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MinnesotaSmith

Membership Revoked

ICAN obtains Court Order demanding CDC release secret COVID Vaccine Adverse Events Data obtained in ‘V-Safe’ Program
expose-news.com ^ | September 19, 2022 | Rhoda Wilson
Posted on 9/19/2022, 7:26:29 PM by ransomnote

After months of litigation, a U.S. court has ordered that, by the end of this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) must produce the first batch of over 19 months’ worth of data collected from tens of millions of v-safe participants during the Covid-19 vaccination program.
The V-safe program includes over 137 million entries that have been made following Covid vaccination.


Informed Consent Action Network (“ICAN”) was founded by Del Bigtree to investigate the safety of medical procedures, pharmaceutical drugs, and vaccines while educating the public about their right to informed consent:
“Our goal is to put the power of scientifically researched health information in your hands and to be bold and transparent in doing so, thereby enabling your medical decisions to come from tangible understanding, not medical coercion.”

In December 2021, ICAN announced that it was suing to obtain data from v-safe, the new smartphone-based program that the CDC deployed to track adverse events following Covid-19 vaccination.

V-safe was launched on 13 December 2020, the day before Covid injections were made available to the American public. The CDC website advises that reporting side effects and adverse events can either be done on v-safe or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (“VAERS”).

According to the CDC, v-safe allows users to “quickly and easily share with CDC how you, or your dependent, feel after getting a Covid-19 vaccine.” The data from v-safe is “collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” a private technology company, in the form of “aggregate de-identified data” – meaning it does not contain personal health information. This means the data could be shared with the public, just as it is shared with Oracle.

image-218.png
vsafe.png
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/vsafe.html

CDC: V-safe After Vaccination Health Checker

In June 2021, ICAN, through its attorneys, headed by Aaron Siri, submitted legal demands for the v-safe data – specifically demanding, “All de-identified data submitted to v-safe since January 1, 2020.”

Despite the CDC’s ability to immediately release this de-identified data, the CDC took the position that “the information in the app is not de-identified” and so would not produce it. Thus, in December 2021, ICAN sued.

ICAN also submitted an additional request to address the agency’s objection, demanding, “All data submitted to v-safe since January 1, 2020,” and when the CDC still refused to release the data, ICAN sued again.

Now, after months of litigation, the court has ordered that, by 30 September 2022, the CDC must produce the first batch of over 19 months’ worth of data collected from tens of millions of v-safe participants between 14 December 2020 and 31 July 2022.
This is a huge win for ICAN and for the American public, who will finally start to be able to see for themselves the actual self-reported nationwide data about the safety of the Covid-19 injections.

The CDC directed adverse events following Covid 'vaccination' away from the publicly accessible VAERS online reporting system to a new phone app called VSafe. Vsafe is only accessible to CDC employees.


The CDC designed the VAERS system as a result of a congressional mandate. But, the CDC intentionally developed VAERS to be hard to use, time consuming, low efficiency etc.

The CDC had money and expertise and they never used it to make VAERS work well. Instead, for Covid, they developed a phone app that would be free, convenient and restricted to CDC viewing, so the public has never seen the adverse events reports which were created after millions of people accepted the phone app.

The CDC should have kept all data in VAERS, updated VAERs and made a convenient phone app to store information where the public could access it.

But the CDC hides and lies. Even if we get to see what was collected in VSAFE (for example, the CDC is known to delete information from VAERS and will likely 'cleanse' VSAFE too), there are 11 other databases collecting adverse events reports which are SUPPOSED to transfer data into VAERS. However, there's a whistleblower lawsuit from an employee working in Medicare's CMS system, who said she saw 45 thousand deaths post 'vaccination' sitting in CMS, never having been updated to VAERS as intended.
 

naegling62

Veteran Member
I know it's been said many times before, but I think it just needs to be expressed every once in a while. HD you are very appreciated by all of us and we thank you for all your hard work accumulating this information. This thread is probably the most informative source of information on this ongoing saga. I would not doubt in the future, students might scour it's contents for insights as to what happened during this era.
 

psychgirl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCStjZrqb88
Hydroxychloroquine Blocks SARS-COV-2 Entry (New in-vitro study)
38 min 58 sec

Streamed live Sep 19, 2022
Drbeen Medical Lectures

Hydroxychloroquine Blocks SARS-COV-2 Entry (New in-vitro study)
Supported by NIH and The US Department of Defense, this new study reveals an unknown mechanism of hydroxychloroquine to block the endocytic entry of SARS-COV-2. Let's review.Keep in mind that this is an in-vitro, peer-reviewed, accepted, and published study.

URL list from Monday, Sep. 19 2022

Hydroxychloroquine blocks SARS-CoV-2 entry into the endocytic pathway in mammalian cell culture | Communications Biology
Cathepsins: Proteases that are vital for survival but can also be fatal - PMC
The ganglioside GM1 interacts with the serotonin1A receptor via the sphingolipid binding domain - ScienceDirect
Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate - Wikipedia
Review of PIP2 in Cellular Signaling, Functions and Diseases - PMC
This is one I’m going to keep!
I’ve been looking for further treatment verification especially for HCQ
DH and I both have a bottle (along with our other supplements and ivm, just “in case”)

We take the others as prophylactics but not HCQ.

Still praying we don’t need to either.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
I know it's been said many times before, but I think it just needs to be expressed every once in a while. HD you are very appreciated by all of us and we thank you for all your hard work accumulating this information. This thread is probably the most informative source of information on this ongoing saga. I would not doubt in the future, students might scour it's contents for insights as to what happened during this era.
Thank you :rs: Actually that's my motivation - to create an archive of all the news, madness, etc that was happening as it happened. I recently heard that they may not (yet - my word) erase articles from the web, but they fool around with the algorithms so that you can't find things easily with just search if they want to hide or change the narrative. Look at all the officials who are already trying to deny what they said in the past. Hopefully TB will be around for a long time and this thread will stand as a testament to all that was happening, as it was happening.

HD
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Is the COVID-19 pandemic really 'over'? Experts weigh in
Anjalee Khemlani·Senior Reporter
Tue, September 20, 2022, 3:45 PM

President Biden stirred debate among health experts Monday after commenting to CBS's 60 Minutes that the pandemic is over.

Though Biden said the country is still fighting COVID-19, White House officials were nonetheless surprised by his comment: "The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over."

Some experts took the president's statement to mean that the emergency part of the pandemic is over, while others worry that Biden's comments could thwart global efforts to combat the disease.

"I think what the president meant was that we are finished with the emergency phase of COVID-19 and we are in a better place than we were a year ago. And that's a fair point. But he didn't say that, and I'm concerned that the public will hear something very different," said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and professor at Georgetown Law.

Ayoade Alakija, special envoy for the World Health Organization's Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, on the other hand, disagreed with Biden's comments.

"I really love President Joe Biden, but I have to completely and totally disagree with him and say that it is not over," she said.

"The acute phase of the pandemic is not over," Alakija added.

She noted that there are more than 400 people dying daily in the U.S. — a number some feel is an undercount. By comparison, in Africa, "We don't have a means to measure. We don't have access to the tools. There is no Paxlovid [an antiviral treatment used to treat COVID] on the African continent."

The reason why that matters is, as previously seen, areas with lower protection give way to variants that could surge and keep the virus going.

"The evolution of the virus continues. We need to constantly be in this state of readiness ... It cannot be that we are calling victory in the middle of a battle," Alakija said.

Gostin noted Biden's comment was also ill-timed, as COVID-19 cases could surge in winter months, which still threatens to overwhelm hospitals, and at a time when the administration is still asking Congress for more funding to fight the virus.

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine, echoed a similar sentiment Monday, saying, "There's very well likely another major new variant of concern out there. We got hit very hard with Alpha in January of 2021 and Omicron in January of 2022. We don't know what January 2023 is going to bring."

Dr. Céline Gounder, who was on Biden's transition team, said whether or not the pandemic is over depends on what we are defining as the new normal.

"If the pandemic is over, that would imply that the President believes that 3,000 deaths a week, or 150,000 deaths per year, is the new normal," said Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist.

"I think it all depends on what we consider a normal level of disease and death. So if you go by the epidemiological definition, or even going by the CDC website ... 'Pandemic' basically means that you have an epidemic on multiple continents. An epidemic means that you have an above normal level typically with a sudden increase, of disease and death, beyond what is expected," she said.

Earlier this year, Gounder and two other public health experts - Michael Osterholm and Zeke Emanuel — noted that a bad year of flu deaths and RSV deaths totaled 3,000 deaths per week. By comparison, COVID-19 is killing that number of people weekly alone, marking a significant rise above pre-pandemic levels.

"Could we be in a place where we are willing to accept more deaths? Possibly. But I think that really should be a more explicit conversation," Gounder said.

"We learned a lot from what happened this fall and winter. It's harder to say if we're going to have a bad wave, the way we did that last couple years. It's hard to declare a pandemic over prospectively, it's really something you do in the rearview mirror, in retrospect. We really haven't seen cases and deaths stabilize in a way that we can say, 'Yes, it's over,'" Gounder said.

Beyond the U.S.

Gavin Yamey, professor of global health and public policy at Duke University, said Biden calling the end of the pandemic suggests that science and public health data are no longer the sole deciding factors.

And the implications of that go beyond the U.S.

"By definition, pandemic control requires international collective action. President Biden’s unilateral declaration that the pandemic is over is very unhelpful when it comes to the continuing need for multilateral action. We still have very stark global inequities, for example, in who has access to tests, vaccines, boosters, bivalent boosters, antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies," Yamey said.

While bivalent boosters are available in Europe and the U.S., and some wealthier countries, they are not yet available in lower income countries — which means the inequities that lead to the spread of variants continues to plague the world.

Is the pandemic "over"? Don't know – it's a judgment call. But clearly the threat is far lower than it was, people have the means to stay fairly safe (though many are choosing not to), & at some point we need to shift from an emergency footing to a sustainable long-term strategy.
— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) September 19, 2022

Experts agreed it was not yet time to call the pandemic over, but some suggested acknowledging we have entered a new phase of the pandemic.

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease expert and associate professor of medicine at University of Toronto, agreed that the time of strict mitigation is over.

"While the era of mandates appears to be coming to an end, people can still reduce (but not eliminate) their individual risk of infection or onward transmission by wearing a mask. This especially makes sense when there is a higher burden of community transmission, and in poorly ventilated or crowded indoor spaces where the vast majority of transmission occurs," Bogoch told Yahoo Finance.

Bogoch emphasized that debating the pandemic's status is less important than focusing on mitigation of the virus.

"Whether we call it pandemic or endemic, COVID-19 is still killing hundreds daily in America and thousands daily around the world," he said.

"This is a global issue, not a regional one, and there are simple, widely available and low cost (even free) solutions that can help mitigate morbidity and mortality, many of which are woefully underutilized," Bogoch added.

Arush Lal, vice chair of Women in Global Health, noted that Biden's comment comes at a time when global efforts are also suffering.

"I worry that premature declarations like this, especially from the U.S. president, can also influence other HIC (high-income country) leaders to follow suit and pump the brakes on response efforts. COVID-19 has affected the most vulnerable communities first, including women and girls, people of color, and low-income communities — statements like this give false hope to policymakers and leaders that COVID-19 is no longer a threat, and it's these marginalized communities that once again will feel the brunt of rising cases again," Lal said.

And while the progress against COVID-19 should be celebrated, Lal said, "We should all be clear eyed about the reality we face — COVID-19 remains a threat to our communities and we need more, not less, political will to bring it under control."
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


'Very Harmful' Lack of Data Blunts U.S. Response to Outbreaks

Sharon LaFraniere - NY Times
Tue, September 20, 2022, 2:25 PM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — After a middle-aged woman tested positive for COVID-19 in January at her workplace in Fairbanks, public health workers sought answers to questions vital to understanding how the virus was spreading in Alaska’s rugged interior.

The woman, they learned, had existing conditions and had not been vaccinated. She had been hospitalized but had recovered. Alaska and many other states have routinely collected that kind of information about people who test positive for the virus. Part of the goal is to paint a detailed picture of how one of the worst scourges in American history evolves and continues to kill hundreds of people daily, despite determined efforts to stop it.

But most of the information about the Fairbanks woman — and tens of millions more infected Americans — remains effectively lost to state and federal public health researchers. Decades of underinvestment in public health information systems has crippled efforts to understand the pandemic, stranding crucial data in incompatible data systems so outmoded that information often must be repeatedly typed in by hand. The data failure, a salient lesson of a pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans, will be expensive and time-consuming to fix.

Details of the Fairbanks woman’s case were scattered among multiple state databases, none of which connect easily to the others, much less to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency in charge of tracking the virus. Nine months after she fell ill, her information was largely useless to public health researchers because it was impossible to synthesize most of it with data on the roughly 300,000 other Alaskans and the 95 million-plus other Americans who have gotten COVID.

Those same antiquated data systems are now hampering the response to the monkeypox outbreak. Once again, state and federal officials are losing time trying to retrieve information from a digital pipeline riddled with huge holes and obstacles.

The federal government invested heavily over the past decade to modernize the data systems of private hospitals and health care providers, doling out more than $38 billion in incentives to shift to electronic health records. That has enabled doctors and health care systems to share information about patients much more efficiently.

But while the private sector was modernizing its data operations, state and local health departments were largely left with the same fax machines, spreadsheets, emails and phone calls to communicate.

States and localities need $7.84 billion for data modernization over the next five years, according to an estimate by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and other nonprofit groups. Another organization, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, estimates those agencies need nearly $37 billion over the next decade.

The pandemic has laid bare the consequences of neglect. Countries with national health systems like Israel and, to a lesser extent, Britain were able to get solid, timely answers to questions such as who is being hospitalized with COVID and how well vaccines are working. American health officials, in contrast, have been forced to make do with extrapolations and educated guesses based on a mishmash of data.

Facing the wildfirelike spread of the highly contagious omicron variant last December, for example, federal officials urgently needed to know whether omicron was more deadly than the delta variant that had preceded it and whether hospitals would soon be flooded with patients. But they could not get the answer from testing, hospitalization or death data, said Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the CDC director, because it failed to sufficiently distinguish cases by variant.

Instead, the CDC asked Kaiser Permanente of Southern California, a large private health system, to analyze its COVID patients. A preliminary study of nearly 70,000 infections from December showed patients hospitalized with omicron were less likely to be hospitalized, need intensive care or die than those infected with delta.

But that was only a snapshot, and the agency only got it by going hat in hand to a private system.

The drought of reliable data has also repeatedly left regulators high and dry in deciding whether, when and for whom additional shots of coronavirus vaccine should be authorized. Such decisions turn on how well the vaccines perform over time and against new versions of the virus. And that requires knowing how many vaccinated people are getting so-called breakthrough infections and when.

But almost two years after the first COVID shots were administered, the CDC still has no national data on breakthrough cases. A major reason is that many states and localities, citing privacy concerns, strip out names and other identifying information from much of the data they share with the CDC, making it impossible for the agency to figure out whether any given COVID patient was vaccinated.

The Food and Drug Administration now spends tens of millions of dollars annually for access to detailed COVID-related health care data from private companies. About 30 states now also report cases and deaths by vaccination status, showing that the unvaccinated are far more likely to die of COVID than those who got shots.

But those reports are incomplete, too: The state data, for instance, does not reflect prior infections, an important factor in trying to assess vaccine effectiveness.

And it took years to get this far.

Now, as the government rolls out reformulated booster shots before a possible winter virus surge, the need for up-to-date data is as pressing as ever. The new boosters target the version of a fast-evolving virus that is currently dominant. Pharmaceutical companies are expected to deliver evidence from human clinical trials showing how well they work later this year.

When the first U.S. monkeypox case was confirmed May 18, federal health officials prepared to confront another information vacuum. Federal authorities cannot generally demand public health data from states and localities, which have legal authority over that realm and zealously protect it. That has made it harder to organize a federal response to a new disease that has now spread to nearly 24,000 people nationwide.

To find out how many people were being vaccinated against monkeypox, the CDC was forced to negotiate data-sharing agreements with individual jurisdictions, just as it had to do for COVID. That process took until early September, even though the information was important to assess whether the taxpayer-funded doses were going to the right places.

State and local public health agencies have been shriveling, losing an estimated 15% of their staffs between 2008 and 2019, according to a study by the de Beaumont Foundation, a public-health-focused philanthropy. In 2019, public health accounted for 3% of the $3.8 trillion spent on health care in the United States.

The pandemic has prompted Congress to loosen its purse strings. The CDC’s $50 million annual budget for data modernization was doubled for the current fiscal year. Two pandemic relief bills provided an additional $1 billion, including funds for a new center to analyze outbreaks.

But public health funding has traced a long boom-and-bust pattern, rising during crises and shrinking once they end. Although COVID still kills about 400 Americans each day, Congress’ appetite for public health spending has waned.

And while $1 billion-plus for data modernization sounds impressive, it is roughly the cost of shifting a single major hospital system to electronic health records, Walensky said.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


10.5 million children were orphaned or lost a primary caregiver due to COVID, study finds
Cady Stanton, USA TODAY
Tue, September 20, 2022, 8:32 PM

Worldwide, an estimated 10.5 million children were either orphaned or lost a primary caregiver due to COVID-19, according to a study published Tuesday.

The study, in JAMA Pediatrics, examined the World Health Organization's data on excess mortality as of May 2022, finding that the majority of those children – 7.5 million – were orphaned while 3 million children lost a primary caregiver.

Study authors urged public health officials to address the lasting impacts of grief on children who've lost caretakers to the virus, in addition to vaccines and prevention.

"Effective, caring action to protect children from immediate and long-term harms of COVID-19 is an investment in the future and a public health imperative," the paper said.

Children experiencing orphanhood or caregiver loss face an increased likelihood of poverty, abuse and mental health challenges, among other obstacles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"COVID is not just an individual disease, it really is a family disease," said Terri Powell, an associate professor of American health at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study. "They're not just people that died, but parents and caregivers — how do we make sure that there's still a safety net for the kids who are their surviving children?"

More children were affected by caregiver loss in Africa and Southeast Asia compared to Europe and North and South America. The study did not break down totals for individual countries, but it noted children were most affected were India, Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan.

In fall 2021, an American Academy of Pediatrics study estimated at least 140,000 children across the U.S. had lost a primary or secondary caregiver to COVID-19. That number has since risen to at least 209,000 children, according to a calculator from Imperial College London.

The AAP study also found significant racial disparities among children affected, with children of color accounting for 65% of children orphaned from COVID-19 through June 2021.

Recognizing these disparities is key in addressing future health crises, but also for providing care to children impacted by COVID-19 that is trauma-informed and culturally relevant as grief is individually unique, Powell told USA TODAY.

"How are we making sure that they have access to additional resources that they may not have even considered before?" she said. "How are we thinking about what can we learn from social workers about keeping families together and supporting brand new parents?"

In the U.S., grandparents, aunts, cousins – kinship caregivers – are often stepping into the void created by the loss of a caregiver, but they face challenges from a lack of training in how to help a child dealing with trauma, to financial and resource challenges from adding a new member to their household.

The California legislature is considering a bill that would establish trust fund accounts for children whose parent or guardian died from COVID-19.

The JAMA pediatrics study utilized excess mortality-derived estimates from the WHO, The Economist and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
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France's health body warns of resurgence of COVID virus in the country
by Myriam Rivet
September 16, 2022 2:09 PM EDT

PARIS, Sept 16 (Reuters) - France's national health body warned on Friday of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the country, and urged people to continue to get vaccinated to protect themselves against the virus.

The Sante Publique France (SPF) body said that during the week of Sept 5-Sept 11, there had been 186 confirmed COVID cases for every 100,000 people in France - a figure up 12% versus the previous week - representing an average of around 18,000 new cases per day.

Earlier this week, Emer Cooke - the executive director for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) watchdog - told a Reuters Next Newsmaker interview that people in Europe should take whatever COVID-19 booster vaccine is available to them, given expectations of an autumn rise in infections.

New infections have been steadily rising since 10 days and the seven-day moving average of daily new cases reached an almost five-weeks high of 24,042 on Thursday.
 

Heliobas Disciple

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More people have been dying this year due to irregular heartbeat, official figures suggest
Excess deaths, or extra deaths, are the number of deaths that are above the long-term average for a particular week or month of the year.

Tuesday 20 September 2022 14:50, UK

Deaths due to an irregular heartbeat are likely to be one of the reasons more people than usual have been dying this year - with the number well above average so far.

The number of deaths registered in England and Wales due to cardiac arrhythmias was more than usual for much of the first half of 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Deaths in this category had the second highest excess mortality figures in March and April, up from being the eighth highest in February and the fourth highest in January.

Excess deaths, or extra deaths, are the number of deaths that are above the long-term average for a particular week or month of the year.

There were 234 excess deaths due to an irregular heartbeat registered in March and 138 in April.

In both months this was the second highest number of excess deaths by cause, behind only those due to "ill-defined conditions" - a definition often used to cover symptoms such as old age and frailty.

The total number of deaths due to an irregular heartbeat was 37.1% above average in March and 23.1% in April - a sharp jump from 13.7% in January and 9.2% in February.

The percentages remained high in May and June (39.0% and 17.9%), but the number of excess deaths for this category ranked lower, in fifth and eighth place respectively.

Other leading causes to have contributed to excess deaths this year include ischaemic heart diseases, diabetes, and dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Overall 3,848 excess deaths were registered in England and Wales in the first half of 2022.

Sarah Caul, ONS head of mortality analysis, said the figure had been "driven by higher than expected numbers of deaths since March, which could be caused by a combination of factors.

"Across March, April and May we saw increases in deaths due to cardiac arrhythmias, predominantly among those aged 80 and above.

"Further work needs to be done to understand any link between the long-term effects of Covid and increasing cardiac deaths."

It is also possible that there has been some "mortality displacement", with the number of deaths higher than average now because of below-average deaths earlier in the year.

"Excess deaths do fluctuate over time and when looking at individual months in 2022, the number of deaths were below expected levels in January and February," she added.

Total deaths registered in England and Wales were 10.3% below average in January and 7.3% below in February, but were above average in every month from March to June.

May and June saw a particularly high level of excess mortality, with deaths 15.4% and 8.6% above average respectively.

Covid-19 has been only partly responsible for extra deaths in recent months, the ONS said.

Of the 6,473 excess deaths in May, more than three-quarters (4,897 or 76%) were not due to coronavirus.

The proportion was even higher in June, with 82% not due to Covid-19 (2,900 of 3,516).
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Study Reveals Masking Kids In School Made ‘No Significant Difference’ In Stopping COVID Spread.
"With no mandatory use, the youngest children have significantly lower transmission indicators when compared with any other group," the study notes.

by Natalie Winters
September 20, 2022

The use of face masks in classrooms made “no significant difference” in COVID-19 infection rates, according to a new study.

A cohort of researchers from several universities and hospitals in Spain came to the conclusion by analyzing COVID-19 transmission rates, age, and the mandated use of face masks in classrooms across the region of Catalonia.

The study – “Unravelling the Role of the Mandatory use of Face Covering Masks for the Control of SARS-CoV-2 in Schools: a Quasi-Experimental Study Nested in a Population-Based Cohort in Catalonia (Spain)” – compiled data from 1,907 schools with a total of 599,314 pupils during the first term of the 2021 academic year. It was included in August’s edition of the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, which is a part of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Group.

Though COVID-19 variants such as Omicron occurred outside of the timeframe of the study, researchers maintain it is “unlikely that the effectiveness of the mask mandate measure will increase with a more transmissible variant.”

“We analysed routinely collected health data to compare the incidence of SARS-CoV-2, secondary attack rates and the effective reproductive number among school children, comparing those without mandatory face covering masks (FCM) and those with FCM during the first term of the school year 2021–2022, to assess the effect of FCM mandates on SARS-CoV-2 transmission within schools,” explains a summary of the work.

Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-11.29.10-AM.png

Study, précis – click to embiggen.

Researchers focused on comparing children in the last year of preschool (P5) and the first year of primary education, as the younger group had no face mask mandate, whereas the older group did.

“The aim of our study was not to measure the individual effectiveness of FCM, but to evaluate the effectiveness of mask mandates in the real-world context of schools,” prefaced researchers.

“The main findings of the study show no significant differences for children in the last grade of preschool (P5) and the first year of primary education in COVID-19 transmission indicators during the study period, despite their difference in FCM mandate and the strong age dependency of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools,” explained researchers.

“The age trend observed for P5 and older children follows a different pattern when P3 and P4 are included in the analysis,” the study continued.

“With no mandatory use of FCM, the youngest children have significantly lower transmission indicators when compared with any other group.”

“In conclusion, FCM mandates in schools showed no significant differences in terms of transmission. Conversely, we found that age is a key component explaining transmission in children,” summarized researchers.

The Spanish case study follows additional studies demonstrating the failed efficacy of face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, even exacerbating the spread of the virus in certain demographics.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Biden Said the ‘Pandemic is Over,’ Now Republicans Want the Administration to Act
According to the White House press secretary, the president said we must keep fighting the pandemic, but “we can acknowledge the massive amount of progress that we have made.”

Courtney Bublé
September 20, 2022 03:43 PM ET

President Biden said, “the pandemic is over” and now Republicans want him to put his money where his mouth is. But White House officials are arguing it’s not so cut and dry.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night, Biden declared the pandemic had ended while noting the coronavirus was still a concern.

“The pandemic is over,” he said. “We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so, I think it's changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”

This surprised the president’s top health officials, according to Politico.

On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president’s chief medical adviser, told Politico, “What he really meant is that the very severe stage of the pandemic of having … 3,000 deaths a day — that stage is no longer present,” but that “people should not be cavalier that we’re out of the woods.” However, Republicans are seizing on this opportunity to further question the administration’s request for $22 billion for covid in as part of a continuing resolution as well as the administration's COVID policies.

Sen. Richard Burr, ranking member of the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, wrote a letter to the Biden on Monday that questioned the actions of the administration given the president’s declaration.

“If that is the case and you, as president, direct policy of your administration, I have questions about actions your administration is taking that do not align with your announcement,” Burr stated in the letter. “Without a clear plan to wind down pandemic-era policies, the deficit will continue to balloon and the effectiveness of public health measures will wane as the American people continue to be confused by mixed messages and distrust of federal officials.”

The senator’s questions included how the administration would now handle the emergency declaration for the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s masking guidance and the use of the covid pandemic to forgive student loans.

Burr also asked questions specifically pertaining to the federal workforce: “With the pandemic being over, when will vaccination requirements for federal workers and contractors end? Immediately? Within 15 days? 30 days?” Also, “Will you finally direct federal workers who were onsite prior to the pandemic to return to work in person?”

The vaccine mandates for federal employees and contractors are currently not being enforced due to ongoing litigation and last month the Biden administration’s Safer Federal Workforce Task Force relaxed its testing and vaccination guidance for federal employees and contractors. The task force also has been issuing guidance for agencies’ entry plans, which have varied among agencies and in some cases, sub-components. Government Executive asked the Office of Management and Budget, whose director is a member of the task force, for comment on both, but it did not respond by the time of this article’s publication.

Additionally, a group of 17 House Republicans called on Biden Monday to terminate the national emergency for the pandemic following the interview, saying the authorities it granted the federal government are unnecessary.

“Under the emergency declaration, the federal government is estimated to have spent upwards of $10 trillion, resulting in an economic crisis, record inflation, and contributing to our nearly $31 trillion national debt,” they wrote.

More lawmakers, beyond the 17, have also called for this termination.

“The COVID Public Health Emergency remains in effect [and] HHS will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration,” Sarah Lovenheim, spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department, tweeted on Monday afternoon. “As we’ve done previously, we’ll continue to lean on the science to determine the length of the [emergency.”

The COVID Public Health Emergency remains in effect & HHS will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration. As we’ve done previously, we’ll continue to lean on the science to determine the length of the PHE. Read FAQs: https://t.co/m15kFGJ9x7
— Sarah Lovenheim (@HHS_Spox) September 19, 2022

As for the funding request, for months, Republicans have already been wary about improving more funding, despite consistent pleading from administration officials. Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told CNN that Biden’s comments makes the request for COVID relief “eminently harder for sure,” and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the outlet. “If [the pandemic is] over, then I wouldn't suspect they need any more money.”

Then on Tuesday, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he was open to a discussion about more funding for COVID-19 vaccines, but it is something they'll have to take a look at, including the money not already spent, Fox News reported.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., tweeted, “I wouldn’t hold your breath” over the president ceasing “reckless spending” due to the pandemic.

Republicans on the House Education and Labor Committee tweeted on Tuesday that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration “never got the memo” about the pandemic being over and the agency “continues to move forward with a permanent COVID-19 health care standard to expand [government] control and extend the #permanentpandemic.”

Government Executive asked OSHA for comment on the status of the standard and for response to the criticism, but it did not respond by the time of this article’s publication.

Lastly, various Republicans have asked if the president would now re-enlist the servicemembers who were involuntarily separated from the military for refusing the vaccine mandate, including Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., ranking member of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

As Military.com reported in January, the service branches have varied approaches to handling relistenments for service members. The vaccine mandates for the military as well as federal employees and contractors, have long been opposed by Republican lawmakers.

Government Executive asked the Defense Department to respond to this call. The department acknowledged the request, but did not provide a comment by the time this article was published.

During the briefing on Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, the president was “clear” in the interview that we have to keep fighting COVID-19, but “he believes is we can acknowledge the massive amount of progress that we have made,” when asked about the Burr letter. “Just think about where we were when this president walked into this administration; where again a response to this once-in-a-generation pandemic was mismanaged by the last administration.”

She reiterated the need for more COVID funding for tests, treatments and vaccines because now “we know what works.” Echoing what National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier in the briefing, “we have to be prepared for the next generation of vaccines and treatments. We have to be prepared for the next potential pandemic ensuring that we’re leading the way when it comes to research, when it comes to development, when it comes to innovation and keeping testing readily accessible.”

If the country loses access to these things, Jean-Pierre said, then “we have to ask Republicans, why didn’t they act?”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


If It’s Over, Why the Continued Emergency?
By Paul Elias Alexander
September 20, 2022

An 11th renewal of the federal government’s emergency declaration is ludicrous. Is this about midterm elections? Is this about Presidential elections in 2024? Is this purely politics now and the drive to hold onto accrued power amassed with the lockdown lunacy?

Omicron as the current dominant variant and its subvariants (clades) is very mild for most people, even many high-risk people. They can adequately handle the infection and cope with it. The reality is that while Omicron can still present a challenge (as does seasonal influenza and common cold and a range of respiratory illnesses) to elderly persons and especially those with comorbidities (as well as obese persons, immune-compromised persons), it is revealing itself to be no more severe than seasonal flu, and generally less so.

Moreover, we have used repurposed therapeutics (as prophylactics and treatment) effectively and we have availability. We also know who is the at-risk group and how to effectively manage, and hospitals were given hundreds of billions of dollars in PPE, PPP, and COVID relief money to prepare. They are prepared.

The data clearly showed very early on after the COVID vaccine rollout that there was no difference in terms of viral load between a vaccinated and an unvaccinated person. Thus the policy was punitive and nonsensical, and not just for nurses, but for all employees subjected to it without any scientific basis. Hospitals and workplaces should take these employees back and pay them all lost wages. Do all they could to make them whole.

Moreover, a large portion of the vulnerable population in the developed world is already protected against severe disease. Importantly, we have learned much about the utility of inexpensive supplements like Vitamin D to reduce disease risk, and as mentioned, there is a host of good therapeutics available to prevent hospitalization and death should a vulnerable patient e.g. elderly in a nursing home or similar congregated setting or private residence, become infected. And for younger people, the risk of severe disease – already low before Omicron – is minuscule. This is the data. This is the evidence across global nations.

Even in places with strict lockdown measures, there are hundreds of thousands of newly registered Omicron cases daily and countless unregistered positives from home testing. Measures like mandatory masking and distancing have had negligible or at most small effects on transmission.

Large-scale population quarantines only delay the inevitable. Vaccination and boosters have not halted Omicron disease spread; heavily vaccinated nations like Israel and Australia have more daily cases per capita than any place on earth at the moment. This wave will run its course despite all of the emergency measures.

There is simply no justification for maintaining emergency status. So why would HHS move to renew it an 11th time? The lockdowns, the school closures, the shielding-in-place, the business closures, the personnel firings and shortages and school university disruptions have done at least as much damage (and certainly more) to the population’s health and welfare as the virus.

The American population and most global nations that engaged in lockdown lunacy etc. have been crushed, devastated; economies and their peoples. We harmed and caused deaths of our populations by the lockdown lunatic policies and especially our poorer minority populations and women, who could not afford to shield.

We catastrophically shifted the burden of infection and illness from the café latte, laptop, ‘Zoom class’ to the poorer in society who could not shield as they had to maintain front-facing employment to survive. They could not ‘remote work.’ Many business owners, laid off employees, and children in America committed suicide due to the lockdown restrictive lunacy.

The state of emergency is clearly not justified now, and it cannot be justified by fears of a hypothetical recurrence of some more severe infection at some unknown hypothetical point in the future. We just cannot operate public health policy this way. If a novel severe strain or variant were to occur and it seems unlikely from Omicron (though we are placing the spike antigen under relentless selection pressure with suboptimal vaccinal antibodies, mounting suboptimal immune pressure, and in the midst of massive infectious pressure) then that would be the time we discuss a declaration of emergency.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley has weighed in on POTUS Biden’s declaration that the pandemic is over, indicating that it is most certainly going to be cited

“in a variety of briefs in cases challenging emergency powers and policies used by the Administration. It was just a year ago, in September 2021, that the President imposed such rules to “ensur[e] the health and safety of the Federal workforce and the efficiency of the civil service.” President Biden announced a similar requirement for federal civilian employees. Exec. Order No. 14,043, 86 Fed. Reg. 50,989 (Sept. 14, 2021). One such example could be the appeal now being considered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The issue of the sweeping pandemic authority being claimed by the Biden Administration is now going before the full court in an en banc rehearing.”

Turley went on to argue that since POTUS Biden is declarative that the pandemic is now at an end just as the Justice Department is defending pandemic policies in various courts, then this will pose tremendous challenges to the Justice Department in terms of defending the policies and mandates. “Even if one were to argue that the policy should be reviewed as supported at the time, the continued viability of the policy can now be questioned in light of the President’s own statements.” Turley further notes “if the pandemic “is over,” some may question the continued uncertain status of military personnel and federal employees on vaccine status as well as lingering mask mandates being used in some states and by certain businesses.”

Americans have sacrificed enough of their human rights, their dignity, liberties, and of their livelihoods for two and a half years in the service of protecting the general public health. They have been attacked, demeaned, ostracized, castigated, and ruined financially in many instances given they were prevented from earning a living. Americans lost people to the virus, vulnerable people and no one can deny that. COVID was punishing, especially the earlier strain (variants) on the vulnerable elderly and this happened largely because the government, the medical establishment, and medical doctors refused to recognize the value of early treatment and their actions ended up costing thousands of lives.

But America lost most lives due to the lockdowns and school closures, and we lost above all, our freedoms. It is time to allow America to be unshackled from these COVID policies. Completely. Living life freely once again, taking reasonable precautions, unfettered by government’s failed COVID lockdown policies whereby not one has worked!

The current emergency declaration must be canceled. It is time. It is time to bring this COVID pandemic to a full closure and to move on to proper public legal inquiries as to the decision-making that went into the COVID response, particularly the rollout of the ineffective and safety untested COVID shots.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


It Ends as it Began: As a Political Ploy
By Jeffrey A. Tucker
September 20, 2022

The current US president finally said it during a 60 Minutes interview: “The pandemic is over.” Though obviously true by the classical definition, Biden’s comment seemed almost accidental, said as an echoed response to a direct question.

Consider, however, that many times as many people die from Covid daily in the US (300-400) than when the US first announced the outrageous lockdowns of March 16, 2020. In those days, deaths were approaching 50 per day, mostly in New York. It will very likely get worse over the winter months.

Screen-Shot-2022-09-19-at-2.23.51-PM-1536x829.png


Instead of today’s calm and relaxed attitude – just chill because infection, disease, and death are just part of life – there were banshee screams from the whole of governments and media. People were running around with their hair on fire, dousing themselves with sanitizer, wiping down groceries, and hiding under their sofas from the “invisible enemy.”

Back then, if you raised any doubts about closures, masks, forced separation, domestic capacity restrictions, or suggested it might not be the worst thing to keep businesses open, or were caught getting a haircut, you were shamed, shouted down, and banned by social media. You could even get fired.

Ask yourself: why the panic then and the calm now? What precisely has changed?

In those days, every new death – even every new case! – was blamed on the Trump administration. People even today say that Trump had no choice but to lock down because otherwise the criticisms would have been globally deafening. So Trump and his closest advisors sat in their Oval Office hothouse and listened to the wise council of Fauci that the only way to deal with a virus is to stop all human activity.

So here we are today, all nonchalant and casual about the whole thing even as the CDC chart on community spread looks like this right now.

US_Community_Transmission_of_All_Counties-1536x928.png


Receiving less attention was Biden’s immediate follow-up. “If you notice, no one is wearing masks. Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape.”

JUST IN – Biden: "The pandemic is over."pic.twitter.com/iS1gq31MD1
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 19, 2022

Hold on there a minute. Is it really all about such casual perceptions of one guy touring a car show?

If everyone was wearing a mask – the Biden administration is still appealing its right to impose a mandate – would it be evidence that the pandemic is still on? If so, might that help explain why the Biden administration was so intent on pushing for mass masking? It served the cosmetic purpose of whipping up public panic…for political and not medical reasons.

If that is true, we live in a dystopian world in which the government itself can create and uncreate a pandemic depending on the political priorities of the day.

As for the eyeball test that everyone Biden sees is “in pretty good” shape, that was true throughout the entire period of panicked and egregious statism. The demographic subject to medically significant outcomes was always very small. The 99.8% of people were always going to be in pretty good shape, but for the astounding psychological, economic, and public-health disaster imposed by the lockdowns themselves.

Yes, the “new virus” is now endemic and wholly manageable, due to mass infection and recovery. It was never going to end any other way. We knew this from February 2020. It’s the way every pandemic of this type of virus ends, all extremely well-documented over the past 100 years or, really, thousands of years.

The policy response to the pandemic is what was the outlier. After spending two and a half years watching the unfolding of the great public-health disaster of our lifetimes, it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that this has always been about politics and the manipulation of public perceptions. The reality that we chose to see was heavily informed by media propaganda and political priorities.

That’s a terrifying reality.

For example, it’s impossible to avoid the observation that the pandemic response was motivated at least in part by the desire to drive Trump out of office.

What better way to crush a presidency than to panic the president himself into wrecking the economy that was his strongest selling point during a critical election year? It was a masterful plot and you don’t have to be a dreaded “conspiracy theorist” to see it.

Moreover, it was not just about Trump himself. It was about much larger agendas and directions that the administration was headed that threatened some very powerful interests, the investigations of which should consume years of work. Theories abound about the real reasons – Fauci and gain-of-function research, WEF and its agenda, an experiment in unleashing hipster techno-primitivism – and we are still a long way off from knowing the full truth.

Why Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and other presumed Trump partisans in the inner circle could not see it is the question. For that matter, why couldn’t FOX see it? Why couldn’t the Trump partisans in think tanks and magazines see it?

It was perfectly obvious at the time that this was precisely what was going on. Why did observing the obvious become so completely unsayable?

In the same way, it is perfectly obvious that the new calm that Biden is hawking is all about creating an environment of normalcy leading to midterm elections just 6 weeks away. The Democrats obviously need every advantage. Declaring an end to the pandemic provides some help on the margin.

It should rattle any concerned citizen of the US – or just any rational person – that such a massive issue as a deadly pandemic could be turned on and off by perception management by powerful elites in government, tech, and media. And yet, the evidence is overwhelming that we have seen just such an operation at work over these pandemic years.

Even now, despite more sophisticated data collection and distribution than we’ve ever had, we are at a loss to state with precision just how severe this pandemic truly was. Between wild inaccuracies of PCR testing plus rampant death misclassification, not to mention the ongoing confusions over infections vs cases, there is no real consensus on the basic measurements one might need to make a scientific assessment.

To be sure, there are those who believe that the arrival of the Omicron variant is itself a good enough reason for the shift from panic to calm. The variant is said to be more prevalent but less severe. But this is a confusion: such variants do not arrive with a preset severity stamp on them, programmed to impact the population in a particular way. It always depends on preexisting immunities.

Whether and to what extent these viruses are nothing alarming or massively devastating is largely contingent on the immunological mappings of the population itself. It was exposure to previous Covid variants that resulted in less medically significant outcomes from the mutations that occurred later.

An isolated tribe in the Outback or Amazon rainforest that had never been exposed to any coronaviruses could face terrible disease and death from the variants that the developed world now regards as mild. For such people, Omicron could be just as devastating or more so than the original wild type. (I owe this point to the ever-brilliant Sunetra Gupta.)

In addition, one might suppose that the end of the panic would also mean the end of the restrictions and mandates. Not so. The state of emergency is still on. People are still being fired for refusing the vaccine. My unvaccinated friends from the UK, Australia, and Europe are still not even allowed into this country! The whole thing is outrageous and embarrassing.

And as Jonathan Turley has written:

Now the President is declaring that the pandemic is over as the Justice Department is defending pandemic policies in various courts. Even if one were to argue that the policy should be reviewed as supported at the time, the continued viability of the policy can now be questioned in light of the President’s own statements. The President’s comments also highlight the fluidity of pandemic policies. While we often look to the CDC on such status statements, it is the President who ultimately decides federal policies on pandemic measures.

Interesting phrase: the fluidity of pandemic policies. Keep in mind that most of the powers that allowed them to lock you in your home, quarantine the well, shut churches and schools, restrict travels, even prosecute people for holding parties, weddings, and funerals all still exist. There has been no rollback of any powers presumed by the CDC. Their website even now lays out their own quarantine plans for the next time.

There must absolutely be a serious challenge to all these government powers. They were abused for political reasons and ended up brutalizing the whole population here and around the world, in violation of all law and tradition. There have been no apologies from the top, only vague promises of reforms that end only in more centralization and funding. This must change before the whole disaster is repeated.

It is not enough for the president to declare an end. It does not end until we end the emergency powers and get an ironclad guarantee that nothing of this sort can ever happen again. One might suppose the Bill of Rights would have been enough but it was not. We need more. And it needs to be explicit and enforceable. That cannot happen until there is a full accounting of the outrages that have been visited upon the country. Only then can we say that everything and everyone “seems to be in pretty good shape.”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


After Biden Declares COVID-19 Pandemic ‘Is Over,’ Fauci Reveals ‘What He Really Meant’
By Jack Phillips
September 20, 2022

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci attempted to walk back a statement made by President Joe Biden during a recent interview that the COVID-19 pandemic “is over.”

“What [Biden] really meant is that the very severe stage of the pandemic of having … 3,000 deaths a day—that stage is no longer present,” Fauci told Politico. “People should not be cavalier that we’re out of the woods,” he added.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday night, Biden was asked about the trajectory of COVID-19 in the United States.

“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over,” Biden declared.

Earlier this month, the White House asked Congress for an additional $47 billion in emergency funding to deal with COVID-19, monkeypox, and the Ukraine conflict. Of that figure, the largest request is about $22.4 billion in COVID-19 funding, which would support research on vaccines, testing, preparations, and treatment.

Democrats Scramble

But his comment to the CBS show prompted Democrats to scramble on Monday to shape the narrative around Biden’s messaging.

“I think what the president was trying to say is that the worst of the pandemic is over,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Fox News, saying that some still suffer from so-called “long COVID.” “The way I would phrase it is the worst of the pandemic is over,” Khanna said.

“COVID is not over,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters on Monday when asked about Biden’s remarks. “I don’t know what he meant … some people use ‘pandemic’ or ‘epidemic’ or other phrases. And he said that COVID isn’t over, the pandemic is over. But the way I look at it, COVID isn’t over.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) agreed with Kaine’s assessment.

“The variants are still out there. We are all hoping that it’s over [but] nobody is going to predict with certainty that it is. I’m not,” Durbin told ABC News.

Republicans used Biden’s comment in the interview to argue that additional COVID-19 relief funding is not needed. Previously, GOP lawmakers have signaled they aren’t willing to back the White House’s latest request.

“Despite Americans having largely returned to normal life, which you acknowledged when you noted that attendees at the Detroit Auto Show were not wearing masks, your Administration continues to request un-offset emergency funding from Congress, enforce vaccine mandates, and maintain federal emergency declarations that cost taxpayers billions of dollars,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) wrote in a letter to the Biden administration this week.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


New York City Ending 2 COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates, Keeping Another
By Zachary Stieber
September 20, 2022

New York City will end COVID-19 vaccine mandates for student athletes and private sector businesses, but officials are keeping in place a third vaccination requirement, the city’s mayor said on Sept. 20.

Students who play sports will no longer have to get vaccinated, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, told reporters at City Hall in the borough of Manhattan.

He also said the city will stop requiring private workers to get a vaccine as of Nov. 1.

Adams said the change is “because we’ve been so successful,” citing how 89 percent of New Yorkers have received at least one dose of a vaccine. He also defended the mandates, and announced city workers will still be required to get vaccinated.

“Our vaccinated workforce kept the city open and operating. With over 300,000 employees, it was crucial to put it in place and we’re keeping that in place. Vaccinated workers have carried out their jobs and they stepped up when the city needed them the most,” Adams said.

The city has fired thousands of workers who refused to get a vaccine, including some 2,000 education workers.

There are no plans as of now to rescind the public worker mandate, Adams said.

Asked about the discrepancy between the private and public sector, he said, “I don’t think anything dealing with COVID makes sense, and there’s no logical pathway of one [sic] can do.”

“The determination now from our medical team is to remove the private sector mandates, remove the sports mandates for children, and that is where we are,” he added later. “And if there’s something’s going to change, we’re going to announce it.”

Dr. Ashwin Vasan, the city’s health commissioner, said people should not look at the mandate decisions “in isolation” and that the “major effect” of the mandates was “to push people to get vaccinated.” He did not explain why one mandate would remain in place while the others were rolled back.

New York previously exempted athletes and performers from its private sector mandate, drawing criticism from some union officials.

The Police Benevolent Association, a union for officers, reacted negatively to the announcement from Adams.

“This announcement is more proof that the vaccine mandate for New York City police officers is arbitrary, capricious, and fundamentally irrational,” Patrick Lynch, president of the group, said in a statement.

“Now that the city has abandoned any pretense of a public health justification for vaccine mandates, we expect it to settle our pending lawsuits and reinstate with back pay our members who unjustly lost their jobs,” he added.

Adams also received a shot of one of the updated boosters on Tuesday, and encouraged all city workers and residents to get one of the new boosters.

He said the booster, which has no human data backing it, “will provide better protection” against COVID-19 than the old booster.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ve5hZmSnc
Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) from Vaccines and Antibodies (In-vitro study)
40 min 38 sec

Streamed live Sep 20, 2022
Drbeen Medical Lectures

This study from Japan demonstrates the requirements for the antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) to occur. It's about the presence of it, requirements of when it occurs. Also some suggestions to prevent or minimize ADE. Cell proteins and the antibody levels are presented. It is possible and repeatable to have ADE. There are phases when it is a possiibility.


URL list from Tuesday, Sep. 20 2022

Reevaluation of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection in anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies and mRNA-vaccine antisera using FcR- and ACE2-positive cells | Scientific Reports
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS) | UCLA Broad Stem Cell Center
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Shimizu et al.: "Reevaluation of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection in anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies and mRNA-vaccine antisera using FcR- and ACE2-positive cells
we demonstrate (in-vitro) that certain monoclonal Abs (mAbs) approved as therapeutic neutralizing anti-S-protein mAbs for human usage have potential to cause ADE in a narrow range of Ab concentration.

Dr. Paul Alexander
19 hr ago


ADE emerges via Moderna mRNA injection, in-vitro. Researchers report “we investigated sera from mRNA (Moderna)-vaccinated individuals in terms of ADE-causing potential by using the same double-positive cells. Here, we show that the casirivimab and imdevimab mAbs have the ability to induce ADE, but sotrovimab does not.”

‘Many therapeutic antibodies (Abs) and mRNA vaccines, both targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S-protein), have been developed and approved in order to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In consideration of these developments, a common concern has been the potential for Ab-dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection caused by inoculated or induced Abs. Although the preventive and therapeutic effects of these Abs are obvious, little attention has been paid to the influence of the remaining and dwindling anti-S-protein Abs in vivo.

Here, we demonstrate that certain monoclonal Abs (mAbs) approved as therapeutic neutralizing anti-S-protein mAbs for human usage have the potential to cause ADE in a narrow range of Ab concentrations. Although sera collected from mRNA-vaccinated individuals exhibited neutralizing activity, some sera gradually exhibited dominance of ADE activity in a time-dependent manner. None of the sera examined exhibited neutralizing activity against infection with the Omicron strain. Rather, some ADE of Omicron infection was observed in some sera. These results suggest the possible emergence of adverse effects caused by these Abs in addition to the therapeutic or preventive effect.’

SOURCE:

Reevaluation of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection in anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies and mRNA-vaccine antisera using FcR- and ACE2-positive cells


Note this is in-vitro and hard objective patient-important outcomes are not studied. Yet quite instructive. Figure 1 A below really is the key graph for it reveals a point in antibody concentration (x-axis) where the viral replication is surged. So there seems to be an optimal concentration of antibodies (they looked at casirivimab and imdevimab and sotrovimab) at which point ADE plays out (increased viral replication). Seems that at a certain concentration, antibodies or no antibodies is the same. At a certain higher concentration of antibodies, then there is the potential as we see here, for mitigation of viral replication (Y-axis) (Figure 1 A).

 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


URGENT: Daniel Horowitz shared this from Dr. Lxx Fxx as to usual practice in hospitals when our parent, grand-parent, you, anyone, based on hospital 'COVID Protocol' to collect $500,000 per patient
$500,000 per COVIDized patient & thus the COVID Protocol to ensure they collected for each patient; this is why I have called for CEOs, Fauci, Birx, Bancel, Bourla, Francis Collins, all, to be JAILED!

Dr. Paul Alexander
14 hr ago

Remember, our governments, our COVID Task Force advisors, those ‘in charge’, threatened us and used the ‘force of law’ on us (the put the police on us, remember this and jailed some of us) if we did not comply with lockdowns and school closures etc., yet today we know every single COVID policy failed! So how do we respond?

I say, recall the Nazi hunter, rightfully for as long as it took, hunting down Nazis, well, we must become the COVIDian hunters, hunting down Fauci, Birx, Azar, Bourla, Bancel, Francis Collins the real top dog, we go after all, all, for as long as it takes and we bring them to justice in proper courts of law and inquiry. We bring them, we ensure they sit in a docket at some point under oath, facing a judge and jury, proper inquiry, we do not take matters into our hands, no, we ensure the public inquiries but we let the legal avenues take it’s course, and we never ever stop for what these malfeasants did to our families and friends and our children with their greed and lockdown lunacy!

Now to the ‘COVID Protocol’ and the hospital medical system ‘black hole’ that killed our parents and grand-parents. You literally must do a rescue, an intervention, you got to rescue your family out of the hospital, they will be sucked into the ‘black hole’…if you do not, they will die there. You get help, some aides, to go with you to rescue your family or friend, they will die there. The incentives for the hospitals are and were too great.

This is why I have called for urgent investigations of all who made COVID decisions and policies in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, all nations, rich, poor, everywhere, proper legal public inquiries and if shown they did no wrong, we praise them, reward them; but if shown in proper legal inquiry that they caused deaths needlessly, that they harmed people needlessly, that they were reckless, then we take all of their money, all pensions, every cent, we clean them out, and we imprison them all! All in the Trump and all in the Biden administration who costed lives! We lock them up for life! All of them! I do not care who you are and were. I include congresspeople, senators, members of parliament (MPs), MPPs, Prime Ministers, COVID Task Force advisors, Presidents even, I mean ALL!

Step 1: a patient goes to hospital not feeling too well so advises they are feeling sick.

Step 2: the patient is tested for COVID and found positive; regardless of the over-cycled over-sensitive PCR cycle-count threshold (Ct) set at 40 when the same hospital staff knows that over Ct of 24 it is likely viral junk and non-infectious, non-lethal and non-culturable and likely 97% false-positive; yet the patient is declared COVID positive

Step 3: patient is immediately placed in isolation in the ICU; locked down, no family, no one can and would be allowed to see the patient; at this point they have entered the ‘black hole’ and now ‘disappeared’ in isolation and loneliness as they careen toward their death for they are now placed on a death path

Step 4: at this time the hospital is ramping up and administering diamorphine, midazolam and a range of sedatives, remdesivir, and ventilation as I describe below and it is this 4 that kills your parent, grand-parent etc.

Step 5: patient told they need oxygen and placed on supplemental oxygen (O2).

Step 6: then patient begins having pulmonary issues aggravated by the oxygen.

Step 7: patient placed on BIPAP (CPAP) due to worsening pulmonary function (oxygen toxicity).

Step 8: patient not tolerating BIPAP so they are restrained and sedated.

Step 9: further oxygen toxicity combined with sedation leads to airway intubation and patient placed on ventilator; it is at this time that the patient begins to decline for the staff did not and do not know how to ventilate and the ventilators begins to kill, blow holes in lungs etc.

Step 10: patient becomes profoundly dehydrated and malnourished from DAYS OF WITHHOLDING FOOD AND WATER, on ventilator etc.

Step 11: renal stress then emerges from dehydration.

Step 12: doctors then administer Remdesivir knowing that it is renal and liver toxic and kills and failed all clinical trials; failed EBOLA drug, a drug that was languishing in search of a disease alike how Tamiflu (oseltamivir) was in search of a flu/pandemic

Step 13: patient suffers acute kidney and liver injury and organ failure ensues post IV remdesivir.

Step 14: patient then placed on dialysis due to the failure caused by remdesivir and becomes more dehydrated.

Step 15: patient continues to receive NO NOURISHMENT (TPN) OR WATER.

Step 16: patient becomes hemodynamically unstable and has a cardiac arrest.

Step 17: since the patient was made DNR (‘do not resuscitate’ though in most instances can be) BY THE TREATING DOCTORS (WITHOUT PATIENT’S CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE), NO CPR IS PERFORMED.

Step 18: Your parent, or grand-parent, your friend, the patient, then dies.

Alone. You are informed of the death while you remained trying to see them. They were in the ‘black hole’.

Step 19: The hospital and the CEOs then submit the bill to the government for $500,000.

Where is/was the Hippocratic Oath? “First, do no harm”? Was the lure of money, financial incentives so great? That you doctors suspended all critical thinking and morality? Where did your moral compass go? Where was your line of integrity?

This is what we did throughout COVID from February/March 2020 and this is why we investigate them all and we hold them to account and jail them all, all who partook in the money feeding frenzy, we jail them long and hard! We jail them for the harms of the COVID gene injection to our military, our police, our border agents, our peoples.

As I wrote many times, we killed our peoples with remdesivir, diamorphine, midazolam, and ventilators. These 4. Moreover, the lockdowns, the school closures, the shielding-in-place, the business closures, the personnel firings and shortages and school university disruptions have done at least as much damage (and certainly more) to the population’s health and welfare as the virus. The American population and most global nations that engaged in lockdown lunacy etc. have been crushed, devastated, economies and their peoples.

We harmed and caused deaths of our populations by the lockdown lunatic policies and especially our poorer minority populations and women, who could not afford to shield. We catastrophically shifted the burden of infection and illness from the café latte, laptop, ‘zoom class’ to the poorer in society who could not shield as had to maintain front-facing employment to survive. They could not ‘remote work’. Many business owners, laid off employees, and children in America committed suicide due to the lockdown restrictive lunacy.

We placed our people who could have been handled successfully at home or in the nursing home with effective, cheap, available ‘early treatment’, in hospitals, to put them on the ‘death path’ so hospitals and CEOs and doctors could enrich themselves killing our unsuspecting parents and grand-parents.

We never EVER let Fauci et al. go. We go after them.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


How I Know the Pandemic is Over
Conflicting messaging from Biden and HHS is nothing new. Thank goodness that I have proof the pandemic is over.

James Lyons-Weiler
19 hr ago

At a recent auto show in Detroit, MI, Biden noticed that hardly anyone around him was wearing masks. Using this real-world data, Biden quipped that the pandemic was over.

HHS lost its mind and tried to backtrack the messaging, as did the official narrative minder Reuters; both agencies decided to counter Biden’s “over” message.

Since the whole PCR-based debacle is still with us, and CDC has yet to issue an adjustment factor for false positive PCR tests, the number of bona fide COVID-19 cases is still unknown. The number of actual COVID-19 hospitalizations is unknown. And the number of real COVID-19 deaths - deaths due to disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus - is unknown.

Reuters wants to take you down a 3-min reminder of all of the messaging from April 2020 - citing (as if it is known) that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is at an all-time minimum since April 2020. The Reuters video starts with a reminder that the US is still under a declared “Emergency” - without researching whether the actual numbers qualify the current situation as an Emergency.

Reuters does point out that it is likely that over 95% of Americans have some form of “immunity”, without acknowledging the massive amount of evidence on antibody-dependent enhancement, which I have reviewed extensively in articles here on Popular Rationalism.

Reuters also show pictures and WHO dude Tedros Ghebreyesus, and a video of lame-duck Fauci imploring that we’re not quite there yet while insisting that we’re “heading in that direction”. Keep in mind that opinion is the weakest evidence. Ironically Fauci discusses how the pandemic will be over when COVID-19 will no longer “dominate” our social lives.

The proof I have that the pandemic is over?

Our local convenience store has removed the hanging plastic shields at the check-out.

What’s your real-world proof that the pandemic is over? Share this, as always, and leave a comment.
 

Zoner

Veteran Member
Listen to this 45 minute interview. It's something we can send to others so they can hear the other side.
I was just confronted in the church by my elders saying they don't want me speaking against the vaccine and boosters. So please pray for me. I stood up and told them they don't know the dangers...and sent them this interview.

 

Zoner

Veteran Member



Question:

“So, with your natural immunity theory you'd like to take us back to the pre-vaccine era when 2.5 million children died annually from measles and 350,000 died each year from polio?”

Answer:

As usual, it’s never a good idea to compare apples to oranges:

First, as far as SARS-CoV-2 is concerned, we’re dealing with a PANDEMIC, and that will remain so for as long as we don’t reach herd immunity, which is well known to be (far!) beyond reach when using non-sterilizing vaccines in the middle of a pandemic.
For measles, polio and other childhood diseases, herd immunity has largely been established. This reduces the occurrence of these viral diseases to (local) ‘outbreaks’ whenever there is a gap in that herd immunity, especially in countries/regions where the virus remains endemic and can spread asymptomatically on a background of herd immunity (e.g., in several third-world countries). Secondarily, in contrast to SARS-CoV-2, polio and measles are acute-self-limiting infections with strict host selectivity for humans. These limitations to viral spread (i.e., background of herd immunity and human-to-human transmission only!) makes it possible to terminate or prevent an outbreak (but never a pandemic!) through the use of vaccines. However, this is only possible provided one uses LIVE ATTENUATED vaccines as the latter induce full-fledged natural immunity (i.e., INNATE! and adaptive). The better the environmental hygiene (avoidance of overcrowding, sufficient ventilation, decent basic sanitation, access to potable water etc.), the lower the vaccine coverage rate required to tame an outbreak.

Any mass vaccination program that fails to generate population-level sterilizing immunity (i.e., herd immunity) will inevitably fail to stop the spread of acute, self-limiting viral infections in an immunologically naïve population. This particularly applies when non-replicating vaccines (e.g., all C-19 vaccines) are used in an attempt to control acute, self-limiting viral infections that can also spread and replicate through other animal species (e.g., SARS-CoV-2).

If one ignores this well-established principle, vaccines will inevitably foster natural selection and propagation of more infectious, and ultimately more virulent, SARS-CoV-2 variants. The emergence of the latter has already been documented in vitro (e.g., Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 lineages) and it is just a matter of time before these (sub)variants will also manifest enhanced virulence in vivo.

Children have an amazing innate immune capacity to generate sterilizing immunity. From a public health viewpoint (herd immunity!), it is therefore critical that we leave the children alone. But protecting our children from C-19 vaccination is also critical from an individual health viewpoint as vaccination with these non-replicating vaccines will prevent adequate education of their immune system. This is because spike (S)-specific, non-neutralizing antibodies (Abs) that are continuously recalled by the circulating Omicron (sub)variants will steadily outcompete their innate Abs and thereby prevent the child’s innate Abs to instruct the immune system on how to discriminate ‘self’ from ‘self-like’ (Intra-pandemic vaccination of toddlers with non-replicating antibody-based vaccines targeted at ASLVI- or ASLVD-enabling glycosylated viruses prevents education of innate immune effector cells (NK cells) | Voice for Science and Solidarity). Furthermore, vaccination of older children is highly likely to cause Ab-dependent enhancement of C-19 disease as non-neutralizing, infection-enhancing Abs may enable the virus to break through the innate immune system when the latter is not yet sufficiently trained[1]. That is going to become particularly problematic once the virus completely subverts vaccine-induced adaptive immunity, and consequently leaves the child at the mercy of its (untrained) innate immune system!

Of course, one may prefer to ignore the science or decide to take the risk but even then, the question remains as to why we have not been vaccinating our children against seasonal influenza in the past (preferably using non-replicating vaccines!?) and why no single childhood vaccine is using non-replicating virus to immunize young children against glycosylated viruses (e.g., measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, rotavirus)? Despite all ‘modern’ technologies vaccinology has remained an empirical business. However, vaccinologists sometimes hit the nail right on the head: We now understand that these replication-competent childhood vaccines train the innate immune response in children whereas non-replicating vaccines don’t. That is why live attenuated vaccines can – under certain conditions- be useful to prevent or abrogate outbreaks and why they haven’t been replaced yet by more modern/ sophisticated vaccine technologies!



[1] The updated Omicron vaccines cannot be expected to prime new neutralizing Abs instead of recalling infection-enhancing Abs: Novel bivalent C-19 vaccines: What does common immunological sense predict in regard to their impact on the C-19 pandemic? | Voice for Science and Solidarity
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
I was just confronted in the church by my elders saying they don't want me speaking against the vaccine and boosters. So please pray for me. I stood up and told them they don't know the dangers...and sent them this interview.

I am so sorry that happened to you and surprised that it happened in your church. Did someone complain about you? After 2.5 years, why now all of a sudden did they approach you about this? Especially now that it's common knowledge that the vaxx neither stops the spread or stops infection. Good for you for standing your ground and trying to enlighten and education them.

HD
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Of all the articles I'm going to post now, this to me was the most interesting. There were a lot of people packed in that church. ....


(fair use applies)

Danish queen tests positive after UK monarch’s funeral
yesterday

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II has tested positive for the coronavirus after attending the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, the royal palace said Wednesday.

In a statement, the royal household said that Margrethe, 82, who has been on the throne for 50 years, canceled her official duties after the Tuesday night test.

The palace said her oldest son, heir to the throne Crown Prince Frederik, and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, would would take the queen’s place hosting a dinner with Danish government officials and members of parliament.

Margrethe previously tested positive for the virus in February. At the time, the palace said she had received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. The queen was among the dignitaries who attended Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral Monday at Westminster Abbey in London.

Margrethe’s half-century reign makes her Europe’s longest-serving monarch following the Sept. 8 death of Elizabeth, 96, who ruled for 70 years.

Out of respect for the late British monarch, Margrethe had asked her court to adjust the Sept. 10-11 program for her own 50-year anniversary commemorations. Among the events she canceled at short notice was appearing on the Amalienborg Palace balcony to greet well-wishers and a ride in a horse-drawn carriage through Copenhagen.

Margrethe was proclaimed queen on Jan. 15, 1972, a day after her father, King Frederik IX, died following a short illness.
 

Heliobas Disciple

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It's OK to Get Your COVID Booster and Flu Shot at the Same Time
Sarah Jacoby - Today
Wed, September 21, 2022, 10:33 AM

The new, updated COVID-19 boosters are available now — and everyone age 12 and up may be eligible to get them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say. With the usual flu season quickly approaching as well, you'll also have the option to get your new COVID-19 booster and flu shot at the same appointment.

Most people aren't likely to get significantly more side effects or — more severe side effects — than they would if they'd only gotten one vaccine or the other, experts told TODAY. But side effects are definitely possible and can be unpleasant for a day or two, the experts said, so it's smart to think ahead, plan your appointment well and be prepared to not feel your best for a little while.

Why do we need another COVID-19 booster?

It's important to get a booster because the vaccines' protection against infection seems to wane more quickly now, Dr. Otto Yang, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told TODAY.

There's early evidence that even that long-lasting protection against severe disease and death may begin to wane now, too, he said. “We’ve enjoyed the luxury of seeing death rates and severe illness drop a lot,” Yang said, “but to maintain that people need to continue to get boosters.”

The development of these particular boosters (from both Moderna and Pfizer) is a big deal. Before, the only vaccines available were the same ones we’ve had since December 2020 even though the virus has mutated significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Frank Esper, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, told TODAY.

"But now they have reformulated that vaccine so that it also works against the most recent omicron strain. So it's a little more tailored to what we're seeing now," he explained.

These updated shots target both the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the coronavirus as well as the original strain, which is why they're called bivalent boosters.

"It's an exciting development because it's the first time in a while we've had what appears to be a good match between the vaccine and the circulating strain," Dr. Thomas Murray, associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the Yale School of Medicine, told TODAY.

That means there's more potential for these boosters to more effectively curb the spread of COVID-19 infections in addition to preventing severe illness and deaths, he said.

Can I get my COVID-19 booster and flu vaccine at the same time?

Yes, you can. The official guidance from the CDC is that, while there is limited data available right now, there are no major concerns about getting your booster and your flu shot at the same time.

One of the big reasons for that is just simple convenience, Murray said. This way, you don't need to make multiple visits.

The other reason is that we now have some encouraging data from last year that reinforces how safe it is to get both vaccines at once. Some studies found that people who got both shots at the same time had a slightly higher rate of side effects. But they were not more likely to get serious or severe side effects than those who just received the previous COVID-19 booster on its own. Other studies found no differences in the rates of reactogenicity between those who got two shots and those who just got one.

All of this supports the idea that, for most of us, getting a flu shot and a COVID-19 booster at the same time is a safe and convenient way to check off those boxes on our seasonal to-do lists.

"There's no cross-reaction, one vaccine is not inhibiting the other or causing adverse events in the other," Esper said. "They're completely different medicines but you can receive them at the same time."

There are a few instances in which you might want to wait on one shot or the other, though. For example, if you had COVID-19 within the last three months, the CDC says you can consider waiting to get a booster depending on your individual risk factors. But that's not a reason to delay your flu vaccine, Murray said. And if you're not sure what makes the most sense for you, check with your doctor.

Will I get more side effects if I get them at the same time?

The research we have so far suggests that people don't usually get more intense side effects if they get these two vaccines together — but it's still possible. And if you know that you tend to react more to these vaccines, then it's reasonable to assume you'll react more when you get them at the same time, Esper said.

To make things a little more bearable, the CDC recommends getting one shot in each arm or, if you're getting them in the same limb, to get them at least an inch apart, Murray explained.

The exact side effects you might get from either vaccine will vary from person to person. And although we don't have too much data yet on the new omicron boosters in humans, there's no reason to think they will be significantly different from those seen with past COVID-19 boosters, Yang said.

Here are the most common potential side effects of each, according to the CDC.

Common COVID-19 booster side effects:
  • Pain, swelling and redness at the injection site
  • Fever
  • Chills
  • Headache
  • Fatigue
  • Nausea

Common flu shot side effects:
  • Redness, soreness and swelling around the injection site
  • Fever
  • Nausea
  • Headache
  • Fatigue
  • Muscle aches

How to prepare for booster and flu shot side effects:


Keep in mind that "these are very common side effects but are not serious side effects," Esper said. "They're not life-threatening side effects and they go away on their own." So even if you're feeling miserable, know that it's temporary. And there are some ways to make yourself feel a little better while you recuperate.

First, plan ahead. Try to schedule your vaccines for when you don't have much going on in the following day or two, just in case you need to lay low due to side effects. "So if you have a big meeting at work or your child is in sports and has a big game, that's probably not the day to go get the vaccine," Murray said.

If you're in pain after your shots, take over-the-counter pain medications like ibuprofen or acetaminophen. Guidance on this might vary because there are "some theoretical concerns" that taking a medication like this could affect how well your immune system responds to the vaccine, Murray said.

That's why Yang recommends waiting about four hours after getting the vaccine to take medication if you can. But there's very little conclusive data on that point, he explained. And if you're feeling significant side effects like arm soreness, fever, headache or muscle aches, the experts agreed that it's reasonable to manage those with OTC medication. (But you should not take those medications before getting your shots, the CDC says.)

The CDC also suggests gently using or exercising the arm that's sore and applying a cool compress to ease soreness and swelling.

There are a few potentially serious (but rare) side effects, like allergic reactions, that require medical attention.

But, for the most part, think of those side effects as signs that your vaccines are kicking in and that your body is doing its job to keep you safe. "That feeling is your immune system turning on and developing the protection that's going to last for the next months to years going forward," Esper said.
 

Heliobas Disciple

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Biden says the COVID pandemic 'over.' Could that put some emergency aid programs at risk?
Maureen Groppe and Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY
Wed, September 21, 2022, 7:59 PM

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s seemingly offhand declaration that the COVID-19 pandemic “is over” could complicate several issues for the administration.

Officials are encouraging people to get boosted ahead of a possible fall and winter wave of infections. They’ve asked Congress for $22.4 billion in emergency coronavirus funding. The administration had been expected to renew a public health emergency, which is keeping millions of Americans on Medicaid. And Biden’s controversial decision to wipe out student loan debt for millions of Americans rests on the Education Department’s ability to ease hardship in a national emergency.

White House officials have not commented publicly on Biden's remark since it aired Sunday on CBS.

The latest
  • What Biden said: In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes," Biden was asked whether the pandemic is over. He said it is, though he added, “We still have a problem with COVID.”
  • COVID-19 casualties: Nearly 3,000 Americans are still dying from COVID-19 each week.
  • What the World Health Organization said: At a news briefing last week, the head of the global agency said more needs to be done until the pandemic is “truly over.”
  • What the White House has said before: On Sept. 6, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said: “The pandemic isn’t over.”

What’s about to happen

Congress is deciding whether to approve billions of dollars of additional coronavirus funding requested by Biden. Republicans have insisted that unspent money from a previous COVID-19 package be repurposed. The administration has said the money is needed to prepare for future surges.

Ahead of a possible surge of infections this fall and winter, the administration is encouraging people to get booster shots targeting the original virus and the most recent variants, called BA.4 and BA.5, which now dominate the U.S. and the world. If the uptake is similar to the rate at which the public gets vaccinated for the flu, an estimated 100,000 hospitalizations could be prevented, according to the administration.

Sarah Lovenheim, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, tweeted Monday that the COVID-19 public health emergency remains in effect. She said the administration will "continue to lean on the science" to decide when it should end and will give states 60 days notice.

Top takeaways

Biden’s comment, which is at odds with the data and with what his COVID-19 coordinator said earlier this month, appears to reflect not a change in policy but an unartful way of saying the worst of the pandemic is over.

Still, some public health experts said his comment is dangerous and problematic. And Republicans jumped on it to declare that it means student loan debt shouldn’t be forgiven, the public health emergency shouldn't be extended, and vaccinations shouldn’t be required.

What they are saying

-
“The pandemic is over,” Biden told “60 Minutes." “We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. It's – but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing.”

- “I understand what he was trying to say but such rhetoric is hurtful, dangerous, and scientifically untrue,” tweeted Dr. Jerome Adams, who was President Donald Trump’s surgeon general.

- “Heck no. With all due respect, @JoeBiden — you’re wrong. Pandemic is not over. Almost 3,000 Americans are dying from #COVID19 every single week,” tweeted Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and co-founder of the World Health Network.

- “We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sept. 14.

- “Biden admitted last night that the COVID pandemic is over. In other words, there is no ‘ongoing emergency’ to justify his proposal for student loan handouts,” tweeted Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

Is the pandemic really 'over'?

Public health experts say the country is in a much better place than it was a year ago, but they’re not willing to declare victory just yet.

“It’s way too early to say the pandemic is over,” said Dr. Philip Chan, an infectious disease specialist and an associate professor at Brown University. “If we let our guard down, it’s going to come back to bite us.”

Former U.S. surgeon general: No, Mr. President, the COVID-19 pandemic isn't over – even if your administration is over it

The U.S. is still reporting a high level of COVID-19 death and suboptimal vaccine uptake, experts say, as the country approaches another expected winter surge. Johns Hopkins University data shows more than 13,000 deaths and 2.1 million cases were reported in the past month, which experts say may be an undercount as many infections go unreported with home testing.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that only 34% of eligible Americans got their second original COVID-19 booster, which experts say doesn’t suggest much hope for the new omicron-specific booster.

“There’s still close to 500 people (a day) dying of a vaccine preventable disease, and we still do not have the vaccine uptake that we’d like to see,” said Jodie Guest, professor and vice chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. “I don’t find that to be a level where I’m willing to say (the pandemic) is over.”

By definition, a pandemic is an outbreak of disease in multiple countries around the world, Chan said, and some countries are still reporting high levels of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
 

Heliobas Disciple

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Why it's easier to find Pfizer's updated COVID boosters than Moderna's

Alexander Tin - CBS News
Wed, September 21, 2022, 12:19 PM

Vaccinators around the country are reporting weeks-long delays in shipments of Moderna's updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters. The delays come after the Food and Drug Administration flagged concerns at a facility contracted to fill the Moderna's new shots into vials.

The wait stems from an Indiana plant operated by Catalent, which is one of two firms that has been bottling Moderna's vaccine in the U.S.

Following an inspection, the FDA this month faulted the Moderna contractor for falling short in its quality control procedures, and failing to "thoroughly investigate" batches discovered to be contaminated. Since September 2020, the company had received 179 complaints over impurities in its vials.

The FDA's inspection had tied up emergency use authorization of all the updated doses filled and finished by Catalent for Moderna.

However, citing "potential supply limitations," Moderna submitted additional data to the regulator asking to clear 10 batches of its vaccine from Catalent's plant.

The FDA granted that request on Tuesday. Moderna told the regulator it plans to "submit similar requests for additional batches on a rolling basis" to free up millions more doses.

"This authorization was based on FDA's determination that the batches met all applicable specifications, following a careful review of information provided by Moderna about the manufacture of these batches. The agency has no concerns with the safety, effectiveness, or quality of these batches," FDA spokesperson Michael Felberbaum said in a statement.

News of the FDA's move was reported first by The Washington Post.

"We anticipate that these availability constraints will be resolved in the coming days. We continue to be on track to meet our committed delivery of 70 million doses of our updated, bivalent vaccine by the end of this year," Moderna spokesperson Christopher Ridley said in a statement.

The delays have resulted in a lopsided rollout of the updated boosters since they were formally cleared for use on September 1.

Some states have moved to suspend ordering for the Moderna doses, citing the delays. Others have urged residents not to wait for the Moderna shots.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services says 26 million doses of the updated shots have been distributed. Americans are eligible to receive either shot, "regardless of which primary vaccine they received."

"We anticipate that Moderna supply will continue to increase in the coming days and weeks. Pfizer's updated COVID-19 vaccine is already widely available across the country," said the HHS spokesperson.

A spokesperson for Pfizer said the company has supplied "more than 21 million doses," which works out to some 80% of the U.S. supply so far. The company plans to ship "up to 100 million" doses by the end of November.

"Pfizer's Kalamazoo, MI site alone is currently manufacturing 10-15 million doses per week with capacity to increase this considerably," said Julia Michelle Cohen, the Pfizer spokesperson.

Nationwide data on how many the shipped doses of vaccine have gone into arms is expected to be released this Thursday, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said at a recent webinar hosted by the COVID-19 Vaccine and Equity Project.

Early figures from the agency posted last week suggested vaccinations climbed to the highest levels since early May, as the updated boosters began to roll out.

The FDA's move also comes as the regulator has said it is working to vet data submitted by Moderna as well as Pfizer and its partner BioNTech on updating booster shots for younger children.

In planning documents shared with health departments this week, the CDC said it expects the bivalent shots could soon be cleared for use "in early to mid-October" for younger age groups.

Moderna's shots could be a simpler option for family doctors and pharmacies, given the company plans to use the same vaccine vials as adults for children down to six years old.

"One question that I'll answer right now, that may come up is, when are we going to have these vaccines for younger children? And I think we can say that, for the age range of five and up, that's a couple of weeks away," the FDA's Dr. Peter Marks told a virtual event with the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases on Monday.

"And for the youngest children, it's probably later this fall to early winter as the data come in and we can review it," said Marks.
 

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Vax Refusal Poised to Deepen National Guard’s End-Strength Shortage
The Guard is missing its goals for the first time in several years, and worse is expected to come.

Caitlin M. Kenney - Staff Reporter, Defense One
September 21, 2022 10:28 AM ET

The National Guard will fall about 9,000 people short of its end-strength goals this fiscal year, a roughly two-percent deficit that is expected to deepen over the next two years by troops who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine, Guard officials said Tuesday.

National Guard recruiters “have told me pretty much unanimously in every location I go just how difficult the current recruiting challenges are that they're facing. For many of them, it's unprecedented in their time as a recruiter,” Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters Tuesday.

The Army National Guard reached just over 98 percent of its end-strength authorization, or 6,000 short of 336,000 troops for fiscal 2022, Hokanson said. The Air National Guard has reached about 97.2 percent of its roughly 108,000-person end-strength goal, leaving it 3,000 short when the fiscal year ends this month. End-strength numbers are affected by recruiting as well as retention of current members.

Hokanson is concerned by those deficits in part because the Guard has met their end-strength goals in recent years.

Hokanson attributed the Guard’s recruiting challenges to several things, including competition with industry and academia, the small percentage of youth who meet standards, and the limited exposure people have to military life and opportunities available to them.

For 2023, the Army National Guard again has a goal of 336,000 soldiers. They may have to adjust that number in 2024 if thousands of troops who have refused the coronavirus vaccine and have not received an exception to policy are kicked out, Anson Smith, the deputy chief of the Army National Guard strength maintenance division, told reporters.

About 9,000 soldiers have refused the vaccine so far and could be kicked out in 2023, Smith said, and they anticipate another 5,000 could be kicked out in 2024. No one has been removed from the Army National Guard for vaccine refusal yet, Smith said, because they are still waiting for the “phase two memorandum” from Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.

“And so as we go into [fiscal year 2024] and beyond, that will be factored into our overall mission, and those losses that we will have to make up based on those individuals who choose to not get COVID [vaccine],” Smith said.

The Guard is not alone in its difficult quest for recruits. In July, Wormuth and the Army’s chief of staff called the situation the “most challenging recruiting environment since the All-Volunteer Force was established in 1973.”
 

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‘Exceeded Their Authority’: Judge Strikes Down Biden Administration’s Head Start COVID Mandate

By Zachary Stieber
September 21, 2022

The mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed on the federal Head Start program was struck down on Sept. 21 by a U.S. judge who said the mandate is clearly outside the power of the agency that promulgated and enforced it.

“The Court finds the Agency Defendants have exceeded their authority by implementing the Head Start Mandate because Congress only gave Agency Defendants the power to ‘modify’ Head Start performance standards. The Head Start Mandate is not a modification,” U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said in a 27-page ruling.

Federal law says the government can impose standards on Head Start, a program for young children in low-income families who aren’t yet attending school, related to administrative and financial management standards, standards relating to the condition and location of facilities, and other standards the secretary of health finds appropriate.

Defendants, including Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, had claimed that the law enabled the imposition of the dual mask–vaccine mandate, but Doughty said they were wrong.

“There is nothing in 42 U.S.C. [Section] 9836a which would allow Agency Defendants to make medical decisions for employees and volunteers, and/or to require two (2), three (3), and four (4), year-old students to wear masks the majority of the day,” he said. “There is a disconnect between the Agency’s challenged actions and its assigned mission and expertise. Agency Defendants’ expertise is not making medical decisions for its students, volunteers, or employees.”

Doughty took the unusual step of permanently striking down the mandate. That means it is no longer in place unless an appeals court or the Supreme Court steps in.

The permanent injunction is in place for 24 states, all of which sued the Biden administration over the mandate in December 2021.

The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the rule of law and for health care freedom,” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, said in a statement. “We stood up and fought the Biden administration’s illegal mandates on behalf of Kansas kids, teachers, and parents, and today, we all won.”

“Louisiana teacher Sandy Brick has been serving her students through adversity and uncertainty the last two years. Today, this decision vindicates her right to teach without sacrificing her freedom,” added Sarah Harbison, general counsel at the Pelican Institute for Public Policy.

Brick is a Head Start employee in Louisiana who filed a suit that was merged with the suit filed by the attorneys general of the 24 states.

The Department of Health and the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees Head Start, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Biden administration announced this week that it would soon rescind the Head Start mask mandate, which is in place for all workers and children aged 2 and older, but would keep the vaccine mandate, which applies to all workers and many contractors and volunteers, in place.
 

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EXCLUSIVE: CDC Reveals Details of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring Teams
By Zachary Stieber
September 21, 2022

About 30 people are working on monitoring data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed to The Epoch Times.

The disclosure came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Epoch Times sought details on the U.S. government’s COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring, which officials have repeatedly described as “the most intensive” in U.S. history. The CDC previously declined to name any of the employees working on VAERS, and falsely said it was performing a type of analysis on the data from the system starting in early 2021. The agency and its director later acknowledged the method, called Proportional Reporting Ratio, was not performed until March 2022.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, which co-manages VAERS with the CDC, says that it has performed a different type of analysis called empirical Bayesian data mining, but refused to share any of the results.

CDC Workers

Approximately nine full-time CDC workers are on the VAERS team, which is led by Dr. John Su, the CDC told The Epoch Times in a letter. Another 20 contractors are on the team.

The staffing numbers vary “depending on the agency needs and has been larger and smaller in the past,” the team said in a statement conveyed through the CDC’s records office.

The Epoch Times asked for all documents concerning the creation of the team and two associated efforts, which focus on post-vaccination heart inflammation, or myocarditis, and blood clotting with low blood platelets, or thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)—two known serious side effects for COVID-19 vaccines.

That included all materials outlining the mission for each team, documents sent for recruiting purposes, and the number of employees on each team.

The CDC provided no materials about the mission for each team. It said the VAERS team “is understood to mean the team tasked with administering and monitoring VAERS” and pointed to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which led to the establishment of VAERS in 1990.

The teams focusing on heart inflammation and blood clotting “are basically ad hoc groups that are formed to address needs but are not part of any formal organizational structure,” the CDC said, adding that the sizes of the groups “have varied between approximately 2 to over 20, depending on workload.”

“There is no documentation with regard to formal authorization and chronology of creating these ‘teams’, when they started their work, or their size,” the CDC added.

Recruitment

The only actual document provided was a four-page recruitment missive sent in November 2020 to members of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which includes more than 6,500 employees of the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies.

The VAERS team asked for workers “with clinical backgrounds,” including expertise in medicine, dentistry, and veterinary services.

Potential members were told that controlling the COVID-19 pandemic “hinge(s) upon safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines” and that the vaccines were expected to be available soon.

“As more people receive COVID-19 vaccines, side effects or ‘adverse events’ will occur. The VAERS Team will monitor adverse events reported after COVID-19 vaccines for unusual adverse events or patterns of reporting that might indicate the need for further safety analysis. For selected adverse events, medical record abstraction will be performed to learn more about the reported patient, Additionally, the VAERS Team will respond to public inquiries about COVID-19 vaccine safety- including from healthcare providers. The VAERS Team will coordinate with CDC’s Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Project on particularly complex and/or medically urgent inquiries,” the missive said.

It told prospective applicants that the work “offers a unique opportunity to contribute to the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, and to learn about COVID-19 vaccines.”

Knowledge of and experience with vaccine safety was not required, nor was a background in infectious diseases.

Accepted applicants would work 100 percent remotely—the CDC has shifted drastically to offsite work during the pandemic—and were not expected to have to work nights or weekends.
 
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COVID-19 Vaccine Harm Group Wary After Facebook Axes Discussion Forum

By Owen Evans
September 21, 2022

A British organisation representing those injured by COVID-19 vaccines has expressed concerns that legitimate discussion on social media could be threatened after a BBC investigation triggered Facebook into removing support groups.

On Friday, the BBC reported that in response to one of its stories, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, had removed several vaccine injury support groups, including one which had over 250,000 members.

Censorship


However, members of Vaccine, Injured, Bereaved UK (VIB UK) are worried that they are at risk of being unfairly targeted by censorship on social media as they try to pull together voices and support in regards to COVID-19 vaccine damage.

The BBC report looked at Facebook users who were using a carrot emoji to hide “anti-vax content” from the tech giant’s automated moderation tool in groups that it claimed were sharing “unverified claims of people being either injured or killed by vaccines.”

Once the BBC alerted Meta, the unnamed groups were removed.


“We have removed this group for violating our harmful misinformation policies and will review any other similar content in line with this policy. We continue to work closely with public health experts and the UK government to further tackle COVID vaccine misinformation,” Meta told the state broadcaster.

VIB UK spokeswoman Claire Hibbs told The Epoch Times that she has been unable to work after developing vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis after taking the AstraZeneca jab in 2021.

She added that trying to get people together to share their experiences of vaccine damage was an uphill battle on Facebook.

“We have just started a closed Facebook group as we want to offer support to people who contact us, but it’s a struggle due to the censorship and the risk of the page being taken down,” said Hibbs.

‘Struggling on Their Own’

“The thought of somebody on their own who doesn’t have access to support groups and who struggling on their own is heartbreaking,” she said.

“We have started one now but it will be very strict and we monitor everyone that joins and it will be purely just for support for people that have been injured,” she said.

The group is formed of 95 individuals who have either been severely injured or bereaved as a direct result of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK, but they are actively seeking more victims to speak out.

Several members of VIB UK are still waiting for financial support through England’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS), which is limited to a single, lump-sum payment of £120,000 ($136,000).

In September, UK politicians discussed in Westminster the lack of support for victims and how the VDPS process of payments could be made “timely and simple.”

Despite recognition from MPs, Hibbs said that discussing such matters online was risky.

“We’ve got this constant battle, as we know that if we left it open for people to join and chat, we know that it will be taken down,” she said.

“We have people that contacted us that have been bereaved and they genuinely just want to speak to people that are in the same situation. As it’s so under-reported it’s so hard to find anyone else to get support,” she added.

Hibbs said that she had the impression that most media outlets are reluctant to speak to them “because they think that we are anti-vax and conspiracy theorists.”

“I had the vaccine in good faith and the next thing I am in the hospital on my death bed. I am not an anti-vax person, but I am not [pro] this vaccine,” said Hibbs.

‘Severely Adversely Affected’

Under VDPS, COVID-19 vaccine harms are recognised when a causative link between vaccination and injury is established and a “severe disability,” or a 60 percent level of disablement, is proven. There are several British law firms calling on individuals to get in touch as soon as possible for such claims.

A private members bill has been forwarded by the Conservative MP Sir Christoper Chope that would “require the Secretary of State to establish an independent review of disablement caused by Covid-19 vaccinations and the adequacy of the compensation offered to persons so disabled; and for connected purposes.”

In March, Chope told The Epoch Times that he believes “tens of thousands have been severely adversely affected by COVID-19 vaccines in the UK.”

Meta and the BBC did not respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment.
 

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Doctor Finds ‘Rectangles and Inverted Pyramids’ in Degraded mRNA Vaccines, Scientists Dispute Analysis
By Enrico Trigoso
September 21, 2022

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from vaccine vials. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

Dr. Daniel Nagase has been using a scanning electron microscope to analyze both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines that were exposed to room temperature for weeks or months, and has found odd objects that according to several doctors who talked to The Epoch Times, should not be in the vials—even after degradation.

Nagase took photos of crystals, spheres, fibers, and most strikingly: “rectangles and inverted pyramids.”

One of the images shows a “hexagonal crystalline structure, on top of which there is a 4-sided rectangular structure with regularly spaced dots in the form of a grid.”

“4-sided structures on top of 6-sided structures do not occur naturally,” Nagase told The Epoch Times, “neither do grid markings.”

A molecular biologist/virologist who reviewed Nagase’s findings told The Epoch Times under the condition of anonymity that the results of the scanning electron microscopy “revealed unexpected content.”

“Most notable is a distinct rectangular shape consisting primarily of carbon and oxygen,” the scientist told The Epoch Times.

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Pfizer vial, March batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

“This shape is inconsistent with known morphological characteristics of vaccine components and biological matter. Further investigation of vaccine composition is pertinent and independent verification in controlled conditions is urgently needed.”

No Nitrogen, No Phosphorous in First Batch

Nagase’s main concern is that they are composed of “just carbon and oxygen.”

He maintains that biologics such as RNA would show signs of nitrogen and phosphorous, but his first batch (from March) of microscopic scans of Pfizer and Moderna vials did not show either of these elements on his machine.

The August batch did detect phosphorous, “indicating there is either DNA or RNA in the sample.”

The scanning electron microscope he uses is able to—and has detected—nitrogen in other different scans which he showed to The Epoch Times.

He did not want to reveal the brand of the apparatus because “that might identify the machine.”

Nagase is an ER Doctor from Canada who has been practicing since 2008. He studied Physiology and Cell Biology at McGill University and also went to Dalhousie University Medical School.

The type of microscope Nagase is using is able to shoot an electron beam through electromagnetic fields and lenses and concentrates the beam toward the object that is being analyzed, then the beam bounces outward with electrons and X-rays, and shows what chemical elements the object was composed of.

He has done two series of analyses on the mRNA vaccines. The last one was done around four months ago, and the new one was done in August. He has sent The Epoch Times a new image (the inverted pyramid from the featured image of this article) from his recent analysis, and is currently in the process of going through many gigabytes of data from the new batch of scans.

Nagase said that he got both batches from “different cities” in Western Canada.

The new images are “very similar” to the first analysis, he asserts.

Nagase told The Epoch Times that he found “Carbon/Oxygen structures in the shapes of crystals, spheres, fibers, rectangles, and inverted pyramids” in his first analysis.

Nagase “didn’t see any carbon spheres or fibers,” on the second analysis.

Screen-Shot-2022-09-19-at-11.51.15-AM-1-1200x1336.png

SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Pfizer vial, August batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

The Pfizer vials he got for the March analysis were kept at room temperature for around 2 months, and the Moderna vials for about 1 month, he says.

The vials for the August analysis were kept at room temperature for about two weeks.

Elements, Temperature, and Time

Dr. Lisa Morici, told Health.com in December 2020 that the “mRNA rapidly degrades. There are also enzymes in the environment and all around us that break down mRNA,” explaining why the vaccines need to be frozen so deeply.

Dr. Michael Palmer, a microbiologist, told The Epoch Times that since the vaccine samples were “left to rot for about 2 months in a liquid state … we don’t know whether any of the strange shapes that were observed in those samples were actually present in the native material.”

“A lot can happen in that time, and we don’t know whether any of the strange shapes that were observed in those samples were actually present in the native material,” Palmer said.

However, he acknowledged that the complete lack of phosphorus and of nitrogen in the X-ray spectra is “potentially important.”

“Both the mRNA and the lipid nanoparticles should contain both of these elements; and whatever chemical degradation might have happened to the chemical compounds contained during those two months, the chemical elements those compounds had consisted of would have been preserved,” Palmer continued.

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Pfizer vial, March batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

“We would need to know, however, exactly what steps were taken in the preparation of those samples for electron microscopy. Could it be that the lipids and the mRNA, or their degradation products, were washed off, and only the strange shapes remained? Also, all the spectra were acquired from the strange shapes, and none from the background between them. Thus, based on the limited information contained in the video, I don’t consider the absence of mRNA and of lipid nanoparticles to have been proven conclusively,” Palmer concluded.

Another microbiologist, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi (retired), “partly but not wholly” agreed with Palmer’s point of view.

“The fact is the ‘monopoly’ of carbon and oxygen in all analyses,” Bhakdi pointed out.

“This ties in with the news of ’empty’ batches,” he said.

The “bad batch” or “empty batch” idea refers to the allegations that different batches of vaccine vials contain different substances.

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Moderna vial, March batch (Courtesy of Dr.Daniel Nagase)

Palmer and Bhakdi recently published a study about spike protein expression detection even after 9 months, as well as inflammation of different organs due to auto-immune response.

“While Dr. Nagase did not have fresh samples, what he found is consistent with what everyone else found when they did have fresh samples. So while we can’t say what those things are, we know they show at a minimum crap production process,” said Sasha Latypova, a former pharma executive who was on Palmer and Bhakdi’s email exchange thread.

About the temperature issue, Nagase stated his idea: “The point of examining unrefrigerated vials is to see what the vaccine does in conditions more in line with the human body.”

He thinks that “the refrigeration temperature does not make any sense.”

“Negative 40 [degrees celsius] is not a biological temperature. Storage of DNA/RNA for several months only requires -20. The expiry dates for the mRNA vaccines are all 6 months or less (from what I’ve seen estimating [based on] the date of manufacture),” Nagase said.

Scientific Debate

A recently retired Yale electron microscopist/researcher who talked to The Epoch Times dismissed Nagase’s findings, saying that since the vaccines were stored in suboptimal conditions, there was “no protocol” for the research.

“There are no valid scientific protocols to analyze the contents of vaccines using these methods. Furthermore, the preparation of samples for electron microscopy unfortunately lends itself to the introduction of artifacts (damage to the integrity of the sample caused by poor preparation techniques) which are often misinterpreted under very high magnification,” the scientist said under the condition of anonymity.

Nagase responded with this rebuttal: “The whole point of a PhD is to write a research paper to prove that you have the analytical thought process to approach and answer an unknown. So a proper PhD committee would evaluate a student’s ability to create a protocol to answer a question where there is no established protocol. The critical factor in determining whether a student has a ‘Doctorate’ is the ability for synthesis of knowledge. Creating knowledge where there was none before.”

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Pfizer vial, March batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

The former electron microscopist further questioned Nagase’s work: “For example, Dr. Nagase sees something which seems like a microchip—if you blow something up hundreds of thousands of times it’s hard to interpret what you’re looking at. It’s kind of analogous to looking at an ink blot because many people have different interpretations. Some people see a bird or some people see a tree.”

To which Nagase responded: “The chip photos are 1,000 to 2,000 x magnification. It says so on the photo. A scanning electron microscope can’t do ‘hundreds of thousands.’ That’s transmission electron microscope territory, and if he actually has any experience with electron microscopy he’d be able to tell from the nature of the image whether or not it was a scanning or transmission electron microscope.”

The scientist also questioned Nagase’s chain of custody, saying that the images are not from the vaccines since they have no biological contents.

“I have the chain of custody, from the provincial health department source of the samples,” Nagase answered.

Other Doctors

Dr. Sherri Tenpeny is a doctor who has been warning about vaccine dangers for about 30 years.

“Dr. Nagase is one more in a series of investigators who have discovered unusual contents inside of a vaccine vial this is supposed to be manufactured under sterile conditions,” Tenpenny told The Epoch Times.

“Researchers in Spain, UK, Germany, Japan, and Brazil who have viewed multiple vaccine solutions under a microscope of various magnifications have all found particulate matter that should not be in any shot,” Tenpenny said.

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Moderna vial, March batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

Tenpenny said that there are many articles that refute their findings.

“Which of course means they are right over the target,” she said.

“No matter what its identification, it should not be injected into the body and particulates such as this are quite possibly leading to many of the side effects attributed to the injections.”
‘Sine Qua Non for a Biological Origin’

Dr. James Thorp finds these inclusions in the vials to be “bizarre” and cannot be “definitively defined.”

“I do find it very peculiar that electron microscopy documents in all of the areas examined that none of the contents appear to be of biological origin. There were no elements of nitrogen or phosphorus as sampled by electron microscopic interrogation. Both nitrogen & phosphorus are a sine qua non for a biological origin,” Thorp told The Epoch Times.

“I would not expect the vaccination sample remaining at room temperature for multiple weeks to test negative for these two elements that would define a biological source. Of course, DNA or RNA would decompose but as a chemistry major, I would not expect the complete elimination of nitrogen and phosphorus from these old samples,” he said.

“Dr. Nagase’s work should not be taken in isolation. We should consider that others have found similar ‘contaminating’ items within the vials and this should prompt immediate action to investigate what the ‘contamination’ is,” Dr. Janci Lindsay, a toxicologist and molecular biologist, told The Epoch Times.

“In the meantime, the inoculation program should be halted. This would be the logical response if the governments of the world were truly interested in the health and safety of their citizens. The failure to do that speaks volumes as to the true intent of this program,” she said.

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Moderna vial, March batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

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SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image from Moderna vial, March batch. (Courtesy of Dr. Daniel Nagase)

Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.
 
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POTUS, Pandemic is over
12 min 45 sec

Sep 21, 2022
Dr. John Campbell

The pandemic is over (POTUS) https://www.fda.gov/emergency-prepare... Emergency use authorizations August 31, 2022 https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press... Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, to authorize bivalent formulations, for use as a single booster dose Original strain + BA.4 and BA.5 lineages For each bivalent COVID-19 vaccine, the FDA based its decision on the totality of available evidence, including extensive safety and effectiveness data for each of the monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, safety and immunogenicity data obtained from a clinical study of a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine that contained mRNA from omicron variant BA.1 lineage that is similar to each of the vaccines being authorized, Biden administration Has already placed an order for 170 million doses https://www.science.org/content/artic... Data collected by the companies Human data, only available BA.1 booster BA.1 trails did not look for protection against severe disease, (People trials are very expensive) For the BA.4/BA.5 boosters, the companies have submitted animal data. (not released publicly) Pfizer presented preliminary findings in eight mice given BA.4/BA.5 vaccines as their third dose, (for EMA) Showed an increased antibody response to all Omicron variants tested: BA.1, BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5. Clinical trials for the BA.4/BA.5 vaccines will begin this month August 19, 2022 https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press... Today, the FDA authorized the emergency use of Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, in individuals 12 through 17 years of age. This authorization follows a rigorous analysis and evaluation of the safety and effectiveness data conducted by the FDA. July 13, 2022 https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press... Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, in individuals 18 years of age and older. June 17, 2022 https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press... Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, in children down to 6 months of age. December 22, 2021 https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press... Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s Paxlovid
 

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Lasting lung damage seen in children and teens after COVID

by Radiological Society of North America
September 21, 2022

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Free-breathing phase-resolved functional lung (PREFUL) low-field MRI at 0.55T with calculated parameters at an axial plane after automatic registration to a mid-expiration position and lung parenchyma segmentation. From left to right, representative color-coded images of functional show ventilation defects (VDP, blue), perfusion defects (QDP, red), ventilation/perfusion (V/Q match, green), ventilation/perfusion defects (V/Q defect, purple) in a healthy control (upper row, 7-year-old male), a participant recovered from COVID-19 (middle row, 10-year-old male) and a participant with long COVID (15-year-old male). Credit: Radiological Society of North America

Children and adolescents who have either recovered from COVID-19 or have long COVID show persistent lung damage on MRI, according to a study published in Radiology.

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Since emerging in late 2019, it has killed more than 5 million people worldwide. The lungs are the primary target for the virus.

Study of the disease's long-term effects has accelerated as the number of COVID survivors climbs and more people are diagnosed with long COVID. The World Health Organization defines long COVID as involving symptoms that persist for a minimum of 12 weeks and other factors, such as symptoms that result in a new health limitation or worsening of a pre-existing underlying medical condition.

The nature of the post-acute phase of the infection is poorly understood in younger people. CT has shown persistent damage to the lungs in adults, but CT uses ionizing radiation and has limited diagnostic value in children, where lung changes due to COVID-19 are less pronounced.

"We conceived this study when the evidence for long- or post-COVID cases in adults was growing," said study senior author Ferdinand Knieling, M.D., specialist in pediatrics and adolescent medicine from the departments of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at University Hospital Erlangen in Erlangen, Germany. "This was also when the first patients with unspecific symptoms were seen in our department, and parents started to ask about an association with a prior infection."

Dr. Knieling and colleagues studied COVID-19's effects in children and adolescents using low-field MRI. The technology relies on a lower magnetic field than conventional MRI and allows for free breathing, meaning the subjects do not have to hold their breath during imaging. This makes scanning more feasible in children.

"As parents, we also wanted to find what risks an infection might have," Dr. Knieling said. "Luckily, our departments teamed up to use their brand-new MRI scanner designed for investigations in children and adolescents."

The researchers looked at changes in lung structure and function in 54 children and adolescents (mean age 11 years) with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of the 54 patients, 29 had recovered, and 25 had long COVID. All but one of the patients had been unvaccinated at the time of original infection.

None of the COVID-19 group required hospital admission during the primary infection period. Shortness of breath, impaired attention, headache, fatigue and loss of smell were the most commonly reported symptoms at the time of the study. Results from the COVID-19 group were compared with those from nine healthy controls.

MRI allowed the researchers to derive the V/Q match, a measure of air and blood flow in the lungs. If lungs are working properly, the air and blood flow should match.

V/Q matches showed persistent pulmonary dysfunction in the patients who had recovered from COVID-19 and in those with long COVID. The V/Q match was 62% in the recovered group and 60% in the long COVID group—both considerably lower than the 81% match in healthy controls.

"Persistent symptoms after COVID still cause diagnostic odysseys, and this is especially true for young people," Dr. Knieling said. "Our findings illustrate that caring for these patients is a multidisciplinary challenge."

Long-term implications of these lung changes remain unclear, but the results warrant further surveillance of persistent lung damage in children and adolescents after COVID-19, Dr. Knieling said. Lung MRI is already widely available, he noted, making these imaging approaches easy to integrate into clinical routine care. More research will help show the full potential of MRI in COVID-19 survivors.

"A follow-up trial has already started, and we seek to understand how findings change over time," Dr. Knieling said. "Additionally, we will take closer looks at other organs to see how this correlates with our findings."
 

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The spike of SARS-CoV-2 promotes metabolic rewiring in hepatocytes

by CIC bioGUNE
September 21, 2022

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Proteomic analyses reveal changes in hACE2 mouse hepatocytes after infection with pseudotyped viral particles expressing the spike of SARS-CoV-2. a Volcano plot showing the 354 differentially expressed peptides between hACE2 mouse hepatocytes in the presence (+) or absence (-) of pseudotyped viral particles after 48?h. b Volcano plot showing the 132 differentially expressed peptides between WT mouse hepatocytes in the presence (+) or absence (-) of pseudotyped viral particles. For a detailed list of all peptides, including their fold-change and p values refer to the Supplementary Data 1. c Venn diagram showing common peptides between hACE2 (+ vs. -) and WT (+ vs. -) mouse hepatocyte comparisons. d Heatmap showing the top-25 up- or downregulated peptides between hACE2 mouse hepatocytes in the presence (+) or absence (-) of pseudotyped viral particles. e Gene ontology term enriched pathways representing the unique differentially expressed peptides in the WT (+ vs. -) or hACE2 (+ vs. -) mouse hepatocyte comparisons. The number of proteins belonging to the identified dysregulated pathways (left) and their corresponding p values (right) are shown. Credit: Communications Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03789-9

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes multi-organ damage, including liver dysfunction identified in more than 50% of COVID-19 patients. Liver damage in COVID-19 patients could be attributed to cytopathic effects induced by the interaction between the virus and liver cells, to an increased immune response or to drug toxicity associated with the treatment of these patients, according to research carried out at CIC bioGUNE.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the liver has been widely debated. "Clinical studies conducted in patients with COVID-19 described liver lesions, however, it was not clear whether the observed damage was a direct consequence of SARS-CoV-2 tropism to this organ or if, on the contrary, it was the result of the administration of the antibiotic/antiviral treatments used in these patients," says Maria Mercado-Gómez, first author of the publication. In this context, "other viruses targeting the upper respiratory tract, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, have shown tropism towards the liver, so we wonder if the new coronavirus could do so as well," explains Dr. Prieto-Fernández.

The groups of Dr. Martínez-Chantar and Dr. Asís Palazón at CIC bioGUNE, synergized their expertise in hepatic and immunological research to demonstrate that hepatocytes are susceptible to infection in different models, i.e., primary hepatocytes derived from humanized angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (hACE2) mice and primary human hepatocytes. This study is also the result of collaboration with the laboratories of Dr. Jiménez-Barbero, Dr. Nogueiras, Dr. Vicent Prevot and Dr. Félix Elortza, and results have been published in Communications Biology, on August 17, 2022.

"We used pseudotyped viral particles decorated with SARS-CoV-2 spike particles that induced the expression of ZsGreen in host cells upon infection, a fluorescent protein that allows quantification of infection by flow cytometry," explains Dr. Prieto-Fernandez.

After demonstrating the interaction between the spike of SARS-CoV-2 and hepatocytes, the researchers studied the metabolic impact of this interaction using a battery of experimental procedures, including metabolic flux experiments employing carbon-labeled glucose and proteomic analysis by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. This multi-method approach led to the discovery that the SARS-CoV-2 spike promotes metabolic reprogramming in hepatocytes toward glycolysis, but also impaired mitochondrial activity, which partly explains the liver damage associated with COVID-19.

"Importantly, we found that primary human and hACE2 hepatocytes, in which steatosis and inflammation were induced by methionine and choline deprivation, are more vulnerable to infection, and these data support the predisposition of patients with metabolically associated fatty liver disease, MAFLD, to a more severe prognosis of COVID-19," said Dr. Malu Martinez-Chantar. In this context, metformin, a common therapeutic option for hyperglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes that is known to partially attenuate fatty liver, reduces human and mouse hepatocyte infection.

In summary, the research provides evidence that hepatocytes are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus infection and propose that metformin could be a therapeutic option to attenuate SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with fatty liver.
 

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Common gene variant linked to COVID mortality
by Rockefeller University
September 21, 2022

It may be the most baffling quirk of COVID: What manifests as minor, flu-like symptoms in some individuals spirals into severe disease, disability, and even death in others. A new paper published in Nature may explain the genetic underpinnings of this dichotomy.

The researchers demonstrated that mice with gene variants previously linked to Alzheimer's disease were at greater risk of dying when infected with COVID. And a retrospective analysis suggests that patients with those same gene variants were more likely to have died of COVID throughout the pandemic. Because three percent of the world population possesses these gene variants, the findings may have implications for hundreds of millions of individuals globally.

"It is clear that age, sex, and certain preconditions such as diabetes increase the risk of detrimental outcomes, but these factors don't fully explain the spectrum of COVID outcomes," says Sohail Tavazoie, the Leon Hess Professor at The Rockefeller University. "This is the first time that we've seen such a common genetic variant associated with COVID mortality."

A closer look at APOE


In previous work, Tavazoie's lab studied a gene called APOE that plays a role in cancer metastasis. After demonstrating that the gene suppresses the spread of melanoma and regulates anti-tumor immune responses, he and his team began looking at its different forms, or alleles, more closely. Most people have a form called APOE3, but 40 percent of the population carries at least one copy of the APOE2 or APOE4 variant. Individuals with APOE2 or APOE4 produce proteins that differ from APOE3 protein by one or two amino acids.

One or two amino acids make a difference. Individuals with APOE4 are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's and atherosclerosis, and Tavazoie and Benjamin Ostendorf, a postdoctoral fellow in his lab, have demonstrated that APOE4 and APOE2 impact the immune response against melanoma. As the pandemic progressed, Tavazoie and Ostendorf began to wonder whether APOE variants might impact COVID outcomes, too. "We had looked only at non-infectious diseases," he says. "But what if APOE variants also made people vulnerable to an infectious agent, like SARS-CoV-2? Could they cause different immune responses against a virus?"

To find out, Tavazoie and colleagues first exposed more than 300 mice engineered to carry human APOE to a mouse-adapted version of SARS-CoV-2 produced by colleagues Hans-Heinrich Hoffmann and Charles M. Rice. They found that mice with APOE4 and APOE2 were more likely to die than those with the more common APOE3 allele. "The results were striking," says Ostendorf, lead author on the study. "A difference in just one or two amino acids in the APOE gene was sufficient to cause major differences in the survival of mice exhibiting COVID."

Mice with APOE2 and APOE4 also had more virus replicating in their lungs, and more signs of inflammation and tissue damage. At the cellular level, the researchers found that APOE3 appeared to reduce the amount of virus entering the cell, while animals with the other variants had less potent immune responses to the virus. "Taken together, these results suggest that the APOE genotype impacts COVID outcomes in two ways," Ostendorf says, "by modulating the immune response and by preventing SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells."

Toward clinical practice

The lab then turned to retrospective human studies. In an analysis of 13,000 patients in the UK Biobank, the researchers found that individuals with two copies of either APOE4 or APOE2 were more likely to have died of COVID than those with two copies of APOE3. (Roughly three percent of individuals have two copies of APOE2 or APOE4, representing an estimated 230 million people worldwide.)

Tavazoie emphasizes that there is no evidence that the 40 percent of individuals carrying only one of these alleles are at increased risk. Moreover, he says those with two APOE2 or APOE4 alleles are likely at lower risk today than the data indicates. "Vaccination changes the picture," he explains. "Data in UK Biobank spans the length of the pandemic, and many of the individuals who died early on would likely have been protected had they been vaccinated."

Moving forward, Tavazoie hopes to see prospective studies on the link between APOE and distinct COVID outcomes. "We've taken the first step," he says. "But to be clinically useful, these results will need to be assessed in prospective human trials that test individuals for their APOE genotypes and account for the availability of vaccination, something that wasn't available early in the pandemic and would improve COVID outcomes across APOE genotypes."

If future studies do confirm a link between APOE and COVID outcomes, clinicians might recommend that individuals with APOE4 or APOE2 be prioritized for vaccinations, boosters, and antiviral therapies. Screening for APOE is fairly routine and inexpensive, and many individuals already know their APOE variants because commercial genetic tests such as 23andMe use it to gauge Alzheimer's risk. At the same time, Tavazoie cautions that screening for a gene variant linked to Alzheimer's is not without ethical hurdles, given that many people would rather not know whether they are predisposed to an incurable neurodegenerative disease.

For his part, Tavazoie plans to also take a closer look at how APOE interacts with various biological systems. The link between APOE4, Alzheimer's, and COVID, for instance, raises the possibility that this gene may play a role in the neurocognitive complications that arise in some COVID patients. "We want to better understand the function of APOE by studying how it shapes the behavior of cells in these disparate contexts of cancer, dementia and now viral infection," he says.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
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Long COVID patients show signs of autoimmune disease a year after infection

by European Lung Foundation
September 21, 2022

Blood samples drawn from patients with long COVID who are still suffering from fatigue and shortness of breath after a year show signs of autoimmune disease in those patients, according to a study published today in the European Respiratory Journal.

Autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy parts of the body, instead of defending the body against disease. It causes conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Researchers say this finding offers clues about the nature of long COVID that could ultimately lead to improvements in diagnosing and treating the condition.

The research was led by Dr. Manali Mukherjee from McMaster University, Ontario, Canada and Professor Chris Carlsten at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Mukherjee said, "Although long COVID is now recognized by bodies like the World Health Organization, we still know very little about why it develops or how we can help patients.

"I'm a respiratory researcher with a background in studying the immune system and when I experienced the symptoms of long COVID firsthand, I began to wonder about the role of the immune system in this condition."

To find out more, Dr. Mukherjee and her colleagues recruited 106 people who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 between August 2020 and September 2021 and were under the care of three hospitals in Canada (St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver). Researchers also included a group of 22 healthy volunteers and a group of 34 people who had experienced a non-COVID respiratory infection as a comparison.

On three occasions—3, 6 and 12 months after they recovered from the infection—patients were asked if they were suffering any shortness of breath, coughing or fatigue (typical symptoms of long COVID). Most patients were still taking part in the study after 6 months (98 out of 106) while only 57 came back after 12 months. Researchers say this may be due to patients recovering.

Participants also gave blood samples. Researchers tested the samples for particular antibodies. Antibodies are normally produced by the immune system to stick to potentially harmful bacteria or viruses, marking them out for attack by other parts of the immune system. In this case, the researchers looked for antibodies that target healthy cells and tissues in the body and that are known to contribute to autoimmune diseases.

Nearly 80% of the COVID-19 patients had two or more of these antibodies in their blood three months and six months after the infection. This fell to 41% after a year. Most of the healthy volunteers had no sign of these antibodies in their blood and in those who had experienced a non-COVID respiratory infection, levels of these antibodies were comparatively low.

Researchers also found that two specific "autoantibodies" (called U1snRNP and SSb-La autoantibodies), along with other proteins (called cytokines) that cause inflammation, persisted in around 30% of COVID patients a year after infection. This tended to be among those patients who were also still suffering with fatigue and shortness of breath.

Dr. Mukherjee explains, "For the majority the patients in our study, even if they had autoantibodies soon after their infection, this resolved after 12 months. However, in some patients, autoantibodies persist, and these patients are more likely to continue suffering with symptoms and to need medical help.

"These results point towards the need to test for signs of autoimmune disease in patients with symptoms of long COVID that last for a year or more."

Professor Carlsten added, "Our data on autoantibodies in those months following COVID infection buttresses that of other groups and provides strong plausibility for the presentation of long COVID as a systemic disease."

Dr. Mukherjee and her colleagues will now study long COVID patients over a period of two years to see how their levels of autoantibodies change in the longer term.

Dr. Eva Polverino from Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain, is Head of the European Respiratory Society's Respiratory Infections Assembly and was not involved in the research. She said, "Millions of people around the world are suffering with long COVID and that is having an enormous socioeconomic impact. However, there is a lack of evidence on why some people develop the condition and how we can help patients recover.

"We know that certain infections can, in some cases, trigger longer-term autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. This study adds to growing evidence that similar processes may be involved in long COVID. Further work in this area could increase our understanding of long COVID and how best to diagnose and treat the condition."
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
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REMDESIVIR key study in LANCET April 2020 (Wang) swept under the rug by media & Fauci: "Remdesivir in adults with severe COVID-19: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial"
see highlighted passage & numbers and you can see why this study was hidden by Fauci & NIH cabal for with the flawed NIH study, it showed that Remdesivir FAILED in cutting deaths & it increased harms

Dr. Paul Alexander
18 hr ago

My take:

There is evidence that Fauci and NIH et al. tampered with the study protocol so that they could claim some benefit as the drug was showing ineffectiveness and safety failures. So if you look at the protocol adjustment below, they made a non patient important outcome (time to recovery), the primary outcome. These are real crooks!

Remdesivir has emerged as liver and kidney toxic and a failed EBOLA drug, failed! It was a drug in search of a disease and found one here due to Fauci and his ‘standard of care’!

Remdesivir emerged as one of these ineffective and potentially harmful drugs yet was championed by the NIH/NIAID/US government as a prominent treatment. The LANCET’s Wang et al. clinical trial results (below) were released on the very same morning that the US government’s NIH trial results (Beigel et al., https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764) on remdesivir were released, and showed a failure of remdesivir and even skewed heavily towards harms.

The key Wang et al.’s findings was that in adult patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, “remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.” Furthermore, and very alarmingly, adverse events were reported in “102 (66%) of 155 remdesivir recipients versus 50 (64%) of 78 placebo recipients. Remdesivir was stopped early because of adverse events in 18 (12%) patients versus four (5%) patients who stopped placebo early.” In addition, the Kaplan-Meier hazard ratio was not statistically significant, reported as HR 0.73; 95% CI, 0.52 to 1.03 (final report).3

Yet the NIH highly touted and flaunted study that did not report or focus on patient-important objective outcomes and only on reduced time to recovery, was deeply flawed methodologically. The reported primary outcome was time to recovery (discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control purposes). Why was the reported primary outcome in the NIH study not mortality? Did researchers at NIH (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) use a secondary outcome such as time to recovery as the primary outcome because they were looking at the data and saw no benefit for patient-important outcomes such as mortality?

This is very serious if the NIH researchers tampered with the trial’s protocol so that they could declare efficacy yet for a secondary ‘less important’ outcome. Moreover, the legacy media and the NIH/NIAID officials completely disregarded the key findings (including strong signals of harms) from the LANCET Wang et al. trial released on the very same day. Why? When the glorified NIH study’s outcome was not patient-important and there was indication of harms: “serious adverse events were reported in 131 of the 532 patients who received remdesivir (24.6%) and in 163 of the 516 patients who received placebo (31.6%).”

SOURCE:

Wang et al.

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736(20)31022-9













NIH tampered with the protocol:




 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Evidence of harm
A short collection of key pieces of evidence showing the COVID vaccines are not "safe and effective." Not even close. They are the most deadly vaccines we've ever produced.

Steve Kirsch
6 hr ago

Executive summary​

Here’s a high level collection of some of the most compelling pieces of evidence I’ve seen to date. This is not an exhaustive list, but just the key pieces of data that are impossible to explain if the vaccines are safe and effective.
I’ve divided the collection into sections and I’ve tried to limit each section to the most compelling data points. So don’t be disappointed if your favorite item isn’t mentioned in this article; I wanted to keep it short enough to be read..
I’ll try to keep this updated over time. It can be found in the Reference section of my Substack.

The phase 3 clinical trial data​

  1. The Pfizer trial 6 month report showed absolutely no all-cause morbidity or mortality benefit. There were no all-cause benefits at all. It was all negative. Ask your doctor why you should take a new, unproven medical intervention that is not shown to have an overall benefit. Even if there was a benefit of fewer COVID infections (which is seriously suspect due to the gaming below), the fact that the total all-cause numbers for both mortality and morbidity were negative means the intervention should not be recommended by any doctor.
  2. The Pfizer trial 6 month report showed that more people died (and were injured) who got the drug than who got the placebo. In other words, the cure was worse than the disease. The drug maker claimed that none of the people in the vaccine group were killed by the vaccine. They do not reveal the tests they did and explain how they were able to make that assessment. Why the secrecy here, especially in light of the study by Bhakdi and Burkhardt showing that trained medical examiners missed the causality link in 93% of the cases they looked at? The Pfizer and Moderna trials both had 40-50% higher cardiac-related deaths with the vaccine than placebo. This lines up very well with the numerous cardiac-related problems related to the vaccine documented below. In short, the claims from the manufacturer that none of the deaths were caused by the vaccine are highly suspect since all the evidence for those claims remains hidden from public view for some reason.
  3. The Pfizer trial 6 month report showed that at best, the drug saved only 1 COVID life per 22,000 recipients. This means that at best, after vaccinating 220M Americans, we might save 10,000 lives from COVID. But the VAERS reports show an excess death toll of well over 10,000 people and that’s before applying the minimum estimated under-reporting factor of 41. So there isn’t a mortality benefit: it’s actually the reverse. Furthermore, VAERS reports will likely only be filed for deaths in temporal proximity to the shot and is highly unlikely to report those deaths happening 5 months after the shot which appear to be the bulk of the deaths. This makes the comparison even worse. In short, we aren’t anywhere close to saving any lives at all.
  4. The Classen paper analyzed the clinical trial data for all three US vaccines and confirmed the lack of any overall benefit. There was an increase in morbidity which was highly statistically significant in all three vaccines. It concluded, “Based on this data it is all but a certainty that mass COVID-19 immunization is hurting the health of the population in general. Scientific principles dictate that the mass immunization with COVID-19 vaccines must be halted immediately because we face a looming vaccine induced public health catastrophe.” This is exactly right.
  5. The paper by Christine Stabell Benn entitled, “Randomised Clinical Trials of COVID-19 Vaccines: Do Adenovirus-Vector Vaccines Have Beneficial Non-Specific Effects?” confirmed that there was no mortality benefit by taking the COVID mRNA vaccines. “Based on the RCTs with the longest possible follow-up, mRNA vaccines had no effect on overall mortality despite protecting against fatal COVID-19.” See this article by Daniel Horowitz for more information. In other words, these vaccines have no death benefit. Period. Full stop. This is exactly what the Canadian analysis below showed.
  6. Serious adverse reactions, including paralysis, were not reported to the FDA and there were other very serious discrepancies in the trials. For some reason, nobody seems to be interested in exploring or explaining these very serious issues. Some are very clear cut such as the case of Maddie de Garay who was one of 1,000 kids in the clinical trial. She’s paralyzed now and has to eat with a feeding tube. The FDA and Pfizer never investigated, but reported her results as mild abdominal pain in the trial results. This is fraud. Also, there were 5 times as many exclusions in the treatment arm as in the placebo arm of the trial: 311 vs. 60. Do the p-value computation on that one and you’ll find that it could not possibly have happened by chance (1e-40). It means the trial was not blinded. Why didn’t anyone in the medical community ever point this out? Nobody will tell me.
  7. Pfizer admitted to clinical trial fraud in federal court. Their defense was that the FDA was in on it.

Official government data​

  1. The VAERS data, which is the official adverse event reporting system used by the US government, shows that an estimated hundreds of thousands have died and millions have been injured. If these weren’t caused by the vaccine, what caused them? Why are there more adverse events reported for these vaccines than for all other vaccines in history combined? Nobody can answer that question. See this tutorial and this recent confirmation and this article on VAERS and causality. Here’s how these numbers were calculated. Here is independent confirmation of the estimates by Dr. Naomi Wolf who used different datasets. No fact checker was interested in contacting me to challenge the facts since I always insist on recording any calls. Also, the causality of events was confirmed by the Israeli safety studies, but nobody wants to look at those.


    Can you spot the unsafe vaccine? People at the CDC don’t see any problem with this mortality chart: all the vaccines look perfectly safe.
  2. The US Social Security Death Master File showed a 60% increase in death rate in September 2021 vs. September 2020. According to the insurance companies, it wasn’t COVID. A five month delay in death vs. vaccination was discovered in multiple countries, not just the US. Different studies found nearly identical delays.
  3. US disability rose dramatically soon after the vaccines rolled out (Y axis is Z-score). A 3 sigma increase is hard to explain.
  4. As of Sep 2, 2022, the vaccination rate in Israel is now just 2.4%. They used to be one of the world’s most vaccinated countries. Today, very few people in Israel are considered to be vaccinated. If the vaccines are so beneficial, why has nearly the entire country shifted from extremely pro-vax to extremely anti-vax in such a short period of time?

[CONTINUED NEXT TWO POSTS]
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
[CONTINUED FROM POST ABOVE - POST 2 of 2]


Statements from government officials​

  1. The Israeli Ministry of Health revealed in a confidential meeting with scientists that the reason that they never notified the people of Israel about the safety issues from the vaccines was because of budget/staffing issues. Apparently, while they had millions of dollars to promote the vaccines as safe and effective, they forgot to budget for the possibility they were wrong.

Independent expert reports solicited by government officials​

  1. The Israeli vaccine safety data showed very clearly the side-effects are serious, long-lasting, and caused by the vaccines. Secondly, it showed that the Israeli authorities and the worldwide mainstream media are covering it all up. It also showed that US officials were not interested in seeing credible COVID vaccine safety that didn’t go along with the narrative. I tried to find out why, but nobody would talk to me. Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff, a widely respected authority on vaccines, when asked why these people wouldn’t want to see the data, replied, “I don’t know.” This is the single most damaging report in the history of the COVID vaccines. Nobody wants to talk about it. They are hoping it will die. It won’t.
  2. The Canadian report prepared for the Liberal Party of Canada (Trudeau’s party) showed no benefit for infection, hospitalization, and death for those under 60. “The empirical evidence investigated in this report from PHO and PHAC does not support continuing mass vaccination programs, mandates, passports and travel bans for all age groups.” You can’t have a vaccine that doesn’t work in Canada work in other countries. The authors of the report had to hide their identities for fear of retribution.

Pre-prints from highly credible sources​

  1. The Harvard-Hopkins-UCSF study showed it is unethical to mandate vaccination for college students and anyone younger. The study clearly said, “University booster mandates are unethical.”
  2. The Thailand study did blood tests before vs. after the jab and determined that nearly 30% of young adults experienced cardiovascular injuries after the jab. How is that safe? And why didn’t anyone in the US ever do such a study? Do we not want to know? This was a simple blood test before and after the vaccine. Why did they not notify parents as soon as the study was published?
  3. The study by Bhakdi and Burkhardt showing 93% of deaths after vaccination were caused by the vaccine
  4. The data showing the vaccines cause prion diseases shortly after vaccination. This is impossible if the vaccines are truly safe. See the paper on ScienceOpen.com (after ResearchGate removed it).
  5. Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis Requiring Hospitalization by Jessica Rose and Peter McCullough showing the myocarditis caused by the vaccine have distinct biomarkers.

Papers published in peer-reviewed medical journals​

  1. The Fraiman-Doshi paper looked at serious adverse event rates and found that the vaccines may not be as safe as has been claimed, but they cannot do a proper analysis because they are not allowed to see the data. “Full transparency of the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data is needed to properly evaluate these questions. Unfortunately, as we approach 2 years after release of COVID-19 vaccines, participant level data remain inaccessible.” You have to wonder: if the vaccine is so safe, why are the drug companies hiding the data?
  2. The Levi cardiac arrest rate elevation paper showed a troubling correlation between vaccine doses and increased cardiac events from January–May 2021. When they tried to get data after May 2021, they were refused access. This begs the question: if the vaccines are perfectly safe, what are they trying to hide?
  3. There are over 1,250 papers published in the scientific peer-reviewed literature showing the vaccines cause significant adverse events.
  4. The Walach paper found that the vaccines harm more people than they save.
  5. This news article published in the BMJ showed that at least 10% of the deaths after vaccination were caused by the vaccine. Funny, in America we think the number is 0. They can’t both be right. Someone should investigate why we have different results. This is very important. In fact, with a deeper investigation, over 90% of the deaths thought by medical examiners not to be caused by the vaccine were shown to be caused by the vaccine. This suggests that the US isn’t looking at the deaths.
  6. My colleagues and I are not misinformation spreaders according to this paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Articles debunking bogus studies in the peer-reviewed scientific literature​

  1. The Watson et al. “modeling study”: did “COVID vaccinations” really prevent 14 million deaths? The original paper was clearly bogus since the vaccines kill more people than they save. This article examines the paper claiming the vaccines have been ridiculously effective.

Autopsy reports​

There are specialized tests required to diagnose a death from the COVID vaccine.
The CDC has never told any medical examiner in the US about these tests.
So the medical examiners aren’t implicating the vaccine in any of the deaths.
The question is we know what the tests are, we know there is solid evidence from multiple countries that the vaccine causes death, yet we refuse to even consider the possibility that the vaccine caused the deaths. Why?

Retracted papers published in peer-reviewed journals​

This paper, A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products, was retracted because the publisher didn’t like the result. So he unilaterally decided to retract the paper. This is unethical.

Here’s the “withdrawn” notice.

Here is the backstory as well as this censorship update.

The publisher hasn’t fixed the problem in over a year despite assurances it would be quickly resolved.

Here is another retracted paper that was correct:

“Compared with the 28,000 deaths the CDC stated were due to COVID-19 and not associated morbidities for the 65+ age range, the inoculation-based deaths are an order-of-magnitude greater than the COVID-19 deaths!

That is basically what I found: the vaccines kill >10X more people than the number of COVID deaths that they save. The paper passed peer review and was published. The editor of the journal quit after he was overridden by the publisher on the retraction.

The reason cited for the retraction:

  1. The use of key terminology, specifically the key terms “inoculation” and “vaccination” diverges from common use and are incorrect, indicating clear evidence of bias.
  2. Publicly available data from the United States Center for Disease Control (U.S. CDC) were concluded by the external reviewers to be misinterpreted to make the erroneous conclusion that the vast majority of reported deaths due to COVID-19 are actually due to other comorbidities. Such an egregious misinterpretation and misrepresentation are unacceptable.
This is completely bogus for two reasons:

  1. The editor could have easily normalized the terminology to eliminate any perceived “bias.” They simply ask the author to do a quick search and replace.
  2. The vast majority of COVID-19 deaths were in fact due to other comorbidities. For example, the New Mexico death records where COVID-19 was listed as the cause of death and 5 out 6 were not consistent with a COVID death. If anyone wants to challenge me on that, I have access to the death data. In Massachusetts, only 10% to 20% of the deaths listed as COVID were actually caused by COVID. Most people don’t have access to the death data, but I do. So I wonder if the journal is interested in fixing their error?

Hard-to-explain anecdotes​

Can anyone explain how these anecdotes are possible?
  1. The Died Suddenly group on Facebook was adding users at 20,000 per day making it the fastest growing group in Facebook history. They had to throttle the growth rate due to attempts by the British military to infiltrate the group to cause it to be shut down.
  2. The average age of the people reported dead in the Died Suddenly group has been trending younger and younger over time. How can you explain that? The only worldwide massive intervention that goes to younger people is the COVID vaccine.
  3. The embalmer data (such as The Epoch Times article and this interview).
  4. Insurance company data from insurance companies worldwide:
    1. Adults Aged 35–44 Died at Twice the Expected Rate Last Summer, Life Insurance Data Suggests
    2. Millennials Experienced ‘84 Percent Rise of Excess Mortality’ Into Fall 2021: Former BlackRock Portfolio Manager
  5. Wayne Root’s wedding: 200 guests, half vaxxed, half unvaxxed. Only the vaxxed got injured (26%) or died (7%). I surveyed my readers and the readers collectively reported very similar stats. That’s hard to explain if there isn’t a huge effect.
  6. My neurologist stats: 11 years without needing to do a single VAERS report; this year, she needs to file 1,000 VAERS reports on 20,000 patients in the practice. How can anyone explain that if the vaccine is perfectly safe with mild, short term effects? This is similar to the 4.5% rate of neurological injury reported earlier by the Israeli Ministry of Health.
  7. The polling results using third party polling firms (so not my followers) consistently show that more people died from the vaccine than from the virus. The mainstream media refuses to do similar surveys and most survey firms refuse to even ask the questions.
  8. Ten different surveys I did
  9. The fact that Paul Offit isn’t going to get the latest booster even though the CDC says he should
  10. Google searches show people became interested in topics related to vaccine safety before they became popular on social media
  11. When I ask data/statistics experts such as Joel Smalley and Professor Norman Fenton whether they’ve seen any credible data proving the vaccines are safe and effective, they are unable to cite a single reference.

Books​

  1. Turtles all the way down: Vaccine science and myth: shows the vaccines are not nearly as safe as people think. There isn’t a single risk-benefit trial on all cause mortality and morbidity for any of the 70 approved vaccines. Surprise!
  2. Dissolving Illusions: the history of vaccines shows they did a lot less than people think
  3. The Real Anthony Fauci: illustrates the corruption. For example, they created a more accurate VAERS system and then scrapped it after it showed all the vaccines were unsafe.

Slide presentations​

  1. Vaccine Secrets: a 20 minute slide presentation from CHD
  2. The CCCA presentations:
    1. Stop the shots,
    2. More Harm Than Good
    3. Dispelling the Myth
  3. My mega-presentations:
    1. What I learned during the pandemic
    2. The elephant in the room
    3. Vaccine Policies
    4. Vaccine Essentials
    5. All you need to know
    6. Things you need to know
    7. 180 questions they can’t answer

Fact checks​

  1. The COVID lies by Dr. Michael Yeadon

Mitigation measures: masks, vaccines, lockdowns, social distancing, 6 foot rule, …​

This was a very well done study, but it is of course attacked by the pro narrative people. We’d love to have an open debate about this study, but the other side doesn’t want to talk about it in a neutral forum.

A LITERATURE REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS ON COVID-19 MORTALITY



Masks don’t work at all. See this article which has plenty of references. If anything, masks are more likely to hurt you than to benefit you.

There is no study at all on the 6 foot distance rule. They just made that one up.

Origin of the virus investigation​

Professor Jeffrey Sachs was tasked by The Lancet to lead an independent investigation into the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. After he determined it came from US biotechnology, all of a sudden nobody wanted to pursue the investigation any further.

[CONTINUED NEXT POST]
 
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