Right there on the form. It was a classic case of miscontruing concepts without actually lying that misled the vast majority of my patients. Big Pharma is very very good at that.
I am of the firm belief, that after the Biden performance last night, unless an intense leveling is done with the American people about appropriate expectations and soon – there will be enormous political consequences for his administration. More than half the country thinks that forced vaccination of these NON-STERILIZING vaccines is going to end this pandemic. That is not the case at all. And I can see a future of a lot of disappointment and anger.
There is precedent for where we are today – the FLU shots. Also non-sterilizing. But nobody discusses the flu vaccination in terms of eradication – because it is simply impossible with non-sterilizing vaccines. Level with the people. They clearly understand the flu shot. They clearly get it – the flu shot will not eradicate the virus from earth – it will however make you less likely to get really sick – WHEN YOU GET THE FLU. And we have learned to live with the flu with the tens/hundreds of thousands of casualties every year. Until something much better comes for COVID, it is going to be a similar story.
Until we begin to treat the citizens of the world as adults, and not kids – and quit bamboozling – we are never going to have buy in from every group as has happened in the past.
My two cents.
The Pfizer phase III trial is here:
Pay careful attention to the endpoints and definitions. The vaccines were never tested to prevent infection and transmission – only symptomatic illness and severe disease.
neuberger | But all this public panic, anger and shaming of the unvaccinated by the vaccinated — what the Sun-Times calls “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”, for example — hides another fact. The Covid vaccines, as good as they are, were not designed to prevent infection in the first place, only symptoms.
Let that sink in. The current Covid vaccines were not designed to prevent infection. That's a major reason why "breakthrough infections" occur. In addition, because the vaccines do prevent severe symptoms and a vast majority of cases, the number of breakthrough infections must, by definition, be under-counted.
When the virus is circulating in a vaccinated population, variants that are more rapidly transmitting are selected for --- those are vaccine evading variants.
— Yaneer Bar-Yam (@yaneerbaryam) September 9, 2021
By vaccinating without shutting down transmission we are promoting vaccine evading variants.
This, from September 2020, was written by Dr. William Haseltine, formerly of the Harvard Medical School and a hero in the fight to genetically characterize AIDS (bio here and here):
Prevention of infection must be a critical endpoint. Any vaccine trial should include regularantien testing every three days to test contagiousness to pick up early signs of infection and PCR testing once a week to confirm infection by SARS-CoV-2 test the ability of the vaccines to stave off infection. Prevention of infection is not a criterion for success for any of these vaccines. In fact, their endpoints all require confirmed infections and all those they will include in the analysis for success, the only difference being the severity of symptoms between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Measuring differences amongst only those infected by SARS-CoV-2 underscores the implicit conclusion that the vaccines are not expected to prevent infection, only modify symptoms of those infected.
We all expect an effective vaccine to prevent serious illness if infected. Three of the vaccine protocols—Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca—do not require that their vaccine prevent serious disease[,] only that they prevent moderate symptoms which may be as mild as cough, or headache. [emphasis added]
It may well be true that these vaccines, to some degree, do protect against infection, but (to use a club brandished against those who recommend studying ivermectin) no clinical studies, to my knowledge, have established that, or have established the degree of that protection.
It's certainly true that the world wanted these vaccines on the market on the fastest schedule possible. And it's also true that they have saved a great many lives. Just look at the ratio of infections-to-deaths prior to the vaccine rollout, and the same ratio afterward (chart above).
But it is also true that it's not just the unvaccinated who are infecting the vaccinated, since both vaccinated and unvaccinated can be Covid carriers and spreaders.
Which means that, even if the world were 100% vaccinated with these vaccines, the vaccinated who host the virus would provide ample breeding ground for variants.
theorganicprepper | The most frustrating thing to me, the past year and a half, has been the constantly changing narrative and the dismissal of formerly well-understood scientific truths. Natural immunity is one of those concepts from freshman biology that many seem to completely disregard these days.
I think this is a natural effect of the “cult of expertise” we have in the United States. Seemingly, anyone with specific credentials is automatically deferred to, regardless of how competent they are… or more insidiously, where their financial interests lie.
I’ve gotten into some discussions with medical professionals about whether people who have recovered from the disease need to be vaccinated. These conversations would have been seen as utterly ridiculous three years ago. However, now, it seems, we all need to relearn freshman biology. So I’d like to review the concept of natural immunity to help organize my thoughts and maybe help others that feel like their heads are in a whirl.
I’ve got my old college biology textbook-Life: The Science of Biology, by Purves, Sadava, Orians, and Heller. I’ve got the sixth edition, published in 2001, so it’s about 20 years old. I also have a newer college biology textbook because I’m a big nerd. It’s Campbell Biology, by Reece, Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, and Jackson, published in 2014. Both textbooks detail how our immune systems work, and both say pretty much the same thing.
Our innate defenses are things like our skin and mucus. We’re born with these, and they make it difficult for various pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and multicellular parasites to enter our bodies. Our bodies also have an immune system that recognizes and attacks any infectious agents that make it past our innate defenses.
Our immune system is really sophisticated, and in healthy individuals, it works pretty well. Suppose some kind of pathogen makes it past the body’s innate defenses and begins infecting cells within the host. In that case, the host’s body will, in turn, start producing antibodies that will specifically attack the invading pathogen. The host body will continue producing antibodies until either the host dies or the invading cells die, and the patient’s body can return to normal.
The best part is, even after the active infection is over, the host’s body will retain the memory of the antibodies it produced during the infection. So if the formerly infected person reencounters the pathogen, the body will immediately have the antibodies to kill the pathogen. They rarely get sick gain, and if they do, it’s generally very mild.
Usually, the WSJ leaves their articles up on the Opinion Page for about a week. However, within twenty-four hours, WSJ buried this article on natural immunity. Jeff had a great article about alternative media just the other day. This definitely feeds into his narrative about how much good info is getting buried right now.
Anyway, the WSJ article discusses mucosal immunity vs. internal immunity. The author (a neurologist) states that while vaccines stimulate internal immunity, they do nothing to address mucosal immunity. The viruses don’t penetrate the host’s organs, which is why most vaccinated people don’t get really sick. But, the viruses still live and reproduce in mucus-lined mouths and nasal passages. That is why vaccinated people with no symptoms are still spreading Covid like crazy. However, those of us that have recovered have both mucosal and internal immunity.
An Israeli study showed recently that vaccinated people were 13 times as likely to become infected and 27 times as likely to have symptomatic infections as people with natural immunity.
Alex Berenson posted this information on Twitter on August 25, and the platform permanently banned him on August 28. However, medical professionals are starting to make noise about it, such as Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard epidemiologist. Hopefully, more people begin to listen.
Even if the world were 100% jabbed with these mRNA neo-vaccinoids, the jabbed - who host the virus - would provide ample breeding ground for variants.
It's likely much worse than this. It has been claimed that widespread distribution of a non-sterilizing mRNA goo into a population with high levels of infection and transmission is likely to select for variants that escape the goo induced immune response.
If that’s right, it looks like a colossal blunder to have relied on “symptom reduction for wild type-caused disease” as the primary public health response to the pandemic.
If the neo-vaccinoids don’t impact infections or transmission, or barely do so, how will they select for jab evasion? Someone, jabbed or not, gets infected and passes it on – where’s the selection pressure? Masks and distancing, on the other hand, would be expected to select for more transmissible variants.
Don’t masks and distancing stop transmission? If the virus doesn’t transmit then it doesn’t seem it can mutate – it would just die out, wouldn’t it? As I understand it, masks and distancing don’t stop transmission, they make it harder – thus favoring virus strains that are more transmissible.
It seems as though you’re saying that we are trading a short term benefit by masking and social distancing for a long term consequence of enhanced virulence of the virus. Would you suggest that it might be better (in the long run) not to mask and distance?
My understanding is viruses only survive and replicate in a host cell so it would seem the best way to get rid of this is to deny it host cells by masks and distancing and in some cases lock downs. The jabs as they are now seem like they are more a way to lead some facsimile of normal but they don’t really address the issue that the virus is still here and replicating in both jabbed and unjabbed.
What this will mean over time – who knows? I personally don’t have a whole lot of confidence in the government which seems more made to protect an economy than to save lives.
I’ve seen this exact argument applied to the neo-vaccinoids as they are non-sterilizing. It seemed like a sound argument not to rush out these neo-vaccinoids as they may create vaccine resistant strains like we might be seeing with Mu. I’ve not seen this about masking and distancing before. Do you think we are seeing these more virulent strains are occurring because we’ve been masking and distancing and not because we’re using non-sterilizing neo-vaccinoids?
'This is not about freedom or personal choice. It's about protecting yourself and those around you, the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love. My job as president is to protect all Americans,' he said in remarks in the State Dining Room at the White House.
'We've
been patient but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has
cost all of us. So please do the right thing,' he said.
Greenwald | The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised even many of its harshest critics this week when it strongly defended coercive programs and other mandates from the state in the name of fighting COVID. “Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties,” its Twitter account announced, adding that “vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public."
If you were surprised to see the ACLU heralding the civil liberties imperatives of "vaccine mandates” and "vaccine requirements” — whereby the government coerces adults to inject medicine into their own bodies that they do not want — the New York Times op-ed which the group promoted, written by two of its senior lawyers, was even more extreme. The article begins with this rhetorical question: “Do vaccine mandates violate civil liberties?” Noting that "some who have refused vaccination claim as much,” the ACLU lawyers say: “we disagree.” The op-ed then examines various civil liberties objections to mandates and state coercion — little things like, you know, bodily autonomy and freedom to choose — and the ACLU officials then invoke one authoritarian cliche after the next (“these rights are not absolute") to sweep aside such civil liberties concerns:
[W]hen it comes to Covid-19, all considerations point in the same direction. . . . In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. . . . .
[Many claim that] vaccines are a justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity. That may sound ominous, because we all have the fundamental right to bodily integrity and to make our own health care decisions. But these rights are not absolute. They do not include the right to inflict harm on others. . . . While vaccine mandates are not always permissible, they rarely run afoul of civil liberties when they involve highly infectious and devastating diseases like Covid-19. . . .
While limited exceptions are necessary, most people can be required to be vaccinated. . . . . Where a vaccine is not medically contraindicated, however, avoiding a deadly threat to the public health typically outweighs personal autonomy and individual freedom.
The op-ed sounds like it was written by an NSA official justifying the need for mass surveillance (yes, fine, your privacy is important but it is not absolute; your privacy rights are outweighed by public safety; we are spying on you for your own good). And the op-ed appropriately ends with this perfect Orwellian flourish: “We care deeply about civil liberties and civil rights for all — which is precisely why we support vaccine mandates.”
What makes the ACLU's position so remarkable — besides the inherent shock of a civil liberties organization championing state mandates overriding individual choice — is that, very recently, the same group warned of the grave dangers of the very mindset it is now pushing. In 2008, the ACLU published a comprehensive report on pandemics which had one primary purpose: to denounce as dangerous and unnecessary attempts by the state to mandate, coerce, and control in the name of protecting the public from pandemics.
RT | The CEO of a health food company has learned the hard way that reciting medical data and coming to logical conclusions, like favoring a health mandate to prevent obesity, will bring out the corporate beast in the woke mob.
‘If you wish to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,’ goes the famous saying. If that is true, then Americans are being ruled by a truly domineering tyrant, who can’t bear to hear advice that just might save the entire kingdom.
Jonathan Neman, CEO of the upscale salad chain Sweetgreen, broke some uncomfortable truths to the millions of Americans who are bursting around the waistline: being obese in the age of Covid could lead to their even more untimely death.
“78% of hospitalizations due to COVID are Obese and Overweight people,” Neman stated in a LinkedIn post that went viral. “Is there an underlying problem that perhaps we have not given enough attention to? Is there another way to think about how we tackle ‘healthcare’ by addressing the root cause?”
“We have been quick to put in place Mask and Vaccine Mandates but zero conversation on HEALTH MANDATES,” continued the CEO, as he waded unknowingly into alligator-infested swamp water. “All the while we have printed unlimited money to soften the blow the shutdowns have caused to our country.”
Despite prefacing his argument with as much virtue signaling padding as possible, emphasizing that he was not an anti-vaxxer and thought vaccines a grand idea, it didn’t matter to the woke pack. Neman had committed the unforgivable crime of stating facts at a deranged moment in American history when the infantile, self-consumed audience has no other desire than to be lulled asleep with a candy-coated simulacrum of reality.
And it wasn’t as though the CEO was misrepresenting the truth. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, described the grim reality facing overweight and obese Americans as thus: “As
clinicians develop care plans for COVID-19 patients, they should
consider the risk for severe outcomes in patients with higher BMIs [Body
Mass Index], especially for those with severe obesity…[which is] a risk
factor for both hospitalization and death.”
swprs | Israel is reporting the highest coronavirus infection rate in the world, showing that neither vaccine mandates nor “vaccine passports” are suitable means to limit or end the pandemic.
Israel has been a global pioneer in covid mass vaccinations as well as in introducing the highly controversial “vaccine passport” (Green Pass). Nevertheless, since late August 2021, Israel has been reporting the highest coronavirus infection rate in the entire world (see chart above).
The Israeli case clearly shows that neither covid vaccine mandates nor “vaccine passports” are suitable means to limit or end the pandemic. This is because covid vaccines are unable to reduce coronavirus infections and transmission, and they lose much of their effectiveness even against severe disease within a few months, a medical fact already known from influenza vaccines.
It should be noted that even in Israel, covid vaccines continue to provide some protection against hospitalization and severe disease (about 50%). Nevertheless, double-vaccinated Israeli citizens will again be counted as ‘unvaccinated’ and will require a third dose. It may well be, however, that “booster shots” have in fact increased recent coronavirus infections (“post-vaccination spike”).
On the positive side, Israeli data confirms that natural immunity, acquired through previous infection, is much stronger and long-lasting – providing a protection up to 27 times higher than vaccination – thus opening up a realistic perspective to end the pandemic. Depending on the country, between 5% and 75% of the population have already acquired natural immunity.
In addition, Israel was the first country to confirm the rather troubling safety profile of covid vaccines, reporting a “murky wave of heart attacks” and an increase in all-cause mortality
– even in young people – already back in March and April 2021. By now,
serious and fatal cardiovascular and neurological covid vaccine adverse
events have been well documented (see updated overview). Globally, covid vaccines may already have killed or severely injured more than 100,000 people. Fist tap Dale.
nakedcapitalism | Hatred of The Other was supposed to a hallmark of the uneducated, provincial, and intolerant. Yet we now see bloody, vicious fantasies about what should happen to Them for being wrong-thinking and wrong-acting being not just voiced freely, but even applauded.
The immediate manifestation is open hatred for the unvaxxed. The Othering of them takes the form of depicting them as white Trump voting Bubbas, when vaccination rates happen to be relatively low also among blacks, Hispanics, and curiously, PhDs. In a belated admission that the media stereotyping of the unvaxxed is too narrow, minority vaccine-shunners are being rebranded as “vaccine deliberate.”1
One of the new big ways to despise The Bad (Presumed White) unvaxxed is to depict them as unworthy of receiving medical care for Covid because it’s supposedly their fault that they are in this fix. Yet no one bats an eye at treating smokers for cancer and COPD, or STD victims who presumably couldn’t be bothered to use a condom, or the overweight for heart attacks and diabetes or drunks who smash themselves up with their cars, or attempted suicides. If we’re going to go strong form “only the deserving get treated,” we could probably shrink the size of the medical industry by two-thirds.
And this sentiment is getting a following. Our IM Doc practices in one of the bluest counties in the US. A recent report:
During lunch in the doctor’s lounge word came that an unvaccinated patient had died at the tertiary center he was sent last night. 3 MDs sat at the table next to me and out loud something like this – “WELL THAT DUMB ASS HAD IT COMING”. I sat for a moment and no one else said a word. I could not believe it. I finally had to say something – “My Chairman [a superstar of academic medicine and renown medical ethicist] would have fired my ass on the spot for even thinking something like that about an AIDS patient. That is completely unprofessional and inappropriate to say that out loud.” THAT IS YOUR OPINION, THESE DUMB BUTTS HAVE IT COMING – was the reply.
They are getting meaner and more brazen by the day – as the whole vaccine narrative continues to become unhinged more every day.
I am feeling that I am getting the idea what it was like to watch normal happy German citizens turn into the SS.
Admittedly I wasn’t there, but particularly coming from a clutch of doctors, this line of talk sounds a bit too much like Lebensunwertes Leben for my comfort.
The other justification for punishing the yahoos is that they pose a contagion threat.
The fury of self-designated members of the elite towards people they don’t know or know only as stereotypes comes off as a parent or authority who is enraged that they are being defied. It’s not as if many or any are angry that hospital workers are being driven to the breaking point, for instance, It’s because their sense of how things should work is being defiled.
And that goes back to 2016. A big chunk of the folks who think they are in charge by virtue being deserving had their collective Great Chain of Being upended when Trump won. Trump then compounded his sin by having a revolving collection of incompetents and loud-mouths in his Administration. What was remarkable is that rather than coolly plotting their comeback, the out group spent four years whining at the loudest warble imaginable and focusing tremendous energy on the supposed Trump show-stopper, Russiagate, that delivered a big fat squib.
If push comes to shove, the professional-managerial class cannot rely on the support of the police. Look at how New York City’s finest openly dissed De Blasio. The military are not supposed to operate domestically and would likely use that prohibition to stand aside. The professional-managerial class does not control the ports, trucking, or rail operations. The crop-growing areas of California are under conservative control. Etc.
So the members of the professional-managerial class are correct to be insecure about their authority and claims of legitimacy. But going authoritarian when they lack adequate control of supply lines and enforcement mechanisms is an exceedingly risky wager.
AP | The House passed legislation Wednesday that would establish a broader definition of antisemitism for the Department of Education t...
I would suggest – that making statements such as that sentence are really misleading to everyone but those who have been schooled in virology and vaccinology. Those words mean something completely different to me than my patients. The difference between an “infection” and a “transmissible infection” is debating angels on a pinhead for most people.
I get the feeling that they are realizing that the whole COVID vaccination story is getting shot through with holes – and they are pulling at straws.
I just had my front desk person read this article. A college graduate in English. She did not understand it the way it is being presented. Again – this is common BIG PHARMA dissembling.
It seems to me the argument here that most people get that the writer is trying to convey – is OH well – the COVID vaccine is not working out as well as we would hoped – but no big deal – neither did any other, when you really think about it and use arcane terms.
Nothing could be further from the truth –
When is the last time I saw a polio infection or a transmissable polio infection? NEVER
When is the last time I saw a smallpox infection or a transmissable smallpox infection? NEVER
I can go on with measles mumps, etc.
When is the last time I saw a COVID infection or a transmissable COVID infection – well I have seen 8 this AM – all in vaccinated patients.
And most people get that – and look sideways at articles like this trying to explain this away via word