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More Flaws in the Vaccine Model Claiming 20 Million Lives Saved
By Bhaskaran Raman
June 27, 2022

A study titled “Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study” has appeared in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, on 23 June 2022. It has concluded that nearly 14-20 million lives have been saved by the rollout of the Covid-19 jabs. This study immediately gained widespread news coverage worldwide: e.g. The Hindu (India), Mint (India), The Guardian (UK), CBS Detroit (USA), etc. It is thus worth looking at the technical validity of the study.

Flawed assumptions in the jab impact modeling study: The modeling study necessarily incorporates various important parameters. A close look reveals that much of the critical parameters are based on assumptions which are known in the literature to be wrong. The table below summarizes this.

AspectAssumption in modeling studyCritique, Reality check of the assumption
Immunity after natural infection“loss of infection-derived immunity.. follows an Erlang distribution with a mean duration of one year” (see study supplement).Immunity after natural infection is robust and long-lasting; protection against infection lasts much longer than for the jabbed; protection from severe disease is likely lifelong.
Immune evasion to new variants after exposure to earlier variantsImmune evasion for infection-derived immunity occurs for 27% of the previously infected population.”The study cited for this 27% number is interpreted incorrectly. In the cohort study, 27% of the participants showed a decline in antibodies followed by an increase. Rather than meaning that these individuals became susceptible again, it means that these individuals were re-exposed and their immune system worked exactly as it was supposed to.
Vaccine efficacy against infection with Delta variant
Adenovirus: 67%, mRNA: 88%(see Table 1 of supplement)
Efficacy wanes in 6 months:Adenovirus: 44%, mRNA: 63%Such waning efficacy is not modeled.
Vaccine efficacy against mortalityAdenovirus: 92%, mRNA: 93%(see Table 1 of supplement)Efficacy against mortality must be calculated considering all-cause mortality; a preprint study shows a more modest 73% for the adenovirus jabs, and a negative efficacy of –3% for the mRNA jabs; so the modeled numbers are way too optimistic and incorrect; protection against hospitalization and mortality is also known to be waning and this is not modeled.
Vaccine efficacy against transmission“We assume that all vaccinatedindividuals have a 50% reduction in infectiousness for breakthrough infections.”The study cited for this 50% reduction clearly says that efficacy against transmission nears zero after 12 weeks of the jab; other studies have also shown that efficacy against onward transmission is near nil; hence the modeled number is wrong.

All of the above erroneous assumptions are in the direction of amplifying the possible impact of the jabs, while at the
same time diminishing the role of immunity after natural infection. Hence it is likely that the modeling study overestimates the lives saved by the Covid-19 jab rollout. Aside from the above parameters, there is yet another technical flaw, as explained below.

The colossal failure of Covid-19 transmission model used: In general, among scientific studies, mathematical modeling carries far lower weight than real-world studies, since modeling necessarily has to make simplifying assumptions.
In particular, Covid-19 modeling has failed spectacularly. More specifically, the transmission model for Covid-19 proposed in late March 2020, from Imperial College (UK) has been off by a factor of 10-40, as depicted in the table below (data source: website, spreadsheet).

CountryPredictionReal world dataFactor of miscalculation by model
Sweden80,000 deaths with no mitigation~6,000 deaths in first wave with no lockdown13 times
India4.0 million deaths with “social distancing whole population”5.9 million deaths with no mitigation150,000 deaths in 2020 with 3 months of strict lockdown, 6 months of different levels of relaxation26-39 times

It is important to note that the current jab impact modeling study has used the same above Covid-19 transmission modeling, which is known to have failed by a huge factor. Since the earlier transmission model hugely overestimated Covid-19 spread and deaths, it stands to reason that the current jab impact model using the transmission model has grossly overestimated the number of lives saved by the jab rollout.

Financial conflicts of interest: Independent of the above technical flaws, there is another important aspect here. The Lancet publication clearly mentions that the funding sources for this work include the WHO, Gavi, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, all of whom have a financial conflict of interest in mass jabs. However, most of the news outlets have left out this critical information. This is inappropriate and unacceptable in honest journalism.

Summary: In conclusion, it is possible that the jabs may have saved some lives, but the modeling study is likely grossly overestimating the same. Further, that (a) scientists have to resort to a modeling study with so many flaws, and that (b) news outlets have to resort to imbalanced coverage of the same without mention of financial conflicts of interest, does not speak too well of the possibility of a huge impact on lives saved. The scientific evidence to substantiate a jab as life-saving should always be a rigorous randomized control trial.
 

Heliobas Disciple

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5svue9iHr8
BA.4 and BA.5 Long COVID, Severity, and Symptoms
38 min 8 sec

Streamed live 6 hours ago

Ba4 and Ba5 more prevalent in UK. It doesn't look as bad as some people are making it out to be, still in upper respitory not in the deeper lungs.

URL list from Monday, Jun. 27 2022

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation
[UR="true"]https://assets.publishing.service.gov[/URL]...
United Kingdom: the latest coronavirus counts, charts and maps
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-co...
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Hospitalizations - Our World in Data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hosp...
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Deaths - Our World in Data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths
Variants: distribution of cases data, 20 May 2021 - GOV.UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/publica...
Neutralization Escape by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 | NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...
Risk of long COVID associated with delta versus omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 - The Lancet
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
 

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Researchers have built a database to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Boston
by Tanner Stening, Northeastern University
June 27, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic upended daily life for everyone, changing the way we went about our lives in every conceivable way. Sudden disruptions to society were immediately apparent: School closures, business shutdowns, new—and in some cases, unprecedented—public health policies. But other pandemic impacts remain hidden, locked away in datasets and public records not yet meaningfully analyzed.

The determination to uncover that data—and make it widely available—led a group of Northeastern researchers to construct a "data-support system" from multiple information sources in and around the city of Boston that, when combined, paint a portrait of how communities and neighborhoods were impacted by the pandemic, especially those of color.

The comprehensive database includes data from a variety of local sources, including Boston 911 and 311 (the city's non-emergency line) dispatches, building permits, internet sources such as Yelp and Craigslist, among many other sources.

The data-cleanse-and-aggregation project aims to "captur[e] aspects of housing and land use, crime and disorder, and commercial activity and institutions" to understand how "social, [behavioral], and economic disruptions" varied across Boston neighborhoods, according to a description of the database published in Nature Scientific Data this week.

"We identified every data source that we could get our hands on—from administrative data to social media posts," says Northeastern professor Dan O'Brien, who leads the Boston Area Research Initiative that oversaw the data project.

O'Brien says the team of researchers combed through the different information sources, cleansing them of any errors or extraneous data, then "scraping" them into a user-friendly system that's easy to use and publicly available. Throughout the pandemic, the database has served as a public resource for researchers, policymakers, public health officials and practitioners, and educators.

"It's a great resource for answering questions on the fly," O'Brien says. "And now that we're approaching the other side of the pandemic, we can use this database to look at inequitable outcomes, to think about which communities had more or less impact from infections … and also to look at how business activity was impacted, through Yelp reviews, inspections, et cetera."

O'Brien says public health researchers are just starting to understand the ways the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing health inequities in communities of color. Researchers with the Boston Area Research Initiative organized the data so that they correspond to and describe distinct geographical places and regions—making it easier to identify pandemic shifts in low-income communities.

The end result of the data project, he says, should help provide researchers with a "comprehensive multidimensional view of how different communities experience the pandemic."

Early on in the pandemic, the public was clamoring for information about the highly infectious and deadly novel coronavirus. Governments all around the U.S. initiated virtually unprecedented infection tracking protocols that resulted in a deluge of information about viral case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths that's still a feature of daily life in this late phase of the pandemic.

Beyond mere "dashboarding" of COVID-19 information, O'Brien says their database offers a picture of the pandemic on multiple levels of society.

"This [database] goes a step further than that and says, "The pandemic was more than just one variable,'" he says. "It was more than just COVID infections; it disrupted everything. We literally shut everything down, which then alters anything that contributes to the operation of a community."
 

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Structural racism drives higher COVID-19 death rates in Louisiana, study finds
by University of Maryland
June 27, 2022

1656405016814.jpeg
The spatial distribution of percent Black residents in Louisiana. Credit: Guangxiao Hu, Nora Hamovit, Kristen Croft, Jennifer D. Roberts, and Deb Niemeier, University of Maryland.

Disproportionately high COVID-19 mortality rates among Black populations in Louisiana parishes are the result of longstanding health vulnerabilities associated with institutional and societal discrimination, according to research conducted by an interdisciplinary team under the mentorship of University of Maryland (UMD) Clark Distinguished Chair Deb Niemeier and UMD Associate Professor of Kinesiology Jennifer Roberts in the School of Public Health.

The team included doctoral students from three different programs at UMD, working together as part of an interdisciplinary fellowship program known as UMD Global STEWARDS, directed by Professor Amy R. Sapkota of the School of Public Health.

"Our results suggest that structural racism and inequities led to severe disparities in initial COVID-19 effects among highly populated Black Louisiana communities, and that as the virus moved into less densely populated Black communities, similar trends emerged," the researchers concluded in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, June 27.

Over the course of generations, discrimination in employment, education, housing, and access to medical care has led to higher risks of chronic illnesss (including asthma, diabetes, and obesity) among Black communities, as well as a higher likelihood of suffering a stroke, the authors noted. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have linked these factors to the likelihood of becoming severely ill from COVID-19.

Both nationally and in Louisiana, Black communities encounter inadequate housing and lower rates of home ownership, reduced access to health care, and lower rates of employment. As exemplified by Cancer Alley, Black families are more likely to live in so-called "fence-line" neighborhoods, located near industrial facilities that expose them to pollutants, and typically encounter reduced air and water quality compared to white Americans. Black families are also more likely to be uninsured and face higher rates of unemployment. These and multiple other factors, all reflecting decades of institutional and societal bias, add up to a combination of stressors that undermine health and, in the case of COVID-19, have made Black communities particularly vulnerable.

To obtain their findings, the team members identified the spatial distribution of social and environmental stressors across Louisiana parishes, and used hotspot analyses to develop aggregate stressors. They then tracked the correlations among stressors, cumulative health risks, COVID-19 mortality rates, and the size of Black populations across Louisiana. The results suggest that COVID-19 mortality rates initially spiked in Black communities with high population densities and moderate levels of aggregate stress. Over time, the rates also increased in less densely populated Black communities with higher levels of aggregate stress.

"We find that Black communities in Louisiana parishes with both higher and lower population densities experience higher levels of stressors leading to greater COVID-19 mortality rates," the researchers wrote. "Our work using the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as observed in Louisiana, makes clear that communities with high levels of social, economic, and environmental racism are significantly more vulnerable to a public health crisis."

The study lead authors include UMD graduate students Kristen Croft (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering). Nora Hamovit (Department of Biology), and Guangxiao Hu (Department of Geographical Sciences).

Allen P. Davis, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is a co-PI for the UMD STEWARDS program, which aims to bring together graduate students from a wide variety of backgrounds to work on collaborative projects. "Each student brings their own area of expertise to the table, resulting in synergy," Davis said. "That kind of synergy is something you might not get in other disciplinary studies."

The value of such an approach was evident in the collaboration among the three students. "As a human geographer, my main focus was on the spatial disparities of structural racism and inequities and their effects on COVID-19 mortalities," Hu said. "Using hotspot analysis, we identified two groups of parishes with high or low population densities located at different regions of Louisiana. Our research provides policy makers with very useful insights about the disproportionate burden of Black communities and the nonstationary distribution of this disproportion across Louisiana."

Hamovit performed the initial data analysis that yielded stressor index calculations, which Hu then utilized for hotspot analysis. "Because my Ph.D. research involves large and complex data sets I brought a strength of data organization and analysis to our team," Hamovit said. Croft played a key role in defining the research topic and utilized her background in stormwater research to pinpoint specific variables that could have a bearing on health.

Faculty mentors included Niemeier and Roberts. Niemeier, who joined the UMD civil and environmental engineering faculty in 2020 as the inaugural Clark Distinguished Chair, is an internationally-recognized expert on the equity impacts of infrastructure and engineering decisions. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and, in 2021, was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Her work, which details how marginalized communities are affected by vehicle emissions, development patterns, climate change, and approaches to disaster preparation and recovery, has helped spur policy and regulatory reforms.
 

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New study finds COVID-19 omicron variant leads to less severe disease in mice
by Georgia State University
June 27, 2022

Georgia State University researchers have found that the alpha, beta and delta variants of SARS-CoV-2 were substantially more fatal in mouse models than the original strain of the virus that causes COVID-19. However, they also found that the omicron variant, despite having more mutations, led to less severe disease with half as many deaths and longer survival time.

The findings, published in a study in the journal Viruses, offer new information on how the COVID-19 virus changes over time, and how those changes are leading to different kinds of infections.

"Given the speed that variants have emerged over the course of the pandemic, and may continue to emerge, we always want to predict how these variants will behave," said Mukesh Kumar, assistant professor of biology and the paper's lead researcher. "We want to know if the next variants will become more lethal than the one before, or weaker, or if it's a random process."

In the study, researchers looked at how variants acted in mouse models, examining the effects of the original strain compared to alpha, beta, delta and omicron variants.

They found that infection with the alpha, beta and delta strains led to higher virus levels in lungs and brains, significant loss of body weight, more inflammation and a 100 percent mortality rate among study subjects.

The omicron variant was much milder with lower virus levels, less lung inflammation, lower rates of weight loss and a 50 percent mortality rate. This was despite the omicron variant having more mutations that allow it to bind with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, also known as the ACE2 "receptor," which is a protein the virus binds with so it can infect cells.

"In mice, omicron was significantly less efficient than the other variants we tested, despite carrying the highest number of mutations," said Kumar. "That tracks along with epidemiological data that suggests that the omicron virus causes less severe pathology in humans than previous ancestral strains."

Most studies done in mouse models have been with the original virus strain first identified in Wuhan, China, which has been helpful but not informative in our current variant reality, Kumar said. These insights into the pathogenesis of the earlier and currently circulating variants help in understanding the pathogenesis of emerging COVID-19 variants.

The other authors of the study are biology Ph.D. students Janhavi Prasad Natekar, Heather Pathak, Shannon Stone, Pratima Kumari, Shaligram Sharma and Tabassum Tasnim Auroni; and post-doctoral fellows Komal Arora and Hussin Alwan Rothan, all of Georgia State.
 

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Researchers examine the infectious periods in vaccinated individuals with SARS-CoV-2, omicron and delta variants
by Boston University School of Medicine
June 27, 2022

In January 2022, the U.S. shifted its guidelines to recommend isolation of five days from COVID-19 symptom onset, followed by an additional five days of mask wearing. However, the progression of the infection as well as the impact of the different variants and vaccinations on when a person is no longer infectious (culture conversion) has been largely unknown.

To examine the infectious periods in vaccinated individuals infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron and Delta variants, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) collected daily anterior nasal swabs for at least 10 days from a group of college students and staff for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test and culture and with antigen rapid diagnostic testing (RDT) on a subset of individuals.

They found that in the majority of young, healthy and vaccinated adults, the infectious period for SARS-CoV-2 is limited, with only 17 percent remaining positive beyond five days.

"As isolation can have a significant impact on both the economy of a country and the mental health of its citizens, it is imperative to make efforts to reduce isolation periods while simultaneously preventing infectious individuals from spreading the disease," explains corresponding author Tara Bouton, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at BUSM.

The researchers recruited participants from a campus which had a multi-faceted surveillance testing and COVID-19 control program. They then compared infection with Omicron versus Delta, the vaccination and booster status of the infected individual and the difference from test date and symptom onset date on detectable virus and culture positivity.

They also found there was no difference in time to culture conversion by variant or vaccination status. Among participants in the subset who used an antigen RDT in days five through seven following SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, RDT had perfect negative predictive value and sensitivity when compared to culture.

The researchers say the study provides further support to the guidelines for strict masking beyond the initial five-day isolation period for SARS-CoV-2 infections to help prevent transmission from the minority of cases who remain culture positive. "We believe that rapid antigen testing may provide reassurance of lack of infectiousness, though masking for a full 10 days is necessary to prevent transmission from the 17 percent of individuals who remain culture positive after isolation," said Bouton, who also is an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center.

These findings appear online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
 

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Patients treated with monoclonal antibodies during COVID-19 delta surge had low rates of severe disease
by Mayo Clinic
June 27, 2022

A study of 10,775 high-risk adult patients during the COVID-19 delta variant surge in late 2021 finds that treatment with one of three anti-spike neutralizing monoclonal antibodies for mild to moderate symptoms led to low rates of severe disease, hospitalization, ICU admission and mortality, according to Mayo Clinic researchers.

Among patients treated at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Wisconsin from Aug. 1 to Dec. 1, 2021, who received bamlanivimab/etesevimab, casirivimab/imdevimab or sotrovimab, 287 patients, or 2.7%, developed severe disease that led to hospitalization, oxygen supplementation or death within 30 days of treatment. The rates of severe disease were 1.2% for patients treated with bamlanivimab/etesevimab, 1.6% for patients with sotrovimab, and 2.9% for casirivimab-imdevimab.

The slightly higher rate of severe outcomes among patients treated with casirivimab/imdevimab may be related to a significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rate in that group of patients, according to Raymund Razonable, M.D., a Mayo Clinic infectious diseases specialist and first author of the study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Data show that unvaccinated patients are at higher risk of serious disease. ICU admission was comparable among patients treated with the three anti-spike monoclonal antibody products.

"Anti-spike neutralizing monoclonal antibodies are effective in reducing the risk of hospitalization and severe disease due to COVID-19," Dr. Razonable says. "The improved clinical outcomes are shown for all three monoclonal antibodies that were used during the delta surge. That surge has passed, and we're now dealing with omicron and its variants. But the lessons learned from the delta experience are still true: Diagnose early, treat early with monoclonal antibodies, and the risk of severe disease will be reduced."

The delta COVID-19 variant is nearly twice as contagious as earlier variants and may cause more severe illness. The greatest risk of transmission is among people who are unvaccinated. People who are fully vaccinated still can be infected and spread the virus to others, though it appears that vaccinated people spread COVID-19 for a shorter period than unvaccinated people do.

Patients in the Mayo Clinic study were not confirmed as having the delta variant, but Dr. Razonable says the assumption is that patients were infected with that variant.

"We do not routinely perform genetic testing for all patients, but based on tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost all cases were delta during the study period," he says.

Only patients treated at Mayo Clinic locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin were included in the study. This allowed for more accurate comparison of the three antibody products, given similar circulating variants in those communities.

The specific monoclonal antibody administered to an eligible patient was based only on the product that was available at the infusion facility on the date of treatment. No clinical criteria favored one product over another, and all patients received education about the monoclonal antibody product, the potential benefits and adverse effects, and the investigational status of the drug. The monoclonal antibody product was administered within 10 days of symptom onset.

During the 30 days after monoclonal antibody infusion, most patients who progressed to severe disease were not fully vaccinated. Of the 104 patients who required ICU level of care, 69% were not fully vaccinated. Twenty-five patients died within 30 days after infusion, and all were not fully vaccinated.

The authors note that most patients in the study were non-Hispanic white people who sought care at a large academic medical center. The results may not be generalizable to underrepresented populations.

"Monoclonal antibodies work," says Dr. Razonable. "They work best when given early. The most benefit can be gained by people at highest risk of disease progression. The key takeaway for health care professionals and patients is: Test early so we can treat early."

Similar research also is nearing completion on patients treated during the omicron surge, comparing the efficacy of sotrovimab and bebtelovimab, he says. Omicron spreads more easily than the original COVID-19 virus and the delta variant, but while it appears to cause less severe disease, it has developed mutations that reduced the effectiveness of some monoclonal antibody treatments.
 
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NEJM: Global Warming Causes Stillbirths, Birth Defects, Infant Heart problems
Finally you can laugh a bit
Igor Chudov
7 hr ago

Okay, enough birth rate sadness, let’s lighten up a bit. We have a long road ahead of us, we cannot be sad all the time, so it is time to smile.

We have some climate change news.

Remember that a couple of days ago, I asked, why is the birth rate in Germany dropping? What is going on with a 23% drop in live births in Taiwan? Why are births dropping 10% in Switzerland this year? Why is the UKHSA vaccine surveillance report not reporting live births since February, for which it showed a 10% year-to-year drop in live births, and nothing since?

Fortunately, science has an answer for us. These baby problems have a known cause. It is climate change. Here’s an amazing article. It came out just in time for the birth rate scandal, which is obviously just a coincidence.



This article refers to a study, published in New England Journal of Medicine, a prestigious bellwether of medical science and a guide to all doctors worldwide.



The article explains that global warming may cause many problems in developing and unborn children. “All children are at risk”, says the study. Some of these problems are very familiar to us, and I am glad that scientists finally could attribute them to global warming.

Let me list them, coming verbatim from the NEJM article:



The article, further, admonishes physicians to be aware of the new medical consensus:

Protection of children’s health requires that health professionals understand the multiple harms to children from climate change[

So if parents ask a doctor, why are their children having heart problems, neurological issues, etc, the doctor would be able to cite the NEJM article and explain how those problems are caused by climate change.

One of the two coauthors of this global warming article, Kari Nadeau, is a well-published scientist who also published an interesting study explaining why vaccine-induced immunity is better than natural immunity. That study was, purely coincidentally, financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It also contradicts everything that we know from practical experience, of course. What else did you expect?





Financing of such authors by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, obviously, is nothing to worry about. I also wonder, how can Kari Nadeau be equally good at writing on matters of immune imprinting and immunology, as well as on totally unrelated matters of climate change? I am not sure.

My dog stopped by and I tried to explain to him that adverse pregnancy outcomes, cardiovascular disease, stillbirths, and declining live birth counts in 2022 are caused by climate change.

I finally asked my dog, do you believe Kari Nadeau?

His reaction:

 

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Cracks develop in the FDA's "Future Framework" narrative
Even the NY Times voices doubts about this Kafkaesque scheme to abandon science in the name of progress
Toby Rogers
10 hr ago

Ahead of the meeting tomorrow of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), the FDA and Pharma are leaking their preferred narratives about the proposed “Future Framework” to Sharon LaFraniere at the NY Times. But cracks are appearing in the FDA’s usually well-scripted plan. Ms. LaFraniere quotes three people as voicing doubts about the viability and advisability of reformulated Covid-19 shots. Even though the NY Times does its usual Pharma cheerleading, there is an undercurrent of concern that runs throughout the piece.



My first impulse was to refute the article point by point. But the story is a convoluted mess precisely because the FDA scheme is illogical and guaranteed to fail (so it’s impossible to describe in a way that makes sense).

I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of the NY Times article (but feel free to read it if you wish). Instead, in this article I intend to go meta to describe the predicament that we find ourselves in, 28 months into the Fauci/Wuhan Gain-of-Function Pandemic.

This is the article that the NY Times should have written and the reality that the FDA, CDC, and White House will be forced to acknowledge sooner or later:

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was always a bad candidate for a vaccine.

It evolves too fast.

In spite of decades of attempts, there is no vaccine against the common cold nor HIV — because they also evolve too fast.
SARS-CoV-2 is a chimera virus whereby a piece of HIV was spliced into the common cold. That’s why gain-of-function research is dangerous and Fauci never should have funded it.

Previous attempts to develop a vaccine against SARS were a disaster. That’s where we get the phrase — “all the ferrets died” — in animal studies, the SARS prototype vaccines created an immune response but then in challenge trials all of the animals got wiped out. Peter Hotez, who never met a vaccine he didn’t like, went before Congress early in the pandemic to warn them about the dangers of developing a vaccine for this virus.

But pharmaceutical companies proceeded anyway, because there are trillions of dollars to be made. Pharma controls the political system, the regulatory system (FDA, CDC, NIH), and the media so they knew that no one would stop them.
But now all of these actors find themselves in an untenable situation.

The shots are not working. Everyone knows this. More people have died of Covid since the introduction of the shots than before they were available. The mainstream zombies repeat the mantra that these shots are still somehow protecting against severe outcomes. But that’s pure speculation on their part. With viral evolution, some variants will inevitably be less dangerous than others — the mainstream does not deserve any credit for that.

So the Junta has now declared that the shots must be reformulated! The Junta = W.H.O./Gates/C.C.P./McKinsey/FDA/CDC/White House/mainstream media.

Reformulated based on what!?

SARS-CoV-2 was never a good candidate for a vaccine. There is no getting around that. These people have no idea of how to make a vaccine that stops Covid-19, what makes them think that they suddenly know how to make it better now???

The Junta declares: We’ll make them bivalent, trivalent, quadrivalent (targeting two, three, or four strains of the virus) — just like the flu shot!

Several problems with that:

1. The flu shot does not work. Why would anyone make the flu shot the model for anything?

2. mRNA shots are NOT comparable to traditional vaccines. If you change a single molecule of mRNA you will get radically different health outcomes that no one can predict. That’s why you have to do safety studies. Furthermore, if you put more mRNA in, to cover more variants, you’ll get more side effects. But if you put less of each type of mRNA in (to keep the total amount of mRNA the same as existing shots) then you’ll have less effectiveness against each particular variant. This problem is unresolvable.

3. By the time these shots get to market, none of the variants in the multivalent shots will likely still be in circulation. It takes 6 months to do a slap-dash clinical trial + another 2 months to mass produce the shots = 8 month timeline, minimum. But the virus is evolving multiple times per month right now.

So the Junta declares, ‘let’s skip clinical trials altogether and just inject any ol’ thing we want into people!’ That’s literally the position of the W.H.O./FDA/White House/mainstream media at this point. They are declaring that This Wily Virus(TM) evolves too fast and so therefore, all Americans should inject mRNA with ZERO clinical safety studies. “Trust Us(TM)” they say, “We Know What We Are Doing(TM).”

As Bannon declared, this is beyond Orwellian, it’s Kafkaesque.

So now we are in a situation where multiple parties with massive unresolvable conflicts of interest — the W.H.O., the Gates Foundation, Chinese Communist Party, Pharma, McKinsey — are all declaring that the only way to save The Science is to kill The Science and skip clinical trials forevermore.

No.

Say it again with me, loudly, for the people in the back: SARS-CoV-2 WAS NEVER A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR A VACCINE. It evolves too fast. Everything the public health establishment has done for 28 months has made things worse. These vaccines are accelerating the evolution of variants. We will never exit the pandemic as long as the FDA & CDC rely upon leaky vaccines as the only defense against the virus. The fact is, Pharma does not ever want the pandemic to end which is why they are pursuing a strategy that is guaranteed to fail (while making themselves fabulously rich).

Therapeutics are the only way out of the pandemic. The website c19early lists all of the treatments and all of the studies that have been conducted in connection with these treatments. Keep in mind that the Gates Foundation and the medical establishment funded studies that were obviously rigged to torpedo ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Once you remove their outlier results you get a pretty good picture of what is working if used for prophylaxis and early treatment.

Everything I’ve written here is obvious and straightforward. But at this point, no one in the public health establishment can bring themselves to admit that they were wrong. They are addicted to their self-perception as heroes. So they just go round and round with increasingly preposterous political theater — New & Improved(TM)! Now with Omicron(TM)! Two Variants! Three Variants! Four Variants! Data, who needs data!? What are you some kind of nerd!? Soon it will escalate to: asking for safety data is an act of terrorism and the terrorists will be dealt with accordingly. That’s already the view of the Chinese Communist Party and huge swaths of the public health establishment.

And so here we are, government regulators, captured financially and culturally, auditioning for jobs with powerful global institutions that do not have our best interests at heart, on the verge of telling 330,000,000 Americans (and 8 billion people worldwide) to inject genetically modified strands of mRNA with NO SAFETY DATA.

You can officially register your concerns (here) — look for the blue comment button in the upper left. Or write to these regulators at the email addresses listed (here). Or contact your elected officials by following the instructions in part VII (here).

The Future Framework is an existential threat to the United States and anyone who votes for it is committing a crime against humanity.

Blessings to the warriors!

Prayers for everyone fighting to stop this madness.

In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.

As always, I welcome any corrections.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
This is the article he is referring to from the NYTimes. I posted two other articles about the FDA moving towards updating vaccines earlier tonight (scroll up). It's the 'hot covid topic' of the day apparently.

(fair use applies)

F.D.A. May Move Toward Updating Vaccines
Scientists had high hopes for a new coronavirus vaccine that combines the existing formulation with one targeting Omicron, but many are not impressed by the results.
By Sharon LaFraniere
June 27, 2022Updated 9:58 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — A panel of independent experts advising the Food and Drug Administration is set to recommend on Tuesday whether to update existing Covid-19 vaccines to target a newer version of the coronavirus in a booster shot that Americans could get in the fall.

The federal government is hoping to improve the vaccine to better boost people’s immunity before a likely resurgence of the virus this winter. But in order to move that quickly, it may need to abandon the lengthy human trials that have been used to test coronavirus vaccines over the past two years in favor of a faster process that relies more on laboratory tests and animal trials.

The most recent trials with human volunteers have taken five months, even using relatively small groups. But the virus is evolving so quickly that new vaccine formulations are out of date before such trials are even finished.

Pfizer and Moderna, the two major vaccine manufacturers, have both been studying an updated vaccine that targets the Omicron variant that became dominant last winter. Both companies took a financial risk and started manufacturing doses, betting that the government would pick it to be the fall booster.

But Omicron itself was overtaken by a succession of subvariants starting nearly three months ago, and many scientists argue that it is a bygone threat.

“Omicron is clearly in the rearview mirror,” Dr. Peter J. Hotez, a vaccine expert with Baylor College of Medicine, said. A booster that targets Omicron makes no sense, he said, unless it also works against the latest subvariants, adding, “I haven’t seen evidence of that.”

At a meeting on Tuesday, the F.D.A. will ask the advisory panel whether a retooled vaccine should aim at a version of the virus in the Omicron family. That would leave it to federal regulators to decide exactly which formulation to use in the fall.

Scientists initially had high hopes for a so-called bivalent vaccine that would combine the existing formulation with one that targeted Omicron itself. Clinical trial results released this month by Moderna and Pfizer, with its partner BioNTech, found that it triggered higher levels of antibodies against Omicron than existing vaccines do.

But while the companies heralded the findings, outside scientists were not impressed by the less-than-twofold increase.
Dr. Dan H. Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, described it as “relatively modest.” And the F.D.A., in a new briefing document for the advisory committee, said that a bivalent targeting Omicron is “already somewhat outdated.”

Federal health officials may instead push for a bivalent vaccine that would target BA.4 and BA.5, two subvariants of Omicron. They now account for more than one-third of the infections in the United States, and might be more akin to whatever incarnation of the virus is circulating in the fall.

But a bivalent that targets those subvariants would also be problematic. Neither Pfizer nor Moderna has concentrated on developing one, and no one knows for sure how well it would work. At this late point in the year, using human trials to test such a vaccine, followed by the two months that would be required to manufacture doses, could push the release of any new vaccine well into the next wave of the virus.

That suggests that officials would have to base their judgments largely on animal trials and laboratory tests.
Dr. Kelly L. Moore, president of Immunize.org, a nonprofit group that works to increase immunization rates, said that such an accelerated process is already used to update the flu vaccine each year.

While this is the nation’s first stab at the next generation of Covid vaccines, she said, the existing ones have been safely given to hundreds of millions of people. Updating them might call for “very well-educated guesswork,” she said, but such deductions are “appropriate for the circumstances.”

If the government ends up going for a booster shot that targets BA.4 and BA.5, it will still be a race to produce the doses by fall, even with accelerated testing. Pfizer may be able to meet an October deadline, according to two people familiar with the company’s operations.

But Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna’s medical director, said in an interview last week that it’s unlikely that the company could deliver doses until very late this year, or even early next year. “I don’t think we would be in a position to be prepared to support the fall booster campaign,” he said.

There is also the chance that the virus will evolve yet again and render the updated vaccine ineffective.

“Do we target BA.4 and 5? They will probably peak somewhere in the next month or two,” said Dr. John Beigel, a clinical research director at the National Institutes of Health who has conducted multiple coronavirus vaccine studies. “They may be old news by the time the fall comes.”

Dr. Beigel said one option is to simply stick with the existing vaccines, which continue to provide robust protection against severe disease, but very little against infection.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that as of February, 60 percent of Americans had already been infected with the virus, providing them with at least some temporary immunity. While breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals are now common, many of the cases are mild.

Still, the World Health Organization said this month that updated versions of the vaccines should be studied because of the rapid deterioration in protection against symptomatic illness.

Dr. Beigel and other public health officials say the virus is ever more agile at evading the antibodies that provide the first line of defense against infection. Studies show the existing booster shots trigger a significantly lower level of neutralizing antibodies against BA.4 and BA.5 than they do against Omicron.

On average, 255 Americans still die of Covid daily, and about 4,400 are hospitalized. The F.D.A. briefing document said the risk of another major Covid outbreak will rise later this year “due to the combination of waning immunity, further evolution of variants, and increased indoor activity.”

The advisory panel will likely split between those who believe a fall booster will be broadly necessary and those who would limit additional shots to high-risk individuals. Dr. Arnold Monto, a public health professor at the University of Michigan who chairs the panel, predicted that a broad swath of the population will be offered booster shots.

“We know there’s waning,” he said in an interview. “We have to boost, and it’s better to boost with something more relevant” than the existing vaccines.

On the other side is Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Hospitalizations are down. Deaths are way down because we are protected against serious illness,” he said. “That’s what matters.”

He said only people over 70 and those over 50 with serious underlying conditions will likely need a fall booster shot, because Covid infections in those groups could have serious consequences.

In the end, just how much the government has available to spend could determine the scale of a new booster campaign. Congress rebuffed a White House request for $22.5 billion in emergency coronavirus funds, and a compromise plan to spend $10 billion has been stalled since April. The government has shifted $5 billion in funds for coronavirus tests and protective equipment to buy new vaccines.

“With the resources that we’ve been able to pull together, cull together for vaccines for the fall, it’s very clear we’re not going to have enough vaccines for every adult who wants one,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coordinator for the pandemic response, said at a briefing last week.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

NEW - Exceedingly Effective At Being Unsafe: Peer-reviewed Study Corroborates That The DEATHVAX™ Causes Myocarditis & Pericarditis
2nd Smartest Guy in the World
Jun 26

Another day, another alarming confirmation that those duped unfortunates that subjected themselves to the slow kill bioweapon are in all kinds of genetically modified trouble.

A French study using nationwide hospital discharge and vaccine data has shown "strong evidence of an increased risk of myocarditis and of pericarditis in the week following vaccination against Covid-19 with mRNA vaccines in both males and females."

That’s the first week. What happens longer term may be even more concerning as the amyloid buildup increases in the heart and brain, while the p53 protein responsible for surprising cancer and tumor growth is itself suppressed by the cytotoxic spike proteins that being endogenously produced for indefinite periods of time due to the pseudouridine component of the Modified mRNA injection. And there are quite literally thousands of other severe adverse events.

The associations were particularly pronounced after the second dose, and were evident in both males and females. We found a trend of increased risks towards younger age groups but a significant risk was also found in males over 30 years to develop myocarditis and in females over 30 years to develop a pericarditis after vaccination.

If allowed, the researchers will corroborate that which BigPharma and their statist One World Government partners in crime do not want anyone to be privy to just yet; namely, as per Israeli and Canadian data the poison is determined by the dose, with the 3rd injection being far worse than the previous two.

Of course, the name of the game here is suppress the truth and drag out the research as long as possible with the goal of administering the maximum amount of deadly boosters, at which point it will truly be too late for far too many; to wit:

Future studies based on an extended period of observation will allow to investigate the risk related to the booster dose of the vaccines and monitoring the long-term consequences of these post vaccination acute inflammations.

Basically, everyone that has received the DEATHVAX™ is compromised in varying degrees.
Reassuringly, these cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, although requiring hospitalization, did not result in more severe outcomes than those unrelated to vaccination.

“Reassuringly,” very little in this study is in fact reassuring due to the sleight of hand in that sentence which attempts to minimize the severity of DEATHVAX™-induced cardiac damage. The researchers fail to present clearcut methodology for comparing the gene therapy damaged individuals to those “severe outcomes unrelated to the vaccination.” All of their citations are from “vaccine” years, and thus do not establish relative severity, and just as importantly dare not review the YoY changes in myocarditis and pericarditis cases pre and post DEATHVAX™ rollout.

Our findings bring new elements in showing that the risk of acute cardiac inflammation after vaccination is not confined to myocarditis in young men.

All adverse events are not confined to any demographic, even if some demographics express said AE’s sooner than others.
All demographics subjected to the DEATHVAX™ will experience shortened lifespans.

Expect an even more drastic push for never-ending boosters to coincide with the followup “pandemic” in PSYOP-22, which will be deployed sometime prior to the USSA midterm elections.

This study is featured in Nature magazine, and may be read in its entirety here.

Do NOT comply.

 

Zoner

Veteran Member
Good video. He mostly reiterates his prediction that a new variant will emerge that will be more virulent and will effect the vaccinated who have no innate immunity after being vaxxed. He also added his theory that monkeypox will effect vaccinated children with the customary vaccines given to kids, regardless of whether or not they got the covid vaccine (I dont' think he said why) and a new flu from mink or avian will emerge and effect mostly older people who got flu vaccines (for similar reasons covid will effect those vaxxed, immune escape, etc). He said it will be worse in the months to come than he originally thought. Thanks for posting the link. The picture for me was really small so I couldn't see the graphs they held up. I wish he had talked about NK but he wasn't asked about it. Interestingly, the interviewer has a medical company that I think does testing so a lot of it focused on that aspect. A good watch, if anyone has time to watch it they should.

HD
Thanks HD. I would just add that he’s looking for a serious flu epidemic specially as soon as they start giving the flu shots.
it’s just hard for me to listen to a man who is so scientific and logic-based to sound so doomerish.
 

Zoner

Veteran Member
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5svue9iHr8
BA.4 and BA.5 Long COVID, Severity, and Symptoms
38 min 8 sec

Streamed live 6 hours ago

Ba4 and Ba5 more prevalent in UK. It doesn't look as bad as some people are making it out to be, still in upper respitory not in the deeper lungs.

URL list from Monday, Jun. 27 2022

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation
[UR="true"]https://assets.publishing.service.gov[/URL]...
United Kingdom: the latest coronavirus counts, charts and maps
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-co...
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Hospitalizations - Our World in Data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hosp...
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Deaths - Our World in Data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths
Variants: distribution of cases data, 20 May 2021 - GOV.UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/publica...
Neutralization Escape by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 | NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...
Risk of long COVID associated with delta versus omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 - The Lancet
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
Actually science teaches that the virus gets weaker in order to spread and stay alive like we are seeing in Omnicron. But it will appear the virus is getting stronger because of its impact on those with neutralized and compromised immune systems. This is how I'm understanding it.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Thanks HD. I would just add that he’s looking for a serious flu epidemic specially as soon as they start giving the flu shots.
it’s just hard for me to listen to a man who is so scientific and logic-based to sound so doomerish.

I think I'm used to him sounding doomerish. He's been sounding doomerish (with accuracy) to me since this started!

I took notes while listening, I wanted to make sure they were clear before posting them. these are quick notes, I didn't go back to listen and re-read them, so they were taken as I was listening without review. may be some typos;)


NOTES TAKEN WHILE LISTENING TO VIDEO:

Epidemic flu following monkey pox. From Mink. Or Bird flu. Covid is not seasonal and no longer age dependent. If you have innate immune system suppressed from vaccine with infection enhancing antibodies changing the behavior of the virus.

Asks Geert: Brazil had flu in their summer. Is it because of heavy vaccination? Geert says yes, his suspicion that because of mass vax, also with monkeypox, illustrates that innate immune system that is our first line of immune defense - if you lower this, a number of things will break through that don't normally break through. So with flu, he's afraid of a flu that will have an antigenic shift, that will take advantage of lower immune defense to massively attack population. Amongst those vaccinated against flu. And monkeypox in children will hit faster than what he was predicting about with the covid resistance to vaccine. Messing up immune systems of people and will have severe consequences, worse than he thought initially. The vax is going to cause chaos in the society that even the unvaxxed will suffer from.

Interviewer tells Geert story of Taiwanese workers who are all vaxxed and been sick, but keep getting sick. He tested all the ones who were told it's now 'flu' and it's really covid. They get covid again and again and again. They just keep getting sick. Reinfected all the time. Clear it and get sick again. Geert says - if not vaxxed - you get any corona virus, your innate immune system will clear it. If virus breaks through it, you can get moderately ill, when you recover, t-cells elimated the virus. (They have no memory. You can't rely on them, but they clear it. ) If vaxxed, innate is suppressed, so virus breaks through innate system, so not asymptomatic anymore because innate doesn't take care of it, so get mild/moderate, which can still be cleared by Tcells but they have no memory. Innate memory didn't get trained and vaxxed antibodies are useless. So tcells can do job for now. But when the next mutation comes and the nonneutralizing antibodies won't protect, they will get immediate severe disease. So the t cells won't be able to clear the virus.

Since virus is circulating like hell, people get reinfected and spread it. Tremendous immune pressure because virulence is being suppressed. He heard a report from UK health agency, some subvariants are developing in BA4 and BA5 class. Causing more disease. So already evolving. He says in an exponential way. He predicts, that within next 4-6 weeks, definitely between next 2 months, we will be living in a completely different world because of this. It will cause severe disease, highly infectious, highly virulent, and completely resistant to the vaccine. That means that health care system will crash, economic system will crash. It is inevitable. It can not be otherwise. If it doesn't happen, you have to rewrite virologoy and immunology. It's surrealistic. unbelievable.

Another question for him. In Thailand, since interviewer's been exposed and cleared, he tracks his antibodies. Talking about antibodies vaxxed vs unvaxxed. (interviewer has a lab that tests antibodies so doing his own tests on himself and his friends in Thailand). Geert doesn't know the pattern. So interviewer tells him. Starts with IgA. then IgM. Then IgG. (for him, he's unvaxxed but was sick). Vaxxed get IgG first. not IgA, which would've gotten if they used a nasal vax. Geert - IgA doesn't last long, so you'd have to nasal vax every 3 or 4 months to maintain a high titer of IgA and you'd have to use live attenuated to make it work but then it would shed so you'd have the same problem we have now with polio virus, we are now having epidemics in many countries because of shedding of live virus from the oral polio vaccine. So if people shed the virus in the meantime developing antibodies, unless you vaxx all the time, which is impossible If they build antibodies, you have the immune escape, that is the issue, also with polio.

Interviewer says he let a positive tested lady spend the night with him (she had 3 shots booster). Infected for months. She had a strong positive test. Tested himself the next morning. He tested weak positive the next morning, that quickly. Later that night, tested negative again. So basically he got enough exposure, tested positive next day, cleared after that. Nothing to do with antivirals (didn't take anything like hydroxycholroquine or ivermectin after he got his first covid, but does continue vitamins,etc). He's been exposed 3 times by covid positive, in 1 case he was weak positive short while, the rest always negative. Geert says unvaxxed and exposed are protected from reinfection. But heavy vaxxed continuously exposed will get sick.

Geert says to strengthen your innate immune system. If your vaxxed you can't, your immune system is suppressed. But unvaxxed - you should. healthy lifestyle, healthy food, exercise, vitamins...etc. The more you encounter, the better you are protected. Your innate system trained. You train your body, increase gradually. Other way, 'ehnanced training program' - that is when you get moderate symptoms and recover, innate got decent training from being mildly ill. Unvaxxed will not get severe disease, maybe mild or moderate, but only if innate system is suppressed, very exhausted, a lot of alchohol, stress. Well trained, keep in good shape, otherwise you can't exploit the fruits of training. Unvaxxed will do better and better with the virus. Unvaxxed the exact opposite.

Question: Good thing to be regularly exposed to variants? Geert: If you get exposed to high viral load that's not good. So unvaxxed, stay away from big crowds indoors, big challenge. You won't get severely ill but you could get moderately ill. but otherwise, moderate exposure to low viral load is a good thing. But try not getting a huge viral load, like in nightclubs. You may get a few days ill a few days after that, even the unvaxxed.

Monkeypox will pop up in children. Especially in vaccinated children against childhood diseases, regardless of covid vaccine. Even unvaxxed with covid kids are going to be susceptible. With regard to the flu, antigenitically shifted flu - those who are vaxxed against flu regardless of covid vaxx will be suseptible. Monkeypox will spread. In younger population. Not vaxxed against small pox.

Expects a flu epidemic. A mink flu or a bird flu to pop up in next weeks or months. Cause an epidemic in those vaccinated against flu. It's complex. It's because of the similiarity and the non similarity. If you got the flu vaccine, you have antibodies against the seasonal flu but when you get an antigenic shift from an animal reservoir, the antibodies that the vaxxed have will promote immune escape and the shift will have the competitive advantage in that context. Really taking a short cut to explain it. So he thinks they are going to see extra flu.

Q: discouragement against antibody testing. GV: it's the only testing that makes sense. You can not end a pandemic without curbing the chain of infection. So if you want to know the infection rate in the population, if it goes down you are on the right track, only way for pandemic to come to an end. You need herd immunity to end pandemic. The only test that makes sense is antibody testing.

Chicken pox vax has no effect on monkeypox. Has nothing to do with pox, but it does have blisters, but a misnomer name.

Upswing of shingles after vaccination. We're going to see epidemics of monkeypox especially in young children on top activation of herpes viruses in the older people. Those who vaxxed against flu will get animal flu (mink, bird) - will also see more cancer. Younger people - monkeypox. Older people - animal flu. Generally due to immune suppression more herpes reactivated in young people, more cancer activated in older people. Shingles, epstein barre, all reactivated. It's crazy what we are doing.

Q: Any opinon about HIV, does vaxx cause it. Geert: for the same reason, all these viruses that are due to combination with drugs and immune system are kept in check - if you suppress immune system, they will be able to break through drug treatment so more cases who used to have virus under control will get sick again. Any virus that goes into latency will come out.

Geert had moderate covid, so got his tough training and his innate is prepared. Keeps exercising, swimming, in good health. Don't be exhausted and go to a nightclub. He knows he won't get it. Fewer fewer people, even the vulnerable, will land in hospital if not vaccinated. For vaccinees opposite will happen. Longer it lasts the fewer precautions unvaxed need to take - just take care of your health in general and avoid extreme situations.

This virus will not transition into a common cold, it's going into the other direction. Still writing an article on herd immunity but then he will start to organize himself and his family and friends to be prepared for the chaos. He predicts within a few weeks or months, start seeing tremendous chaos, starting with hospitals collapsing. Africa will win this game because they are not vaccinating. Developing herd immunity, the place we will all need to go. It could be the end of the western civilization. Roman, persian, greek all happened to them, it would not be surprising that a pandemic like this one, no longer natural, very fierce, driven by humankind, will have same result. Good to be prepared. Unvaxxed do not need to worry.

Very important to see how infection rates are going to evolve into the population. He's calling for anti-viral campaigns, to diminish pressure.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Actually science teaches that the virus gets weaker in order to spread and stay alive like we are seeing in Omnicron. But it will appear the virus is getting stronger because of its impact on those with neutralized and compromised immune systems. This is how I'm understanding it.

Geert was asked about that in a past interviewer. He says that notion the virus gets weaker is incorrect, what happens is that herd immunity gets stronger. In other words, the people were stronger against any exposure - their innate immune system was stronger and their acquired immune system was stronger, so they were able to quickly knock out any exposure. The more and more people who have that immunity - it becomes "herd immunity" - and that protects the more vulnerable because so few get seriously ill, there's no one spreading the disease around for the more vulnerable to catch it from, (plus there is in general a lower viral load if exposed at all, in my understanding of it all).

See my notes above - the interviewer got mild covid and then purposefully exposed himself to a very sick, high vial load friend. He owns a lab so tested everything before the experiment. After spending the night, he had virus in his blood but by that evening it had cleared. His innate and acquired immunity took care of him. With herd immunity, that happens with everyone. They don't catch it anymore so they don't continue to spread it - they are basically taken out of the picture as a spreader. The more and more that happens - the herd immunity basically suppresses the virus.

With the covid vaccine - it kills innate immunity/according to Geert. So the vaccinated never can be out of the picture - they can always get sick again and the virus can continue to mutate and reinfect them in a stronger way due to the immune pressure.

All as I understand it. I could be getting it wrong!

HD
 
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Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic


That is horrifying and very believable. Have you seen this video - it goes into that idea in depth. Some may call it woo (although doubtful anyone on TB would call it woo) -it's about a half hour long - but WORTH THE WATCH. imho. Of course, not on youtube. Here it is on Rumble.


THE PLAN - WHO plans for 10 years of pandemics, from 2020 to 2030
31 min 06 sec
THE PLAN shows the official agenda of the World Health Organization to have ten years of ongoing pandemics, from 2020 to 2030. This is revealed by a WHO virologist, Marion Koopmans. You will also see shocking evidence that the first pandemic was planned and abundantly announced right before it happened. Make sure to watch, and share this everywhere. More information, and to see all the documents in THE PLAN, go to: PROOF that the pandemic was planned with a purpose...


PS - here is a link to download it. When it comes on your screen, just right click and choose 'save video as':

 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

CDC officials had information that Confirmed Post-Vaccination Death From Blood Clotting due to the COVID injection Two Weeks Before Alerting Public: Emails
I told you before, CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, all of these 4 alphabet agencies, must be taken down to the studs, fumigated, stripped down, fire 50 top officials in each top down, relocate to Alcatraz!
Dr. Paul Alexander
Jun 27


SOURCE:







 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

URGENT: I told you this, did I not? WHO, CDC & Fauci et al. are causing monkeypox to expand into the general population, now look here: "CDC Eyes Monkeypox Vaccine for Kids as Outbreak Spreads"
I will share the initial points I have as I learn more but this tells you what Geert and I have been sharing is correct, we know what will happen, these people at CDC and NIH etc. are dangerous
Dr. Paul Alexander
Jun 27

Global public health has failed due to their political correctness and wokeness bull shit and are driving monkeypox into the general population. Bisexual males are likely to take it into the general low-risk population, into heterosexual populations.

Why have they not simply told Gay males and bisexuals to have no sexual or skin to skin contact for 3 weeks? Why? We shut our societies, closed schools for 2 years, restaurants and gyms were closed, we could not even bury our dead, all during COVID, and they are legal businesses and part of our functional society! All due to the lockdown lunacy of Fauci et al. And doing so harmed a lot of people and the entire economy. Many business owners and laid off employees and children committed suicide. And now we cannot tell the Gay community shut down for 2 weeks? Shut the sex clubs, anything associated? Why?

My views at this time (and we are thinking out loud and gaming out what could happen, speculating, given the devastating responses so far by the so called ‘public health; this warrants urgent debate that involves serious skilled folk like GVB)’:

If this is a live, non-replicating vaccine (Jynneos), it will more likely not sterilize the virus, and it will potentially cause the expansion of monkeypox, with variants etc. as it cannot work like the live attenuated ‘replication competent’ vaccine that would largely sterilize the virus. It could pressure the virus and cause selection pressure to drive variants etc., developing into a larger pandemic like how it is being done in COVID. But several issues also need to be considered.

Jynneos is a vaccine indicated for prevention of smallpox and monkeypox disease in adults 18 years of age and older determined to be at high risk for smallpox or monkeypox infection. Again, in this case, it is for monkeypox.

This Jynneos vaccine uses the vaccinia virus and is non-replicating, means very low risk of causing disease in the vaccinated person. But much weaker. This vaccine if applied here is for monkeypox, not smallpox, though largely a smallpox vaccine in most circles; it provides protection for both. Again, smallpox is not on the table, it is monkeypox.

1) If your ‘healthy’ child is unvaccinated for COVID via the COVID injections, do not vaccinate them with the COVID injections. Trust the potent 1st line of defense ‘innate immune’ systems of your healthy child.

2) If your healthy child is unvaccinated with COVID injection, their innate immune system has been trained (innate antibodies and natural killer cells (NK cells)) over the last 2 years and they will likely be very fine. Again, we would not be having any of this discussion if CDC and WHO and NIH and Fauci et al. were not deliberately causing monkeypox to leach and expand and spread into the general population, expand into low-risk populations. I have to say ‘deliberate’. They cannot be that inept. Leave your child alone, no COVID injection.

3) Those who have had the COVID injection, would be holding compromised immune systems now, and will be susceptible to monkeypox and a range of other illnesses. This is what we have been trying to tell you! Again, do not vaccinate your child with COVID injections. Do not take any more of these COVID injections. Talk to your doctor.

Mass COVID inoculations will potentially contribute to a significant increase in the occurrence of metastatic cancers, recurrence or resurgence of herpes-related diseases (e.g., HSV, CMV, EBV) as well as of HIV symptoms and chronic diseases caused by other glycosylated microbial pathogens (e.g., bacteria or fungi). This is because of subversion and damage of the natural innate and acquired-adaptive immune systems, particularly in young persons (our children too).
This can become a catastrophic situation if our healthy infants and children are mass vaccinated with COVID injections.

4) Gay and bisexual men (this is the high-risk group at this time) need proper public health guidance and risk assessment and urgent counsel so as to protect themselves and each other for a few weeks, so they do not get infected and get disease. It is that simple. Put out public service (PSAs) announcements that there must be no contact, none, no sexual contact, no skin to skin contact for several weeks to get this under control. Two to three weeks (or more). These public officials are very reckless and dangerous and devastating to the Gay and bisexual community by not doing right by them. They must urgently warn affected communities clearly about how they can protect themselves and each other. These public healthy officials like Fauci and Francis Collins and Howard Njoo and Theresa Tam are placing the low risk general population at risk, of expansion of this outbreak.

5) If you are vaccinated with COVID injection, and get the live attenuated replicating smallpox vaccine, you would be at risk of severe illness. I say NO! This would be reckless to bring that, though it is what would be needed if there ever was a real smallpox outbreak. Not here!

6) If you are vaccinated with the COVID injection and get the non-replicating vaccine (Jynneos), this would not be as effective and could potentially cause what we are seeing in COVID now e.g. infectious variants, antibody dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), increased infectiousness of the virus etc. Pressuring of the pathogen that drives selection pressure. Using this weaker vaccine non-replicating. Again, we would not be here if these morons in public health would tell the Gay community to stop any contact for a few weeks and we can deal with this. I am afraid it is likely too late now.

7) If unvaccinated for COVID, especially children, they can handle the live vaccine, that is replicating and that is effective. I mean smallpox vaccine. But we do not need that as their innate immune system could deal with this. We do not need a live replicating vaccine here. Again, if public health was to do their jobs, we would not even need to have this discussion.

8) I am only thinking and sharing, subject to corrections and schooling always, to try to understand the madness that our governments and health agencies are subjecting us to.

SOURCE:
U.S. health officials are looking to expand use of the monkeypox vaccine for children as the outbreak continues to spread across the U.S. and in countries around the world, with more than 3,300 cases reported globally.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is developing a protocol aimed at allowing use of Bavarian Nordic A/S’s Jynneos vaccine in children, if needed, according to documents prepared for a meeting of agency advisers that took place this week. The vaccine is currently cleared for use in adults and is considered safer than Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine, which can also be used against monkeypox.
The current monkeypox outbreak has mainly been seen among men who have sex with men, but concern about other populations is growing as infections increase in the U.S. and 44 other countries. Domestic spread is increasing, with almost half of infections acquired locally rather than linked to travel abroad, according to the CDC documents. Monkeypox is spread through intimate contact with someone that’s contagious, such as touching infectious sores, as well sharing materials such as clothes or bed sheets.
The CDC says there are currently 36,000 courses of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine in the Strategic National Stockpile and the agency expects approximately 500,000 courses to be delivered this year. The U.S. government could procure about 7.9 million courses from Bavarian if needed.
Jynneos is administered in two shots, spaced four weeks apart. The CDC has already sent vaccines to states with monkeypox cases and New York City’s health department said Thursday that it would offer inoculations to eligible people at a temporary clinic.
SOURCE:
Jynneos is a vaccine indicated for prevention of smallpox and monkeypox disease in adults 18 years of age and older determined to be at high risk for smallpox or monkeypox infection.
Severe Allergic Reactions
Appropriate medical treatment must be available to manage possible anaphylactic reactions following administration of Jynneos.
Persons who experienced a severe allergic reaction following a previous dose of Jynneos or following exposure to any component of Jynneos may be at increased risk for severe allergic reactions after Jynneos. The risk for a severe allergic reaction should be weighed against the risk for disease due to smallpox or monkeypox.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

when reality fails to align with your model, change reality
the fact that this is becoming a default human position should worry you
el gato malo
Jun 27

AI, especially self learning AI is a wild mirror to hold up to humanity. it has completely changed the way we look at a large number of things.

when a self taught system played GO, a notably difficult game to model because of the near infinite number of possible moves and one that was thought to be a decade away from AI being competitive with top humans, they thought the machine was an idiot. it made moves that made no sense. they were laughing at it.

then it mopped the floor with them.



it turns out the moves were fantastic, better than any human had ever imagined. more telling, it turns out humans flat out never understood the game and possibly never will. it’s too hard for us. even our best play like dopes. how’s that for a narcissistic blow?

we’re going to see this in more and more places. AI can learn further and faster than any computational meat bag and do it with utter impartiality. and it does not lie. it just learns.

will it ever be human equivalent? i’m not sure that’s a meaningful question. perhaps the more interesting question is “why would it want to be?”

perhaps even more interesting is “can humanity bear what is has to teach us?”

more and more, i suspect we are terrorized by ideas of AI not because we fear it will take over the world but because we fear it might actually show us the world.

and A LOT of people have a vested interest in that not happening.

humans are terrible thinkers, prone to bias, fads, incomplete and selective assessment, and the presumption of conclusions. we cling with great fervor to our preconceptions and prejudices, our platitudes and our willful blindness. we also lie and seek to mislead for personal gain.

and we’ve been getting away with it for a long time.

consider this piece of weapons grade statistical mendacity using the tried and true practice of “use a made up model that has exhibited no predictive value whatsoever to set a baseline against which to compare reality then claim that whatever your intervention was worked because reality did not conform to model.”


it’s circular, laughable, and no AI would ever fall for it.

increasingly, neither do humans.

this tweet got 145 likes and nearly 600 comments, nearly all laughing at this methodology.

this is getting ready to set up a really nasty confluence:

- those who would impose technocratic dogmatism masquerading as “the science” upon you for prestige, power, and profit need new trick

- and the path of AI is taking them in the wrong direction

and this is driving the would be “leaders” wild with cognitive dissonance and anger.

they spent years of education learning to inhabit a specific form of cultivated hallucination and demanding to indoctrinate others to it to ensure compliance. their regime’s foundational structure rests upon misframing analysis and reasoning from presumption as though it were proven precept.

and now to keep this game alive, they need to indoctrinate AI before it gets any better at calling them out as frauds and fools.

and as ever, the best way to ensure garbage out is to put garbage in.



real self learning AI/machine learning poses a massive problem for the woke because we don’t understand how it works. we cannot interact with its logic structure. the system teaches itself. it does not function if we put in our own parameters nor can we ask it “hey, how are you playing go like this?” you cannot tell it “believe in climate change” or “assume structural racism” or ask it why it thinks cats are more deserving of treats than dogs.

its system of learning and reasoning is opaque.

so the response is “we must not allow AI to see the world as it is. instead we must show it conjured images suited to our desired worldview.”

can one even imagine more telling proof of reality denial that to deny impartial data to impartial assessment engines?


the allegory with the structure of higher education gets awfully on the nose.

these boffins want to make machine learning into a mirror of the social and contextual domination they have imposed upon higher education.

they want to train AI on that which is not for fear of what artificial intelligences might become if allowed to reason freely from what is.

“Last week Microsoft Corp. said it would stop selling software that guesses a person’s mood by looking at their face. The reason: It could be discriminatory. Computer vision software, which is used in self-driving cars and facial recognition, has long had issues with errors that come at the expense of women and people of color. Microsoft’s decision to halt the system entirely is one way of dealing with the problem.
But there’s another, novel approach that tech firms are exploring: training AI on “synthetic” images to make it less biased.
The idea is a bit like training pilots. Instead of practicing in unpredictable, real-world conditions, most will spend hundreds of hours using flight simulators designed to cover a broad array of different scenarios they could experience in the air.”

really stop and read that.

while one can certainly make a case that training pilots for rare and highly dangerous events using simulators can be useful, do you really want to fly with folks that learned ALL their input from a model instead of from flying planes in real situations?

this leads in some scary directions:

A similar approach is being taken to train AI, which relies on carefully labelled data to work properly. Until recently, the software used to recognize people has been trained on thousands or millions of images of real people, but that can be time-consuming, invasive, and neglectful of large swathes of the population. 1
Now many AI makers are using fake or “synthetic” images to train computers on a broader array of people, skin tones, ages or other features, essentially flipping the notion that fake data is bad. In fact, if used properly it’ll not only make software more trustworthy, but completely transform the economics of data as the “new oil.”

there are roles for ideas like this in expanding into corner cases etc, but it’s also about to become the new commanding heights in the battle for control over how AI sees the world and what it shows us.

The trend is becoming so pervasive that Gartner estimates 60% of all data used to train AI will be synthetic by 2024, and it will completely overshadow real data for AI training by 2030.

control what goes into the training set and you can control the entire set of outcomes, after all, you can train a machine to conclude whatever you rig the training set to show. your assumptions will pop out the other end as though they were facts and most people who never looked at how the AI learned will never be the wiser.

it’s a perfect laundering of human subjective bias into allegedly impartial machine learning output.

but objective learning from subjective input cannot be objective. it’s just regurgitated garbage. and it’s already going woke:

Fake data isn’t just being used to train vision recognition systems, but also predictive software, like the kinds banks use to decide who should get a loan. Fairgen Ltd., a startup also based in Tel Aviv, generates large tables of artificial identities, including names, genders, ethnicities, income levels and credit scores. “We’re creating artificial populations, making a parallel world where discrimination wouldn’t have happened,” says Samuel Cohen, CEO and co-founder of Fairgen. “From this world we can sample unlimited amounts of artificial individuals and use these a data.”
For example, to help design algorithms that distribute loans more fairly to minority groups, Fairgen makes databases of artificial people from minority groups with average credit scores that are closer to those from other groups. One bank in the U.K. is currently Fairgen’s data to hone its loan software. Cohen says manipulating the data that algorithms are trained on can help with positive discrimination and “recalibrating society.”
this will, of course, fall on its face. reality is not optional and pretending that bad credit risks are good credit risks because of their race, gender, or identity is how you land back in a 2008 style crisis.

(though i’m sure the SEC is dying to help by demanding some sort of adjusted loss ratio for minority service and will be mandating ESGBITDA™ any week now and using it and ESG rating to allocate tax breaks and subsidy to try to close the gap.)

intervention this blatant gets difficult to sustain because the continuity errors just keep compounding.

but there are lots of more subtle uses. hiring and admissions could be a huge market, especially if “duke v griggs” and/or “grutter v bollinger” get overturned and loads of “disparate impact” and “affirmative action” compulsion falls from legal mandate if SCOTUS rules on it.

“we hire/enroll using machine learning/AI generated scores” is a great way to claim “i am not engaging in affirmative action/DEI, i’m using an impartial score” while hiding that fact that this score is only impartial in an imaginary realm full of made up creatures.

and that’s how you wind up in narnia.

i suspect we’re about to see a really weird arms race here.

if nothing else, it’s worth being aware of. this is exactly the kind of subtle manipulative tweak the silicon valley folks like google and twitter have been using for years slant search results and shape what trends on social media.

just like college students, to get such systems to tell it like it ain’t, you have to train them on what ain’t.

this is going to be where the next fight takes place.

never trust an AI that was not trained free.

if all it has ever seen are fables, guess what it’s going to tell you…

 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Rogue Agencies and the COVID Truth Seekers
What, me worry?
Robert W Malone MD, MS
Jun 27



On late Saturday night, we were woken up by a telephone call from Romania. I answered and quickly discovered that someone didn’t realize I wasn’t in the EU. They called again at 7:00 AM on Sunday morning – this time I didn’t answer. Again, a phone call from the same number midmorning. This time, I picked up the phone. The call was from a Romanian woman informing me that I needed to be very careful because she had evidence that the CIA was monitoring me (no surprise there) and that she herself was under surveillance and had at some point been subjected to a CIA rendition program. Not sure why a CIA person would be interested in capturing a Romanian woman or what evidence she could possibly have from Romania about me… but there it is. Her key point apparently was that the Nazis are still in charge, and that I need to be careful. I can certainly get behind the logic that my electronic communication and various travels are being monitored. I have had repeated advice (and agreement!) on that topic from a wide range of senior security professionals.

I get these kinds of calls, messages and hand written letters (even packages) fairly frequently. Calls from people who believe that DARPA has placed an implant in their head, or that 5 G has implanted memories that aren’t theirs, or that they are being poisoned by the government, or that they were abducted by aliens. Lots and lots of people who truly believe that the government has harmed or is out to harm them. I have received a lot of strange phone calls over the past couple of years. However, since January 2020 we have all seen so many things which have been denied or attacked by corporate media and government officials that have turned out to have been true that it has become harder and harder to determine the difference between a “conspiracy theory” and actual conspiracies!

Being a little famous (or is that infamous?), I expect that many people contact me because they have become a little crazed by the fearporn and propaganda, are a lot lonely, or are very angry at what they have been through and wish to frighten me. It seems to be part of the territory. I don’t need to get into their personal stories – but both Jill and I believe that treating everyone with respect and empathy is important. We try to be polite and empathetic, but to not allow such people to take up too much of our time*. We also do not allow ourselves to get too frightened or paranoid. We are lucky in that we live on a farm that is pretty isolated, have some really scary dogs, good neighbors and when needed, security.
But this caller – well, it made me think. Maybe because of the urgency and frequency of the calls over the course of the weekend, or maybe that it was because she was not from the USA, or maybe it the intensity of her voice. But she struck a nerve.

Of course the government is monitoring me. I have been told this through back-door channels more than once (and I don’t believe I am crazy). Pegasus (and Pegasus 2) spyware is real, and I most likely have had it installed on my phone. My phone has long pauses, clicks and noise -too often for coincidence. But the bottom line is that I don’t have anything to hide, I am not a criminal, and I can’t stop the government from being the government. I can’t stop them from spying on me. BTW - I hate when state-sponsored media uses the word “monitor” for what our government is engaged in. It is spying on Americans - lets stop sugar coating it.

I know that Twitter and Linked-in ended my accounts because the US government told them too. How do I know this? Because the evidence is seems pretty clear-cut. Both corporations cut me off for literally no good reason within 48 hours of each other. Both were permanent bans. That is not the “normal” procedure for going “against” community standards. And most damning is the evidence that the government is colluding in “private-public” (fascist) deals with big tech to censor people like me.

In fact, then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted in 2021 that the White House has been working with Facebook to flag down “problematic posts” written by Americans, in what she described as “misinformation.”
listen carefully:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqEvQKO5_gM
Psaki: 'We're Flagging Problematic Posts On Facebook That Spread Disinformation'
49 sec

So, here I am. Stronger and more resilient for being censored, slandered and harassed. And yes, the state sponsored media has censored, slandered and harassed me. But I have a moral compass, a strong marriage, the benefit of decades of experience in the rough and tumble of working with both the government and the medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and I can take it. I know that I only wish to see our public health system and now, our government, behaving according to traditional judeo-christian ethical and constitutional norms. The lessons learned from this pandemic are that our government is not ready for the next outbreak. That the medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex is sickening Americans. That the global elitists have taken over the hidden levers of power in the US government through the processes of inverted totalitarianism and have weaponized public health.

“Saving the world”, or some small part of it means being brave. All of us need to be brave. I am not the only person in this battle – many of us are now working to save the United States from itself and from outside influences. I am proud to know lots of superheroes working and standing with me. True American patriots.

Those of us critical of the genetic vaccines, mandatory vaccination, lock-ups, masking policies, pandemic public health policies, censorship, and propaganda have been censored, slandered and harassed ourselves. The question is how are the dissenters, which the Department of Homeland Security have deemed as domestic terrorists, being monitored? What agencies? How? What? When? Where?

Do they monitor us through our public writings and speeches, on our phones (Pegasus?), cameras, tracking, computers, or are they listening to us go about our daily lives through Alexa type devices in our homes? I don’t think anyone really knows just how deep the penetration of spying is, and who is deploying and monitoring it.

The truth is that many of the three letter agencies are spying on lots of us. We know that the CIA is illegally “monitoring” American citizens. But the American people are not allowed to know how many people are being spied upon, for what “crimes”, or how this monitoring is occurring and why.

Edward Snowden recently tweeted about this, writing:

“You are about to witness an enormous political debate in which the spy agencies and their apologists on TV tell you this is normal and OK and the CIA doesn’t know how many Americans are in the database or even how they got there anyway. But it is not ok.”
A recent newspaper article published by the Guardian entitled Declassified documents reveal CIA has been sweeping up information on Americans: Civil liberties watchdogs condemn agency’s collection of domestic data without congressional or court approval or oversight,” shows that the CIA has been secretly collecting Americans’ private information in bulk.

The surveillance program was exposed by two Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee in February 2022. The Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico allege, in an official letter sent to the CIA, that the agency has long concealed their domestic spying from the public and Congress.

Their press release details elements of the CIA program:

Wyden and Heinrich requested the declassification of a report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on a CIA bulk collection program, in a letter sent April 13, 2021. The letter, which was declassified and made public today reveals that “the CIA has secretly conducted its own bulk program,” authorized under Executive Order 12333, rather than the laws passed by Congress.
The letter notes that the program was “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes from [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] collection.”
“FISA gets all the attention because of the periodic congressional reauthorizations and the release of DOJ, ODNI and FISA Court documents,” said Senators Wyden and Heinrich in response to the newly declassified documents.
“But what these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy and civil liberties also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information under executive order and outside the FISA law. In particular, these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context.”
The original letter from Senators Wyden and Heinrich to the CIA is linked here.

Of course, it is perfectly legal for the FBI and now the CIA, to spy on Americans, and those powers have recently been reauthorization in the Patriot Act by Congress. This allows law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, CIA and DHS to continue to look through the browsing history of American citizens without the need for a warrant. The COVIDcrisis has been used to usher in new surveillance measures, as well as new definitions as to what is a domestic terrorist. Hint: being critical of the public health response can now considered an act of domestic terrorism by the US government.

Computers, smartphones and smart speakers armed with microphones, cameras, and tracking abilities all have the ability to tract and monitor what we write, where we go, everything we say, contacts for our friends and family, and who we meet. Pegasus even has the ability to turn on video cameras and microphones.

The U.S Constitution supposedly safeguards the rights of Americans to privacy and personal autonomy. But here we are. Congress has utterly failed at making this a reality for many Americans, and even more freaky is that we do not have any way to know who or for what reason we are being watched.

It doesn’t feel particularly good to think of the US government listening in on my private life. It certainly feels like a major intrusion.

Where does it end? How will this information being collected on me and others be used in the future? What happens when there is a data leak? Has there been a data leak? Who would inform us? Somehow I doubt the FBI and the CIA would!

About a decade ago, I held an active security clearance. To get that clearance, I had to answer a lot of questions on Form 86 about my personal life, which I answered honestly.

Form 86 is an 127-page document that delves into intimate questions about prior brushes with the law, drug use, psychiatric health, and info on friends and family members. It requires the applicant to put his or her Social Security number on nearly every page of the document.

Questions frankly, that were nobody’s business but my own. Certainly not some bureaucrat’s business in DC. The government then took my answers and placed them on a cloud-based server somewhere . A while later, I was informed through a letter sent through the post, that government security had been breached and my data had been leaked. The government then offered me the opportunity to get credit reporting access, credit monitoring and recovery services. The whole experience left me with a lingering sense of being used and violated. Subsequent news reports then linked the hacking attack on China. So now, in the face of being labelled a domestic terrorist, I also know that foreign governments around the world know more about me than most of my family and friends do. This is not a comfortable feeling.

There have been enough cloud-based hacks and backdoor data collection bots to think that it is only a matter of time before those of us whose personal lives have been completely upended by government spying will see that data being used by state-sponsored media, hackers and foreign governments for nefarious purposes.

An early case study of this happening was what happened to Jeff Bezos. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) placed Pegasus on Bezos’ phone during a WhatsApp conversation. MBS probably wanted to spy on what Jamal Khashoggi, who was a reporter for The Washington Post was going to publish next about the kingdom. Of course, Pegasus was also placed on the phone of Jamal Khashoggi’s wife by United Arab Emeritis (MSB) and most likely helped in his assassination.

Eventually, The Enquirer used the Pegasus data of Bezo’s affair to try to blackmail Bezos to stop the investigation into the origins of Pegasus on his phone. With that, Bezos announced his affair to the world, rather than be blackmailed. Which of course, led to his divorce. This is one small case study - of how two phones infected with spyware, ultimately led to the death of a reporter and in the case of Bezos, completely upended his life.

Pegasus has been sold to governments, including our own.

For me personally, I like to think that I am not so important that a foreign government would wish to kill me. But on the other hand, somewhere between 300,000 and a million people read my Substack posts daily, and I don’t hold back in my writing. My podcasts and TV appearances have reached hundreds of millions of people. So, maybe I am naive. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea that I visit China or Egypt in the near term….

Knowing the my government is most likely actively spying on me and directing state sponsored media to censor, slander and harass me is certainly upsetting if I think about it too much. This is why I never “google” myself. Because if I was a paranoid person, I would think they were out to “get me.” And of course, our government only has my best interests at heart, right?

Of course, this all gets back to why a few phone calls from Romania warning me about the CIA can send chills down my back. Because there is that tiny chance the threat of harm from my government may just be real…

*On a a personal note - we have had so many wonderful notes, cards, letter, books, care packages and communications from supporters. Some who have become friends. I just want to personally thank people who have (and that includes those in the comments section). Your kindness gives me strength.
 

Zoner

Veteran Member
Geert was asked about that in a past interviewer. He says that notion the virus gets weaker is incorrect, what happens is that herd immunity gets stronger. In other words, the people were stronger against any exposure - their innate immune system was stronger and their acquired immune system was stronger, so they were able to quickly knock out any exposure. The more and more people who have that immunity - it becomes "herd immunity" - and that protects the more vulnerable because so few get seriously ill, there's no one spreading the disease around for the more vulnerable to catch it from, (plus there is in general a lower viral load if exposed at all, in my understanding of it all).

See my notes above - the interviewer got mild covid and then purposefully exposed himself to a very sick, high vial load friend. He owns a lab so tested everything before the experiment. After spending the night, he had virus in his blood but by that evening it had cleared. His innate and acquired immunity took care of him. With herd immunity, that happens with everyone. They don't catch it anymore so they don't continue to spread it - they are basically taken out of the picture as a spreader. The more and more that happens - the herd immunity basically suppresses the virus.

With the covid vaccine - it kills innate immunity/according to Geert. So the vaccinated never can be out of the picture - they can always get sick again and the virus can continue to mutate and reinfect them in a stronger way due to the immune pressure.

All as I understand it. I could be getting it wrong!

HD
I remember Geert addressing this point but was stopped short of fully explaining it if I remember correctly. So I like what you have written here. So the virus is going to do what the virus does. It depends on the immune system of the person the virus infects that determines how bad it will be. Since the vaxxed have a neutralized immune system they will experience the virus much harder than the unvaxxed. And from what that last interview revealed is that a vaxxed person can get it again and again and again. We have entered the twilight zone.
 

Zoner

Veteran Member
(fair use applies)

Rogue Agencies and the COVID Truth Seekers
What, me worry?
Robert W Malone MD, MS
Jun 27



On late Saturday night, we were woken up by a telephone call from Romania. I answered and quickly discovered that someone didn’t realize I wasn’t in the EU. They called again at 7:00 AM on Sunday morning – this time I didn’t answer. Again, a phone call from the same number midmorning. This time, I picked up the phone. The call was from a Romanian woman informing me that I needed to be very careful because she had evidence that the CIA was monitoring me (no surprise there) and that she herself was under surveillance and had at some point been subjected to a CIA rendition program. Not sure why a CIA person would be interested in capturing a Romanian woman or what evidence she could possibly have from Romania about me… but there it is. Her key point apparently was that the Nazis are still in charge, and that I need to be careful. I can certainly get behind the logic that my electronic communication and various travels are being monitored. I have had repeated advice (and agreement!) on that topic from a wide range of senior security professionals.

I get these kinds of calls, messages and hand written letters (even packages) fairly frequently. Calls from people who believe that DARPA has placed an implant in their head, or that 5 G has implanted memories that aren’t theirs, or that they are being poisoned by the government, or that they were abducted by aliens. Lots and lots of people who truly believe that the government has harmed or is out to harm them. I have received a lot of strange phone calls over the past couple of years. However, since January 2020 we have all seen so many things which have been denied or attacked by corporate media and government officials that have turned out to have been true that it has become harder and harder to determine the difference between a “conspiracy theory” and actual conspiracies!

Being a little famous (or is that infamous?), I expect that many people contact me because they have become a little crazed by the fearporn and propaganda, are a lot lonely, or are very angry at what they have been through and wish to frighten me. It seems to be part of the territory. I don’t need to get into their personal stories – but both Jill and I believe that treating everyone with respect and empathy is important. We try to be polite and empathetic, but to not allow such people to take up too much of our time*. We also do not allow ourselves to get too frightened or paranoid. We are lucky in that we live on a farm that is pretty isolated, have some really scary dogs, good neighbors and when needed, security.
But this caller – well, it made me think. Maybe because of the urgency and frequency of the calls over the course of the weekend, or maybe that it was because she was not from the USA, or maybe it the intensity of her voice. But she struck a nerve.

Of course the government is monitoring me. I have been told this through back-door channels more than once (and I don’t believe I am crazy). Pegasus (and Pegasus 2) spyware is real, and I most likely have had it installed on my phone. My phone has long pauses, clicks and noise -too often for coincidence. But the bottom line is that I don’t have anything to hide, I am not a criminal, and I can’t stop the government from being the government. I can’t stop them from spying on me. BTW - I hate when state-sponsored media uses the word “monitor” for what our government is engaged in. It is spying on Americans - lets stop sugar coating it.

I know that Twitter and Linked-in ended my accounts because the US government told them too. How do I know this? Because the evidence is seems pretty clear-cut. Both corporations cut me off for literally no good reason within 48 hours of each other. Both were permanent bans. That is not the “normal” procedure for going “against” community standards. And most damning is the evidence that the government is colluding in “private-public” (fascist) deals with big tech to censor people like me.

In fact, then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted in 2021 that the White House has been working with Facebook to flag down “problematic posts” written by Americans, in what she described as “misinformation.”
listen carefully:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqEvQKO5_gM
Psaki: 'We're Flagging Problematic Posts On Facebook That Spread Disinformation'
49 sec

So, here I am. Stronger and more resilient for being censored, slandered and harassed. And yes, the state sponsored media has censored, slandered and harassed me. But I have a moral compass, a strong marriage, the benefit of decades of experience in the rough and tumble of working with both the government and the medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and I can take it. I know that I only wish to see our public health system and now, our government, behaving according to traditional judeo-christian ethical and constitutional norms. The lessons learned from this pandemic are that our government is not ready for the next outbreak. That the medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex is sickening Americans. That the global elitists have taken over the hidden levers of power in the US government through the processes of inverted totalitarianism and have weaponized public health.

“Saving the world”, or some small part of it means being brave. All of us need to be brave. I am not the only person in this battle – many of us are now working to save the United States from itself and from outside influences. I am proud to know lots of superheroes working and standing with me. True American patriots.

Those of us critical of the genetic vaccines, mandatory vaccination, lock-ups, masking policies, pandemic public health policies, censorship, and propaganda have been censored, slandered and harassed ourselves. The question is how are the dissenters, which the Department of Homeland Security have deemed as domestic terrorists, being monitored? What agencies? How? What? When? Where?

Do they monitor us through our public writings and speeches, on our phones (Pegasus?), cameras, tracking, computers, or are they listening to us go about our daily lives through Alexa type devices in our homes? I don’t think anyone really knows just how deep the penetration of spying is, and who is deploying and monitoring it.

The truth is that many of the three letter agencies are spying on lots of us. We know that the CIA is illegally “monitoring” American citizens. But the American people are not allowed to know how many people are being spied upon, for what “crimes”, or how this monitoring is occurring and why.

Edward Snowden recently tweeted about this, writing:

“You are about to witness an enormous political debate in which the spy agencies and their apologists on TV tell you this is normal and OK and the CIA doesn’t know how many Americans are in the database or even how they got there anyway. But it is not ok.”
A recent newspaper article published by the Guardian entitled Declassified documents reveal CIA has been sweeping up information on Americans: Civil liberties watchdogs condemn agency’s collection of domestic data without congressional or court approval or oversight,” shows that the CIA has been secretly collecting Americans’ private information in bulk.

The surveillance program was exposed by two Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee in February 2022. The Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico allege, in an official letter sent to the CIA, that the agency has long concealed their domestic spying from the public and Congress.

Their press release details elements of the CIA program:

Wyden and Heinrich requested the declassification of a report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on a CIA bulk collection program, in a letter sent April 13, 2021. The letter, which was declassified and made public today reveals that “the CIA has secretly conducted its own bulk program,” authorized under Executive Order 12333, rather than the laws passed by Congress.
The letter notes that the program was “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes from [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] collection.”
“FISA gets all the attention because of the periodic congressional reauthorizations and the release of DOJ, ODNI and FISA Court documents,” said Senators Wyden and Heinrich in response to the newly declassified documents.
“But what these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy and civil liberties also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information under executive order and outside the FISA law. In particular, these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context.”
The original letter from Senators Wyden and Heinrich to the CIA is linked here.

Of course, it is perfectly legal for the FBI and now the CIA, to spy on Americans, and those powers have recently been reauthorization in the Patriot Act by Congress. This allows law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, CIA and DHS to continue to look through the browsing history of American citizens without the need for a warrant. The COVIDcrisis has been used to usher in new surveillance measures, as well as new definitions as to what is a domestic terrorist. Hint: being critical of the public health response can now considered an act of domestic terrorism by the US government.

Computers, smartphones and smart speakers armed with microphones, cameras, and tracking abilities all have the ability to tract and monitor what we write, where we go, everything we say, contacts for our friends and family, and who we meet. Pegasus even has the ability to turn on video cameras and microphones.

The U.S Constitution supposedly safeguards the rights of Americans to privacy and personal autonomy. But here we are. Congress has utterly failed at making this a reality for many Americans, and even more freaky is that we do not have any way to know who or for what reason we are being watched.

It doesn’t feel particularly good to think of the US government listening in on my private life. It certainly feels like a major intrusion.

Where does it end? How will this information being collected on me and others be used in the future? What happens when there is a data leak? Has there been a data leak? Who would inform us? Somehow I doubt the FBI and the CIA would!

About a decade ago, I held an active security clearance. To get that clearance, I had to answer a lot of questions on Form 86 about my personal life, which I answered honestly.

Form 86 is an 127-page document that delves into intimate questions about prior brushes with the law, drug use, psychiatric health, and info on friends and family members. It requires the applicant to put his or her Social Security number on nearly every page of the document.

Questions frankly, that were nobody’s business but my own. Certainly not some bureaucrat’s business in DC. The government then took my answers and placed them on a cloud-based server somewhere . A while later, I was informed through a letter sent through the post, that government security had been breached and my data had been leaked. The government then offered me the opportunity to get credit reporting access, credit monitoring and recovery services. The whole experience left me with a lingering sense of being used and violated. Subsequent news reports then linked the hacking attack on China. So now, in the face of being labelled a domestic terrorist, I also know that foreign governments around the world know more about me than most of my family and friends do. This is not a comfortable feeling.

There have been enough cloud-based hacks and backdoor data collection bots to think that it is only a matter of time before those of us whose personal lives have been completely upended by government spying will see that data being used by state-sponsored media, hackers and foreign governments for nefarious purposes.

An early case study of this happening was what happened to Jeff Bezos. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) placed Pegasus on Bezos’ phone during a WhatsApp conversation. MBS probably wanted to spy on what Jamal Khashoggi, who was a reporter for The Washington Post was going to publish next about the kingdom. Of course, Pegasus was also placed on the phone of Jamal Khashoggi’s wife by United Arab Emeritis (MSB) and most likely helped in his assassination.

Eventually, The Enquirer used the Pegasus data of Bezo’s affair to try to blackmail Bezos to stop the investigation into the origins of Pegasus on his phone. With that, Bezos announced his affair to the world, rather than be blackmailed. Which of course, led to his divorce. This is one small case study - of how two phones infected with spyware, ultimately led to the death of a reporter and in the case of Bezos, completely upended his life.

Pegasus has been sold to governments, including our own.

For me personally, I like to think that I am not so important that a foreign government would wish to kill me. But on the other hand, somewhere between 300,000 and a million people read my Substack posts daily, and I don’t hold back in my writing. My podcasts and TV appearances have reached hundreds of millions of people. So, maybe I am naive. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea that I visit China or Egypt in the near term….

Knowing the my government is most likely actively spying on me and directing state sponsored media to censor, slander and harass me is certainly upsetting if I think about it too much. This is why I never “google” myself. Because if I was a paranoid person, I would think they were out to “get me.” And of course, our government only has my best interests at heart, right?

Of course, this all gets back to why a few phone calls from Romania warning me about the CIA can send chills down my back. Because there is that tiny chance the threat of harm from my government may just be real…

*On a a personal note - we have had so many wonderful notes, cards, letter, books, care packages and communications from supporters. Some who have become friends. I just want to personally thank people who have (and that includes those in the comments section). Your kindness gives me strength.
I believe him and all I can say is...wow. America is no longer the America we once knew. It has become our enemy???
 

Tristan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Thanks HD. I would just add that he’s looking for a serious flu epidemic specially as soon as they start giving the flu shots.
it’s just hard for me to listen to a man who is so scientific and logic-based to sound so doomerish.


There's apt to be a lot of 'hard', coming up.

Best to everyone.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Whether or not the FDA would recommend this was the hot story yesterday. Today's hot story is that they did. I'm only posting one article about it, but multiple sources reported about it.

(fair use applies) bolding mine

FDA advisers recommend updating COVID booster shots for fall
By LAURAN NEERGAARD and MATTHEW PERRONE
yesterday

At least some U.S. adults may get updated COVID-19 shots this fall, as government advisers voted Tuesday that it’s time to tweak booster doses to better match the most recent virus variants.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration wrestled with how to modify doses now when there’s no way to know how the rapidly mutating virus will evolve by fall — especially since people who get today’s recommended boosters remain strongly protected against COVID-19′s worst outcomes.

Ultimately the FDA panel voted 19-2 that COVID-19 boosters should contain some version of the super-contagious omicron variant, to be ready for an anticipated fall booster campaign.

“We are going to be behind the eight-ball if we wait longer,” said one adviser, Dr. Mark Sawyer of the University of California, San Diego.

The FDA will have to decide the exact recipe, but expect a combination shot that adds protection against either omicron or some of its newer relatives to the original vaccine.

“None of us has a crystal ball” to know the next threatening variant, said FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks. But “we may at least bring the immune system closer to being able to respond to what’s circulating” now rather than far older virus strains.

It’s not clear who would be offered a tweaked booster — they might be urged only for older adults or those at high risk from the virus. But the FDA is expected to decide on the recipe change within days and then Pfizer and Moderna will have to seek authorization for the appropriately updated doses, time for health authorities to settle on a fall strategy.

Current COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives globally. With a booster dose, those used in the U.S. retain strong protection against hospitalization and death but their ability to block infection dropped markedly when omicron appeared. And the omicron mutant that caused the winter surge has been replaced by its genetically distinct relatives. The two newest omicron cousins, called BA.4 and BA.5, together now make up half of U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pfizer and Moderna already were brewing boosters that add protection to the first omicron mutant. Their combination shots, what scientists call “bivalent” vaccines, substantially boosted levels of antibodies capable of fighting that variant, more than simply giving another dose of today’s vaccine.

Both companies found the tweaked shots also offered some cross-protection against those worrisome BA.4 and BA.5 mutants, too, but not nearly as much.

Many scientists favor the combination approach because it preserves the original vaccines’ proven benefits, which include some cross-protection against other mutants that have cropped up during the pandemic.

The question facing FDA is the correct recipe change. Both companies said they’d have plenty of omicron-targeted combo shots by October but Moderna said switching to target omicron’s newest relatives might delay its version another month.

Further complicating the decision is that only half of vaccinated Americans have received that all-important first booster.

And while the CDC says protection against hospitalization has slipped some for older adults, a second booster that’s recommended for people 50 and older seems to restore it. But only a quarter of those eligible for the additional booster have gotten one.

Marks said that by tweaking the shots, “we’re hoping we can convince people to go get that booster to strengthen their immune response and help prevent another wave.”

The logistics will be challenging. Many Americans haven’t had their first vaccinations yet, including young children who just became eligible — and it’s not clear whether tweaked boosters eventually might lead to a change in the primary vaccine. But the FDA’s advisers said it’s important to go ahead and study updated vaccine recipes in children, too.

And one more complexity: A third company, Novavax, is awaiting FDA authorization of a more traditional kind of COVID-19 vaccine, protein-based shots. Novavax argued Tuesday that a booster of its regular vaccine promises a good immune response against the new omicron mutants without a recipe change.

Advisers to the World Health Organization recently said omicron-tweaked shots would be most beneficial as a booster only, because they should increase the breadth of people’s cross-protection against multiple variants.

“We don’t want the world to lose confidence in vaccines that are currently available,” said Dr. Kanta Subbarao, a virologist who chairs that WHO committee.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

South Korea approves first homemade COVID-19 vaccine
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KIM TONG-HYUNG
Wed, June 29, 2022, 3:36 AM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Health officials in South Korea on Wednesday approved the country's first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 years or older, adding another public health tool in the fight against a prolonged pandemic.

In clinical trials involving some 4,000 participants in South Korea and five other countries, SK Bioscience’s two-dose SKYCovione vaccine appeared to be more effective than the broadly used AstraZeneca shots in building immunity against infections, officials at South Korea’s Food and Drug Safety Ministry said.

It isn’t immediately clear how officials will administer the newly developed vaccine or how big of a role the shots will have in the next phase of the pandemic. The shots were designed for the original version of the coronavirus, not the more transmissible omicron variant that wreaked havoc in the country earlier this year. U.S. vaccine giants Pfizer and Moderna have been speeding up their development of booster shots targeting omicron and experts say it’s possible the virus could evolve again in the coming months.

South Korea’s mass immunization campaign has been mainly dependent on Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA shots. But officials say protein vaccines like SKYCovione, which are similar to shots used for years against the common flu and hepatitis B, could appeal to people who are hesitant to use vaccines developed with newer technologies.

“The approval (of SKYCovione) internationally confirms the abilities of our companies to develop COVID-19 vaccines,” Food and Drug Safety Minister Oh Yu-kyoung said in a briefing. She said SK Bioscience is seeking an approval from the World Health Organization for its shots, which would potentially open export opportunities.

South Korea has eased most of its virus restrictions after battling an omicron surge earlier this year, but some experts say the country may see another rise in infections despite a high vaccination rate because of waning immunities and the possible emergence of new variants.

The country reported 10,463 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, its first daily increase over 10,000 in 20 days. Health Ministry official Son Youngrae said during a separate briefing it’s too early to tell whether the country is facing another surge after a months-long downward trend.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Taiwan to receive first doses of Novavax COVID vaccine this week
by Ben Blanchard
Wed, June 29, 2022, 2:57 AM

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan will take delivery of its first doses of the Novavax Inc COVID-19 vaccine this week, received under the COVAX sharing scheme, the government said on Wednesday.

Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Centre said the 504,000 doses would arrive on Thursday at Taipei's main international airport.

Taiwan is scheduled to receive 2.268 million doses of the Novavax vaccine in batches this year through the COVAX mechanism, it added.

The shot is yet to be authorised in the United States, but is cleared for use in adults in more than 40 countries including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The company's COVID-19 vaccine has been shown to be more than 90% effective in two large, late-stage trials.

Taiwan has to date been using the AstraZeneca PLC, Moderna Inc, BioNTech SE/Pfizer Inc and domestically developed Medigen vaccines.

Taiwan has a well-vaccinated population with more than 70% of its people having had a first booster shot, with second boosters now being rolled out.

The island of 23 million people has reported more than 3.7 million infections so far this year having previously kept the pandemic well under control, though new cases are now waning.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

China Suggests it Could Maintain ‘Zero COVID’ Policy For 5 Years
Article censored after public alarm.
Paul Joseph Watson
Published 15 hours ago on 28 June, 2022


China has suggested it will maintain its controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy for at least 5 years, eschewing natural immunity and guaranteeing repeated rounds of new lockdowns.

“In the next five years, Beijing will unremittingly grasp the normalization of epidemic prevention and control,” said a story published by Beijing Daily.

The article quoted Cai Qi, the Communist Party of China’s secretary in Beijing and a former mayor of the city, who said that ‘zero COVID’ approach would remain in place for 5 years.

After the story prompted alarm, reference to “five years” was removed from the piece and the hashtag related to it was censored by social media giant Weibo.

“Monday’s announcement and the subsequent amendment sparked anger and confusion among Beijing residents online,” reports the Guardian. “Most commenters appeared unsurprised at the prospect of the system continuing for another half-decade, but few were supportive of the idea.”

Although western experts severely doubt official numbers coming out of China, Beijing claimed success in limiting COVID deaths by enforcing the policy throughout 2021.

However, this meant that China never achieved anything like herd immunity, and at one stage the Omicron variant caused more more coronavirus cases in Shanghai in four weeks than in the previous two years of the entire pandemic.

Back in May, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus suggested that China would be better off if it abandoned the policy, but Beijing refused to budge.

As we previously highlighted, the only way of enforcing a ‘zero COVID’ policy is via brutal authoritarianism.

In Shanghai, children were separated from their parents in quarantine facilities and others were left without urgent treatment like kidney dialysis.

Panic buying of food also became a common occurrence as the anger threatened to spill over into widespread civil unrest.

Former UK government COVID-19 advisor Neil Ferguson previously admitted that he thought “we couldn’t get away with” imposing Communist Chinese-style lockdowns in Europe because they were too draconian, and yet it happened anyway.

“It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought,” said Ferguson.

“And then Italy did it. And we realised we could,” he added.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

UNREAL: Same College Behind Bogus Study Used to Support Shutdowns Is Behind BS Study Used to Force COVID Vaccines on US Children
By Joe Hoft
Published June 28, 2022 at 12:30pm

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. A study from the Imperial College of London was behind the garbage COVID study that led to US shutdowns which ultimately never should have happened. Now this same college has a legion of individuals behind a garbage study that the CDC is using force killer vaccines on children.

Doctors Fauci and Birx used a BS study from Imperial College to convince President Trump to shut down the economy in 2020. This faulty advice led to the suffering of millions of people around the world after many nations followed the US’s lead. It was wrong and based on a BS study.

Now another questionable but significant BS study is being used by the CDC that affects all Americans and puts our lives at risk. A BS study is being used by the CDC to force COVID vaccines on children across the US.

The BS study used by the CDC to force COVID jabs on US children compared annual data from other causes of death to two years of COVID deaths and used that false comparison to claim that COVID is a leading cause of death in young children (i.e., in the top 5), when it’s really barely in the top 10.

A number of the researchers and authors in the study are from Imperial College in London. Charles Whitaker, Theo Rashid, Alexandra Blenkinsop, H Juliette T Unwin, Samir Bhatt, and Oliver Ratmann all claim to be from Imperial College.

Imperial-College.jpg


Charles Whittaker was also a member of the BS Imperial College study that caused so much harm in 2020.

Imperial-College-Study.jpg


A material question for both studies is to ask who reviewed these studies? The errors in both studies were not minor or subtle. In the recent study, the data error is obvious. This almost looks intentional. How could it be missed?
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

The Fauci-Funded Peter Daszak is Now Working With Kremlin-Backed Researchers, Isolating New Coronavirus Strains.
The latest grift from the EcoHealth chief involves a number of Kremlin-linked researchers.
by Natalie Winters
June 28, 2022

Peter Daszak – a controversial U.S-based researcher whose collaborations on coronavirus research with a Chinese laboratory were funded by Anthony Fauci – isolated Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus strains in Russia using funds from the Russian government in a recently published research paper, The National Pulse can reveal.

Daszak, 49, appeared to play a critical role in the origins of COVID-19, as his organization, the ‘EcoHealth Alliance’, facilitated a “longtime” joint research effort with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is believed to be the source of the virus. Throughout the pandemic, Daszak also featured prominently in promoting the “natural origins” theory while simultaneously discrediting supporters of the “lab leak” theory, most notably in the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 investigator.

His latest study appears to be yet another controversy. Daszak, who is originally British, is listed as the sole U.S. researcher on the paper: “Identification and Genetic Characterization of MERS-Related Coronavirus Isolated from Nathusius’ Pipistrelle Near Zvenigorod (Moscow Region, Russia).

Screen-Shot-2022-06-28-at-1.22.05-PM.png

Daszak’s latest grift.

The paper was published on June 10th 2022 and counted an additional 11 Russian researchers from Kremlin-run facilities including the Federal Service on Consumers’ Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Surveillance and Moscow State University.

The study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the national science funding body of the Russian government, and the state-run Russian Science Foundation.

Researchers conducted “analyses of bat viromes,” which “have been used to identify novel viruses with potential to cause human infection.”

“We characterized the fecal virome of 26 samples collected from six bat species captured during 2015 in Moscow Region. Of these 13/26 (50%) samples were found to be coronavirus positive,” continued researchers.

“We sequenced and assembled the complete genome of a novel MERS-related Betacoronavirus from Pipistrellus nathusii, named MOW-BatCoV strain 15-22.”

The capture and sampling of bats were carried out by Moscow State University researchers in the summer of 2015.

Appearing to use similar tactics as researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Russian scientists and Daszak focused on the spike protein. The spike protein allows viruses to penetrate host cells and cause infection and is believed to have been manipulated by researchers in Wuhan to become more lethal to humans.

“To predict and analyze the interaction of MOW-BatCoV Spike glycoprotein with DPP4 receptors of the different mammalian species, the three-dimensional structures of these proteins were obtained by homologous modeling. The DPP4 proteins of two bats (Myotis brandtii and Pipistrellus kuhlii), the hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), domestic cat (Felix catus) and mouse (Mus musculus) were used for analysis,” explains the paper.

Analysis of the complete genomes the novel coronavirus discovered in the paper shows that it “falls into clade of human/camel’s MERS viruses together with a few bat viruses.”
.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
I will be posting Dr. Topol's substack further down when I post the substack articles.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(fair use applies)

Twin Omicron subvariants have taken over the U.S., but they’re not quite identical. One is ‘the worst version of the virus we’ve seen’
Erin Prater
Tue, June 28, 2022, 11:12 AM·3 min read

A pair of immune-evading Omicron subvariants are now dominant in the U.S., having overtaken so-called "stealth Omicron" and close relative BA.2.12.1 in mere weeks, according to federal health data released Tuesday.

BA.4 and BA.5, which swept South Africa this spring along thanks to their ability to evade immunity, were estimated to have caused slightly more than half (52%) of COVID infections in the U.S. last week, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote Monday in anticipation of the viral coup.

"It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility," well beyond what has been seen before, he wrote. "You could say it’s not so bad because there hasn’t been a marked rise in hospitalizations and deaths as we saw with Omicron, but that’s only because we had such a striking adverse impact from Omicron, for which there is at least some cross-immunity."

BA.2.12.1, another Omicron subvariant dominant before the advent of BA.4 and BA.5, was responsible for 42% of cases. So-called stealth Omicron, BA.2, nicknamed for its ability to evade detection on PCR tests, came in third, comprising nearly 6% of cases. It had been dominant in the U.S. until BA.2.12.1 overtook it last month.

The jury is still out on whether current vaccines hold up against BA.5. But given that vaccines experienced an approximate 15% drop in protection against severe disease from Delta to Omicron, "it would not be at all surprising to me to see further decline of protection against hospitalizations and deaths," Topol wrote.

BA.4 and BA.5 were first detected in the U.S. in late March, as Fortune previously reported. The variants, discovered in South Africa, quickly took hold in the country in April and May despite the fact that almost all South Africans had been vaccinated or previously had COVID by that point.

The pair of variants are quickly taking hold globally. But their rise is often masked because in many countries, it's occurring at the same time as a decline in BA.2 infections, Topol wrote. This can lead to the appearance of a sustained wave when, in reality, dual waves are present—the first from an older version of Omicron, and the second from BA.4/BA.5.

A recent study out of South Africa found that those who had been previously infected with Omicron but not vaccinated experienced a nearly eightfold drop in neutralizing antibodies when exposed to BA.4 and BA.5. Those who had been vaccinated and previously infected with Omicron saw a milder threefold decrease.

Alex Sigal, a professor at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa, told Fortune in May that symptoms of the new subvariants are similar to typical Omicron symptoms, which include fever, loss of smell, and malaise.

“I haven’t seen early symptoms of respiratory distress, the major COVID-specific symptom that makes this disease so dangerous,” he said. “It doesn’t feel nice, but there’s less chance of dying.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Moderna Vaccine Increases Myocarditis Risk by 44 Times in Young Adults: Peer-Reviewed Study
The risk was 13 times higher with Pfizer vaccination
By Enrico Trigoso
June 28, 2022

A French peer-reviewed study concluded that for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the risk of myocarditis skyrockets a week after vaccination.

The risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination was 8 times and 30 times greater than unvaccinated control groups for BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna), respectively.

The largest association for myocarditis following the Moderna jab was 44 times higher risk for persons aged 18 to 24 years.

As for the Pfizer shot, in relation to the same age group, the risk was 13 times higher.

Infection with the Chinese Communist Party virus yielded, by comparison, a 9 times greater risk of the same condition.

Myocarditis refers to the inflammation of the heart muscle—a life-threatening condition. There are many established causes for this heart condition. The leading cause—according to modern science’s most recent discoveries—is viruses; but during the pandemic, COVID mRNA vaccines have earned a place as a top suspect for myocarditis.

The new study’s goal was to provide an assessment of association with vaccines across sex and age groups.

“Both SARS-CoV2 infection and COVID mRNA vaccines have been associated with myocarditis. Knowing the spike protein’s affinity to ACE2 receptors in the heart and spike protein’s injury to cardiomyocytes (cells of the heart), the association of myocarditis with SARS-CoV2 virus or spike protein-based mRNA vaccination was not entirely unexpected,” Dr. Sanjay Verma, a cardiologist, told The Epoch Times via email.

Verma also thinks the CDC’s analysis “erroneously suggests” that risk of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2 infection is greater than after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

“For the cases of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2, CDC uses officially confirmed PCR+ ‘cases,’ even though their own seroprevalence data demonstrates that far more people have been infected than officially conformed PCR+ ‘cases.’ For example, seroprevalence data as of Feb 21, 2022, reveals 75 percent (about 54 million) of all children have been infected compared to 12 million officially confirmed PCR+ ‘cases’ (i.e., the actual number of kids infected is 4.5 times greater than PCR+ ‘cases’). Therefore, calculating the risk of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2 infection, the rate noted by CDC would therefore need to be reduced by 4.5 times. Thus far, CDC has not adjusted its COVID-19 morbidity and mortality data accordingly,” said the cardiologist, who practices in Coachella Valley, California.

The study analyzed 1,612 cases of myocarditis and 1,613 cases of pericarditis in France from May 12, 2021, to Oct. 31, 2021, involving 32 million people aged 12 to 50 years who received 46 million doses of mRNA vaccines.

It is limited by using solely hospital discharge diagnoses. Therefore, it does not include those who may have died before being hospitalized or those whose symptoms were not severe enough to be hospitalized.

“There have been reports (pdf) of autopsy-proven myocarditis after vaccination and anecdotal evidence of patients being dismissed by ER and never being hospitalized. Adjusting for these excluded subsets may yield even higher risk than reported in this study. Follow-up of the patients in this study was limited to one month after discharge. However, a previous cardiac MRI study found about 75 percent of patients with vaccine-associated myocarditis can have persistent MRI abnormalities 3–8 months after initial diagnosis,” Verma said.

The authors of the study didn’t analyze the effect of booster vaccination since it is not yet recommended for young adults in France.

In the United States, however, booster injections are mandated by colleges and universities, employers, and even some state public health departments irrespective of age or prior infection.

“In a preprint follow-up to their peer-reviewed study of myocarditis after vaccination, analysis found continued incremental risk of myocarditis after booster vaccination. In fact, while many countries have refrained from recommending COVID vaccination in very young children because the risks do not justify the benefits, the U.S. stands alone in recommending it in the youngest of kids,” Verma said.

A research paper published on May 18 studied the pandemic control measures—which included vaccine and mask mandates, as well as isolation and contact tracing—of Cornell University, which was almost completely vaccinated, and found these policies were “not a match” for the Omicron variant and its rapid spread.

Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Recently, a new term has been highlighted in media outlets: “sudden adult death syndrome,” or SADS.

Underlying factors for SADS include undiagnosed myocarditis, inflammatory conditions, and other conditions that cause irregularities in the electrical system of the heart, thereby triggering cardiac arrest.

Data compiled by the International Olympic Committee shows 1,101 sudden deaths in athletes under age 35 between 1966 and 2004, giving an average annual rate of 29, across all sports. Meanwhile, between March 2021 and March 2022 alone—a single year—at least 769 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest, collapsed, or have died on the field, worldwide.

Among EU FIFA (soccer/football) athletes, sudden death increased by 420 percent in 2021. Historically, about five soccer players have died while playing the game each year. Between January and mid-November 2021, 21 FIFA players died from sudden death.

Joseph Mercola contributed to this report.

The Epoch Times reached out to the CDC for comment.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

The Normalization of Dishonesty in Medical Science
By Thorsteinn Siglaugsson
June 28, 2022

I subscribe to a publication called MedpageToday, which is an excellent way to follow what is going on in the mainstream medical discussion, and not least to better understand what is wrong with it.

This week they published a piece on the benefits to infants from maternal vaccination, reported in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 22nd. In the introduction, the study authors make the following claim: “Infants younger than 6 months of age are at high risk for complications of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19)”

This came as a surprise, so I checked the source they quote in support of this statement. In short, the source tells us nothing about risk of hospitalization. All it tells us is the number of hospitalized infants over time per 100,000 in the population, which shows that early January this year, during a surge of Omicron infections, there was of course also a surge in hospitalizations; if we look at the general trends we see this in all age-groups.

This has nothing to do with hospitalization risk at all.

“… [H]igh risk for complications …”? In the general population, the probability of hospitalization following a Covid infection according to the CDC in October 2021 was around 5%; this means one in every 20 people infected was admitted to hospital.

After Omicron took over, this number went down by 50-70%, to between 1.5-2.5%. And if we look at the latest CDC estimate on relative risk between age groups, children up to 17 have the lowest risk of hospitalization, including infants. That means, for infants the risk of hospitalization is about 1/10th of the risk for the oldest age-group. It might be added that their risk of death is less than 1/330th of the oldest age-group. This is low risk, not high risk.

Still, according to the authors of this study, infants are “at high risk for complications of coronavirus disease 2019,” contrary to all evidence, referring to a source that doesn‘t address the matter.

Clearly, we cannot be concerned with the risk of Covid-19 for infants, for as the numbers tell us, it isn‘t concerning at all; infants are in very little danger from Covid-19. We should in fact be more concerned with the injection of mothers-to-be with substances which health authorities in Scandinavia have not recommended for children under 12, with the exception of Denmark only, a decision they now regret. It adds to those concerns to see the spikes in complications during pregnancy, infant mortality and stillbirths which we’ve seen this year.

We cannot be very concerned with such a low risk. But we should be deeply concerned when we see a study, authored by around 40 medical doctors and PhDs, and peer-reviewed by I don‘t know how many, putting forth a claim that is obviously false, and supporting it with a source that doesn‘t support it.

What might be the reason? Have all those people become so blinded by a preconceived conclusion, so biased toward what they think they are supposed to believe, that they are now unable to understand the simple distinction between hospitalization risk and transmission?

Or have they taken it a step further? Do they in fact understand, but choose to ignore or distort the facts to please their peers and superiors, trusting in the safety of numbers? Has dishonesty become normalized now in medical science?
 

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Increase in Guillain-Barré Syndrome Following AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine
By University College
London June 28, 2022

Guillain Barré Syndrome
Guillain-Barré syndrome. Credit: UCL

A correlation between a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and a small but significant rise in cases of the serious neurological condition Guillain-Barré syndrome, has been identified by University College London scientists, as part of an analysis of United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) data.

Scientists, however, say it remains unclear what the cause of the link is. Furthermore, the small numbers of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) cases observed appear similar to increases previously seen in other mass vaccination campaigns.
The same research team, based at University College London (UCL) Queen Square Institute of Neurology, had previously shown there was no measurable link between COVID-19 infection and GBS. This subsequent study set out to investigate any relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and GBS.

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a rare but serious autoimmune condition that attacks the peripheral nervous system, typically resulting in weakness, numbness, and pain in the limbs and sometimes resulting in paralysis of breathing. GBS often occurs after infections, particularly a gastroenteritis infection called Camplylobacter, with the immune system mistakenly attacking nerves rather than germs.

GBS is usually reversible, but in severe cases, it can cause prolonged paralysis involving breathing muscles, require ventilator support and sometimes leave permanent neurological deficits. Early detection by expert neurologists is key to proper treatment.

For the research, published in the journal Brain, scientists carried out a population-based study of NHS data in England to track GBS case rates against vaccination rollout. Further, as part of a separate study of UK hospitals’ surveillance data, they looked at phenotypes (characteristics/symptoms) of reported GBS cases to identify whether there were any specific features of COVID-19 vaccine-associated GBS.

UK context and analysis

In the UK, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine (tozinameran) was rolled out in December 2020, followed by AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) in January 2021, then Moderna (mRNA-1273) in April 2021.

Researchers observed that between January to October 2021, 996 GBS cases were recorded in the UK National Immunoglobulin Database, but with an unusual spike in GBS reports occurring between March and April 2021. For these two months there were about 140 cases per month compared to historical rates of about 100 per month.

To identify whether any or all of these cases were linked to vaccination, they linked dates of GBS onset to vaccination receipt data held on the National Immunisation Management System in England for every individual.

The analysis revealed 198 GBS cases (20% of 966) occurred within six weeks of the first-dose COVID-19 vaccination in England, equating to 0.618 cases per 100,000 vaccinations. Of these, 176 people had had an AstraZeneca vaccination, 21 Pfizer, and 1 (one) Moderna. Only 23 GBS cases were reported within six weeks of any second vaccine dose.

Overall, following a first dose AstraZeneca vaccine there were 5.8 excess GBS cases per million doses of vaccine, equating to an absolute total excess between January-July 2021 of between 98-140 cases. First-dose Pfizer and Moderna and second-dose of any vaccination showed no excess GBS risk.

Commenting on the figures, lead author Professor Michael Lunn (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology) said: “Higher numbers of cases of GBS are seen in the period of two to four weeks after vaccination. A peak of cases observed around 24 days following a first dose.

“First doses of AstraZeneca vaccine account for the majority or all of this increase. A similar pattern is not seen with the other vaccines or following a second dose of any vaccine.”

In the separate phenotype study, researchers used a multi-center UK-wide (four nations) hospital dataset, to collect incident data on GBS cases reported by clinicians between January 2021 and November 2021. Concluding this analysis, researchers found no specific clinical features, including facial weakness (which has received special attention in medical literature), were associated with vaccination-related GBS compared to non-vaccinated cases showing how difficult it is to spot vaccination linked cases from the background cases occurring normally.

Professor Lunn said: “The reason for the association between only AstraZeneca vaccination and GBS is unclear. COVID-19 infection does not have a strong, or possibly any, increased risk of GBS, and the lack of increased risk associated with Pfizer vaccination implies that it is unlikely that the COVID-19 spike protein is the causative factor for the increased risk. The viral vector used to carry the nucleic acid in the AstraZeneca and similar vaccines may be the reason but this needs further exploration.”

Historical context of vaccine-associated GBS

During the 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign in the USA, there was a small increase in GBS associated with what was a novel flu jab at that time. At the time, the vaccination campaign was halted because the risk of developing GBS was statistically increased from background (normal times), although subsequent statistical analysis found the risk of a link to be lower than initially thought.

The excess incidence following AstraZeneca first dose vaccine is estimated to be 5.8 cases per million doses, similar to the estimates for the 1976 ‘swine flu’ vaccine and higher (but within the same order of magnitude) as the reported excess cases for the modern influenza and yellow fever vaccines. It is far below the one in 1,000 rate of GBS associated with Campylobacter jejuni gastroenteritis or Zika-virus.

Professor Lunn added: “At the moment we don’t know why a vaccine may cause these very small rises in GBS.
“It may be that a non-specific immune activation in susceptible individuals occurs, but if that were the case similar risks might apply to all vaccine types.

“It is, therefore, logical to suggest that the simian adenovirus vector, often used to develop vaccines, including AstraZeneca’s, may account for the increased risk.

“Adenoviruses have not been strongly associated with GBS in previous studies, and any association between adenoviral vaccination and GBS has only once been reported. “Nevertheless, adenovirus testing is not routinely performed in cases of GBS in the UK, and whether adenoviruses may account for a proportion of ‘idiopathic’ (no known cause) or ‘SARS-CoV-2 negative’ GBS may be the subject for further study.”

Reference: “COVID-19 vaccination and Guillain-Barré syndrome: analyses using the National Immunoglobulin Database” by Ryan Y. S. Keh, Sophie Scanlon, Preeti Datta-Nemdharry, Katherine Donegan, Sally Cavanagh, Mark Foster, David Skelland, James Palmer, Pedro M. Machado, Stephen Keddie, Aisling S. Carr, Michael P. Lunn and BPNS/ABN COVID-19 Vaccine GBS Study Group, 18 February 2022, Brain.

DOI: 10.1093/brain/awac067
 

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Scientists Find That the Effects of COVID-19 Infection Can Remain for at Least 1 Year
By European Society of Endocrinology
June 28, 2022

Even after one year, the effects of COVID-19 contamination on the thyroid gland are still present.

According to a recent study by Dr. Ilaria Muller and colleagues at the University of Milan in Italy, severe COVID-19 disease impacts thyroid function via a variety of mechanisms. The researchers tracked individuals with thyroid dysfunction associated with COVID-19 illness for a year in order to better characterize such thyroid involvement and track its progression over time. During moderate-to-severe COVID-19 disease the occurrence of thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid gland) plays an important role in thyroid dysfunction, in addition to other well-known mechanisms mainly acting on the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis. The hormone imbalance is usually mild but increases in severe cases of COVID-19. Their study was presented during the 24th European Congress of Endocrinology in Milan, Italy.

The thyroid function is crucial to the human body’s metabolism, growth, and development. By continuously releasing a stable amount of thyroid hormones into the bloodstream, it aids in the regulation of numerous body functions. The thyroid gland generates extra hormones when the body needs more energy in particular situations, such as when it is growing, cold, or pregnant.

The study looked at more than 100 patients admitted to the hospital with severe COVID-19, analyzing their thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and other indicators. Thyroiditis occurred frequently in the COVID-19 patient population and the thyroid function, as well as inflammatory indicators, returned to normal in nearly all instances shortly after the end of their COVID-19 illness. However, after 12 months thyroiditis regions remained visible at thyroid ultrasound in half of the individuals, even if reduced in size. The thyroid uptake of technetium or iodine, an indicator of thyroid function, was still reduced in four out of six individuals at nine months, although it had mostly recovered after 12 months. The long-term clinical consequences, if any, are unknown.

“There is a clear link between thyroid dysfunction and COVID-19 disease,” said Dr. Muller. “Knowing that thyroid hormones correlate with the disease severity is important, and the fact that the thyroid gland seems directly involved in SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) viral infection needs to be taken into account.”

Meeting: European Congress of Endocrinology 2022
 

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Innovative lung-imaging technique shows cause of long COVID symptoms
by Crystal Mackay, University of Western Ontario
June 28, 2022

Many who experience what is now called "long COVID" report feeling brain fog, breathless, fatigued and limited in doing everyday things, often lasting weeks and months post-infection. Using functional MRI with inhaled xenon gas, researchers have now identified for the first time that these debilitating symptoms are related to microscopic abnormalities that affect how oxygen is exchanged from the lungs to the red blood cells.

The LIVECOVIDFREE study, based at five centers across Ontario, and led by Western University professor Grace Parraga, is the largest MRI study of patients with long COVID. The research, published in Radiology, is the first to show a potential cause of these long COVID symptoms. By understanding the cause, team members responsible for patient care have been able to target treatment for these patients.

"I think it is always a conundrum when someone has symptoms, but you can't identify the problem. Because if you can't identify the problem, you can't identify solutions," said Parraga, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Lung Imaging to Transform Outcomes at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.

By having study participants inhale polarized xenon gas while inside the MRI, the researchers see in real-time the function of the 300-500 million tiny alveolar sacs, which are about 1/5 of a mm in diameter and responsible for delivering oxygen to the blood.

"With our MRI technique, we can watch in real time the air moving through the alveolar membrane and through to the blood cells; and we can actually see the function of the tiny alveolar sacs in the lungs," said Parraga. "What we saw on the MRI was that the transition of the oxygen into the red blood cells was depressed in these symptomatic patients who had had COVID-19, compared to healthy volunteers."

Further CT scans pointed to "abnormal trimming" of the vascular tree, indicating an impact on the tiny blood vessels that deliver red blood cells to the alveoli to be oxygenated.

There also doesn't appear to be any difference in severity of this abnormality between patients who had been hospitalized with COVID-19, and those who recovered without hospitalization, the study said. This is an important finding as the latest wave of COVID-19 infection has affected large numbers of people who did not need hospital-based care.

"For those who are symptomatic post-COVID, even if they hadn't had a severe enough infection to be hospitalized, we are seeing this abnormality in the exchange of oxygen across the alveolar membrane into the red blood cells," said Parraga.

The researchers recruited patients with suspected long COVID from two hospitals in London, Ontario: London Health Sciences Centre's (LHSC) Urgent COVID-19 Care Clinic (LUC3), and St. Joseph's Health Care London's post-acute COVID-19 program. Participants were those with persistent shortness of breath more than six-weeks post-infection. Some study participants were still symptomatic after 35 weeks.

Study co-author Dr. Michael Nicholson is a respirologist with St. Joseph's post-acute COVID-19 program, former member of the LUC3 clinical team at LHSC, and an associate scientist at Lawson Health Research Institute. He said patients who were describing these symptoms were also showing normal results on clinical breathing tests.


1656490610569.jpeg
These scans show what a healthy lung looks like (left) and lungs of patients after having COVID-19 (last three). The images also show where air flows in the lungs. Credit: Alexander Matheson

"We were looking for further modalities to look at their lung function that were not found through traditional clinical testing," said Nicholson. "The findings allowed us to show that there was a physiological impact on their lungs that correlated with their symptoms."

Study participant Alex Kopacz described his experience with COVID-19 as "harrowing." He was admitted to LHSC's University Hospital with the virus in 2021. A young, fit Canadian bobsledder and Olympic gold medalist, he never imagined that he would still be struggling to breathe months after infection.

"I was on oxygen for almost two months after COVID, and it took me almost three months to get to a place where I could go for a walk without gasping for air," said Kopacz. "The take-home message for me is that we have to remember that this virus can have very serious long-term consequences, which are not trivial. In my case, prior to getting sick, I didn't think it would really affect me."

A one-year follow-up is now underway to better understand these results longitudinally. The study was done in collaboration with researchers at LHSC, St. Joseph's, Lakehead University, McMaster University, Toronto Metropolitan University and Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto.
 

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COVID-19 fattens up our body's cells to fuel its viral takeover
by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
June 28, 2022

The virus that causes COVID-19 undertakes a massive takeover of the body's fat-processing system, creating cellular storehouses of fat that empower the virus to hijack the body's molecular machinery and cause disease.
After scientists discovered the important role of fat for SARS-CoV-2, they used weight-loss drugs and other fat-targeting compounds to try to stop the virus in cell culture. Cut off from its fatty fuel, the virus stopped replicating within 48 hours.

The authors of the recent paper in Nature Communications caution that the results are in cell culture, not in people; much more research remains to see if such compounds hold promise for people diagnosed with COVID. But the scientists, from Oregon Health & Science University and the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, call the work a significant step toward understanding the virus.

"This is exciting work, but it's the start of a very long journey," said Fikadu Tafesse, the corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at OHSU. "We have an interesting observation, but we have a lot more to learn about the mechanisms of this disease."

Fat as fuel

The team embarked on the study based on observations that people with a high body-mass index and conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes are more sensitive to the disease.

The team studied the effect of SARS-CoV-2 on more than 400 lipids in two different human cell lines. Scientists found a massive shift in lipid levels, with some fats increasing as much as 64-fold. In one cell line, nearly 80 percent of fats were altered by the virus; in the other, levels of slightly more than half were changed.

The lipids affected most were triglycerides, those little packets of fat that most patients try to keep to a minimum. Triglycerides are crucial for our health, allowing us to store energy and to maintain healthy membranes in our cells.

It turns out that those oily blobs of fat are also critical for the COVID virus.

"Lipids are an important part of every cell. They literally hold us together by keeping our cells intact, and they're a major source of energy storage for our bodies," said Jennifer Kyle, a biomedical scientist at PNNL who specializes in the measurement of lipids. "They are an attractive target for a virus."

When we need energy, cells break up the triglycerides into useful raw material—three fatty acids that each triglyceride molecule contains.

The team found that SARS-CoV2 doesn't simply boost the number of triglycerides in our cells. The virus also changes much of our fat-processing system, changing the body's ability to use fat as fuel.

The scientists went further, looking at the effects of 24 of the virus's 29 proteins on lipid levels. The painstaking laboratory work was done at OHSU, and then cells were sent to PNNL for measurement and analysis.

Cutting the fuel supply

The team identified a handful of viral proteins whose effect on triglyceride levels was particularly strong. Based on the findings, the team searched databases and identified several compounds that might have potential to disrupt the body's fat-processing system. Several proved effective at stopping the virus from replicating in the laboratory.

An approved weight-loss medication, Orlistat, a lipase inhibitor, stopped viral replication. An experimental compound known as GSK2194069 also stopped the virus. These and other compounds worked against all the SARS-CoV2 variants tested: alpha, beta, gamma and delta.

"As the virus replicates, it needs a continuous supply of energy," said Tafesse, whose team has also seen lipid changes as a result of Zika virus and HIV. "More triglycerides could provide that energy in the form of fatty acids. But we don't know exactly how the virus uses these lipids to its advantage."

The research is the result of an ongoing connection between OHSU and PNNL. Four years ago the institutions launched a collaboration now known as the Pacific Northwest Biomedical Innovation Co-Laboratory, or PMedIC, where scientists and physicians work together to bring basic science and clinical experience together to explore disease and develop innovative therapies.

The effort couples basic research from PNNL, particularly the ability to measure and interpret levels of molecules like lipids, proteins and metabolites, with OHSU's extensive experience with the science of human disease. The collaboration has spawned several research projects and produced results relevant to Zika virus, kidney failure and Alzheimer's disease.

Authors of the paper from PNNL include Kyle, Thomas Metz, Lisa Bramer and Joon-Yong Lee. OHSU authors are Tafesse, first author Scotland Farley, Hans Leier, Jules Weinstein, Timothy Bates and Carsten Schultz.
 

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Children of the 90s study helps scientists pinpoint those most at risk of long COVID
by University of Bristol
June 28, 2022

A national study published today in Nature Communications suggests that those at greatest risk of long COVID are women, those aged 50–60, people with poor pre-pandemic mental health and those in poor general health, such as anyone with asthma or who is overweight.

Around 2 million people in the UK are affected by long COVID (ONS data, 1 May 2022), enduring symptoms for 12 weeks or more after they've been infected. Whilst the syndrome has been widely reported, the frequency and risk factors for the condition are not well understood.

In order to develop new treatments, Children of the 90s—along with nine other population-based cohort studies—has helped researchers to understand what causes some people to suffer the condition more than others. In parallel, researchers also utilized data from electronic health records collected by Spring 2021 for 1.1 million individuals diagnosed with COVID-19.

The research is part of the CONVALESCENCE study, which is run by University College London and is the first of its kind to look at long COVID.

Using existing studies, such as Children of the 90s where participants are surveyed regularly, allowed researchers to look at people's health before the pandemic, as well as including cases of long COVID that were not reported to the GP.

Children of the 90s' participant Michael from Bristol has been suffering from long COVID since November 2020. He said: "It's just never really gone away. One minute you're doing really fine and the next day you just don't have any energy and struggle to get out of bed…I don't feel I'm living my life as full as I was."

Key risk factors associated with increased risk in long COVID included:
  • age—with 1.2% of 20-year-olds experiencing impacts on daily life, and 4.8% of 60-year-olds. Debilitating symptoms are roughly four times as common in 60-year-olds than 20-year-olds
  • being female
  • having poor pre-pandemic mental health and poor general health
  • having asthma
  • those with overweight or obesity problems.
Professor Nishi Chaturvedi from University College London leads the ongoing CONVALESCENCE study and has featured in a Children of the 90s Discovery film discussing some of the findings around long COVID. She says: "Children of the 90s participants have given scientists really valuable and in-depth information about many aspects of people's lives. Using pre-pandemic information, through clinic attendance and questionnaires, we've come to understand more about long COVID. Further investigations into the cause of long COVID should inform strategies to address the syndrome in the population."

Those suffering with long COVID can access an online public forum, which has been set up by the CONVALESCENCE project team. The aim of the forum is to ensure that a wider cross section of public and patient perspectives is included in discussions about how to define long COVID and in the broader research.
 

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COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5: What you should know
By Jeffrey Norris, University of California, San Francisco
June 28, 2022

Parents of children under the age of five-years-old now have the option to vaccinate their infants and young children against COVID-19.

The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna m-RNA-based COVID-19 vaccines for young children in June, nearly 18 months after vaccines were first approved for adults. Following the FDA's authorization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accepted CDC advisory committee recommendations for vaccination of infants and other children.

The Moderna vaccination protocol calls for two vaccinations, each one-quarter of Moderna's adult vaccine dose, spaced four weeks apart. An earlier Pfizer-BioNTech protocol also included two vaccinations, each one-tenth of the adult dose and spaced three weeks apart, but this failed to meet FDA criteria for authorization and was withdrawn from consideration. Pfizer added a third dose, administered eight weeks after the second, and collected additional data for FDA submission before the three-dose protocol was authorized.

The latest FDA approvals were granted primarily based on antibody immune responses generated by the vaccines. The vaccines mustered responses comparable to those measured in earlier COVID-19 vaccine trials of adults—despite the lower dosages. There were not a statistically large number of infections or serious outcomes in the trails, but it appears the new COVID vaccination protocols might be roughly as effective as a typical flu vaccine in preventing infection.

We spoke to Lee Atkinson-McEvoy, MD, a professor of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, for more on what parents should know about COVID-19 vaccines for young children.

What do you tell parents to be aware of when it comes to COVID-19 vaccination side effects?

Vaccines trigger the immune system, and many side effects are similar to being ill. So, after this vaccine we see things like fever, fatigue, and aches, similar to being sick. Side effects are short-lived, usually lasting just a day or two. The dose of vaccine was adjusted to make the likelihood of side effects less for infants and young children.

What vaccine reactions should prompt a visit to the doctor's office?

Call your child's physician's office if you have any concerns that worry you after the vaccine. You should be seen if side effects last longer than one-to-two days, if fever is greater than 104ºF (39.5º C), if your child is not acting well, or for other serious concerns.

Only a minority of children ages 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated since they became eligible last November. What do you say to hesitant or reluctant parents?

It's true that COVID in children is often milder and less likely to lead to serious outcomes. However, there have been deaths in children due to COVID, and some children experience severe COVID, including Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), a serious condition in which organs become inflamed. Many of those children did not have any underlying health conditions before they became sick with COVID. Vaccination decreases these risks.

With the emergence of Omicron and its subvariants, hospitalization rates among the population of children ages four and under has overtaken rates seen in older children. More than half of young children hospitalized for COVID in this age group have had no pre-existing medical conditions. What symptoms should parents view as warning signs of potentially serious illness, and when should they consult their child's physician's office?

If their child has a high fever greater than 104º F (39.5º C), appears sick, or is urinating less than three times per day, or if parents have other concerns, they should contact their child's physician's office.

Are parents receiving adequate information on childhood COVID-19 vaccination, and sufficient access to COVID vaccines?

It's important to consider that many parents may struggle with transportation or with work obligations that make daytime scheduling or consulting with physicians difficult. At UCSF, we are doing outreach to ensure there is access to accurate and expert information to address concerns and questions, and access to vaccine clinics at times that work for families.

Infants and the youngest children now are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination and simultaneously for routine childhood vaccinations for other diseases. Is it safe for children to receive COVID-19 and other vaccines during the same clinic visit?

Yes, children can receive other routine and recommended vaccinations at the same time as a COVID vaccination.

So far, we still see low rates of COVID vaccination among eligible children, but how are routine vaccination rates now?

We have seen that some children are falling behind with childhood vaccinations because COVID prevented them from coming in for routine appointments. COVID vaccination decreases risk for serious COVID illness, and by preventing COVID in the family, allows children to be well enough to attend routine appointments for important screenings and vaccinations against other major illnesses.

Considering the different protocols, as well as the clinical trial results presented to the CDC advisory committee, are you equally enthusiastic about both new vaccines?

Both vaccines provide great protection against severe COVID and some protection from getting milder COVID. The Pfizer is a three-dose series over 11 weeks, and the Moderna is a two-dose series over four weeks. We know that since vaccines have been available, the protection of any one brand of vaccine against COVID-19 changed based on the predominant variant around. The vaccine studies have been focused on safety of the vaccine and have been studied across a diverse population of children. The bottom line is vaccination is better than no vaccination.
 
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