CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

[Heliobas Disciple]

Stroke After Pfizer Booster May Be Connected to Flu Vaccine: Officials

Instances of stroke following receipt of Pfizer's new booster in the elderly may be connected to the influenza ...

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)


Stroke After Pfizer Booster May Be Connected to Flu Vaccine: Officials
Zachary Stieber
Jan 26 2023

Instances of stroke following receipt of Pfizer’s new booster in the elderly may be connected to the influenza vaccine, officials said on Jan. 26.

One-hundred thirty cases of ischemic stroke, which can be deadly, were recorded among people aged 65 or older within 21 days of a bivalent Pfizer booster, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee heard on Thursday.

That was higher than the 92 cases recorded in the 22- to 42-day window following vaccination, triggering a safety signal.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the administration (FDA) revealed the signal on Jan. 13 but had not said how many cases were recorded from the U.S. government’s Vaccine Safety Datalink surveillance system, which contains records from 12.5 million people across 11 sites.

A preliminary review of medical records at one site, which saw 24 ischemic stroke cases in the three weeks following Pfizer vaccination, revealed that a majority of the people who suffered a stroke had an influenza vaccine administered on the same day as the COVID-19 vaccine.

None of the patients had a history of stroke or transient ischemic attack, which is similar to a stroke and could be a non-vaccine cause of ischemic stroke.

Three of the patients died, including a man who perished one month after the stroke. His death was determined to likely be related to the health event.

Overall, 40 cases of ischemic stroke following both COVID-19 and flu vaccination were identified among people who suffered stroke through Dec. 17, 2022. That post-signal analyses heightened the safety signal, which is a sign a vaccine may cause a condition. Only 34.5 cases were expected based on background rates.

There were 60 cases among elderly people who received a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine without receiving a flu vaccine on the same day. That number did not meet the definition of a signal.

Officials decided to compare the cases recorded among boosted people one to 21 days after vaccination with boosted people 22 to 42 days after vaccination for the primary analysis. The rationale given was that people who recently received a vaccine were “expected to be more similar to current vaccinees than unvaccinated individuals.”

Officials also revealed that they excluded post-vaccination ischemic stroke cases if a person had a personal history of certain conditions, including transient ischemic attack or atrial fibrillation, also known as irregular heartbeat.

The new information came from a set of slides that Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC official, and Dr. Nicola Klein, a Kaiser Permanente official who works closely with the CDC, presented to the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel.

“CDC and FDA are engaged in epidemiologic analyses regarding coadministration of COVID-19 mRNA bivalent booster and flu vaccine,” one slide stated, following the detection of a “significant cluster” of post-vaccination cases of the ischemic stroke.

The CDC and FDA said previously that an examination of other surveillance systems showed no signal of ischemic stroke for the bivalent boosters but failed to mention that an analysis of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which the agencies co-manage, for the original Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines triggered the signal for ischemic stroke and hundreds of other adverse events. Both the original vaccines are still administered in the United States; the bivalents can only be obtained as boosters.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said in a recent joint statement that the companies were made aware of “limited reports of ischemic stroke” observed in the Vaccine Safety DataLink system.

“Neither Pfizer and BioNTech nor the CDC or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have observed similar findings across numerous other monitoring systems in the U.S. and globally and there is no evidence to conclude that ischemic stroke is associated with the use of the companies’ COVID-19 vaccines,” the companies stated.

Israel and the European Union have said that they have not detected a signal for ischemic stroke following bivalent vaccination. European officials said they also looked at Pfizer’s original vaccine.
Signal First Identified in 2022

The slides also showed that the safety signal from the Vaccine Safety Datalink was first identified in 2022.

The first time the condition met the signal was Nov. 27, 2022, one slide showed. It did not stop meeting the signal as of Jan. 8, 2023.

The signal has been “persistent for 7 weeks,” one slide stated.

While the rate ratio, or the result of the analyses, “has slowly attenuated from 1.92 to 1.47,” it “has continued to meet signaling criteria,” the slides acknowledged.

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Klein said during the meeting that during the past week, the rate diminished enough that it no longer met the signal.

Officials said they would continue to monitor data from the datalink system, consider expanding the record review to all system sites, and look at data from other systems to better understand the possible role of flu vaccination with COVID-19 vaccination as well as examine the indication of a decreased rate of stroke in the three to six weeks following vaccination.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

FDA advisers recommend updating Covid vaccines

Advisers to the FDA voted Thursday to back a plan whereby all Covid vaccines would move to the formulation used for the updated boosters, a step toward the goal of creating a single annual Covid shot for most Americans.

www.statnews.com

(fair use applies)


FDA advisers recommend updating Covid vaccines
Matthew Herper and Helen Branswell
Jan. 26, 2023

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted Thursday to back a plan whereby all Covid vaccines would move to the formulation used for the updated boosters, a step toward the goal of creating a single annual Covid shot for most Americans.

The panel said that a single vaccine would both be more effective and less confusing to both patients and health care workers.

The panel voted 21-to-0 to direct vaccine manufacturers Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax to “harmonize” the primary series of their vaccines — the first doses that people receive — with the new booster shots that contain both the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and a new Omicron strain.

Members of the panel were also supportive of the FDA’s plan to move to a single annual vaccine dose for most Americans, which will be matched annually to circulating strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The idea is that this would better protect recipients and allow for a more smooth vaccine rollout. For older people, immunocompromised individuals, and young children, two doses would be given, according to FDA plans.

However, the FDA did not ask the panel to vote on the components of the new plan.

“I think this is a reasonable approach. We have to keep reminding ourselves that this is not influenza and we need to keep paying attention to that to make sure we don’t just follow that dogma because we’re used to doing it,” said Bruce Gellin, a temporary voting member of the panel and chief of global public health strategy for the Rockefeller Foundation’s pandemic prevention institute. “We’ll try this this time. I don’t think we’re setting it in stone and we’ll see how it goes. We may need to adjust along the way.”

A continued Covid vaccination program represents a huge challenge for the U.S. government. Most people received the original two doses of the mRNA vaccine, with 229.5 million people, or 75% of those over age 5, having rolled up their sleeves. But a much smaller number of Americans – 50.6 million, or 16% of those eligible – have gotten the bivalent booster.

A wealth of data was presented by the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the companies that manufacture the vaccines showing that the new boosters result in higher antibody levels against new strains of the virus, including a Moderna study in the U.K. that directly compared a new bivalent booster with the original booster. Generally, the panel seemed to support the idea of moving to the new boosters.

But the need was also clearly highest in older people, who die of Covid in disproportionate numbers. According to data presented by the CDC, death rates from Covid over the past year were 1.3 per 1,000 in people aged 65 to 74 years and 5.1 per 1,000 in those over 75. The latter is 60 times the rate in adults aged 18 to 49 years.

Nicola Klein, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, presented results of a study that might indicate a link between the Pfizer vaccine and stroke in older people, but both the panelists and the FDA tended to believe it was a finding that might not hold up with further study.

However, little data was presented on the risk of myocarditis, a rare side effect of the vaccine that shows up mainly in men and adolescent boys.

The panelists did seem to believe that the idea of another annual shot, at least next year, was warranted by the current data. But several panelists hoped that a better vaccine would emerge over time, though it’s not clear how a new vaccine would be developed. And others said that many important questions about how vaccines should be used would require more data to answer.

“I think it’s quite reasonable to talk about another one for the fall,” said Eric Rubin, a panelist and the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s hard to say that it’s going to be annual at this point.”

 

[Oreally]

project veritas stings pfizer

truly hilarious!

View: https://youtu.be/u5n7RRKgDog


10 mon

 

[Zoner]

This is outrageous

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1618759983436529665

View: https://twitter.com/its_gav_7/status/1618759983436529665?s=46&t=EukNZ8DAZG4No0Wy2MU95A

 

[Oreally]

here is the first video of this idiot spilling the Pfizer beans

Pfizer exposed for exploring mutating Covid-19 viruses

www.brighteon.com

10 min

 

[Zoner]

Getting Covid isn’t good.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1618988743192608770

View: https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1618988743192608770?s=46&t=Jg-PMy1eoo75N_8DzRO8WQ

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Holiday trips within China surge after lifting of COVID curbs

BEIJING (Reuters) -Lunar New Year holiday trips inside China surged 74% from last year after authorities scrapped COVID-19 curbs that had stifled travel for three years, media reported on Saturday. The Lunar New Year is the most important holiday of the year in China, when huge numbers of...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)


Holiday trips within China surge after lifting of COVID curbs
Yew Lun Tian
Fri, January 27, 2023, 11:27 PM EST

BEIJING (Reuters) - Lunar New Year holiday trips inside China surged 74% from last year after authorities scrapped COVID-19 curbs that had stifled travel for three years, media reported on Saturday.

The Lunar New Year is the most important holiday of the year in China, when huge numbers of people working in prosperous coastal cities head to their hometowns and villages for family reunions.

But for three years people were told not to travel during the holiday, with those who insisted facing the risk of snap lockdowns, multiple COVID tests, quarantine and even admonishment by their work units.

An estimated 226 million domestic trips were made by all means including plane during the holiday week that ended on Friday, state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing government figures.

That compares with about 130 million domestic trips during the holiday week last year, according to the transport ministry.

In the last Lunar New Year holiday before the novel coronavirus emerged in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, some 420 million trips were made internally.

As for travel abroad, inbound and outbound cross-border trips jumped 120.5% from last year to 2.88 million, the National Immigration Administration said on Saturday.

During the Lunar New Year holiday in 2019, 12.53 million cross-border trips were made, the Xinhua news agency reported.

China abandoned its strict "zero COVID" policy in early December after protests against the restrictions, allowing people to travel and the virus to spread rapidly throughout the country.

Holiday consumption of in-person services recovered notably, as seen in the rebound in domestic tourism, but households are likely to be moderate in releasing pent-up demand, given their worsening balance sheets, analysts at Japanese brokerage Nomura said in a research note.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Many People with Long COVID Experienced Mild Infection: Study

A global analysis found that around 90 percent of long-COVID cases occur in individuals who were not hospitalized ...

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)


Many People with Long COVID Experienced Mild Infection: Study
Marina Zhang
Jan 27 2023

A global analysis found that around 90 percent of long-COVID cases occur in individuals who were not hospitalized for COVID-19.

In a commentary published in January 2023, the authors of the study concluded that this would suggest that most people with long COVID experienced a mild infection.

The data come from a global study that analyzed 54 studies and two medical databases across 10 countries. The authors defined long COVID as the persistence of fatigue, cognitive, or respiratory symptoms for over three months post-COVID. They found that 89.7 percent (130 million) of the recorded long-COVID cases occurred in people who were not hospitalized for COVID-19.

In reviewing the study, it appears that because mild cases make up the majority of long-COVID cases, having mild COVID might be what puts people at risk of long COVID.

However, the report’s corresponding author, Dr. Theo Vos from the University of Washington, who holds a doctorate in epidemiology and health economics, expressed in an email to The Epoch Times that the more likely explanation is that since most people experience mild symptoms with COVID-19, then if some of these patients were to become long-haulers, they would easily make up the majority of overall long-COVID cases.

Previous studies that tracked the severity of COVID-19 symptoms also supported this reasoning. A study in February 2020 that tracked infections in China showed that asymptomatic and mild disease exceeded 80 percent of all COVID-19 cases.

“The sheer [greater] number of non-hospitalized infections … means that the vast majority of long-COVID cases arise in people with milder acute infection,” Vos wrote in the email.
Predicting the Development of Long COVID

The global study, like much previous research, supports the hypothesis that a severe case of COVID-19 would increase the risk of developing long COVID.

Based on the data analyzed, the authors estimated that a greater proportion of patients who needed critical care or hospitalization for COVID-19 developed long-COVID symptoms than non-hospitalized patients.

However, since most people do not develop severe symptoms during a COVID-19 infection, this may be why physicians do not see clear patterns in the patients who progress to long COVID.

Further, the severity of the initial COVID-19 infection may not predict the severity of long COVID.

The chief of critical care and COVID-19 at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, Dr. Joseph Varon told The Epoch Times that he has seen long-COVID patients with varying severities of the initial COVID-19 infection.

One of his patients developed very dire symptoms of long COVID after experiencing a mild case of COVID-19.

“That’s the primary concern that I have, because a lot of people think that you [need to] have severe disease to have a more [severe case of] long COVID,” Varon said.

Though many studies have suggested that people with underlying health conditions, such as diabetes and obesity, are more at risk for long COVID, doctors have seen a mixed bag of patients reporting severe symptoms.

Critical care pulmonary specialist Dr. Pierre Kory said on EpochTV’s “Frontline Health” that he is actually seeing many patients who are young, healthy, and were professional or aiming to become professional athletes, now being severely debilitated by long COVID.

Studies have suggested that exercises may worsen or accelerate the progression to long COVID. A survey of over 477 long-COVID patients in the UK found that around 75 percent reported worsened symptoms after exercise.

Kory said that there are different types of long-COVID patients. The first type comprises those who directly progress from acute to long COVID. These people never experience a period of recovery before relapsing into long COVID, and they make up a small minority of long-COVID patients. Most long-COVID patients experience a brief period of recovery for a few weeks or a few months before progressing to long COVID.

To prevent long COVID, doctors like Kory and Varon recommend early treatment drugs to inhibit the virus from replicating and causing further damage and symptoms.

Kory and Varon are part of a group of critical care experts within the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. They have developed their own early treatment protocols to help people recover from COVID-19 infection.

Varon said that most of the long-COVID patients in his clinic did not get adequate treatment at the time of infection, observing that when he gave ivermectin, as per his protocol to patients, very few would later progress to long COVID.

 

[mzkitty]

Link is kind of messy, so just go here:

German Gov’t Bombshell: ‘Alarming Number of Vaccinated Are Developing AIDS’ - News Punch

The German government has admitted that an 'alarming number' of vaccinated people are developing 'AIDS-like symptoms.'

newspunch.com

 

[jward]

Lara Logan
@laralogan
8m

COVID Boosters Trigger Metastasis

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1619525734350962688

View: https://twitter.com/laralogan/status/1619525734350962688?s=20

 

[Profit of Doom]

I just saw this article and a (admittedly very woo) lightbulb went off. Can't get everyone on board to take a new mrna vaxx without having the covid crisis to push them towards it, can you? Let's see how long they take to actually roll this out. If it is in trials for a few years, no conspiracy. If this is out on shelves ready for injection in a few months, tighten the tin foil.

Sinopharm's mRNA Omicron vaccine gets green light for trials

China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of China National Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd (Sinopharm), announced on Friday that its biotech unit in Shanghai has received regulatory approval for clinical trials of China's first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine targeting the Omicron strains.

www.chinadaily.com.cn

(fair use applies)


Sinopharm's mRNA Omicron vaccine gets green light for trials
By Cui Jia | China Daily
Updated: 2023-01-21 07:29

China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of China National Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd (Sinopharm), announced on Friday that its biotech unit in Shanghai has received regulatory approval for clinical trials of China's first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine targeting the Omicron strains.

The approval for Omicron-specific mRNA vaccine clinical trials, granted by the State Drug Administration on Thursday, is a "milestone" in the company's COVID-19 vaccine development after producing inactivated and genetic recombinant vaccines, Zhang Yuntao, vice-president and chief scientist of the group, said in a statement.

"From the early stage of research and development, CNBG has been working toward developing a world-class Omicron-specific mRNA vaccine in all aspects. Also, we have been making efforts to speed up the process for clinical trials," Zhang said.

CNBG began research on and development of Omicron-specific vaccines near the end of 2021, Zhang had previously said.

Jia Weiguo, chief scientist at CNBG's Virogin Biotech Company, said the new mRNA vaccine, which can encode the full length of the Omicron variant's S protein, could help the body to create antibodies more efficiently. It has proved effective in preventing infection in animal trials.

"The company's advanced mRNA-LNP encapsulation technology can further guarantee the production capacity of the vaccine," Jia said.

Virogin, which is based in Shanghai, has built a research and development platform, as well as production lines with an annual capacity of 2 billion doses of mRNA vaccine. They can quickly produce mRNA vaccines to deal with pandemics, CNBG said.

The company added that it will further assess the safety, immunogenicity and effectiveness of production during clinical trials.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's annual COVID-19 vaccine production capacity has reached 7 billion doses, and the annual output exceeded 5.5 billion doses in 2022, which is a big improvement compared with the capacity of 5 billion doses in 2021.

Gao Fu, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with China Newsweek that vaccines against the mutant strains of COVID-19 should be approved for use as soon as possible.

Gao, also former head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested that approval procedures for COVID-19 vaccines should be similar to those for influenza vaccines. If the vaccines come from the same company and use the same technology, there's no need for them to go through the whole clinical trial process, as long as they are only different in strain or gene sequence,according to the China Newsweek report published on Thursday.

Gao added that although breakthrough infections are common,vaccination can still provide protection, and that the elderly may need to get vaccinated every six months because of the possibility that COVID-19 could become an endemic disease over the long term.

Deja vu all over again.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

White House Criticizes China for Not Being ‘Fully Transparent’ About COVID Numbers

During a White House press briefing on Jan. 25, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby ...

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)



White House Criticizes China for Not Being ‘Fully Transparent’ About COVID Numbers
By Alex Wu
January 28, 2023

During a White House press briefing on Jan. 25, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said that China hasn’t been “fully transparent” about COVID numbers. “And we cannot speak to the veracity of those numbers. We urge China to be fully transparent about what’s going on.”

Under increasing international pressure to share COVID data, the Chinese regime reported nearly 60,000 COVID-related deaths in hospitals between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12, a massive jump over previous reports. However, the new number casts doubts about the actual COVID death toll in China, as it excludes deaths that occur at home, and some doctors have said authorities don’t want them to put COVID as the cause of death on death certificates if there was a concurrent disease present.

The number is also in stark contrast to the images and videos flooding social media that show hospitals and funeral homes being deluged across the country.

The Epoch Times obtained internal documents of the Chinese regime showing that during the peak of the epidemic from Dec. 18 to early January 2023 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the daily cremation number was 6 to 7 times higher than the previously reported monthly average. The Nanjing funeral industry is keeping the actual numbers confidential.

Numbers Questioned

International media has noticed that the number of canceled household registrations in many places has soared (Chinese law requires the next of kin to cancel the household registration of a deceased person), and the increased deaths in rural areas have pushed up the sales of coffins. Funeral homes have installed more cremation ovens.

An Epoch Times review of 10 provinces and major cities found that more than 30 funeral homes published tenders for cremation ovens, ash urns, vans to transport bodies, and refrigerators, over the past three weeks alone.

“Because of the sharp surge in business, we urgently need to buy two ash sorting machines and post-processing equipment,” reads one Jan. 19 notice published by Huzhou Funeral House in Zhejiang Province, located south of Shanghai.

Local funeral homes have spent millions of yuan (6.78 yuan = $1) to purchase additional cooler storage for bodies, large trucks to transport bodies, and cremation ovens, since early December last year when COVID suddenly surged nationwide, according to Reuters.

Wang Ning, who works in the Jiangsu medical and health system, told Radio Free Asia that since the beginning of December last year, the number of people whose household registrations have been canceled increased by 3 to 5 times year-on-year, and the number is even higher in smaller cities. “Some of my friends are civil servants, and they have to handle the cancelation of household registration, and the number is three times that of usual. I heard some relevant data from funeral businesses in other places, and the numbers are almost four to five times.”

The BBC reported that coffin makers in northern Shanxi Province said they have been busy and haven’t had any rest in recent months. Sometimes the coffins have even sold out and people in the funeral business have been “earning a small fortune,” according to a customer.

BBC also reported that when they drove along the road in the countryside, they noticed many fresh mounds of earth with red flags on them. A farmer herding goats confirmed that they were all new graves, “Families have been burying elderly people here after they die. There are just too many.”

Indications of Much Higher Death Toll

In a Jan. 26 article for the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times, columnist Zhou Xiaohui described some indicators of the huge death toll. He noted that orders for tens of millions of body bags have been placed by local authorities, as shown in posts on social media since Jan. 8.

He cited one post by a business named Changzhou Hiking Outdoor Products, which disclosed that the Civil Affairs Bureau and local governments have been ordering a huge number of body bags. One order was for 30 million bags, and delivery was required within two weeks.

Zhou said that according to public data on funeral-related companies in China, the number of new company registrations peaked in 2021 at 16,800, a year-on-year increase of 16.11 percent. In the first three months of 2022, the number of registrations of funeral-related enterprises was 4,397, a year-on-year increase of 30.7 percent. No subsequent data is available.

Zhou wrote: “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dares not publish the number of body bags ordered by its Civil Affairs Bureaus and local governments, the total sales of coffin companies in the past three years, or explain the reasons for the sharp increase in the registration of funeral-related companies in the past three years. What lies behind this is that the CCP is covering up the huge death toll.”

 

[Zoner]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1619530405719445505

View: https://twitter.com/English_Bible1/status/1619530405719445505?s=20&t=gzxgskZrPK6Xpi-7nfWQgQ

 

[Zoner]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1619565778612912129

View: https://twitter.com/SaiKate108/status/1619565778612912129?s=20&t=yhm-yd3wlNbOzdGylr3NEQ

 

[psychgirl]

I had no idea the Princess of Thailand was in a coma!

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Russian embassy says North Korea lifted lockdown in capital

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Russia’s embassy in North Korea says the country has eased stringent epidemic controls in capital Pyongyang that were placed during the past five days to slow the spread of respiratory illnesses.

apnews.com

(fair use applies)


Russian embassy says North Korea lifted lockdown in capital
By KIM TONG-HYUNG
an hour ago

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Russia’s embassy in North Korea says the country has eased stringent epidemic controls in capital Pyongyang that were placed during the past five days to slow the spread of respiratory illnesses.

North Korea has not officially acknowledged a lockdown in Pyongyang or a re-emergence of COVID-19 after leader Kim Jong Un declared a widely disputed victory over the coronavirus in August, but the Russian embassy’s Facebook posts have provided rare glimpses into the secretive country’s infectious disease controls.

The embassy posted a notice Monday issued by North Korea’s Foreign Ministry informing foreign diplomats that the “special anti-epidemic period” imposed in Pyongyang since Wednesday was lifted as of Monday.

Last week, the embassy said that North Korean health authorities required diplomatic missions to keep their employees indoors and also measure their temperatures four times a day and report the results to a hospital in Pyongyang. It said the North Korean measures were in response to an increase in “flu and other respiratory diseases,” but it didn’t mention the spread of COVID-19 or restrictions imposed on regular citizens.

Shortly before that post, NK News, a North Korea-focused news website, cited a North Korean government notice to report that health officials had imposed a five-day lockdown in Pyongyang in an effort to stem the spread of respiratory illnesses.

Getting a read of North Korea’s virus situation is difficult as the country has been tightly shut since early 2020, with officials imposing strict border controls, banning tourists and aid workers and jetting out diplomats while scrambling to shield their poor health care system.

North Korea’s admission of a COVID-19 outbreak in May last year came after it spent 2 ½ years rejecting outside offers of vaccines and other help while steadfastly claiming that its superior socialist system was protecting its population from an “evil” virus that had killed millions elsewhere.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the number of foreign missions that are currently active in North Korea would be 10 or less, a list that includes the missions of China, Vietnam and Cuba along with the Russian embassy.

North Korean state media in recent weeks have stressed vigilance against a possible re-emergence of COVID-19. The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which previously described the anti-virus campaign as the “No. 1 priority” in national affairs, called for North Koreans to maintain a “sense of high crisis” Monday as COVID-19 continues to spread in neighboring countries.

Some analysts say North Korea could be taking preventive measures as it prepares to stage huge public events in Pyongyang — possibly as early as next week — to glorify Kim’s authoritarian leadership and the expansion of his nuclear weapons and missiles program.

Recent commercial satellite images have indicated preparations for a massive military parade in Pyongyang, likely for the 75th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army that falls on Feb. 8, an occasion Kim could potentially use to showcase his growing collection of nuclear-capable missiles.

Satellite images from Friday indicated continuing parade practices at a training site in southeast Pyongyang despite the reported lockdown, according to 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea studies. But no activities were seen at Kim Il Sung Square in the central part of the city where the country usually hosts military parades, the report said.

Some outside experts had linked North Korea’s 2022 COVID-19 outbreak to a massive military parade in April, where Kim vowed to accelerate the development of nuclear weapons and threatened to use them if provoked.

North Korea maintains it has had no confirmed COVID-19 cases since Aug. 10, when Kim used a major political conference to declare the country has eradicated the coronavirus, just three months after the country acknowledged an omicron outbreak.

While Kim claimed that the country’s purported success against the virus would be recognized as a global health miracle, experts believe North Korea has manipulated disclosures on its outbreak to help him maintain absolute control.

From May to August, North Korea reported about 4.8 million “fever cases” across its population of 26 million but only identified a fraction of them as COVID-19. Experts say the country’s official death toll of 74 is abnormally small, considering the country’s lack of public health tools.

North Korea has dubiously insisted that rival South Korea was responsible for its COVID-19 outbreak, saying that the virus was transported by anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other materials flown across the border by balloons launched by South Korean civilian activists. South Korea has dismissed such claims as unscientific and “ridiculous.”

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Is Geert's Prediction of a Deadlier Covid Variant Coming True?

Excess deaths jump to 20-36% above normal. Does Covid cause delayed deaths that we miss?

igorchudov.substack.com

(fair use applies)


Is Geert's Prediction of a Deadlier Covid Variant Coming True?
Excess deaths jump to 20-36% above normal. Does Covid cause delayed deaths that we miss?
Igor Chudov
Jan 29

SUMMARY: Excess mortality in Europe has been elevated at about 15% since last spring. In December 2022, excess deaths frighteningly jumped to 30-35% above normal. Even Sweden, which avoided excess mortality in most of 2022, had 20% more deaths than expected in December. Has the vaccine-selected deadly Covid variant predicted by Geert Vanden Bossche finally arrived?


The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

I always admired Dr. Vanden Bossche for his stance against the Covid vaccine. Unlike many vaccine skeptics such as myself, Geert, a professional vaccinologist, was previously employed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and therefore had much to lose from opposing “Covid vaccines.”

Since March 2021, Geert predicted, with much dramatization on his part, that a much more virulent, or deadly, variant of Covid-19 will appear due to mass vaccination. Such a variant, he said, will affect people whose immune systems were focused by repeated vaccine shots towards the extinct original Wuhan virus. Such overboosted persons could not mount a defense against newer escape variants.

Months passed, and hopes appeared that Geert’s prediction was a mistake. (nobody wants excess deaths, right?)

Until December of 2022, that is.

Data from the EU, Germany, Sweden, and the UK show a sudden rise in overall deaths far beyond what 2022 already brought: from 10-15% excess mortality to 25-36% excess mortality compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Here are the sudden jumps in mortality:



Many Covid skeptics praised Sweden for low mortality in the past. Please be aware that Sweden, in December, had a disturbingly high 20% excess mortality on par with the rest of Europe.

What caused this jump in mortality?


This December Jump Cannot be Attributed to Covid Vaccines Alone.

I am against Covid vaccines. I am firmly opposed to recklessly injecting billions of people with unproven, untested genetic injections that transfect people with mRNA expressing HIV-peptide-carrying genes from a lab-made mystery virus. Covid vaccines caused 278,000 deaths in the USA in 2021 alone!

However, if vaccines alone caused excess deaths, and Covid played no role, we would not see strange up-and-down waves like in the charts above. Excess mortality waves resemble the Covid pandemic's waves, coming up and down.

Does Covid play a larger role in excess mortality than we think? Is the interplay between waves of Covid and Covid vaccinations instrumental to explaining excess mortality of late 2022?

Fabian Spieker did excellent research comparing vaccinations against excess mortality in Germany. He produced charts for all German federal lands, one of which I modified to make my point, comparing excess non-Covid deaths in one of the German Bundeslands with vaccine doses given:



You can see that early vaccination (circled part) shows excess deaths explainable by Covid vaccines given during the same period. Fabian showed conclusively that initial vaccine shots killed people in Germany. He estimated one out of 1,642 Germans per dose given was killed by the initial Covid vaccinations, which is in line with other estimates.

However, after the initial series of shots, excess non-Covid mortality remained elevated but stopped tracking vaccine doses given. Had the vaccines been the only cause, the excess mortality curve would look relatively smooth and steady, whatever the underlying mechanism for long-term vaccine damage could be.

The wavy mortality pattern leaves me with no explanation other than thinking that Covid plays an underappreciated role in excess deaths. In other words, if Covid hypothetically disappeared in early 2022, the mortality curves would look different from what we are observing.

Mortality would not have obvious waves if infections and variants did not play a role.

Here’s a chart of California's excess mortality. I used California death data and calculated excess mortality as the number of deaths in a given month, compared to the average of deaths for 2017-2019. On top of the mortality chart, I overlaid the chart for wastewater Covid RNA levels for one of California’s counties. You can see that mortality roughly follows Covid infection levels.



Sweden and the UK experienced recent Covid waves and greatly increased excess mortality. They also seem to match pretty well:



If so, we can ask: are we undercounting COVID deaths? Do recent covid infections and reinfections explain many “sudden deaths”? In my opinion, yes.

Saying that Covid deaths are undercounted would be unpopular with many vaccine skeptics.

In the past, Covid deaths were overcounted for propaganda purposes.

That changed in 2022 when authorities worldwide could no longer hide the ineffectiveness of vaccines. Covid tests can now be done at home, and if someone dies of a heart attack three weeks after a Covid infection, such a death would not be counted as a Covid death without a recorded test.

This undercounting of Covid deaths is not a coincidence but a way to avoid explaining why vaccines are not working.

Except no one can hide excess mortality.


Covid Caused Delayed Deaths Even in 2020

Even mild Covid infections cause deaths. This UK Biobank study (Mar 2020-2021) shows the risk of death after a mild Covid infection to be several times that of the background rate. (this estimate seems awfully high to me)



In the Veterans Administration study, reinfections were found to be even worse than initial infections, increasing the risk of post-acute death even further, with vaccines not being helpful at all:



So, Covid is a bad illness, and it is not a good thing to be reinfected.

If so, does the latest jump in deaths signify a deadlier than before Covid variant, perhaps causing more deaths than in the past? Are the deaths delayed? Is this the deadly “Geert Variant” that Mr. Vanden Bossche predicted?


Delayed Deaths Do Not Select for Milder Variants

There is a stereotype about viruses becoming milder because the deadlier variants do not spread as easily. It makes intuitive sense. An illness that makes people super sick would not spread as well because the sicker people tend to stay home in bed.

However, if an infection causes death well after the person ceases to be infectious, there is no evolutionary pressure for the virus to become milder.

If Covid infections and reinfections cause delayed deaths, such as “sudden deaths” described below, then it makes sense that the virus would never evolve to cause fewer such deaths. These delayed deaths seem to be recorded mostly as cardiovascular deaths by coroners.

UK data suggests that the three heart-related categories explain much of the UK’s excess mortality.



Not all excess deaths are due to recent Covid infections, but many could be.

Such sudden deaths puzzle authorities. They cannot be pinned down to vaccines taken a long time ago. Such deaths cannot even be certainly attributed to Covid. And yet they are plentiful. They include Gwen Casten, Bob Saget, Kelly Ernby, and many others:



This excess mortality is mysteriously absent in barely-vaccinated countries such as Bulgaria or South Africa.



This absence is evident when excess mortality in late 2022 is analyzed against vaccination levels. The more vaccines - the greater the mortality!

Igor’s Newsletter​

Association Between Vaccines and EXCESS MORTALITY Getting Stronger -- and is Discussed in UK Parliament​

While we will be discussing the most unwelcome news of increased death rates, I am happy to report that a leading British Member of Parliament, Andrew Bridgen brought up, in the UK parliament no less, the relationship between vaccination and excess deaths…​

Read more​

3 months ago · 740 likes · 768 comments · Igor Chudov​

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​

While that association was already published by me and even checked by Martin Neil and Norman Fenton, this article adds that Covid likely plays a larger role in excess mortality than anyone is willing to admit.

In other words: if Covid magically disappeared - so would many excess deaths.

Of course, Covid did disappear in countries with low vaccination rates and herd immunity, such as Bulgaria or South Africa, which experienced no excess mortality in December (see above).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, in highly vaccinated countries, more vaccine doses mean more infections, as El Gato Malo explains. And these infections come with health consequences.

The greater-than-usual excess mortality in December could be explained by one of two things:

• Covid became deadlier than usual, as Geert Vanden Bossche predicted
• Covid is as pathogenic as always, but repeat reinfections wear people down and make previously healthy persons susceptible to worse outcomes, due to IgG4 immune tolerance.

I hope that we can figure out what is happening.

I was warning about reinfections last March:

Igor’s Newsletter​

UK: Covid Becoming CHRONIC, like AIDS, and Will Take us Down​

I would like to discuss very disturbing statistics from the UK, that clearly shows that Covid is becoming a chronic disease, in the same sense as AIDS is a chronic disease. Covid, for many Brits, is an illness that will just not go away. Endless bouts, recurrence, or even never-ending disease, is now the norm and not the exception, and will lead to a ca…​

Read more​

10 months ago · 414 likes · 513 comments · Igor Chudov​

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​

The authorities do not care.

Watch this sad one-minute video, please. A UK parliamentarian asks the health minister why people are dying at excess rates in the UK. The health minister explains that “it is not just the UK, it is in Europe also” as if that was an acceptable explanation.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1617927040916652048

View: https://twitter.com/CartlandDavid/status/1617927040916652048​

Dr David Cartland @CartlandDavid​

What an appalling response to this question! It’s ok re excess deaths nothing to see here as it’s happening everywhere. Proceeds to sit down​

4:47 PM ∙ Jan 24, 2023​

57 seconds​

What concerns me the most is that while the waves of mortality are coming and going, they are getting worse instead of better. In addition, there is nothing that I can see that can stop this unfortunate progression.

Do you think that we will “return back to normal” when it comes to excess deaths?

 

[Zoner]

Is Geert's Prediction of a Deadlier Covid Variant Coming True?

Excess deaths jump to 20-36% above normal. Does Covid cause delayed deaths that we miss?

igorchudov.substack.com

(fair use applies)


Is Geert's Prediction of a Deadlier Covid Variant Coming True?
Excess deaths jump to 20-36% above normal. Does Covid cause delayed deaths that we miss?
Igor Chudov
Jan 29

SUMMARY: Excess mortality in Europe has been elevated at about 15% since last spring. In December 2022, excess deaths frighteningly jumped to 30-35% above normal. Even Sweden, which avoided excess mortality in most of 2022, had 20% more deaths than expected in December. Has the vaccine-selected deadly Covid variant predicted by Geert Vanden Bossche finally arrived?


The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

I always admired Dr. Vanden Bossche for his stance against the Covid vaccine. Unlike many vaccine skeptics such as myself, Geert, a professional vaccinologist, was previously employed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and therefore had much to lose from opposing “Covid vaccines.”

Since March 2021, Geert predicted, with much dramatization on his part, that a much more virulent, or deadly, variant of Covid-19 will appear due to mass vaccination. Such a variant, he said, will affect people whose immune systems were focused by repeated vaccine shots towards the extinct original Wuhan virus. Such overboosted persons could not mount a defense against newer escape variants.

Months passed, and hopes appeared that Geert’s prediction was a mistake. (nobody wants excess deaths, right?)

Until December of 2022, that is.

Data from the EU, Germany, Sweden, and the UK show a sudden rise in overall deaths far beyond what 2022 already brought: from 10-15% excess mortality to 25-36% excess mortality compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Here are the sudden jumps in mortality:



Many Covid skeptics praised Sweden for low mortality in the past. Please be aware that Sweden, in December, had a disturbingly high 20% excess mortality on par with the rest of Europe.

What caused this jump in mortality?


This December Jump Cannot be Attributed to Covid Vaccines Alone.

I am against Covid vaccines. I am firmly opposed to recklessly injecting billions of people with unproven, untested genetic injections that transfect people with mRNA expressing HIV-peptide-carrying genes from a lab-made mystery virus. Covid vaccines caused 278,000 deaths in the USA in 2021 alone!

However, if vaccines alone caused excess deaths, and Covid played no role, we would not see strange up-and-down waves like in the charts above. Excess mortality waves resemble the Covid pandemic's waves, coming up and down.

Does Covid play a larger role in excess mortality than we think? Is the interplay between waves of Covid and Covid vaccinations instrumental to explaining excess mortality of late 2022?

Fabian Spieker did excellent research comparing vaccinations against excess mortality in Germany. He produced charts for all German federal lands, one of which I modified to make my point, comparing excess non-Covid deaths in one of the German Bundeslands with vaccine doses given:



You can see that early vaccination (circled part) shows excess deaths explainable by Covid vaccines given during the same period. Fabian showed conclusively that initial vaccine shots killed people in Germany. He estimated one out of 1,642 Germans per dose given was killed by the initial Covid vaccinations, which is in line with other estimates.

However, after the initial series of shots, excess non-Covid mortality remained elevated but stopped tracking vaccine doses given. Had the vaccines been the only cause, the excess mortality curve would look relatively smooth and steady, whatever the underlying mechanism for long-term vaccine damage could be.

The wavy mortality pattern leaves me with no explanation other than thinking that Covid plays an underappreciated role in excess deaths. In other words, if Covid hypothetically disappeared in early 2022, the mortality curves would look different from what we are observing.

Mortality would not have obvious waves if infections and variants did not play a role.

Here’s a chart of California's excess mortality. I used California death data and calculated excess mortality as the number of deaths in a given month, compared to the average of deaths for 2017-2019. On top of the mortality chart, I overlaid the chart for wastewater Covid RNA levels for one of California’s counties. You can see that mortality roughly follows Covid infection levels.



Sweden and the UK experienced recent Covid waves and greatly increased excess mortality. They also seem to match pretty well:



If so, we can ask: are we undercounting COVID deaths? Do recent covid infections and reinfections explain many “sudden deaths”? In my opinion, yes.

Saying that Covid deaths are undercounted would be unpopular with many vaccine skeptics.

In the past, Covid deaths were overcounted for propaganda purposes.

That changed in 2022 when authorities worldwide could no longer hide the ineffectiveness of vaccines. Covid tests can now be done at home, and if someone dies of a heart attack three weeks after a Covid infection, such a death would not be counted as a Covid death without a recorded test.

This undercounting of Covid deaths is not a coincidence but a way to avoid explaining why vaccines are not working.

Except no one can hide excess mortality.


Covid Caused Delayed Deaths Even in 2020

Even mild Covid infections cause deaths. This UK Biobank study (Mar 2020-2021) shows the risk of death after a mild Covid infection to be several times that of the background rate. (this estimate seems awfully high to me)



In the Veterans Administration study, reinfections were found to be even worse than initial infections, increasing the risk of post-acute death even further, with vaccines not being helpful at all:



So, Covid is a bad illness, and it is not a good thing to be reinfected.

If so, does the latest jump in deaths signify a deadlier than before Covid variant, perhaps causing more deaths than in the past? Are the deaths delayed? Is this the deadly “Geert Variant” that Mr. Vanden Bossche predicted?


Delayed Deaths Do Not Select for Milder Variants

There is a stereotype about viruses becoming milder because the deadlier variants do not spread as easily. It makes intuitive sense. An illness that makes people super sick would not spread as well because the sicker people tend to stay home in bed.

However, if an infection causes death well after the person ceases to be infectious, there is no evolutionary pressure for the virus to become milder.

If Covid infections and reinfections cause delayed deaths, such as “sudden deaths” described below, then it makes sense that the virus would never evolve to cause fewer such deaths. These delayed deaths seem to be recorded mostly as cardiovascular deaths by coroners.

UK data suggests that the three heart-related categories explain much of the UK’s excess mortality.



Not all excess deaths are due to recent Covid infections, but many could be.

WOW! What a revelation! This may be one of the most important articles you have posted HD. I think he is on to something. I had to read it twice and I'm still wrestling with what he wrote. So what I'm taking from this is that it's not the vaccines that are causing the the excess deaths, but COVID. But am I understanding this right, Covid is causing these excess deaths because of the vaccinations? Geert always said the unvaxxed don't have to worry. We see that in his charts on Bulgaria and S. Africa. So reinfections are happening MAINLY in those vaxxed, and these reinfections are allowing COVID to attack a weakened immune system and causing excess deaths. Thoughts and opinions welcomed.

 

[psychgirl]

That is what some here have been saying all along; it’s Covid itself causing the deaths TOO
Nothing new actually. But you’re correct; great article!

 

[naegling62]

WOW! What a revelation! This may be one of the most important articles you have posted HD. I think he is on to something. I had to read it twice and I'm still wresting with what he wrote. So what I'm taking from this is that it's not the vaccines that are causing the the excess deaths, but COVID. But am I understanding this right, Covid is causing these excess deaths because of the vaccinations? Geert always said the unvaxxed don't have to worry. We see that in his charts on Bulgaria and S. Africa. So reinfections are happening MAINLY in those vaxxed, and these reinfections are allowing COVID to attack a weakened immune system and causing excess deaths. Thoughts and opinions welcomed.

From the anecdotal evidence my daughter is seeing at her work it looks like the case as far as reinfection. The workers, the clients and their children are continuously getting covid. No deaths in that group though. How many times can a kid catch covid? Yikes.

 

[psychgirl]

From the anecdotal evidence my daughter is seeing at her work it looks like the case as far as reinfection. The workers, the clients and their children are continuously getting covid. No deaths in that group though. How many times can a kid catch covid? Yikes.

I have some coworkers, all vaxxed and boosted who have had Covid 2/3 times.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

WOW! What a revelation! This may be one of the most important articles you have posted HD. I think he is on to something. I had to read it twice and I'm still wresting with what he wrote. So what I'm taking from this is that it's not the vaccines that are causing the the excess deaths, but COVID. But am I understanding this right, Covid is causing these excess deaths because of the vaccinations? Geert always said the unvaxxed don't have to worry. We see that in his charts on Bulgaria and S. Africa. So reinfections are happening MAINLY in those vaxxed, and these reinfections are allowing COVID to attack a weakened immune system and causing excess deaths. Thoughts and opinions welcomed.

There is a lot to unpack in what he wrote, I do agree with his premise that it's the vaccine and covid both causing excess deaths. Both have spike proteins introduced into the body. There are unvaxxed who are also dying suddenly and it seems it's after a bout with covid (within a few months). Something is going on, and Igor is hitting on it. It needs further study and Igor is a good one to do it.

That being said, I do not agree with him associating Geert and especially a 'geert variant' with these excess deaths - so on those counts I have some issues with it, and I say that as his #1 fan. I read Igor all the time, I think his analysis is (usually) spot on. My issues about Geert is that he misquotes or misunderstands Geert incorrectly in 2 instances. And he calls him Mr. Vanden Bossche. Geert is vet and has a phd, he's double doctor. He deserves that respect. It's DR Vanden Bossche. small quibble but it bothered me. But he got Geert's theory wrong and then attached it to the article. Better to have left Geert out altogether.

1. " There is a stereotype about viruses becoming milder because the deadlier variants do not spread as easily. It makes intuitive sense. An illness that makes people super sick would not spread as well because the sicker people tend to stay home in bed. However, if an infection causes death well after the person ceases to be infectious, there is no evolutionary pressure for the virus to become milder .If Covid infections and reinfections cause delayed deaths, such as “sudden deaths” described below, then it makes sense that the virus would never evolve to cause fewer such deaths."

This is gobblededook. Not at all in line with what Geert says. The way I understand what Geert said, he did not say viruses get weaker over time, he said that was just wrong thinking. He said due to herd immunity, PEOPLE GET STRONGER AGAINST THE VIRUS over time. There is no evolutionary pressure on a virus to get weaker, viruses don't think, etc. It's the health environment that allows different variants to overcome others, allows one to escape from the others and become the dominant one, the one that escapes the pressure being put on it. If everyone is immune due to natural herd immunity the virus dies out, it has no one left to attack. It's not weaker, it's overcome.


2. "The greater-than-usual excess mortality in December could be explained by one of two things:

• Covid became deadlier than usual, as Geert Vanden Bossche predicted"

No. This is NOT the Geert variant and covid has not become more deadly. Not yet anyway. Geert's variant will attack the lower lungs and will overcrowd hospitals (like what's happening in China). There will be no mistaking Geert's variant - it is specific to lower lungs and it is because of the non-neutralizing antibodies no longer being able to block infiltration of the lower lung. It's not mysteriously people dropping dead one day who were otherwise healthy. Sudden Death syndrome is something different than the Geert variant.

Now, that being said, Igor is, as usual, brilliant. And he's making great correlations that no one else made. I think he's right - there is something going on that makes sudden death follow covid waves, and it needs to be looked into. But it's not the geert variant doing it! (imho). Maybe Geert will come out and say it is, but if he does, it'll be something new, not something he had been predicting to happen with the Geert variant as he had been predicting it. Still wishing to hear from Geert on all of this. I'd love a round table with Del or Dr. MacMillan interviewing Geert and Igor...


Bottom line: I think Igor is right. It's not JUST the vaccines killing people. There's something else going on. Covid is killing people, weeks or months after infection, and possibly the vaxxed are more susceptible to this delayed deadly reaction to covid. It's not the vaxx itself - it's the vaxx and having covid. Or just having covid for some people. Covid is a bio-weapon, that fact can never be overemphasized.. We still do not understand it. Maybe the creators do, but the rest of the world does not. It will take years to figure it all out.


ETA: Rereading I will say that Igor may be correct that there's a new variant that is more deadly because it has a delayed death aspect, one that is killing cardio/stroke/blood clot wise, not because it's hitting the lower lungs. That could be true and if so, Igor is being brilliant as usual. But if so, it's not the Geert variant as Geert predicted it would manifest. It would be a new variant that works in a way Geert wasn't expecting. Still a new variant, still more deadly, but not because it's attacking the lower lungs. The more I think about it the more I want a video with Igor and Geert hashing this out !!!!!!!


HD

 

[psychgirl]

Great analysis HD! I couldn’t get to the entire article today so thank you, I think you’re definitely correct.
Those things ARE what Dr GVB stated a long time ago.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Great analysis HD! I couldn’t get to the entire article today so thank you, I think you’re definitely correct.
Those things ARE what Dr GVB stated a long time ago.

I edited my post and will copy the edit here because it bears repeating:

ETA: Rereading I will say that Igor may be correct that there's a new variant that is more deadly because it has a delayed death aspect, one that is killing cardio/stroke/blood clot wise, not because it's hitting the lower lungs. That could be true and if so, Igor is being brilliant as usual. But if so, it's not the Geert variant as Geert predicted it would manifest. It would be a new variant that works in a way Geert wasn't expecting. Still a new variant, still more deadly, but not because it's attacking the lower lungs. The more I think about it the more I want a video with Igor and Geert hashing this out !!!!!!!

 

[psychgirl]

A video with those two would be awesome, I agree!

 

[Zoner]

There is a lot to unpack in what he wrote, I do agree with his premise that it's the vaccine and covid both causing excess deaths. Both have spike proteins introduced into the body. There are unvaxxed who are also dying suddenly and it seems it's after a bout with covid (within a few months). Something is going on, and Igor is hitting on it. It needs further study and Igor is a good one to do it.

That being said, I do not agree with him associating Geert and especially a 'geert variant' with these excess deaths - so on those counts I have some issues with it, and I say that as his #1 fan. I read Igor all the time, I think his analysis is (usually) spot on. My issues about Geert is that he misquotes or misunderstands Geert incorrectly in 2 instances. And he calls him Mr. Vanden Bossche. Geert is vet and has a phd, he's double doctor. He deserves that respect. It's DR Vanden Bossche. small quibble but it bothered me. But he got Geert's theory wrong and then attached it to the article. Better to have left Geert out altogether.

1. " There is a stereotype about viruses becoming milder because the deadlier variants do not spread as easily. It makes intuitive sense. An illness that makes people super sick would not spread as well because the sicker people tend to stay home in bed. However, if an infection causes death well after the person ceases to be infectious, there is no evolutionary pressure for the virus to become milder .If Covid infections and reinfections cause delayed deaths, such as “sudden deaths” described below, then it makes sense that the virus would never evolve to cause fewer such deaths."

This is gobblededook. Not at all in line with what Geert says. The way I understand what Geert said, he did not say viruses get weaker over time, he said that was just wrong thinking. He said due to herd immunity, PEOPLE GET STRONGER AGAINST THE VIRUS over time. There is no evolutionary pressure on a virus to get weaker, viruses don't think, etc. It's the health environment that allows different variants to overcome others, allows one to escape from the others and become the dominant one, the one that escapes the pressure being put on it. If everyone is immune due to natural herd immunity the virus dies out, it has no one left to attack. It's not weaker, it's overcome.


2. "The greater-than-usual excess mortality in December could be explained by one of two things:

• Covid became deadlier than usual, as Geert Vanden Bossche predicted"

No. This is NOT the Geert variant and covid has not become more deadly. Not yet anyway. Geert's variant will attack the lower lungs and will overcrowd hospitals (like what's happening in China). There will be no mistaking Geert's variant - it is specific to lower lungs and it is because of the non-neutralizing antibodies no longer being able to block infiltration of the lower lung. It's not mysteriously people dropping dead one day who were otherwise healthy. Sudden Death syndrome is something different than the Geert variant.

Now, that being said, Igor is, as usual, brilliant. And he's making great correlations that no one else made. I think he's right - there is something going on that makes sudden death follow covid waves, and it needs to be looked into. But it's not the geert variant doing it! (imho). Maybe Geert will come out and say it is, but if he does, it'll be something new, not something he had been predicting to happen with the Geert variant as he had been predicting it. Still wishing to hear from Geert on all of this. I'd love a round table with Del or Dr. MacMillan interviewing Geert and Igor...


Bottom line: I think Igor is right. It's not JUST the vaccines killing people. There's something else going on. Covid is killing people, weeks or months after infection, and possibly the vaxxed are more susceptible to this delayed deadly reaction to covid. It's not the vaxx itself - it's the vaxx and having covid. Or just having covid for some people. Covid is a bio-weapon, that fact can never be overemphasized.. We still do not understand it. Maybe the creators do, but the rest of the world does not. It will take years to figure it all out.


ETA: Rereading I will say that Igor may be correct that there's a new variant that is more deadly because it has a delayed death aspect, one that is killing cardio/stroke/blood clot wise, not because it's hitting the lower lungs. That could be true and if so, Igor is being brilliant as usual. But if so, it's not the Geert variant as Geert predicted it would manifest. It would be a new variant that works in a way Geert wasn't expecting. Still a new variant, still more deadly, but not because it's attacking the lower lungs. The more I think about it the more I want a video with Igor and Geert hashing this out !!!!!!!

I edited my post and will copy the edit here because it bears repeating:

ETA: Rereading I will say that Igor may be correct that there's a new variant that is more deadly because it has a delayed death aspect, one that is killing cardio/stroke/blood clot wise, not because it's hitting the lower lungs. That could be true and if so, Igor is being brilliant as usual. But if so, it's not the Geert variant as Geert predicted it would manifest. It would be a new variant that works in a way Geert wasn't expecting. Still a new variant, still more deadly, but not because it's attacking the lower lungs. The more I think about it the more I want a video with Igor and Geert hashing this out !!!!!!!

Thanks as always HD. Geert definitely said this new variant would be extremely virulent and cause the hospital systems to collapse and that it would explode suddenly in one area and then spread especially among the vaxxed. I agree with you that these excess deaths are not the "Geert Variant" as Geert has described it, but it could be ANOTHER THING that has been spawned as a result of the vaccinations weakening the immune system. What is happening in England and China has my attention. There is A LOT going on there we just don't know. I sent this article to Geert via twitter. We'll see if he responds in some fashion.

 

[psychgirl]

Thank you, Zoner! I’m excited to hear what he might have to say!

Good job sending it over!

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Thanks as always HD. Geert definitely said this new variant would be extremely virulent and cause the hospital systems to collapse and that it would explode suddenly in one area and then spread especially among the vaxxed. I agree with you that these excess deaths are not the "Geert Variant" as Geert has described it, but it could be ANOTHER THING that has been spawned as a result of the vaccinations weakening the immune system. What is happening in England and China has my attention. There is A LOT going on there we just don't know. I sent this article to Geert via twitter. We'll see if he responds in some fashion.

Yes, this is what I'd love to see Geert discuss. Geert theorized that the mutation that would overcome the pressure against virulence would do that by infecting the lower lungs. What if that's not the mutation we are going to see? What if the variant that Geert thinks is coming is instead one that causes inflammation that grows over time and clotting damage that leads to death? Or maybe both variants are in the cards - the lower lung one and whatever is now happening? What is most remarkable about what Igor posted is the correlation of deaths with the outbreaks, not with the vaccination schedule. So there is a component of the virus itself being a factor.

Thank you for forwarding this to Geert. I hope he answers you and/or Igor.

HD

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

WHO maintains highest alert over COVID, but sees hope ahead

The pandemic was likely in a "transition point" that continues to need careful management to "mitigate the potential negative consequences", the agency added in a statement. It is three years since the WHO first declared that COVID represented a global health emergency. "We remain hopeful that...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)


WHO maintains highest alert over COVID, but sees hope ahead
Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Jennifer Rigby
Mon, January 30, 2023, 4:58 AM EST

(Reuters) -The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that COVID-19 continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern, its highest form of alert.

The pandemic was likely in a "transition point" that continues to need careful management to "mitigate the potential negative consequences", the agency added in a statement.

It is three years since the WHO first declared that COVID represented a global health emergency. More than 6.8 million people have died during the outbreak, which has touched every country on Earth, ravaging communities and economies.

However, the advent of vaccines and treatments has changed the pandemic situation considerably since 2020, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he hopes to see an end to the emergency this year, particularly if access to the counter-measures can be improved globally.

"We remain hopeful that in the coming year, the world will transition to a new phase in which we reduce (COVID) hospitalisations and deaths to their lowest possible level,” Tedros told a separate WHO meeting on Monday.

Advisers to the WHO expert committee on the pandemic's status told Reuters in December that it was likely not the moment to end the emergency given the uncertainty over the wave of infections in China after it lifted its strict zero-COVID measures at the end of 2022.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Biden to end Covid health emergency declarations in May

The move will restructure the government’s response to the pandemic.

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)


Biden to end Covid health emergency declarations in May
Adam Cancryn - Politico
Mon, January 30, 2023, 7:44 PM EST

The Biden administration will end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11, the White House said Monday in a major step meant to signal that the crisis era of the pandemic is over.

The move would restructure the federal government’s coronavirus response and unwind a sprawling set of flexibilities put in place nearly three years ago that paved the way for free Covid treatments and tests. The White House disclosed its plan in response to two House Republican measures aimed at immediately ending the emergencies, calling those proposals “a grave disservice to the American people.”

“This wind-down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the PHE,” the White House said in its statement of policy.

Lifting the health emergency could also mean the abrupt termination of Title 42, a health policy reinstated during the Trump administration in March 2020 at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and used to shut down the southern border. The authority gave border officials the ability to rapidly “expel” migrants without a chance to seek U.S. asylum.

The Biden administration’s attempts to end Title 42 have been repeatedly blocked by the courts, most recently with the Supreme Court's decision to temporarily keep the policy in place. While a ruling by the high court isn't expected until June, the White House's move to end the declaration could lead to the case being dismissed as moot.

The announcement Monday, which came with little warning, surprised lawmakers and industry officials, raising concerns over how the administration plans to unwind the myriad of options the emergency declarations have provided over the last three years.

“I’ve yet to hear, 'Okay, here is the rationale,'” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the chamber's health committee. “I’m sure that they have one, I just haven’t heard it.”

The expiration of emergencies also signals a shift in the administration’s approach to the southern border amid growing scrutiny from House Republicans over its immigration policies. Title 42, which was originally reinstated during the Trump administration in March 2020, has given federal border officials the ability to rapidly “expel” migrants without a chance to seek U.S. asylum.

A senior administration official defended the decision making, telling POLITICO that “we’re committed to having a smooth, coordinated rollout and we believe today’s announcement does just that.”

“This decision is based on what is best for the health of our country at this time,” the senior official said. “We’re in a pretty good place in the pandemic, we’ve come through the winter, cases are down dramatically from where they were the past two winters.”

But others familiar with the matter said the administration had originally discussed announcing its May 11 end date for the emergencies next week, as it approached a Feb. 11 deadline for giving stakeholders advance notice.

The disclosure was accelerated after it became clear that House Republicans planned to push measures aimed at ending the emergencies, and that some Democratic lawmakers might vote for them absent further clarity from the administration on its official end date.

Biden health officials have spent the last several months preparing for the complex unwinding of the health emergencies, which will eventually involve shifting responsibility for the distribution of most vaccines and treatments to the private market.

The process comes as most Americans have returned to their every day lives, and as federal funding for the White House's Covid response dried up in the face of Republican opposition.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Here are 3 things the end of the COVID public health emergency could undo

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it plans to end on May 11 a pair of emergency designations implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under both the national emergency and the public health emergency, both the Trump and Biden administrations implemented and extended programs...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)

Here are 3 things the end of the COVID public health emergency could undo
Lauren Sforza - The Hill
Mon, January 30, 2023, 10:19 PM EST

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it plans to end on May 11 a pair of emergency designations implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under both the national emergency and the public health emergency, both the Trump and Biden administrations implemented and extended programs that aimed to provide relief when it came to paying for health care, COVID-19 tests and treatments and making monthly student loan payments.

It also included a controversial border program that made it easier to expel foreign nations, citing public health protections amid the pandemic.

The futures of some of those programs are now tied up in court battles.

The Biden administration announcement came on the eve of a planned vote on a bill backed by House Republicans dubbed the Pandemic is Over Act that would end the public health emergency on the same day the bill — which would still need a Senate vote and President Biden’s signature — is enacted.

Here are three things that could be undone with the lifting of the national and public health emergencies.

Title 42

Title 42 was a policy implemented by the Trump administration that allowed Border Patrol officials to expel foreign nationals at the border, citing public health protections related to the pandemic. The policy, which disregarded and ultimately gutted the asylum system, has resulted in nearly 2.5 million encounters since its implementation in 2020, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The Biden administration since taking over in January 2021 had continued to implement the policy until the matter became tied up legally. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court that in December reversed an order from a federal judge who ruled the border policy must end.

A date has been set for oral arguments in March, with a final decision expected in June — a month after the planned May 11 lift of the public health emergency.

In a statement Monday, the Office of Management and Budget said the Biden administration “supports an orderly, predictable wind-down of Title 42, with sufficient time to put alternative policies in place.”

The Department of Homeland Security has previously indicated it is preparing to terminate Title 42 once the public health emergency ends.

Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary benefits

Since the public health emergency (PHE) declaration, government programs such as Medicaid were able to operate under special conditions, allowing beneficiaries to retain their coverage during the pandemic.

Medicaid announced a series of guidelines last year on how to return to pre-pandemic norms, stating that Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program agencies will be allowed to begin their “unwinding” period either one month before the PHE ends, the same month that it ends or the month after it ends.

Under the public health emergency, beneficiaries enrolled in traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage could also receive free at-home COVID-19 testing and treatments and pay no cost-sharing. It also required private insurance companies to cover the costs of COVID-19 testing.

With the end of the public health emergency, Americans will need to start paying for COVID-19 tests and treatments such as Paxlovid, with insurance companies and manufacturers setting the price.

Federal student loan payment pause

Student loan payments on debt serviced by the U.S. Department of Education have been on pause since March 2020, with such loans also collecting no interest for nearly three years.

But the lifting of the national emergency, which was used as the basis for allowing payments to be paused, could further complicate another Trump-era matter that is now tied up in the legal system.

The pause, which has been extended under both the Trump and Biden administrations six times, is now tied to a student debt forgiveness program that the Biden administration is arguing at the Supreme Court level.

The Department of Education said previously that until it can implement the debt relief program, student loan payments would be paused until “no later than” June 30, which has left borrowers feeling in limbo.

 

[Zoner]

Yes, this is what I'd love to see Geert discuss. Geert theorized that the mutation that would overcome the pressure against virulence would do that by infecting the lower lungs. What if that's not the mutation we are going to see? What if the variant that Geert thinks is coming is instead one that causes inflammation that grows over time and clotting damage that leads to death? Or maybe both variants are in the cards - the lower lung one and whatever is now happening? What is most remarkable about what Igor posted is the correlation of deaths with the outbreaks, not with the vaccination schedule. So there is a component of the virus itself being a factor.

Thank you for forwarding this to Geert. I hope he answers you and/or Igor.

HD

Igor is right to point out that these excess deaths are not paralleling vaccination. But just because the number who are getting vaccinated is going down doesn’t mean that vaccination isn’t responsible for the excess deaths.

Igor writes: “However, after the initial series of shots, excess non-Covid mortality remained elevated but stopped tracking vaccine doses given. Had the vaccines been the only cause, the excess mortality curve would look relatively smooth and steady, whatever the underlying mechanism for long-term vaccine damage could be. The wavy mortality pattern leaves me with no explanation other than thinking that Covid plays an underappreciated role in excess deaths. In other words, if Covid hypothetically disappeared in early 2022, the mortality curves would look different from what we are observing. Mortality would not have obvious waves if infections and variants did not play a role.”

Of course covid plays a role in these excess deaths. But Geert’s hypothesis Is that it is because the immune system has been compromised by the vaccinations. Igor even said excess deaths decreased in countries with a very low vaccination rates. So covid by itself is not causing excess deaths. It is the combination of being vaccinated with Covid mutating that is causing excess deaths.

And while he dismisses old vaccinations as a reason for the excess deaths I would disagree and I think Geert would also. That is why I sent it to him.

My hypothesis is that both covid and the vaccines are bio weapons and once a person gets vaccinated they are more vulnerable to Covid and future mutations because their immune system has been compromised by the vaccines. This is resulting in excess deaths. Yes covid is a killer, but it’s moreso in the vaxed. What Igor’s study does not show is the difference in excess deaths comparing the vaxed to the unvaxed.

 

[Chicory]

For those vaccinated, just another thing to be watchful for in the years ahead. Crimes against humanity.

 

[vector7]

Vaccinated MSNBC Host Reveals She Developed Pericarditis and Myocarditis Due to “Common Cold” (VIDEO)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1620437418712207365

View: https://twitter.com/gatewaypundit/status/1620437418712207365?t=MwVBQP04bA2grDqDPPPbGQ&s=19

 

[Zoner]

Igor is right to point out that these excess deaths are not paralleling vaccination. But just because the number who are getting vaccinated is going down doesn’t mean that vaccination isn’t responsible for the excess deaths.

Igor writes: “However, after the initial series of shots, excess non-Covid mortality remained elevated but stopped tracking vaccine doses given. Had the vaccines been the only cause, the excess mortality curve would look relatively smooth and steady, whatever the underlying mechanism for long-term vaccine damage could be. The wavy mortality pattern leaves me with no explanation other than thinking that Covid plays an underappreciated role in excess deaths. In other words, if Covid hypothetically disappeared in early 2022, the mortality curves would look different from what we are observing. Mortality would not have obvious waves if infections and variants did not play a role.”

Of course covid plays a role in these excess deaths. But Geert’s hypothesis Is that it is because the immune system has been compromised by the vaccinations. Igor even said excess deaths decreased in countries with a very low vaccination rates. So covid by itself is not causing excess deaths. It is the combination of being vaccinated with Covid mutating that is causing excess deaths.

And while he dismisses old vaccinations as a reason for the excess deaths I would disagree and I think Geert would also. That is why I sent it to him.

My hypothesis is that both covid and the vaccines are bio weapons and once a person gets vaccinated they are more vulnerable to Covid and future mutations because their immune system has been compromised by the vaccines. This is resulting in excess deaths. Yes covid is a killer, but it’s moreso in the vaxed. What Igor’s study does not show is the difference in excess deaths comparing the vaxed to the unvaxed.

Here is Igor’s tweet of this article. Read the replies. Most all agree with what we believe on this thread.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1619551214194286593

View: https://twitter.com/ichudov/status/1619551214194286593?s=46&t=OMhILvsDkeN39PQHganuUw

 

[vector7]

Joe Biden as He Grabs Reporter’s Hand: “The Covid Emergency Will End When the Supreme Court Ends It” (VIDEO)
RT 15secs

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1620470363137380354

View: https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1620470363137380354?s=20&t=l7p7eXh0heyghxcMwex9Sw

 

[Oreally]

wow

o'keefe is a genius!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1620447276832559104

View: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1620447276832559104

 

[Cacheman]

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

www.newsweek.com

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives | Opinion​

Kevin Bass

7–9 minutes

---

As a medical student and researcher, I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters.

I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.

I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.

But perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was, and continues to be. It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths.

What we did not properly appreciate is that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences might be—indeed, our preferences were—very different from many of the people that we serve. We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil.

We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.

We excluded important parts of the population from policy development and castigated critics, which meant that we deployed a monolithic response across an exceptionally diverse nation, forged a society more fractured than ever, and exacerbated longstanding heath and economic disparities.

Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience.

Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.

When former President Trump pointed out the downsides of intervention, he was dismissed publicly as a buffoon. And when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong.

Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.

And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream.

Labeling this speech "misinformation" and blaming it on "scientific illiteracy" and "ignorance," the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government's opponents.

And this despite the fact that pandemic policy was created by a razor-thin sliver of American society who anointed themselves to preside over the working class—members of academia, government, medicine, journalism, tech, and public health, who are highly educated and privileged. From the comfort of their privilege, this elite prizes paternalism, as opposed to average Americans who laud self-reliance and whose daily lives routinely demand that they reckon with risk. That many of our leaders neglected to consider the lived experience of those across the class divide is unconscionable.

Incomprehensible to us due to this class divide, we severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We dismissed as "grifters" those who represented their interests. We believed "misinformation" energized the ignorant, and we refused to accept that such people simply had a different, valid point of view.

We crafted policy for the people without consulting them. If our public health officials had led with less hubris, the course of the pandemic in the United States might have had a very different outcome, with far fewer lost lives.

Instead, we have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system; a massive concentration in wealth by already wealthy elites; a rise in suicides and gun violence especially among the poor; a near-doubling of the rate of depression and anxiety disorders especially among the young; a catastrophic loss of educational attainment among already disadvantaged children; and among those most vulnerable, a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly.

My motivation for writing this is simple: It's clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better.

It's OK to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That's a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink—and too afraid to publicly take responsibility—to do this.

Solving these problems in the long term requires a greater commitment to pluralism and tolerance in our institutions, including the inclusion of critical if unpopular voices.

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

Kevin Bass is an MD/PhD student at a medical school in Texas. He is in his 7th year.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

 

[Zoner]

New Geert video
I haven’t watched it yet will watch it later.

Vanden Bossche and Alexander: Stop COVID vaccines, elderly could be killed, do not give to children

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche discusses with Dr. Paul Elias Alexander why COVID vaccines were never needed, why they must be stopped, why elderly could be killed and why children must not be given these CO

rumble.com

 

[psychgirl]

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

www.newsweek.com

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives | Opinion​

Kevin Bass

7–9 minutes

---

As a medical student and researcher, I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters.

I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.

I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.

But perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was, and continues to be. It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths.

What we did not properly appreciate is that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences might be—indeed, our preferences were—very different from many of the people that we serve. We created policy based on our preferences, then justified it using data. And then we portrayed those opposing our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish, and evil.

We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.

We excluded important parts of the population from policy development and castigated critics, which meant that we deployed a monolithic response across an exceptionally diverse nation, forged a society more fractured than ever, and exacerbated longstanding heath and economic disparities.

Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience.

Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.

When former President Trump pointed out the downsides of intervention, he was dismissed publicly as a buffoon. And when Dr. Antony Fauci opposed Trump and became the hero of the public health community, we gave him our support to do and say what he wanted, even when he was wrong.

Trump was not remotely perfect, nor were the academic critics of consensus policy. But the scorn that we laid on them was a disaster for public trust in the pandemic response. Our approach alienated large segments of the population from what should have been a national, collaborative project.

And we paid the price. The rage of the those marginalized by the expert class exploded onto and dominated social media. Lacking the scientific lexicon to express their disagreement, many dissidents turned to conspiracy theories and a cottage industry of scientific contortionists to make their case against the expert class consensus that dominated the pandemic mainstream.

Labeling this speech "misinformation" and blaming it on "scientific illiteracy" and "ignorance," the government conspired with Big Tech to aggressively suppress it, erasing the valid political concerns of the government's opponents.

And this despite the fact that pandemic policy was created by a razor-thin sliver of American society who anointed themselves to preside over the working class—members of academia, government, medicine, journalism, tech, and public health, who are highly educated and privileged. From the comfort of their privilege, this elite prizes paternalism, as opposed to average Americans who laud self-reliance and whose daily lives routinely demand that they reckon with risk. That many of our leaders neglected to consider the lived experience of those across the class divide is unconscionable.

Incomprehensible to us due to this class divide, we severely judged lockdown critics as lazy, backwards, even evil. We dismissed as "grifters" those who represented their interests. We believed "misinformation" energized the ignorant, and we refused to accept that such people simply had a different, valid point of view.

We crafted policy for the people without consulting them. If our public health officials had led with less hubris, the course of the pandemic in the United States might have had a very different outcome, with far fewer lost lives.

Instead, we have witnessed a massive and ongoing loss of life in America due to distrust of vaccines and the healthcare system; a massive concentration in wealth by already wealthy elites; a rise in suicides and gun violence especially among the poor; a near-doubling of the rate of depression and anxiety disorders especially among the young; a catastrophic loss of educational attainment among already disadvantaged children; and among those most vulnerable, a massive loss of trust in healthcare, science, scientific authorities, and political leaders more broadly.

My motivation for writing this is simple: It's clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic, and where we could have done better.

It's OK to be wrong and admit where one was wrong and what one learned. That's a central part of the way science works. Yet I fear that many are too entrenched in groupthink—and too afraid to publicly take responsibility—to do this.

Solving these problems in the long term requires a greater commitment to pluralism and tolerance in our institutions, including the inclusion of critical if unpopular voices.

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

Kevin Bass is an MD/PhD student at a medical school in Texas. He is in his 7th year.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Hm.
Well, I can’t decide if this is another lame, “subversive, woa is me” ….”see how contrite we all are” type of article or…..?

I just don’t trust it.