Observations from today - the sheep are in so deep, even when left off the leash, they won't run now.

ORIGINAL LINK

Here in Pennsylvania, our governor was requiring a 70% vaccination rate to drop the mask mandate and open up any further. CDC changed their guidelines out of the blue to no masks for anyone outdoors and vaccinated can go maskless indoors. Many businesses, even large ones like grocery stores, Walmart, etc updated their policy to align.

Rationally, you'd think you'd see people without masks now - probably a lot. With a ~40% fully vaccination rate, rationally about 40% of people would be roaming around without a mask if they're following the rules being fully vaccinated. Another large chunk would probably be unvaccinated, but just say fuck it finally. Given it's free to all and vaccination rates have plateaued, this could very realistically be another 30-40%.

Instead, what we've had is nearly EVERYONE still masked. I'll be transparent - I've been wearing a stupid mask to get into businesses because they'll turn you away and make a scene without one and hire people to stand at entrances. But at this point, really?

Went to get ice cream outside during the week. Maybe 10 people, outside, 85 degree day, plenty of distance around - all wearing masks. Masks to order, masks around their necks eating ice cream, then putting them back on to throw away their trash and walk to cars.

Went to a large grocery store today. Clear signs on the doors saying they've updated to CDC guidelines and no masks are needed for vaccinated people. No one observing at the door. Went in, no mask. No problems. Everyone else, masked up. Some double masked. One person still had latex gloves on like it was March 2020. Went to another large grocery store for some other items - exact same deal. I was only one not wearing a mask.

The most odd thing is you'd rationally think you'd see half maskless, half still clinging to them. Not literally 99% of people still wearing them.

We've been getting back to doing normal monthly meetups with a bunch of guys I do a hobby with. One guy in particular has been very outspoken about how the vaccine is great, getting people appointments early on, etc. He asked if I was vaccinated because he didn't want to go inside a building with me for fear of catching it himself. He's fully vaccinated. What the fuck is going on.

Forget the debate if the vaccine is legitimately fine or not, the real problem here is people are completely brainwashed into cult beliefs. No one can think for themselves. Worst of all, no one is willing to do something different from the herd even when they're 100% allowed.

I actually asked a few vaccinated people (that I know) why they won't take them off. Some were still fearful they'd catch it and the mask protects them (not others). A large chunk didn't want to look like 'conspiracy theorists or Republicans'. Many wanted maskless people to feel guilty and put theirs back on. Some even felt it was their purpose to be out with a mask to get others to wear them, therefore saving lives in their mind.

I've completely given up hope the masses will break lose from the madness. End rant.

submitted by /u/cmiovino
[link] [comments]

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

DOJ Seizes $90K, Charges BLM Agitator Who 'Stormed Capitol' And Sold The Footage

ORIGINAL LINK
DOJ Seizes $90K, Charges BLM Agitator Who 'Stormed Capitol' And Sold The Footage

US authorities have seized approximately $90,000 from a far-left BLM organizer who 'stormed the capitol' right alongside Trump supporters and sold footage he took of US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt being shot dead by a Capitol Police Officer.

John Earle Sullivan of Provo, Utah, was also hit with additional criminal charges and now faces a total of eight criminal counts, including weapons charges, according to Reuters. Sullivan is one of more than 440 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 'insurrection' in which Trump supporters who rejected the outcome of the 2020 US election stormed the Capitol with the full support of several Capitol Police officers - some of whom took selfies with the protesters.

After breaking into the Capitol through an open window, Sullivan was heard encouraging protesters to climb a wall to gain entrance.

During one conversation with others while inside, Sullivan said, “We gotta get this [expletive] burned.” At other times, he said, among other things, “it’s our house [expletive]” and “we are getting this [expletive].”

Sullivan told U.S. Capitol Police officers to stand down so that they wouldn’t get hurt, according to the court filing (pdf). He joined the crowd trying to open doors to another part of the Capitol, telling people “Hey guys, I have a knife” and asking them to let him get to the front. He did not make it to the doors. He later tried to get the officers guarding the Speaker’s Lobby to go home, telling them: “Bro, I’ve seen people out there get hurt.”

Following the riot Sullivan appeared on several mainstream television networks CNN and MSNBC, which paid him for the footage.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/22/2021 - 18:00

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

CDC's Absurd Guidelines For Summer Camps: A Recipe For Dystopian "Fun"

ORIGINAL LINK
CDC's Absurd Guidelines For Summer Camps: A Recipe For Dystopian "Fun"

Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities,

The Center for Disease Control’s major easing of its mask-use recommendations was a welcome development, giving Americans hope that logic can triumph over the CDC’s bureaucratic inertia and its Covid-era tendency to push the most severe restrictions on human activity at every turn.

Next, let’s hope this outbreak of rationality proves contagious within the CDC, and brings a major overhaul of the agency’s absurd guidelines for summer camps.

Via North Carolina Health News

CDC Trapped in March 2020 Mindset

In April, the CDC published guidance for operating youth camps that was the latest eye-rolling example of CDC maximalism that conflicts with what we’ve learned about Covid-19.

Before we examine the CDC guidance, let’s review some of the key things that we now know about Covid-19 that we didn’t in March 2020:

• Covid-19 presents little risk at all to children. According to CDC data, only 295 children age 0-17 have died with Covid-19. Compare that to the CDC’s estimation that 600 died of the flu during the 2017-18 season.

• Outdoor transmission pretty much never happens. An Irish study of more than 232,000 Covid-19 cases found only 0.1% of cases were transmitted outside.

• Surface transmission isn’t a material source of spread. The CDC has declared the risk of contracting the virus by touching surfaces or objects is low, and that rather than cleaning with disinfectant, "soap and water is enough to reduce risk" (unless there’s a known or suspected Covid-19 case in a community setting).

• Vaccines are abundantly available. According to the CDC’s vaccination data, 60.5% of U.S. adults have have received at least one vaccine dose, and 48.4% are fully vaccinated. Gone are the days when finding the vaccine was a challenge; today, anyone who wants the vaccine can readily find it.

• Covid-19 cases and deaths are in a free fall. The 7-day averages for cases and deaths have respectively fallen 89% and 83% from their peaks. On Sunday, the entire state of Texas reported not a single death from the virus. Today, San Francisco General Hospital has no Covid-19 patients for the first time since March 2020.

With that knowledge in mind, here are some key ingredients in the CDC’s recipe for dystopian summer fun:

• Two-layer masks should be worn at all times—indoors and out—except for eating, drinking and swimming

• Don’t allow close-contact games and sports

• Avoid sharing of objects such as toys, games and art supplies

• Separate children on buses by skipping rows

• Divide children into "cohorts" and then keep them away from other cohorts

• Children should stay three feet away from kids in their cohort and six feet away from those outside their cohort; campers and staff should stay six feet from each other, as should fellow staff members

• While eating and drinking, stay six feet away from everybody—even your own cohort

Who exactly are these draconian, fun-killing guidelines meant to protect? The children aren’t in any meaningful danger—the number of children who typically drown in a given year is more than double the number of child Covid deaths we’ve observed in 15 months.

Why @drlucymcbride is telling her patients that their kids, vaccinated or not, do not need to wear masks outside—despite @CDCgov summer-camp guidelines that recommend kids wear masks whenever physical distancing is difficult, including outside. https://t.co/eS2WncA0ev

— LenaSun (@bylenasun) May 20, 2021

Meanwhile, against a backdrop of rapidly-vanishing Covid-19 infections across the country, camp staff will have had more than ample opportunity to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 before the first kids arrive.

We’re told to "follow the science," but what is the CDC following? The agency’s guidelines read like they were written during the early dark ages of the Covid outbreak, when the peril was still filled with overwhelming mystery, and "erring on the side of caution" still had a trace of credibility.

As Columbia University pediatric immunologist Mark Gorelik told New York Magazine, "We know that the risk of outdoor infection is very low. We know risks of children becoming seriously ill or even ill at all is vanishingly small. And most of the vulnerable population is already vaccinated. I am supportive of effective measures to restrain the spread of illness. However, the CDC’s recommendations cross the line into excess and are, frankly, senseless. Children cannot be running around outside in 90-degree weather wearing a mask. Period."

Read more and subscribe at https://starkrealities.substack.com/

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/22/2021 - 19:30

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Is The Pentagon's UFO PsyOps Fueling Russia, China War Risk?

ORIGINAL LINK
Is The Pentagon's UFO PsyOps Fueling Russia, China War Risk?

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There are reasons to be skeptical. After decades of stonewalling on the issue, suddenly American military chiefs appear to be giving credence to claims of UFOs invading Earth.

Several viral video clips purporting to show extraordinary flying technology have been “confirmed” by the Pentagon as authentic. The Pentagon move is unprecedented.

The videos of the Unidentified Flying Objects were taken by U.S. air force flight crews or by naval surveillance and subsequently “leaked” to the public. The question is: were the “leaks” authorized by Pentagon spooks to stoke the public imagination of visitors from space? The Pentagon doesn’t actually say what it believes the UFOs are, only that the videos are “authentic”.

A Senate intelligence committee is to receive a report from the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force next month. That has also raised public interest in the possibility of alien life breaching our skies equipped with physics-defying technology far superior to existing supersonic jets and surveillance systems.

Several other questions come to mind that beg skepticism. Why does the phenomenon of UFOs or UAP only seem to be associated with the American military? This goes back decades to the speculation during the 1950s about aliens crashing at Roswell in New Mexico. Why is it that only the American military seems privy to such strange encounters? Why not the Russian or Chinese military which would have comparable detection technology to the Americans but they don’t seem to have made any public disclosures on alien encounters? Such a discrepancy is implausible unless we believe that life-forms from lightyears away have a fixation solely on the United States. That’s intergalactic American “exceptionalism” for you!

Also, the alleged sightings of UFOs invariably are associated with U.S. military training grounds or high-security areas.

Moreover, the released videos that have spurred renewed public interest in UFOs are always suspiciously of poor quality, grainy and low resolution. Several researchers, such as Mick West, have cogently debunked the videos as optical illusions. That’s not to say that the U.S. air force or naval personnel were fabricating the images. They may genuinely believe that they were witnessing something extraordinary. But as rational optics experts have pointed out there are mundane explanations for seeming unusual aerial observations, such as drones or balloons drifting at high speed in differential wind conditions, or by the crew mistaking a far-off aircraft dipping over the horizon for an object they believe to be much closer.

The military people who take the videos in good – albeit misplaced – faith about what they are witnessing are not the same as the military or intelligence people who see an opportunity with the videos to exploit the public in a psychological operation.

Fomenting public anxieties, or even just curiosity, about aliens and super-technology is an expedient way to exert control over the population. At a time when governing authorities are being questioned by a distrustful public and when military-intelligence establishments are viewed as having lost a sense of purpose, what better way to realign public respect by getting them to fret over alien marauders from whom they need protection?

There is here a close analogy to the way foreign nations are portrayed as adversaries and enemies in order to marshal public support or least deference to the governing establishment and its military. We see this ploy played over and over again with regard to the U.S. and Western demonization of Russia and China as somehow conveying a malign intent towards Western societies. In other words, it’s a case of Cold War and UFOs from the same ideological launchpad, so to speak, in order to distract public attention from internal problems.

However, more worrying still is that there is a dangerous reinforcing crossover of the two propaganda realms. The fueling of UFO speculation is feeding directly into speculation that U.S. airspace is being invaded by high-tech weapons developed by Russia or China.

U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from the Pentagon about whether the aerial “encounters” are advanced weaponry from foreign enemies who are surveilling the American homeland at will. Some U.S. air force aviators have recently expressed to the media a feeling of helplessness in the face of seeming superior technology.

At a time of heightened animosity towards Russia and China and febrile talk among Pentagon chiefs about the possibility of all-out war, it is not difficult to imagine, indeed it is disturbingly easy to imagine, how optical illusions about alien phenomena could trigger false alarms attributed to Russian or Chinese military incursions.

The government has never told the truth about anything yet suddenly is coming clean on aliens and UFOs. pic.twitter.com/LcHgoUj4vw

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) May 22, 2021

The stoking of UFO controversy appears to be a classic psyops perpetrated by U.S. military intelligence for the objective of population control. Its aim is to corral the citizenry under the authority of the state and for them to accept the protector function of “our” military. The big trouble is that the psyops with aliens are, in turn, risking the exacerbation of fears and tensions with Russia and China.

With all the Pentagon-assisted chatter, it is more likely that an F-18 squadron could mistake an errant weather balloon on the horizon for an alien spacecraft. And amid our new Cold War tensions, it is but a small conceptual step to further imagine that the UFO is not from outer space but rather is a Russian or Chinese hypersonic cruise missile heading towards the U.S. mainland.

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/22/2021 - 21:30

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Everything Keeps Getting Weirder And Weirder

Back in 2019 I wrote an article titled “Things Are Only Going To Get Weirder“, and from Covid to the 2020 election to the steadily increasing regularity with which UFOs are now mentioned in the mainstream media, that has indeed proved to be the case.

ORIGINAL LINK

The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

ORIGINAL LINK

Miss Anthropist 2.0 🌸 #KBF

Hypnotherapists have been noticing blatant hypnosis and NLP techniques (for example, the Milton Model: Hypnotic Language Patterns) being used by the government and state-controlled media during the pandemic. (1)

ORIGINAL LINK

Why Did Twitter Censor An Eminent Infectious Disease Expert For His Opinion On COVID Vaccines?

In March, Harvard epidemiologist and vaccine expert Dr. Martin Kulldorff was subjected to censorship by Twitter for sharing his opinion that not everybody needed to take the COVID vaccine.

ORIGINAL LINK

The Takeover has Already Begun - A Secret Video Reveals All

Marxist Communism won't look like how it did before. It's more than coincidence that what we see now is straight out of a Communist Handbook in 1966. Original Video Here: https://youtu.be/Z3LTrqv3sFE -Richard Grannon

ORIGINAL LINK

FOMO Is Loco

ORIGINAL LINK
FOMO Is Loco

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

We can also posit a general rule that those who inherit wealth and succumb to FOMO are eventually less wealthy while those who are wealthy and take a pass on FOMO / hoarding at the top of the manic frenzy increase their wealth.

Judging by the panic buying of everything from homes to yachts to lumber futures, it seems the world has run out of everything except newly issued central bank trillions, and so the logical response is FOMO (fear of missing out) and hoarding: buy everything you can get your hands on today lest it become unavailable or more expensive tomorrow.

FOMO is wonderful for sellers and profiteers who can jack up prices and enjoy bidding wars during the panic buying.

FOMO and hoarding are instinctual behaviors to shortages, perceived and real. There's nothing quite like the surge onto the last bus or train of the day when transport is scarce. Cash becomes trash when you need whatever is scarce and you're afraid you won't be able to get it at any price.

All this is rational when the threat of what happens if you miss out is existential. As in, not getting in a boat means you drown, not getting some water means you die of thirst, etc.

But is not being able to buy a new pleasure craft or home in a desirable area really the same? It feels the same way to the individuals caught up in the frenzy of FOMO, but FOMO and hoarding feel the same whether the scarcity is real or perceived, and the emotions triggered by scarcity are urgently intense: if I lose this bidding war, my life is over, etc.

On a lesser but still painful level, we don't like losing or being left behind as the circus leaves town. If you've ever been bumped from an airline flight or been unable to get on that last train, watching all the shiny happy people board the aircraft while you're left in the fetid terminal with the janitorial crew is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.

There's another intense emotion that comes into play a bit later: buyer's remorse. The bidding war arouses an excitement quite unlike other forms of engagement, and the euphoria of winning feels like the jackpot is yours, ripped from the greedy grasp of the undeserving at the last moment.

Then the euphoria fades and the sick realization that you're on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars sinks in. At this point regret that one forgot the rational, calculating part of the mind and dashed head-long into the "last seat on the lifeboat / last roll of toilet paper" FOMO / hoarding.

One of my rules is to consider what benefits those at the top of the wealth-power pyramid. If we consider the case for hyper-inflation, for example, it's difficult to make a case for hyper-inflation benefiting those who own the majority of the nation's financial assets, i.e. the top 0.5%. Yes, the super-wealthy can move all their wealth into gold and bitcoin, but this requires sacrificing the income from all the assets that were sold to escape hyper-inflation.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just call a friend or three and make it known that hyper-inflation doesn't work for you? Needless to say, it also doesn't work for the bottom 99.5% whose earnings spiral down the drain in hyper-inflation.

We can also posit a general rule that those who inherit wealth and succumb to FOMO are eventually less wealthy while those who are wealthy and take a pass on FOMO / hoarding at the top of the manic frenzy increase their wealth, as they anticipate a symmetric deflation in most of the FOMO / hoarding price spikes.

In other words, it's worth pondering the possibility that cash won't always be trash, and that overbidding by $400,000 to get "the last house in Cape Cod" overlooked the possibility that it wasn't actually the last house and that suitable alternatives might be remarkably less expensive in a year.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

*  *  *

My recent books:

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Tyler Durden Sat, 05/22/2021 - 12:00

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, And Why It Matters

ORIGINAL LINK
Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, And Why It Matters

Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClearEnergy.com,

On January 8, 2014, at New York University in Brooklyn, there occurred a unique event in the annals of global warming: nearly eight hours of structured debate between three climate scientists supporting the consensus on manmade global warming and three climate scientists who dispute it, moderated by a team of six leading physicists from the American Physical Society (APS) led by Dr. Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist at New York University. The debate, hosted by the APS, revealed consensus-supporting climate scientists harboring doubts and uncertainties and admitting to holes in climate science – in marked contrast to the emphatic messaging of bodies such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

At one point, Koonin read an extract from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report released the previous year. Computer model-simulated responses to forcings – the term used by climate scientists for changes of energy flows into and out of the climate system, such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, and changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – “can be scaled up or down.” This scaling included greenhouse gas forcings.

Some forcings in some computer models had to be scaled down to match computer simulations to actual climate observations. But when it came to making centennial projections on which governments rely and drive climate policy, the scaling factors were removed, probably resulting in a 25 to 30 percent over-prediction of the 2100 warming.

The ensuing dialogue between Koonin and Dr. William Collins of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – a lead author of the climate model evaluation chapter in the Fifth Assessment Report – revealed something more troubling and deliberate than holes in scientific knowledge:

• Dr. Koonin: But if the model tells you that you got the response to the forcing wrong by 30 percent, you should use that same 30 percent factor when you project out a century.

• Dr. Collins: Yes. And one of the reasons we are not doing that is we are not using the models as [a] statistical projection tool.

• Dr. Koonin: What are you using them as?

• Dr. Collins: Well, we took exactly the same models that got the forcing wrong and which got sort of the projections wrong up to 2100.

• Dr. Koonin: So, why do we even show centennial-scale projections?

• Dr. Collins: Well, I mean, it is part of the [IPCC] assessment process.

Koonin was uncommonly well-suited to lead the APS climate workshop. He has a deep understanding of computer models, which have become the workhorses of climate science. As a young man, Koonin wrote a paper on computer modeling of nuclear reaction in stars and taught a course on computational physics at Caltech. In the early 1990s, he was involved in a program using satellites to measure the Earth’s albedo – that is, the reflection of incoming solar radiation back into space. As a student at Caltech in the late 1960s, he was taught by Nobel physicist Richard Feynman and absorbed what Koonin calls Feynman’s “absolute intellectual honesty.”

On becoming BP’s chief scientist in 2004, Koonin became part of the wider climate change milieu. Assignments included explaining the physics of man-made global warming to Prince Philip at a dinner in Buckingham Palace. In 2009, Koonin was appointed an under-secretary at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration.

The APS climate debate was the turning point in Koonin’s thinking about climate change and consensus climate science (“The Science”).

“I began by believing that we were in a race to save the planet from climate catastrophe,” Koonin writes in his new book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters.”

“I came away from the APS workshop not only surprised, but shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed.”

“Unsettled” is an authoritative primer on the science of climate change that lifts the lid on The Science and finds plenty that isn’t as it should be.

“As a scientist,” writes Koonin, “I felt the scientific community was letting the public down by not telling the whole truth plainly.”

Koonin’s aim is to right that wrong.

Koonin’s indictment of The Science starts with its reliance on unreliable computer models. Usefully describing the earth’s climate, writes Koonin, is “one of the most challenging scientific simulation problems.” Models divide the atmosphere into pancake-shaped boxes of around 100km wide and one kilometer deep. But the upward flow of energy from tropical thunder clouds, which is more than thirty times larger than that from human influences, occurs over smaller scales than the programmed boxes. This forces climate modellers to make assumptions about what happens inside those boxes. As one modeller confesses, “it’s a real challenge to model what we don’t understand.”

Inevitably, this leaves considerable scope for modelers’ subjective views and preferences. A key question climate models are meant to solve is estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide (ECS), which aims to tell us by how much temperatures rise from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet in 2020, climate modelers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute admitted to tuning their model by targeting an ECS of about 3° Centigrade. “Talk about cooking the books,” Koonin comments.

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Self-evidently, computer projections can’t be tested against a future that’s yet to happen, but they can be tested against climates present and past. Climate models can’t even agree on what the current global average temperature is. “One particularly jarring feature is that the simulated average global surface temperature,” Koonin notes, “varies among models by about 3°C, three times greater than the observed value of the twentieth century warming they’re purporting to describe and explain.”

Another embarrassing feature of climate models concerns the earlier of the two twentieth-century warmings from 1910 to 1940, when human influences were much smaller. On average, models give a warming rate of about half of what was actually observed. The failure of the latest models to warm fast enough in those decades suggest that it’s possible, even likely, that internal climate variability is a significant contributor to the warming of recent decades, Koonin suggests. “That the models can’t reproduce the past is a big red flag – it erodes confidence in their projections of future climates.” Neither is it reassuring that for the years after 1960, the latest generation of climate models show a larger spread and greater uncertainty than earlier ones – implying that, far from advancing, The Science has been going backwards. That is not how science is meant to work.

The second part of Koonin’s indictment concerns the distortion, misrepresentation, and mischaracterization of climate data to support a narrative of climate catastrophism based on increasing frequency of extreme weather events. As an example, Koonin takes a “shockingly misleading” claim and associated graph in the United States government’s 2017 Climate Science Special Report that the number of high-temperature records set in the past two decades far exceeds the number of low-temperature records across the 48 contiguous states. Koonin demonstrates that the sharp uptick in highs over the last two decades is an artifact of a methodology chosen to mislead. After re-running the data, record highs show a clear peak in the 1930s, but there is no significant trend over the 120 years of observations starting in 1895, or even since 1980, when human influences on the climate grew strongly. In contrast, the number of record cold temperatures has declined over more than a century, with the trend accelerating after 1985.

Notes Koonin, “temperature extremes in the contiguous U.S. have become less common and somewhat milder since the late nineteenth century.” Similarly, a key message in the 2014 National Climate Assessment of an upward trend in hurricane frequency and intensity, repeated in the 2017 assessment, is contradicted 728 pages later by a statement buried in an appendix stating that there has been no significant trend in the global number of tropical cyclones “nor has any trend been identified in the number of U.S. land-falling hurricanes.”

That might surprise many politicians.

“Over the past thirty years, the incidence of natural disasters has dramatically increased,” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen falsely asserted last month in a pitch supporting the Biden administration’s infrastructure package. “We are now in a situation where climate change is an existential risk to our future economy and way of life,” she claimed.

The sacrifice of scientific truth in the form of objective empirical data for the sake of a catastrophist climate narrative is plain to see. As Koonin summarizes the case:

“Even as human influences have increased fivefold since 1950 and the globe has warmed modestly, most severe weather phenomena remain within past variability. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose.”

Koonin also has sharp words for the policy side of the climate change consensus, which asserts that although climate change is an existential threat, solving it by totally decarbonizing society is straightforward and relatively painless.

“Two decades ago, when I was in the private sector,” Koonin writes, “I learned to say that the goal of stabilizing human influences on the climate was ‘a challenge,’ while in government it was talked about as ‘an opportunity.’ Now back in academia, I can forthrightly call it ‘a practical impossibility.’”

Unlike many scientists and most politicians, Koonin displays a sure grasp of the split between developed and developing nations, for whom decarbonization is a luxury good that they can’t afford. The fissure dates back to the earliest days of the U.N. climate process at the end of the 1980s. Indeed, it’s why developing nations insisted on the U.N. route as opposed to an intergovernmental one that produced the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances.

“The economic betterment of most of humanity in the coming decades will drive energy demand even more strongly than population growth,” Koonin says.

“Who will pay the developing world not to emit? I have been posing that simple question to many people for more than fifteen years and have yet to hear a convincing answer.”

The most unsettling part of “Unsettled” concerns science and the role of scientists.

“Science is one of the very few human activities – perhaps the only one – in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected,” Karl Popper wrote nearly six decades ago.

That condition does not pertain in climate science, where errors are embedded in a political narrative and criticism is suppressed. In a recent essay, the philosopher Matthew B. Crawford observes that the pride of science as a way of generating knowledge – unlike religion – is to be falsifiable. That changes when science is pressed into duty as authority in order to absolve politicians of responsibility for justifying their policy choices (“the science says,” we’re repeatedly told). “Yet what sort of authority would it be that insists its own grasp of reality is merely provisional?” asks Crawford. “For authority to be really authoritative, it must claim an epistemic monopoly of some kind, whether of priestly or scientific knowledge.”

At the outset of “Unsettled,” Feynman’s axiom of absolute intellectual honesty is contrasted with climate scientist Stephen Schneider’s “double ethical bind.” On the one hand, scientists are ethically bound by the scientific method to tell the truth. On the other, they are human beings who want to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.

“Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest,” Schneider said.

“Being effective” helps explain the pressure on climate scientists to conform to The Science and the emergence of a climate science knowledge monopoly. Its function is, as Crawford puts it, the manufacture of a product – political legitimacy – which, in turn, requires that competing views be delegitimized and driven out of public discourse through enforcement of a “moratorium on the asking of questions.” This sees climate scientist gatekeepers deciding who can and cannot opine on climate science. “Please, save us from retired physicists who think they’re smarter and wiser than everyone in climate science,” tweeted Gavin Schmidt, NASA acting senior climate advisor, about Koonin and his book. “I agree with pretty much everything you wrote,” a chair of a university earth sciences department tells Koonin, “but I don’t dare say that in public.” Another scientist criticizes Koonin for giving ammunition to “the deniers,” and a third writes an op-ed urging New York University to reconsider Koonin’s position there. It goes wider than scientists. Facebook has suppressed a “Wall Street Journal” review of “Unsettled.” Likewise, “Unsettled” remains unreviewed by the “New York Times,” the “Washington Post” (though it carried an op-ed by Marc Thiessen based on an interview with Koonin) and other dailies, which would prefer to treat Koonin’s reasoned climate dissent as though it doesn’t exist.

The moratorium on the asking of questions represents the death of science as understood and described by Popper, a victim of the conflicting requirements of political utility and scientific integrity. Many scientists take this lying down. Koonin won’t. For his forensic skill and making his findings accessible to non-specialists, Koonin has written the most important book on climate science in decades.

*  *  *

Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of  Green Tyranny and Capitalism, Socialism and ESG. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/21/2021 - 22:40

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

FDA: 'Vaccine hesitant' can't use antibody test to prove immunity!

ORIGINAL LINK

Connecticut Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Sara Landon prepares COVID-19 vaccine doses April 1, 2021, in Morton Hall Gymnasium at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Tristan B. Lotz)

Many Americans who have chosen not to get one of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines because of the risks have hoped that testing positive for antibodies could substitute for being vaccinated, providing a virtual "vaccine passport."

But the Food and Drug Administration issued guidance this week stating a vaccine is still needed to confirm immunity from the COVID-19 virus.

The FDA acknowledged that antibody tests "can play an important role in identifying individuals who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may have developed an adaptive immune response."

"However, antibody tests should not be used at this time to determine immunity or protection against COVID-19 at any time, and especially after a person has received a COVID-19 vaccination."

The FDA said that antibodies provided by the vaccines are superior to the antibodies developed from being infected by the virus, providing needed protection that the regular antibodies do not.

But that's contradicted by empirical study data, Yale University epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch told WND.

He pointed to a massive study in Israel finding that people who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus in the previous three or more months had at least as much protection against new infection, hospitalization and death as vaccinated people.

"People become immune by surviving infection," argued Risch, professor of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine.

In an email to WND, he explained that serum antibodies and T-cell antibodies – the white blood cells that attack infections – demonstrate past history of infection.

Risch said the FDA is correct that antibodies from infection are not the same as post-vaccination antibodies.

But this is irrelevant, he contended.

"These natural antibodies are proof of past infection," said Risch. "Past infection is extremely strong evidence of immunity."

'Irrational' to vaccinate children
Risch joined Dr. Peter McCullough, a professor of medicine at Baylor University, on Thursday night in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

Both have testified to the U.S. Senate, contending the federal government has politicized cheap, widely available and effective treatments for COVID-19 such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermection.

Asked by Ingraham to comment on Dr. Anthony Fauci's recommendation in a TV interview this week that children as young as 4 get vaccinated, Risch said it's "irrational."

Young children do not get very sick from COVID, they don't spread the virus, "and they certainly do not die" from it, he argued.

"So, neither they nor the society around them has any interest in vaccinating them," said Risch.

But they can be harmed by the vaccines, he said, pointing to cases reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, or VAERS. Among them were a 15-year-old who had a heart attack, a 2-year-old who died a day after the vaccination and a 6-month-old who died after receiving the vaccine through the mother's breast milk.

"So, children have no reason to die from vaccination that isn't going to help them or the society either," Risch said.

McCullough warned that the randomized vaccine trials excluded people who had been infected with COVID. That means there is no safety data and no indication of the effectiveness of the vaccine for people who have been infected, he said.

Further, there are two studies from the U.K. and one from New York City that show higher rates of adverse events for recovered COVID-19 patients who are vaccinated.

"There's no evidence of benefit and only evidence of harm," he said.

'Deaths follow vaccination'
On Tuesday, French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier said that vaccinating a population while a pandemic is ongoing is an "enormous mistake."

He explained in an interview translated and published by the RAIR Foundation USA that the vaccinations are producing new variants, similar to how viruses adapt to antibiotics.

"You see it in each country, it's the same: in every country deaths follow vaccination," he said.

Montagnier called mass vaccination against the coronavirus "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants" and leading to deaths from the disease.

"It’s an enormous mistake, isn’t it? A scientific error as well as a medical error. It is an unacceptable mistake," he said. "The history books will show that, because it is the vaccination that is creating the variants."

Your passport, please
Meanwhile, the concept of a vaccine passport, or some way to prove vaccination, is gaining ground.

Fauci said at a Bloomberg Businessweek conference on Thursday that he expects many U.S businesses, including cruise lines and airlines, to require customers to show proof of vaccination to receive service.

He pointed out that already, several universities have announced they will require students to be vaccinated before returning to campus this fall.

"There are organizations, particularly universities and colleges who are saying, not withstanding what the federal government is requiring, if you want to come into campus and be in in-person learning, you're going to have to show proof of vaccination," he said.

In Oregon, the state health office is requiring workspaces, businesses and "faith institutions" who want to lift their mask mandate in accordance with the new CDC guidelines to have a policy for checking the COVID-19 vaccination status of visitors and patrons who don't want to wear a mask.

In contrast, Florida is among the states that have banned local businesses from requiring proof of vaccination.

Santa Clara County, California, has ordered businesses to report the vaccination status of all of their employees.

The businesses them must "comply with the rules for personnel who are not fully vaccinated," as required under the County Health Officer's May 18 order.

Under the order, any employees who refuse to disclose their vaccination status will be assumed to be unvaccinated and subject to mask mandates and other restrictions.

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!

The post FDA: 'Vaccine hesitant' can't use antibody test to prove immunity! appeared first on WND.

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

9 Dating Apps Partner With White House in Latest Scheme to Boost Slumping Vaccine Rates

ORIGINAL LINK

The White House is partnering with nine popular dating apps to entice Americans to get vaccinated by offering special incentives to users who have received their COVID shot.

In an attempt to overcome vaccine hesitancy, Match, Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, BLK, Chispa, Plenty of Fish, Bumble and Badoo will give vaccinated users access to premium content and a host of perks including boosts, super likes and special stickers displayed on their profile that show that they have received their shot, Forbes reported.

Users will also be able to filter potential matches by vaccination status or book vaccination appointments through the apps. Promotional campaigns on the apps will launch in the coming weeks and run until the July 4 Independence Day holiday.

“Human connection is so vital for healthy lives — it’s why I am so committed to this business,” said Shar Dubey, CEO of Match Group. “We are honored to work with the White House on increasing vaccinations across America, which will allow people to once again meet in person and engage in meaningful ways. This will make dating safer for everyone, everywhere.

For many users across Match Group’s dating platforms, COVID vaccinations are seen as vital for singles to be able to date safely in person, the company said, adding that users this year have proactively posted about their vaccine status and view this as an important component of compatibility.

CHD Calls on FDA to Take COVID Vaccines Off the Market - Submit a Comment

According to research from OKCupid, vaccinated users or those who plan to get vaccinated receive 14% more matches than people who don’t,” the White House told reporters in a fact sheet Thursday.

The White House’s partnership with popular dating apps is its latest attempt to reach the vaccine hesitant as vaccination rates plateau.

Previously, the administration has partnered with NASCAR, the NFL, MLB, country music organizations, McDonalds, Uber and Lyft, AT&T, Instacart, Target, Trader Joe’s, Chobani, rural organizations and social media companies, while targeting Black and Latino Americans through additional advertising.

Many states, including Ohio, New York and Maryland have offered million-dollar lottery drawings to incentivize residents to get vaccinated. Albertsons, Target, Raytheon, Jabil and AT&T have all offered financial incentives, free Lyft rides to vaccine appointments, or on-site clinics for employees and family members.

At Amazon, employees who show proof of vaccination receive an $80 bonus and new-hires receive $100 if they’re vaccinated. Colleges are giving out a wide range of freebies — gift cards, T-shirts, free courses, housing and cash for students who show proof of COVID vaccination.

Some states, including New Jersey and Washington, are offering free alcohol to entice people to get their COVID shot. Budweiser is pouring free beer if you can prove your vaccine status.

On April 20, District of Columbia marijuana activists staged Joints for Jabs and handed out free joints outside the city’s vaccination sites. On May 13, New Orleans gave vaccine recipients at one local clinic a free pound of crawfish.

Krispy Kreme is offering a free glazed doughnut to anyone who shows their COVID vaccinated record card.

McDonald’s will promote COVID vaccine information on its coffee cups as part of its partnership with the White House. The fast-food chain announced it was redesigning its McCafe cups and delivery seal stickers to feature art from the national “We Can Do This” campaign, a slogan created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to promote COVID vaccinations across America.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said thanks to the government’s partnership with McDonalds, “people will now be able to get trusted information about vaccines when they grab a cup of coffee or order a meal.”

The post 9 Dating Apps Partner With White House in Latest Scheme to Boost Slumping Vaccine Rates appeared first on Children's Health Defense.

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

The Government’s Emergency Powers Myth

“The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances.

ORIGINAL LINK

How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up “vaccine effectiveness”

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for “Covid19” in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy “vaccines” are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

ORIGINAL LINK

ORIGINAL LINK

Peddlers Of Russiagate Won't Take Truth For An Answer

ORIGINAL LINK
Peddlers Of Russiagate Won't Take Truth For An Answer

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

The Biden administration is vigorously pursuing key figures from the phony Trump/Russia collusion scandal that roiled the nation for four years. But instead of trying to punish the liars who perpetrated that fraud, it is targeting the truth-tellers who challenged and exposed the conspiracy to negate the 2016 election.

Working from the same playbook used to smear dozens of Trump associates, the administration and its allies are planting stories based on blind quotes in friendly media outlets to seek revenge.

On April 16, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that the Justice Department is investigating Kash Patel – who had worked with Rep. Devin Nunes and later the Trump administration to reveal the Russiagate hoax – for the “possible improper disclosure of classified information.” Ignatius said he received the tip from “two knowledgeable sources” who “wouldn’t provide additional details.”

Violating the bedrock principles of American justice and journalism, this article is an exercise in thuggery as the government uses a powerful media outlet to intimidate and besmirch a citizen without evidence. With nothing to respond to, how can Patel defend himself? If Patel is lucky, the federal government has only placed a sharp sword over his head that may not fall. If not, he might be dragged into a lengthy court battle that could drain his finances and also cost him his freedom.

We don’t know if Patel broke the law, but note that the administration has shown no interest in pursuing former FBI leaders such as James Comey and Andrew McCabe, who improperly disclosed information regarding Russiagate.

Trump’s former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani is also in the “cross hairs of a federal criminal investigation,” according to an April 29 article in New York Times that relied on “people with knowledge of the matter.”

At issue, those anonymous sources say, is whether Giuliani was serving two masters when he counseled Trump to remove Marie L. Yovanovitch as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019. “Did Mr. Giuliani go after Ms. Yovanovitch solely on behalf of Mr. Trump, who was his client at the time?” the Times reports. “Or was he also doing so on behalf of the Ukrainian officials, who wanted her removed for their own reasons?”

I’ll leave it to the lawyers to determine the wisdom of bringing a case based on the parsing of tangled motives. What is clear is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion. As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations, just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies.

And note, the FBI’s zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president’s son Hunter Biden, who, Paul Sperry reported for RCI, “failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials.” It appears that we have two tiers of justice: one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends.

The targeting of Giuliani looks especially suspect and politically motivated after three main news outlets that have driven much of the false Russiagate coverage – the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News – were forced to correct a recent story, once again based on anonymous sources, claiming the FBI had warned Giuliani in 2019 “that he was a target of a Russian disinformation campaign during his efforts to dig up unflattering information about then-candidate Joe Biden in 2019.” Giuliani was never given such a briefing.

Considering the numerous instances in which the press published bogus information from “informed sources” during Russiagate, one has to ask why they continue to serve as vehicles for falsehoods. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a dozen times and you’re not fooling me – we’re acting in concert.  As RCI editor Tom Kuntz has argued, journalistic integrity demands, at the very least, that these organizations tell their audience who exactly had misled them. Confidentiality agreements should not protect liars.

A third example of the Biden administration’s effort to punish Russiagate figures is its renewed effort to put former Manafort associate Konstantin V. Kilimnik behind bars. In an extensive new article for RCI, Aaron Maté reports that the Treasury Department provided no evidence to support its recent claim that Kilimnik is a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.” It also refuses to explain how it was able to discover the truth of Kilimnik’s identity, which the two most extensive Russiagate investigations – the 448-page Muller report and the 966-page Senate Intelligence report – failed to uncover.

This absence of evidence has not stopped the peddlers of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory from claiming vindication. Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff casts Treasury’s unsubstantiated claim as smoking-gun evidence of collusion. The New York Times reports that the claim demonstrates that “there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the year before the [2016] election.”

Who needs proof when the government says it’s so?

The FBI is also putting the screws to Kilimnik, offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest on witness-tampering charges involving text messages he sent in 2018 to two people who have only been identified as “potential witnesses” involving Manafort’s lobbying work for Ukraine, not Russiagate.

In an exclusive interview, Kilimnik told Maté, “I don’t understand how two messages to our old partners who helped us get out the message about Ukraine’s integration aspirations in [the] EU, and asking them to get in touch with Paul, can be interpreted as ‘intimidation’ or ‘obstruction of justice.’”

Maté also reports that the $250,000 bounty on Kilimnik is more than double the amount the FBI is offering for information leading to the arrest of murder suspects.

The Biden administration’s campaigns against Patel, Giuliani and Kilimnik suggest how the winners of the 2020 election are attempting to rewrite the history of Russiagate. Having been debunked and rebuked by their own investigators, the conspiracists are taking a second bite at the poisoned apple.  Using anonymous sources to make unsubstantiated charges in the nation’s most influential news outlets, they are seeking to punish people for the crime of exposing their malfeasance.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/20/2021 - 19:00

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Politifact Quietly Admits COVID-19 Lab Escape Not 'Debunked Conspiracy Theory'

ORIGINAL LINK
Politifact Quietly Admits COVID-19 Lab Escape Not 'Debunked Conspiracy Theory'

Last January, when China and the World Health Organization (WHO) were performing damage control for Beijing over a mysterious new coronavirus which broke out in the same town as their secretive bat coronavirus lab (with whom, unbeknownst to most at the time, a Fauci-funded NGO called EcoHealth Alliance had been working), anyone who logically suggested a link between the secretive lab and the new disease was immediately punished by Silicon Valley tech giants who protected China from those who dare speculate based on very. obvious. clues.

Wuhan Institute of Virology

Twitter suspended Zero Hedge after a BuzzFeed journalist (later fired for plagiarism) accused us of 'doxxing a Chinese scientist it falsely accused of creating coronavirus' (with publicly available information). Five months later Twitter restored our account after mounting public pressure - saying they had "made an error."

Facebook banned our articles - and policed COVID 'disinformation' based on the word of so-called "fact checkers" who insisted that the new disease couldn't have possibly escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and must have emerged via yet-to-be discovered animal intermediaries between bats and humans. Of course, one of Facebook's "fact checkers" worked at the Wuhan lab.

Former Wuhan lab worker and Facebook fact checker, Danielle Anderson, who collaborated nine times with bat-covid researcher, Peng Zhou

And then there's Politifact, which wrote this blaring headline in a September 2020 "fact check":

"Tucker Carlson guest airs debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab."

Now, almost exactly one year and one president later, Politifact has issued a major 'correction.' and 'archived' the fact-check.

"When this fact check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact's sources concluded researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed."

I never want to hear about Politifact. Ever. Never. Ever. I’m going to use these two screencaps if anyone ever cites that source. pic.twitter.com/5EPgpxEgiW

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) May 19, 2021

While Politifact defenders argue that the 'fact checker' is simply holding themselves accountable - they decreed the lab escape theory to be 'debunked' - as in proven false - at the same time as former President Trump - and individuals credentials equal or better to their 'sources' were saying otherwise.

It wasn't a "conspiracy", just facts.

It was clear to every knowledge researcher out there that it came from a lab, but silenced.

Listen to Dr Pekova for example, who was cancelled immediately after the last 4 minutes of this interview in March 2020.https://t.co/JSBFZKQQnl

— Rob (@MakingMoneyFast) May 20, 2021

In fact, it was political.

Oh shut up

You didn’t want to talk about the lab leak because of Trump and now you are bc he’s gone

Shut up

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 19, 2021

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/20/2021 - 12:53

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Report: Government Scientific Advisors Admit They Used ‘Totalitarian’ Fear Tactics To Control People During Pandemic

ORIGINAL LINK

Submitted by Thaisleeze

Guest Post by Steve Watson

Scientists in the UK working as advisors for the government have expressed regret for using what they now admit to be “unethical” and “totalitarian” methods of instilling fear in the population in order to control behaviour during the pandemic, according to a report.

The London Telegraph reports the comments made by Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B), a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) the government’s chief scientific advisory group.

The report quotes a briefing from March 2020, as the first lockdown was decreed, that stated the government should drastically increase “the perceived level of personal threat” that the virus poses because “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”.

One scientist with the SPI-B admits that “In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.”

The unnamed scientist adds that “The way we have used fear is dystopian.”

The scientist further confessed that “The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”

Another separate scientist on the subcommittee professed “You could call psychology ‘mind control’. That’s what we do… clearly we try and go about it in a positive way, but it has been used nefariously in the past.”

Another scientist warned that “We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in,” adding “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise.”

According to the report, another researcher with the group acknowledged that “Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon,” adding that “Psychology has had a really good epidemic, actually.”

Yet another scientist on the subcommittee stated that they have been “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology” over the past year, and warned that “psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative.”

“They have too much power and it intoxicates them”, the scientist further warned.

The comments were collected by author Laura Dodsworth, for her book A State of Fear, out today, that explores the government’s actions during the pandemic.

When the Telegraph asked the subcommittee for comment on the findings, SPI-B psychologist Gavin Morgan replied “Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.”

Morgan added that “By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.”

Commenting on the revelations, Conservative Steve Baker, a member of a group of anti-lockdown MPs said “If it is true that the state took the decision to terrify the public to get compliance with rules, that raises extremely serious questions about the type of society we want to become.”

“Do I fear that Government policy today is playing into the roots of totalitarianism? Yes, of course it is,” Baker urged.

The government state of fear continues minute by minute as government ministers are now suggesting that so called ‘freedom day’ in the UK (a situation where the government permits people to have basic rights is not freedom) on June 21st is under threat because a sizeable portion of the population is refusing to take the vaccine:

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

House intel report: 'Overwhelming' evidence COVID leaked from Wuhan lab

ORIGINAL LINK

Dr. Anthony Fauci (Official White House photo)

There is "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" backing the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began in a lab in China, a report released Wednesday by House Intelligence Committee Republicans has concluded.

Led by ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the report assesses the Wuhan Institute of Virology was secretly working with the Chinese military, conducting risky gain-of-function research, the Washington Examiner reported.

The 21-page Republican report, "In Focus: COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology," also presents evidence that the U.S. funded the lab's gain-of-function research after support for such research had been suspended in 2014 by the Obama administration.

The idea of "gain of function" is to increase the virulence and transmissiblity of a virus that is regarded as a potential threat to humans. The data is then used to begin developing vaccines and treatments in case of an outbreak. The obvious risk is that an experimental virus programmed to be highly contagious and powerful could be accidentally released. And that is what a growing number of scientists and lawmakers such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., believe happened after more than a year of media, politicians and top health officials dismissing the scenario as a "conspiracy theory."

On Wednesday, Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky admitted in response to queries by Republican Sen. John Kennedy that it's "possible" the COVID-19 virus could have leaked "from a lab."

Last week, as WND reported, a group of 18 prominent scientists published a paper in the journal Science calling for an investigation into the origins of the pandemic, insisting an accidental leak from a lab cannot be ruled out.

The open letter came on the heels of Sen. Paul confronting White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on the issue, and a former Science editor publishing a lengthy analysis concluding the evidence points to a lab leak.

The 18 scientists said the lab theory was not given "balanced consideration" in the investigation of the pandemic's origin by a team commissioned by the World Health Organization. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have cast doubt on the joint China-WHO probe and accused Beijing of thwarting an independent investigation into the origins of the virus. The WHO-China report concluded a jump from animals to humans was most likely.

'Stymied by China'

But the Republican report finds the "threads of circumstantial information suggest the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 and resulting COVID-19 pandemic could have been the result of an accidental leak from the WIV, particularly given the absence of credible information that supports a zoonotic transmission."

"Unfortunately, Beijing has hindered the conduct of a full, credible investigation. There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence, however, to support a lab leak as the origination of COVID-19, while there is no substantive evidence supporting the natural zoonosis hypothesis."

The report points out that Chinese authorities "have failed to identify the original species that allegedly spread the virus to humans, which is critical to their zoonotic transfer theory."

A fact sheet released by the State Department in January noted the Wuhan lab has a "published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses." The research includes experiments on a bat coronavirus that is 96.2% similar to  SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus. The State Department also found that the lab "has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military."

The Republican report argued the U.S. government and health experts need to find out how the pandemic began so that future pandemics can be prevented or mitigated, but China has "stymied" that effort.

"Nevertheless, significant circumstantial evidence raises serious concerns that the COVID19 outbreak may have been a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

The report says the evidence includes:

• China’s "history of research lab leaks" resulting in infections
• Multiple "warnings from U.S. diplomats in China as early as 2017 that the Wuhan lab was conducting dangerous research on coronaviruses without following necessary safety protocols" that risked a potential outbreak
• "Gain of Function research being conducted at the Wuhan lab that made coronaviruses more infectious in humans" and evidence that "several researchers at Wuhan lab were sickened with COVID-19-like symptoms" in the fall of 2019
• The "involvement in the Wuhan lab of the Chinese military, which has a documented biological weapons program"
• "Multiple indications of attempts by Beijing to cover up the true circumstances of the COVID-19 outbreak."

The report said there also are "clear signs that U.S. Government agencies and academic institutions may have funded or collaborated in Gain of Function research at the Wuhan lab."

"At least some of this research was published even after the U.S. Government had paused these kinds of studies in the United States due to ethical concerns over their biowarfare applicability and their potential to accidentally unleash a pandemic … Given the Chinese government’s documented biological weapons program, it is difficult to understand why the U.S. Government permitted collaborative research at the WIV, which had a known Chinese military presence."

CDC director: 'Certainly a lab-based origin is one possibility'

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked the CDC's Walensky how she believes the pandemic began.

"I don't believe I've seen enough data, individual data for me to be able to comment on that," she replied.

Kennedy asked what the possibilities are.

"Certainly the possibilities of, that most coronaviruses that we know of are of origin from, that have infected the population — SARS CoV-1, MERS — generally come from an animal origin," she said.

Kennedy followed: "Are there any other possibilities?"

"Certainly a lab-based origin is one possibility," Walensky said.

Kennedy then asked whether the United States was funding any "gain-of- function" research.

"Not that I know of," she replied.

Sen. Paul said last Thursday that while there's no hard proof yet regarding the origin, it's becoming clearer that Fauci "could be culpable for the entire pandemic."

Two days earlier, Paul confronted Fauci in a Senate hearing, asking him directly if the NIH funded "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci declared "the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute."

Fauci has dismissed the lab-leak scenario for more than a year. At a news conference in April 2020, he cited a study led by computational biologist Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in California concluding SARS-CoV-2 "is not a purposefully manipulated virus."

However, as WND reported, former Science journal editor and New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade pointed out in a lengthy analysis supporting the lab-leak theory that Anderson's argument was "full of absurdly large holes."

The study followed a February 2020 letter signed by a group of virologists and others published in the eminent British science journal The Lancet insisting on a natural origin and condeming "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

Scientists "overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife," they said, calling on readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

But Wade showed how the signatories "were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true." It later turned out that the letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York.

Daszak's organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But this "acute conflict of interest" was not disclosed to The Lancet's readers, Wade noted. To the contrary, the letter concluded, "We declare no competing interests."

And, significantly, Daszak was the sole American representative on the WHO team investigating the pandemic's origin.

'A proper investigation'

The 18 scientists pointed out in their letter last week that along with the WHO director, 13 other countries and the European Union believe "greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve," the 18 scientists wrote.

"We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data," they said. "A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest."

They also call on public health agencies and research laboratories to "open their records to the public."

One of the 18 scientists is virologist Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, who was spotlighted by Paul in the Senate hearing last week as a collaborator with the Wuhan lab's Dr. Shi Zhengli on gain-of-function research on bat viruses.

That collaboration also was mentioned in Wade's analysis. He said that after working with Baric, Shi "returned to her lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and resumed the work she had started on genetically engineering coronaviruses to attack human cells."

Dr. Shi Zhengli (World Society for Virology)

Grant proposals, which are public record, show funds were assigned to Shi's prime contractor, the EcoHealth Alliance, for research constructing novel coronaviruses and assessing their ability to infect human cells.

See the NIH project report for a 2019 grant to EcoHealth Alliance titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence."

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.

SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!

The post House intel report: 'Overwhelming' evidence COVID leaked from Wuhan lab appeared first on WND.

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK