Saturday, October 16, 2021

Talk I gave on October 2 to a group in Poland meeting at their Parliament regarding testing of vaccines in children

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Thank you for inviting me. 

Let me tell you about the laws regarding experimental products and research on children in the United States.

According to federal law, children require protection and their parents are supposed to provide it.  Consent is needed for a child to travel on a trip with their class, or to have their ears pierced.  Most children, even in foster care, still require their parents' consent to become medical research subjects.

Research is defined as the use of any medicinal product that has not been fully licensed. Therefore, the use of vaccines that have been authorized only for emergency use is considered experimental.  

Parental consent is absolutely required for children who receive an Emergency Use product, as well as for children who are subjects in medical experiments.

Children who with their parents chose to volunteer to be subjects in a Pfizer Covid vaccine trial are paid about $800 dollars if they complete the entire trial.  

In 1997 the FDA Modernization Act offered pharmaceutical companies an extra six months of patent exclusivity if the company tested new drugs and vaccines on children.  For a blockbuster vaccine, this could mean an additional billion dollars or more in earnings before it had to face generic competition.  Even if the drug or vaccine is never even used in children after being licensed, it will still receive an extra six months of protection if the manufacturer performs tests in children as specified by the FDA.

For the Covid vaccine, the FDA asked Pfizer to submit its protocol to test children aged 6 months to 5 years by last February. Pfizer must give FDA its protocol for testing children under 6 months of age by next January 31.

Covid vaccines are therefore being tested in younger and younger children, even though arguably the disease is so mild in children that no vaccine is needed.  Usually children just get a cold from Covid or are asymptomatic. 

We know that despite millions of cases in children, less than 30 children have died from Covid in the UK, and only 26 have died in Germany.  Our CDC does not tell the public how many US children have died from COVID.  Instead we are told how many children have died "involving" COVID. Most of these were chronically ill, and it appears that many were only diagnosed with COVID after being hospitalized for something else and undergoing routine surveillance testing. 

While COVID is not very dangerous to children, it seems the COVID vaccines themselves are dangerous to children.  Myocarditis, or inflammation of heart muscle and perhaps other regions of the heart, occurs 50 times more often in males aged 12-17 compared to males over 65, based on reports to the VAERS system.  The risk of myocarditis from an mRNA COVID vaccine rises exponentially as you get younger and younger.  Additional risks, such as pulmonary emboli, strokes and heart attacks, are elevated after COVID vaccinations, but the risk is not well quantified.  While there are also considerable risks from the disease COVID, when it is treated early with ivermectin and other appropriate drugs, these complications are extremely rare.

According to data from the UK's Office of National Statistics, deaths in teenagers have risen about 50% since June 2021, when vaccinations began to be offered to their age group.

A cynic or perhaps a wise man might say that the FDA has colluded with COVID vaccine companies to sacrifice children on the altar of 6 months of additional profits.

While our CDC produced a highly flawed estimate of risk-benefit that magnified the COVID risk in children, and minimized the myocarditis risk, others have found that the risk from the vaccine is not justified by its benefit to children.  While it is considered unethical to vaccinate children to protect adults, in fact exactly that has been called for by some politicians.  The California governor yesterday required Covid vaccinations for children to attend school, once the vaccines are licensed for their age group.  As vaccinations for 16 and 17 year olds are already approved, unvaccinated children of this age will not be able to attend school in California beginning next January.

Despite the laws I described that require parental consent, something strange has been happening in the US.  Teenagers aged 12-15 have recently been offered experimental Covid vaccines without parental consent in cities around the United States.  In fact, health departments have actively encouraged adolescents to come alone to be vaccinated, even when their parents are against it.  Staff who perform the vaccinations have been told they can decide whether a child is able to provide his or her own "assent."  

Some unknown authority has superceded our traditional laws regarding parental responsibility, presumably under new emergency rules that require no legislative votes.  Perhaps the same is true in Poland?  We seem to be operating under secret rules now, and the state seems to think it owns our children, and it can use any draconian means it likes to enforce vaccine compliance.  Instead of the state working to serve its citizens, the state now thinks we are here to serve it.  I hope the Polish authorities never stoop to enticing children to get vaccinated or to do anything else without their parents' knowledge and consent.

In the 1980s and 90s, over 500 foster children in New York were used as experimental subjects for dangerous drugs for HIV, many in research projects sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by local universities.  Over 80 of these children died in foster care, and 25 died while they were enrolled in a clinical trial.  As you might guess, there was no parental consent for many of these children.  The scandal led to hearings in Congress and widespread publicity.  Yet it seems we may be back in the same place today.  Because when you want to test a dangerous product on children, whose children do you use?  Not ours. 

Some families may be lured financially.  But the easiest way to obtain child subjects is use those who have no parent protecting them.  I hope that is not occurring in Poland.

Our federal health agencies have been captured by the pharmaceutical industry.  Our federal government seems to be captive to special interests.  Our healthcare system is no longer trusted by the citizens, who will do anything to avoid being treated in hospital if they get COVID.  Our cherished institutions are undergoing a controlled demolition.  

I urge you not to follow our path.  Protect your children.  Serve your citizens.  Be a beacon for the world.

Meryl Nass, M.D.


References

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/pediatric-exclusivity-for-biologics-18215/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105512/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-gender-germany/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7260492/

https://www.vera.org/publications/the-experiences-of-new-york-city-foster-children-in-hiv-aids-clinical-trials

https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download (Letter from FDA to Pfizer, Aug. 23, 2021)

See below, pages 5-6: 

"Your deferred pediatric studies required under section 505B(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) are required postmarketing studies. The status of these postmarketing studies must be reported according to 21 CFR 601.28 and section 505B(a)(4)(C) of the FDCA. In addition, section 506B of the FDCA and 21 CFR 601.70 require you to report annually on the status of any postmarketing commitments or required studies or clinical trials. 

Label your annual report as an “Annual Status Report of Postmarketing Study Requirement/Commitments” and submit it to the FDA each year within 60 calendar days of the anniversary date of this letter until all Requirements and Commitments subject to the reporting requirements under section 506B of the FDCA are released or fulfilled. These required studies are listed below: 

1. Deferred pediatric Study C4591001 to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in children 12 years through 15 years of age. 

Final Protocol Submission: October 7, 2020 

Study Completion: May 31, 2023 

Final Report Submission: October 31, 2023 

2. Deferred pediatric Study C4591007 to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in infants and children 6 months to <12 years of age.

Final Protocol Submission:  February 8, 2021

Study Completion:  November30, 2023

Final Report Submission:  May 31, 2024

3.  Deferred pediatric Study C4591023 to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COMIRNATY in infants <6 months of age.

Final Protocol Submission:  January 31, 2022

Study Completion:  July 31, 2024

Final Report Submission:  October 31, 2024

Submit the protocols to your IND 19736, with a cross-reference letter to this BLA STN BL 125742 explaining that these protocols were submitted to the IND.  Please refer to the PMR sequential number for each study/clinical trial and the submission number as shown in this letter.

Submit final study reports to this BLA STN BL 125742.  In order for your PREA PMRs to be considered fulfilled, you must submit and receive approval of an efficacy or a labeling supplement.  For administrative purposes, all submissions related to these required pediatric postmarketing studies must be clearly designated as:

·      Required Pediatric Assessment(s)

We note that you have fulfilled the pediatric study requirement for ages 16 through 17 years for this application." 





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It takes a lot of education to keep us this stupid



The oligarchic empire is working harder and harder to bolt down our minds in service of its agendas. Silicon Valley is working more and more openly in conjunction with the US government, and its algorithms elevate empire-authorized narratives while hiding unapproved ones with increasing brazenness.

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Investors Rush To Buy Nearly 1 In 4 Homes

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Investors Rush To Buy Nearly 1 In 4 Homes

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Investors are buying huge percentages of existing home sales...

Corelogic reports Single-Family Investor Activity Surges in the Second Quarter.

Large investors (those who retain 100 or more properties) are largely responsible for this rise.

Of all investor purchases made in June 2021, 20% were made by large investors. This is much higher than 11% in 2020 or 14% in 2019.

Small investors (those who retain between 3 and 10 properties), have declined slightly and now account for less than half of investor purchases at 46% in June.

Mid-sized investors (those who retain 11-99 properties) have stayed constant, oscillating around 35% percent in the past 30 months.

The pandemic seemed to drive away large investors, but they are now making up their largest share of investor purchases seen in the past decade.

If you have been outbid on a home there's nearly a 1 in 4 chance it was to an investor or group of investors.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Sat, 10/16/2021 - 16:30

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Yes, Virginia, There is a Deep State



On The Young Turks the other night, during a segment called — this is not a joke — “RebelHQ,” commentator Ben Carollo extolled the virtues of the CIA.

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French Senate Rejects Mandatory Vaccination Of All By 262 To 64 Votes

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FrenchSenateRejectsMandatoryVaccinationO

A small but significant victory was achieved Wednesday when the French Senate rejacted a socialist senator’s proposal to make the COVID experimental vaccine mandatory for all citizens living in France. Non-compliance would trigger a fine of 135 euro (about $150 USD), and 1,500 euro for re-offenders.

The post French Senate Rejects Mandatory Vaccination Of All By 262 To 64 Votes appeared first on GreatGameIndia.



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Harvard Research Confirms What We’ve Been Saying for Months

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Submitted by Thaisleeze

Guest Post by Justin Hart

There is not evidentiary correlation between cases and vaccination rates

I have no idea how this paper made it past the censors but there it is! This was published a month ago but didn’t receive much fanfare and now we know why—it confirms what we’ve been saying for months now: the vaccines have not stopped and likely will not stop the pandemic.

Back in July we tweeted that the CDC data mapping vax rates to COVID-19 case rates shows ZERO impact of the former on the latter:

We’ve written in these pages multiple times about the same phenomenon. Yesterday, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford tweeted:

“There is a lot to learn from this graph, but most obviously, the COVID vax does not stop infection. The vax provides a private benefit (protection vs. severe disease), but limited public benefit (protection vs. disease spread). So what is the argument for mandates?”

Now this Harvard research notes:

At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.

 

When they got down to the U.S. county level the relation was even less discernible:

 

They conclude:

The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering  the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants

Feel some vindication folks. We were right.



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The Greatest Failure in the History of Public Health: The Case for the Prosecution

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In the first quarter of 2020, the first Covid-19 pandemic wave swept the world. This caused a wave of fear to also sweep across the world, leading to governments taking desperate countermeasures that imposed limits on everyday freedoms never before seen in our lifetimes. Stories about Covid-19 went viral in the media, which have covered the pandemic 24/7 throughout 2020 and 2021 to the exclusion of many important health-related topics. 

The world succumbed to a kind of Covid monomania. 

What were the origins of this extraordinary response, why was it so extreme, and how well have governments justified the harsh countermeasures to the public? There are several key themes and concepts underlying the narratives that governments and media have used to justify the response which have lodged in the public mind.

An influential underlying driver has been the subjective feeling that extreme measures are proportionate to an extreme threat.

There was an early theme in the government and media narratives that compared this pandemic to the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which over 50 million people lost their lives worldwide. The total number of deaths for Covid-19 in the US has passed the number of deaths in 1918 – however, the US population is now more than three times larger than 1918. And the years of life lost are proportionately smaller again as Covid-19 mortality increases exponentially by age, whereas the 1918 pandemic took people at earlier ages when they had many more years of life to expect. Here is one media report that explains this well. 

So, the Covid-19 pandemic, while of course it deserves to be taken seriously, is more comparable to the lesser-known Asian flu of 1957-58, which is estimated to have caused over one million deaths worldwide (when the world population was less than a third what it is now). In some countries (for example, Australia) all-cause mortality actually went down in 2020. Sweden, which used the lightest touch of most any country in the world, without mask mandates or school closures, fared very well, with fewer excess deaths than European countries.

In any case, even if the Covid-19 pandemic was comparable in scale to 1918, it simply would not follow that extreme measures would be more effective than moderate measures.

The origins of the great wave of fear lie in the first quarter of 2020, when the Imperial College London Covid-19 Response Group published their notorious Report 9, which predicted that 2.2 million people would die in 3-4 months of 2020 in the US if aggressive government interventions were not put in place.

This was based on unspecified “plausible and largely conservative (i.e. pessimistic) assumptions,” which were not supported by any evidence or references.

The key concepts were, first, that dire outcomes would ensure if normal social interactions in the population were maintained during a pandemic caused by a ‘novel’ virus they had never encountered before. There were historical precedents for this when colonial invaders made first contact with indigenous populations, but nothing like it in modern developed country populations. Second, the ICL group concluded that interactions needed to be reduced by 75% over eighteen months until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more), by reducing mobility through “general social distancing.”

The report generated three scenarios based on these key assumptions: 1) “do nothing”; 2) a package of measures designed to “mitigate” the effects of the pandemic; and 3) a package aimed at “suppressing” it. 

As the assumptions were not in any way supported by evidence, the projections of extreme loss of life in the ‘do nothing’ scenario represent an unfalsifiable hypothesis. No governments went down that path and they all implemented countermeasures to a greater or lesser extent. To justify these measures, they have continually held the hypothetical threat of massive loss of life over us.

What is remarkable looking back on it, however, is that the projections presented in the ICL report that started it all do not convincingly favor suppression. 

Figure 2 in the report shows epidemic curves for various mitigation scenarios starting with ‘do nothing,’ which supposedly results in a peak of demand for ICU beds towards 300 per 100,000 of population. 

The traditional package of case isolation and home quarantining, together with social distancing only for the over 70s results in a peak below 100. 

Figure 3A presents curves for suppression strategies including the one with general social distancing which shows a similar curve, but the peak is actually higher, well over 100 ICU beds per 100,000 of population.

The traditional package with the addition of social distancing for the over 70s is clearly the winning strategy in the report, and bizarrely, is quite close to the ‘focused protection’ strategy advocated by the distinguished authors of the Great Barrington Declaration.

So, the (imaginary) data presented in the Ferguson report actually shows a better outcome from mitigation – but they recommended suppression! 

This sleight of hand has occurred with some other papers where the authors reach conclusions that are at odds with their own results.

A pandemic of modelling then took place across the world, with many other groups making local projections along the same lines, generating worst case scenarios that cannot be tested.

The models have subsequently been found to be extremely fallible, with highly variable outcomes depending on questionable assumptions and key values selected.

Where they generate factual scenarios that can be tested, they have been caught out. When Italy moved to relax its restrictions in the summer of 2020, the ICL Covid Response Group warned in Report 20 that this would lead to another wave, with peaks higher than before and tens of thousands of deaths within weeks.

 As Jefferson and Hehneghan pointed out, “by 30 June that year, just 23 daily deaths had been reported’.” This shows us that the assumptions about the effectiveness of the interventions are particularly weak.

Likewise, a modelling group at my Australian alma mater predicted that with “extreme” social distancing the number of infections in Australia would peak at around 100,000 per day towards the end of June 2020. In fact, the total number of cases peaked at a little over 700 per day in August, many orders of magnitude less than the projection.

Nonetheless, these reports were taken at face value and scared the hell out of the world’s governments and then their peoples, and the governments rushed to accept the group’s recommendation to implement harsh interventions until a vaccine became available. 

Another key underlying theme in the narratives has been “we are all at risk.” Government representatives have been at pains to emphasise that anyone can fall victim to Covid, including young people, and therefore everyone needs to join in the common enterprise to defeat it. Media articles often play up uncommon examples of younger people who became seriously ill in hospital, but downplay all reactions from vaccines as “rare.”

But the reality has always been that risk of Covid (the disease) rises exponentially with age. Charts showing rates of hospitalization divide sharply between the upper age quartiles and the lower age quartiles. There are certainly cases of disease in all age groups, but Covid (and Covid mortality) are sharply distinguished from the 1918 flu by being concentrated strongly in the post-working age population.

Despite this, governments have relentlessly pursued universal strategies, targeting (if that’s the word) everyone in the entire world. 

In the first instance they went beyond the traditional strategy of testing and tracing to find and quarantine sick people and their contacts, and extended this to quarantining the entire population in their homes for the first time in history, using stay-at-home public health orders to enforce lockdowns. This has never been recommended by the World Health Organization, which has consistently advised that lockdowns should only be used for short periods at the beginning of a pandemic, to buy governments some time to put other strategies in place. 

By 2021 it became possible to evaluate the outcomes of these policies against real data

One study strikes at the heart of the key assumption that reducing mobility improves outcomes. This study was published in the world’s top medical journal, The Lancet, and shows that lockdowns do have an effect on infection rates, but only in the short term. 

The authors reviewed the evidence from 314 Latin American cities looking for an association between reduced mobility and infection rates. They concluded that: ‘10% lower weekly mobility was associated with 8·6% (95% CI 7·6–9·6) lower incidence of COVID-19 in the following week. This association gradually weakened as the lag between mobility and COVID-19 incidence increased and was not different from null at a 6-week lag.’ 

Although they present the findings as supporting the link between mobility and infection, in fact they severely undercut the utility of any link. Lockdowns do reduce infection rates, but only for a few weeks, not for any meaningful period. And this study does not draw any conclusions about the effect on the outcomes that matter, such as hospitalisations and mortality.

Hard evidence that lockdowns improved these outcomes is very difficult to find. In some instances, lockdowns were imposed just before the peak of the epidemic curve, which then turned down. But we must avoid falling into the post hoc fallacy, assuming that because ‘B’ follows ‘A’ in the alphabet, ‘A’ must have caused ‘B’.

Empirical studies of different countries or regions mostly fail to find significant correlations between lockdowns and any change in the course of epidemic curves resulting in improved outcomes (particularly mortality). For example, a study of mortality outcomes in all countries with more than 10 deaths from Covid 19 at the end of August 2020 concluded that: 

The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases…burden vs infectious diseases prevalence) economy (growth national product, financial support) and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemic, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate. 

Consider, for example, the case of two cities – Melbourne and Buenos Aires. They have been competing for the title of world’s highest number of days in lockdown (in total). Both cities have imposed measures at the same level of stringency, but Buenos Aires has six times the number of total deaths (taking into account its larger population). Clearly the differentiating factors must be environmental. Latin American countries combine high urbanisation levels and lower GDP per capita, so the differences in living conditions and health systems are driving these differences in outcomes, not the feeble attempts by governments to manage the circulation of the virus.

Some studies purport to find that lockdowns help, but this is usually based on extrapolating from short-term reductions in infection rates and/or counterfactual scenarios based on modelling. There are many studies that find that lockdowns fail, which have been gathered together into various compendia on the web such as this one. There are too many unfavourable findings and not enough favourable ones to justify governments relying on this severe and harsh option.

A few countries, mainly islands in the Pacific regions, managed to hold the virus at bay and go beyond suppression to achieve periods of elimination, or “zero Covid.” Politicians vowed that they would not just “bend the curve” but crush it, or drive the virus into the ground,” as if viruses can be intimidated by political pressure the same as people. 

Having no land borders makes it a lot easier to control interactions with the outside world, but as Covid-19 became endemic in all other countries, the zero-Covid countries reluctantly relinquished the dream and prepared to open up and learn to live with the virus.

Their governments could still spin this as consistent with the original rationale of a period of eighteen months of suppression “until a vaccine becomes available’.” The ICL group never spelled out what would happen when a vaccine did become available, but there was an unspoken implication that suppression would no longer be needed, or at least some of the suppression measures would no longer be needed. 

Vaccination would in some way end the pandemic, although how exactly was never spelled out. Would this effectively be a suppression strategy giving way to a mitigation strategy? Consistent with government approaches throughout the pandemic, no objectives or targets would be set against which success could be measured. But vaccination was certainly supposed to stop the spread.

Governments are vulnerable to action bias, the assumption that in a crisis, taking vigorous action (any action) is better than restraint. They are expected to actively manage crises. As the epidemic waves mount, they come under irresistible pressure to hold them back, to go further, and then further again. Attacking the waves in the present became an overriding imperative, and longer-term collateral damage from the countermeasures has weighed far less in the balance, because it extends beyond the electoral cycle.

The world’s governments are now repeating their original mistaken model of implementing universal, one size-fits-all measures, this time pursuing universal vaccination – “vaccinate the world.” They still want to “drive the virus into the ground” and prevent it from circulating in the community. This is often said to be necessary because it will reduce the likelihood of new variants emerging, which supposedly remains higher so long as there are communities in the world that are not fully vaccinated.

No-one is safe until we are all safe” is the prevailing slogan, supporting a goal to ‘end the pandemic.’ An alternative perspective is that implementing mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic would create evolutionary pressure that would make it more likely that troublesome variants would emerge. This view has been widely debunked in the media, but without reference to contrary research.

As we have seen, the main groups at risk are the older quartiles. An alternative strategy would be to focus on vaccinating these groups, and allow the lower risk quartiles to encounter the virus, recover usually after a mild illness and develop natural immunity. This would arguably give greater protection against later infection than vaccination. Gazit et al found that vaccinated individuals were 13 times more likely to become infected compared with those who had previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Natural immunity may also protect against a broader range of variants with vaccination giving very specific protection against the original variant.

A “focused protection”’ model was advocated by one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (with others) in a contribution to the Journal of Medical Ethics.

There should have been a deep strategic debate about these two alternative strategies, but there was not. Governments continued down the one-size-fits-all path without considering any other options.

Equally, weight should be given to raising Vitamin D levels in these most vulnerable groups, many of which don’t get out much and so lack exposure to sunlight. Already before Covid 19 came along, a comprehensive review had established that Vitamin D ‘protected against acute respiratory tract infection overall,’ especially for those most deficient, which is likely to include most residents of elderly care homes.

Since the onset of this pandemic, more specifically, studies have found links between low Vitamin D status and Covid-19 severity. One such study found that ‘regular bolus vitamin D supplementation was associated with less severe COVID-19 and better survival in frail elderly.’ As a contributor to The Lancet summed it up: “Pending results of [more randomised controlled trials] of supplementation, it would seem uncontroversial to enthusiastically promote efforts to achieve reference nutrient intakes of vitamin D, which range from 400 IU/day in the UK to 600–800 IU/day in the USA” (see Vitamin D: A case to answer’).

meta-analysis of the use of Vitamin D in treatment concluded:
As a number of high-quality randomized control studies have demonstrated a benefit in hospital mortality, vitamin D should be considered a supplemental therapy of strong interest. At the same time, should vitamin D prove to reduce hospitalization rates and symptoms outside of the hospital setting, the cost and benefit to global pandemic mitigation efforts would be substantial. It can be concluded that further multicenter investigation of vitamin D in SARS-CoV-2 positive patients is urgently warranted at this time.
And yet in the first phase of the pandemic, this benign strategy with a prior track record against infectious respiratory diseases was overlooked in favour of a harsh and completely novel strategy with no prior track record and little supporting evidence. The 2019 WHO review of NPIs for influenza did not even cover stay-at-home orders.

The sole reliance on vaccination to save the day at the end of the suppression period is looking increasingly shaky already as we move into the last quarter of 2021. Israel has been the world’s laboratory for testing the effectiveness of universal vaccination using the new mRNA vaccines. But the research on outcomes from Israel and the United Kingdom has revealed that:

- Protection against infection steadily wanes over the months (see pre-print here)
- Protection against transmission is even more short-term, evaporating after three months (see pre-print here).

Consequently, Israel experienced a third wave of the epidemic peaking on 14 September 2021, more than twenty per cent higher than the second wave. Vaccination did not stop the spread.”

So, where to from here? The answer is obvious to the world’s governments – if vaccination is not working well enough yet to end the pandemic, we must double down and have even more vaccination! Bring out the boosters! Governments have bet the farm on vaccination, but it cannot deliver because it only addresses part of the problem.

But the strategies that have been followed since the outset of the pandemic have failed to end the pandemic and have not evidently contained it especially in the worst affected countries in Latin America. 

We are constantly told to “follow the science,” but key findings of science that do not fit the dominant narrative are overlooked. We have had 19 months of essentially futile attempts to stem the tide, causing deep, widespread and long-lasting adverse effects to lives and livelihoods, yet there is no hard evidence that going for suppression instead of mitigation has produced better outcomes. 

Good governance requires that these issues and strategic choices should go through a deliberative process in which the strategic options are weighed up before a decision is made, but this has never happened, certainly not in the public eye.

At some stage, it may no longer be possible to avoid hard strategic thinking. Only 6% of US Covid cases do not also involve “comorbidities;” in other words concurrent chronic and degenerative conditions such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hypertension. Most of these are the “diseases of civilization” that are strongly correlated with the Western diet and sedentary lifestyle factors. 

This caused the editor of The Lancet to write an opinion piece provocatively called “COVID-19 is not a pandemic,” by which he meant it was actually a ‘syndemic,’ in which a respiratory illness is interacting with an array of non-communicable diseases. He concluded: “Approaching COVID-19 as a syndemic will invite a larger vision, one encompassing education, employment, housing, food, and environment.” 

Over a year later, his appeal has clearly been too sophisticated and has fallen on deaf ears. Governments prefer the quick fix. There has been no larger vision. Short-term strategies that can be boiled down easily into slogans have prevailed.

The first step towards that larger vision will be to abandon the leading myths that:

- An extreme threat justifies the use of extreme measures
- We are all at risk so the same extreme measures must be used for everyone.

Instead, governments should move towards a more nuanced strategy, with additional measures differentiating by risk group. 

And address the underlying causes of the crisis in health amongst our seniors. SARS-CoV-2 is just the trigger that has precipitated the crisis. In order to solve a problem, you first have to understand what the real problem is. 

Governments have sought to micromanage the circulation of a virus around the world, by micromanaging the circulation of people. It didn’t work, because they conceptualised the circulation of the virus as the entire problem, and ignored the environment in which it was circulating.

Those who have challenged lockdown strategies have been labelled “science deniers.” But on the contrary, there is a dearth of scientific evidence to support these strategies and a high number of negative findings. The challengers are challenging the basis of conventional opinion, not the science.

The house of science has many rooms. Policy makers need to go beyond cherry-picking the evidence in one or two of these rooms. They should open all the relevant doors and represent the evidence that they find validly. Then have the debate. Then set some clear objectives against which the success of the chosen strategies can be measured.

There should be a clear relationship between the strength of the evidence required for a strategy and the risk of adverse effects. The higher the risk, the higher the bar should be for evidence. Harsh policies should require very high quality evidence.

Governments got it all wrong. They should have chosen the mitigation strategy all along, leaving the management of pathogens to actual medical professionals who deal with individuals and their problems rather than push a central plan hatched by computer scientists, political leaders, and their advisors.. 

Decision-making processes have been ad hoc and secretive, a model that leads to governments making colossal mistakes. It is very hard to understand how lockdowns have become a standard operating procedure despite there being no evidence that they improve outcomes and vast evidence that they wreck social and market functioning in a way that spreads human suffering.

Good governance requires that we do better next time. The basis of government decisions that affect the lives of millions must be publicly disclosed.

And especially: “follow the science” – all of it!

Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute.

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The Not-So-Friendly Skies

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Get ready for turbulence ahead.

Yesterday American Airlines had almost 300 of its flights canceled, almost 10 percent of its total schedule, far more than ANY other carrier in the United States (Southwest remains second), and another 673 delayed. It is no doubt purely coincidental that I have heard from multiple pilots at American this week and that its pilot forums are filled with anger at the vaccine mandate.

It is also no doubt a coincidence that Delta - which has had far fewer problems than the other big carriers - has been the only one NOT to impose a vaccine mandate.

Meanwhile, though they still insist last weekend’s meltdown had nothing - NOTHING, I TELL YOU - to do with their vaccine mandate, Southwest’s executives have dramatically changed their rhetoric about said mandate.

On a video call yesterday, the company’s CEO encouraged employees who don’t want to be vaccinated to apply for exemptions and said he didn’t want anyone to lose a job over vaccinations. Last week, the language went like this: “Failure to comply with the COVID-19 Vaccination Policy will result in termination of employment.” (Still, the mandate remains in place, unless Southwest simply decides to wave through every exemption request.)

Nothing to see here, folks.

Let’s be real: many airline employees are furious with the mandates. Especially pilots. By nature they tend to be conservative self-starters. No one decides to fly planes for a living if he isn’t comfortable with pressure and being responsible for other people (and has an ego, too - old joke: How do you know there’s an F-16 pilot in the room? He’ll tell you.)

They - many of them, anyway - don’t want the vaccine. But unlike most people, they can do something about it. They are inside huge companies with VERY complicated work rules, and they have union protections. And they are aware of the fragility of the system, and not just at Southwest.

Airlines can swing from huge profits to huge losses in months, depending on fuel prices and the overall economy - and that was before Covid travel rules made their corporate lives even more complicated. (No less an investor than Warren Buffett once said he would again never buy them again after a bad investment on them in the 1980s; then he did again, then he sold his positions at exactly the wrong time, after Covid hit last spring.)

Which means the pilots have a lot of leverage, should they choose to use it. A small number of sickouts at a single airline can snarl operations and lead to systemwide flight cancellations that leave tens or hundreds of thousands of people stranded for days. The costs to the travelers caught in the middle of this fight are real - they’ll be stuck and miserable at airports as their vacations are ruined and they miss funerals and weddings and business trips.

Fair use excerpt. Read the whole article here.

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Was January 6 Part of the FBI’s ‘Operation Cold Snap’?

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By Julie Kelly via American Greatness

The tony, bucolic town of Dublin, Ohio would be one of the last places in America expected to host a convention of white supremacist militiamen. Nestled along the Scioto River, the Columbus suburb’s biggest claim to fame is hosting the PGA’s annual Memorial Golf tournament every summer.

But in June 2020, days after the nation was roiled by Black Lives Matter looting and rioting, a man from Wisconsin named Stephen Robeson sponsored a “National Militia Conference” at a Dublin hotel. (Yes, that was the real name of the event.)

According to BuzzFeed’s exceptional July 2021 investigative report on the FBI-led plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, Robeson “helped organize the national meeting, and he was enthusiastically pushing people he knew to attend.” The purpose of the conference was to recruit people who ultimately would stoke “political violence” against governors who refused to reopen their states after lockdowns supposedly necessitated by COVID.

Some participants said Robeson, known as “Robey,” relentlessly pestered them until they agreed to show up; people came from as far as Maryland and Kansas City, BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison reported. One member of the Three Percenters, an alleged militia group on the FBI’s naughty list, observed people taking photos from discreet locations in the hotel. “The feds are everywhere,” he thought to himself.

Indeed. One of the feds was Robeson himself.

In a motion filed in July by a defense lawyer in the Whitmer kidnapping prosecution, Robeson is described as having a long record “of cooperating with the government in exchange for personal benefits. Basically, this [confidential human source] has a decades-long history of acting as a professional snitch for the government.”

Robeson also—and there’s nothing at all sketchy about this—founded the Wisconsin Patriot Three Percenters, BuzzFeed reported. Three Percenters, along with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, are considered right-wing extremist militias by the FBI. Dozens of members from the three groups have been arrested and charged in connection with the January 6 protest at the Capitol.

But there’s more to Robeson’s background than just acting as government-paid flypaper to lure right-wingers to join a so-called “militia” group; he’s compiled a rap sheet a mile long including sex with a minor, battery, car theft, insurance fraud, and forgery. And in 2020, this convicted felon was working for Christopher Wray’s FBI to entrap alleged “militia men,” presumably loyal to Donald Trump, to pull a stunt before the 2020 election.

Which is exactly what happened. In yet another example of the FBI interfering in a presidential election, Robeson and at least a dozen other FBI agents and informants orchestrated the shocking scheme—the feds paid for and organized “surveillance” trips as well as weapons training camps, all for the hidden cameras to capture on film—to produce major headlines as early voting was underway in the crucial swing state of Michigan.

Whitmer held a dramatic press conference the day the Justice Department announced the arrest of six men on federal conspiracy charges, blaming Trump for encouraging “domestic terrorists.” Joe Biden weighed in, too. “There is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one. He is giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country,” he said on October 8, 2020.

Turns out, the “oxygen” that gave the plot life came from inside the house. BuzzFeed, after reviewing numerous court records and conducting interviews with those involved, concluded the FBI assets “had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception.” Without the FBIs involvement, it’s unclear “whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.” For now, the federal trial has been delayed until next spring after defense counsel asked for a 90-day continuance to investigate misconduct by FBI agents and informants. (I reported on that here.)

It also appears that the Whitmer operation was only part of the FBI’s overall plan to infiltrate and perhaps direct the conduct of unsuspecting “militia” men in 2020.

Operation Cold Snap, according to BuzzFeed, was an undercover “far-reaching, multi-state domestic terrorism investigation” to surveil—or more likely entrap, as defense lawyers in the Whitmer case now argue—people tied to the FBI’s hit list of right-wing militias. The Justice Department vaguely referred to the operation in its press release announcing the arrests in the Whitmer case. “[The] FBI began an investigation earlier this year after becoming aware through social media that a group of individuals was discussing the violent overthrow of certain government and law enforcement components.”

Testimony by one of the lead FBI special agents in the Whitmer case verified the multi-state probe. Henrik Impola, who worked with the FBI’s biggest informant in the case, an Iraq War vet known as “Big Dan,” told a judge he was handling “Big Dan” and acting as a case agent in Operation Cold Snap at the same time. “From the FBI through the domestic terrorism operation center, I was aware of other FBI investigations in Baltimore and Milwaukee and Cincinnati and Indiana involving other militia members . . . who were attending the national conference in Dublin,” Impola testified in March.

“Big Dan,” who was paid at least $54,000 by the FBI for seven months’ work on the Whitmer caper, and a separate FBI special agent had another target: Virginia. FBI Special Agent Jayson Chambers in September urged “Big Dan” to convince a man in Virginia to participate in a sinister plan against Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. “The mission is to kill the governor specifically,” the text between handler and informant read. And just like in the Whitmer plot, “Big Dan” advised his target how to build an explosive device and urged him to attend a training camp in Wisconsin. “Like all the others, [the Wisconsin event] was conceived, planned, and conducted by the federal investigative team of agents and undercover informants working together to provide a stage upon which to manipulate their targets into acting out ostensibly incriminating behavior the government hoped to elicit in its bid to develop then “interrupt” the operation of a “domestic terrorist organization.”

Sound familiar?

And there is another glaring connection between January 6 and the Whitmer case that cannot be dismissed as coincidence. One week after the charges were announced in the kidnapping plot, the man in charge of the Detroit FBI Field office was promoted to head of the D.C. FBI Field office. Steven M. D’Antuono took over the D.C. shop, described as “a coveted post in the bureau,” on October 13, 2020. Was D’Antuono promoted for a job well done or to continue the undercover operation, blaming any post-election chaos on right-wing militia groups as they did with the Whitmer plot?

Several unanswered questions about the FBI’s possible involvement remain, as Darren Beattie has detailed at Revolver News. One mystery is the whereabouts of FBI Director Chris Wray before and during the protest. Kash Patel, who held several high-level posts in the waning months of Trump’s presidency, was in communication with top administration officials on January 5 and 6. “I was on the phone on January fourth, fifth, and sixth with the president, with the chief of staff, with the Attorney General, with the Department of Homeland Security, and the only person missing from those phone calls was the Director of the FBI.” Patel said in a recent interview. “He was nowhere to be found.”

Further, the New York Times bombshell last month confirmed that at least one informant inside the Proud Boys started working with the agency in July 2020 and “appears to have been close to several other members of his Proud Boys chapter, including some who have been charged in the attack.” The Times report can only be seen as the start of a slow drip of information about the extent of the FBI’s role in January 6.

For now, it’s hard to imagine Operation Cold Snap ended with the arrest of Whitmer’s would-be abductors. A more likely scenario is that Wray moved D’Antuono from Michigan to the nation’s capital just in time for what everyone knew would be a highly fraught period after Election Day. It’s only a matter of time before we learn how many “Big Dans” or Stephen Robesons were part of January 6.



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Navy will soon dismiss servicemembers who are unvaccinated without an exemption

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Religious and medical exemptions will be considered; natural immunity to COVID will not.

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Fun Facts about the *Spanish Flu*



The "Spanish Flu" never started in Spain - it began in the USA. It was not a "Flu" - despite an ocean of evidence / data, they persisted with the false narrative that it was a "Flu" when in reality it was a bacterial pneumonia - autopsy results showed that bacterial pneumonia killed 92.

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Wikipedia Slashes Spanish Flu Death Rate



We’ve had a couple of people take issue with us regarding the case fatality rate (CFR) of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Citing Wikipedia and the CDC we gave that rate as being between 10-20%. A couple of commenters, however, insisted the actual CFR was 2-3%, and this led us to look further.

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Friday, October 15, 2021

An analysis of Covid-19 Vaccine Effectiveness shows they simply don’t work



There have been plenty of illustrations now about the deception of 90% to 99% Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE). There is also now plenty enough real-world, empirical data to assess the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine overall as a public health tool.

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How Ivermectin became a Target for the ‘Fraud Detectives.’

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Guest Post by Sonia Elijah

From its humble beginnings, derived from an isolated bacterial culture from Japanese soil 46 years ago, to a Nobel prize-winning and anti-parasitic drug, included in the World Health Organisation’s essential list of medicines–ivermectin is one of modern science’s major success stories.

However, from the onset of the pandemic, this cheap generic drug, which for decades has safely cured people of river blindness in 33 countries, with more than 3.7 billion doses administered, has rapidly become public enemy #1 for the fact-checkers when the drug was repurposed as an early treatment and prophylaxis (preventative) for Covid-19.

To date, there have been 31 RCTs (Randomized Controlled Trials), 64 controlled studies, and 7 meta-analyses of the RCTs done on ivermectin. All of them found that ivermectin significantly reduced mortality and hospitalization rates as well as the risk of contracting Covid-19. In Mexico City, over 50,000 patients were treated early with ivermectin, resulting in up to a 75% reduction in hospitalization rates, compared to over 70,000 who were not treated. In Peru, a mass distribution program of ivermectin, led to a 74% drop in excess deaths within a month. Similar success stories were found in Las Pampas and La Misiones regions in Argentina.

In Uttar Pradesh, India, with a population of 241 million as of 10 September 2021, unbelievably only 11 cases and no deaths were recorded. The WHO reported on Uttar Pradesh’s success, attributing it to the aggressive test and treat program, which included the distribution of medicine kits. However, their report failed to include the list of the kits’ contents. Only one article from the mainstream media, an MSN report, revealed that the ‘Uttar Pradesh government has claimed that it was the first state to have introduced a large-scale “prophylactic and therapeutic” use of ivermectin and added that the drug helped the state to maintain a lower fatality and positivity rate as compared to other states.’

A similar success story was experienced in Indonesia after the government authorized the use of ivermectin for Covid-19 patients in July when the Delta variant was ripping through the country.

The number of cases has significantly plummeted since July.

In response to the real-world proven track record of ivermectin as an effective Covid treatment, governmental regulatory bodies, mainstream media, and disinformation agents/fact-checkers have deplored its use and embarked on what can be described as a smear campaign. With headlines running in the Washington Post such as “How those ivermectin conspiracy theories convinced people to buy horse dewormer.”

Even the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently tweeted this post below.

A formulation of ivermectin has long been used in veterinary medicine but for the FDA to be so reductive and defamatory in tone by simply referring to it as a horse dewormer, is misinformation. Especially when ivermectin is approved by the FDA to treat humans with intestinal diseases with a proven forty-year safety record.

The apparent censorship and smear campaign against ivermectin by Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Pharma has arisen against the backdrop of the Trusted News Initiative, led by the BBC. Its members include Reuters, CBC, Associated Press, Financial Times, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Google/YouTube. It was set up in 2019 with the sole purpose to censor what powerful interest groups consider to be ‘misinformation.’

It’s worth noting, James C. Smith, a Pfizer board member was the former CEO and chairman of Thompson Reuters Corporation until February 2020. In addition, Scott Gottlieb, another Pfizer board member, served as 23rd Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until 2019.

This ‘revolving door’ of pharmaceutical execs either coming from or going to work for governmental regulatory bodies, such as the FDA, has given impetus to the argument these agencies have been ‘captured.’

Big Pharma is the colloquial term used to define the top ten pharmaceutical companies in terms of revenue. Major players include Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck. Pfizer has seen a surge in revenues after partnering with BioNTech and winning approval of their Covid vaccine. (Source: investors.pfizer.com)

An example of the merging of Big Tech and Big Pharma can be seen in the purchase of two pharmaceutical companies by Alphabet (the parent company of Google which owns YouTube). Calico, which discovers treatments to overcome aging, and Verily Life Sciences, which partnered with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2016 to form a new drug company, Galvani Bioelectronics, chaired by GSK’s former chairman of its global vaccine business. It’s interesting to note that Emma Walmsley the CEO of GSK is also on the board of Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates.

The controversy surrounding ivermectin reached a fever pitch in July when the Elgazzar et al RCTs pre-print (led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt) was retracted from Research Square on 14 July. It was not retracted by the author but by the server, Research Gate, based solely on the complaints of alleged ‘fraudulent data,’ ‘data manipulation,’ and ‘plagiarism’ by Jack Lawrence, currently studying for his biomedical sciences masters at St George’s, University of London.

Research Square did not give the authors of the Elgazzar study prior notice of the retraction or the right of reply. The retraction, based on ‘ethical concerns’, came a day after Lawrence claimed he alerted them to the fraud. In the Body of Evidence podcast interview, Lawrence states he was given the Elgazzar study to critique by his professor as part of his master’s course. Then, he later states he was studying it, “looking for fraud” (at 13:28 in the timeline). He vividly described his discoveries of “patchwork plagiarism” akin to “a James Bond movie scene.”

The Canadian interviewers, Dr Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry, ‘debunkers of pseudoscience’ that ‘tell you what’s solid, what’s iffy, and what’s crapola’, did not attempt to hide their openly biased opinion. Their ill-humored remark that the BIRD group (British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group) should be renamed was emphasized with a neighing horse sound effect.

“There is a whole ivermectin hype…dominated by a mix of right-wing figures, anti-vaxxers and outright conspiracy theorists” Jack Lawrence stated in the 15 July, Guardian article.

This statement can be viewed as disparaging given its use of derogatory stereotyping against those who support the scientific evidence in favor of ivermectin’s prophylactic and therapeutic effectiveness.

The article was swiftly published only 24 hours after the Elgazzar paper was retracted by Research Square. Melissa Davey, the medical editor of the Guardian, Australia, omitted important information regarding Lawrence. She failed to include details that this master’s student also happens to be a journalist/blogger and founder of the website and discussion forum called, GRFTR, grifters exposed, ‘dedicated to countering online disinformation, misleading stories, and exposing online grifters of all types via debunkings, criticism, analysis, and review.’

It’s worth noting that the Guardian is a recipient of a generous grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) through their Global Development Fund. The same foundation has given over $17 million in grants to Pfizer, which it has shares in, as well as other pharmaceutical companies, such as BioNTech, Pfizer’s manufacturing partner of its Covid vaccine. The BMGF also heavily finances GAVI, the vaccine alliance, which has posted articles actively advising against the use of ivermectin on its website.

According to the Guardian article, Lawrence ‘found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised.’ London-based Lawrence then contacted the chronic disease epidemiologist from the University of Wollongong in Australia, Gideon, currently studying for his PhD and Nick Brown, a data analyst affiliated with Linnaeus University in Sweden, to help him review the report. It’s worth noting the University of Wollongong is the recipient of a substantial grant from the BMGF.

What’s unusual is that Lawrence claims to have accessed the raw data by attempting to guess the passcode, which he claims ended up being “1 2 3 4.”

Whether or not the raw data was accessed and done so by guessing at the password, is yet to be determined. The fact that Lawrence admits to guessing at the password to get into a password protected database could be interpreted as hacking, given the definition is the following ‘the gaining of unauthorized access to data in a system or computer.’ This is concerning, since hacking is as illegal activity under UK law, according to the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar alarmingly stated in an email to a chief investigator of a large meta-analysis on ivermectin, “the data mentioned in the Guardian article is not the actual data of my raw materials.” Furthermore, in an email to Research Square, he accused Lawrence of “taking strange raw material that had been fabricated and added to another website and linked to my research, but after reviewing it I confirmed beyond any doubt that it does not belong to me at all.”

When I asked Lawrence about how he was able to access the raw data file, his response was “the data file has been removed from the file transfer website, I’m afraid. I do not know the reasons for this. The ways these authors shared the data is not normal scientific practice, to say the least. You can find an archived copy of the data here.”

Unusually, this alleged raw data is kept on Nick Brown’s blog casting a shadow over its authenticity, particularly as Elgazzar claims it did not originate from his study.

Furthermore, in Elgazzar’s email he shared the fact that he had contacted Melissa Davey of the Guardian, to refute the claims made by Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz that “the data was just totally faked.” He has strongly asserted defamation and intimated legal action.

In contrast, Davey writes ‘Lawrence and the Guardian sent Elgazzar a comprehensive list of questions about the data but did not receive a reply. The university’s press office also did not respond.’

Since Davey’s article was published exactly one day after the study was retracted by Research Square, perhaps Elgazzar was not able to respond to her within the 24-hour time frame. However, no update to the article has included Elgazzar’s response to date.

In the Body of Evidence podcast, Lawrence reveals that he had been evaluating the Elgazzar paper “for months” and events unfolded very quickly within a 2-week period which led him to alert Research Square in July of the alleged fraud and Melissa Davey of the Guardian. These seemingly coordinated events followed on the heels of the influential Bryant et al meta-analysis systematic review of 24 RCTs (including the Elgazzar RCT) which was published just before in the American Journal of Therapeutics concluding that ‘Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin.’

Turning to Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (the Australian PhD student quoted in the Guardian article), it’s worth highlighting the articles written by Meyerowitz- Katz prior to the pandemic, all share something in common- the downplaying of any harms caused by chemicals. It could be said that Meyerowitz-Katz, by default, is promoting the interests of the chemical lobby. One of his articles reads, “Alarmist fearmongering over the scary chemicals in your food is all the rage, the reality is far more humdrum”. He then writes how the organic food movement is just a “health fad” and downplays any negative health effects attributed to chemical food additives as simply, “sensationalist science”. Another runs with the headline “Artificial sweeteners aren’t destroying your children’s health.”

Meyerowitz-Katz was also quoted in a Genetic Literacy Project article, known to be a pro chemical lobby publication, challenging the meta-analysis that the weedkiller glyphosate, originally developed by Monsanto in the 1970s and often paired with GM crops, increases cancer risk.

The self-proclaimed fraud detectives, Lawrence, Meyerowitz-Katz and Brown teamed up again but this time alongside Kyle Sheldrick and James Heathers, to write a letter to the editor published in Nature on 22 September. Heathers and Brown have worked together in the past, exposing ‘shoddy and questionable research.’

They explained that ‘several other studies that claim a clinical benefit for ivermectin are similarly fraught and contain impossible numbers in their results.’ Inadvertently, they reveal their own biases in their statement by only discrediting the studies that ‘claim a clinical benefit’ without providing any evidence for it. They remain silent on the ones which are widely considered to be flawed studies, like Roman et al, where 40 physicians signed an open letter, detailing the errors and requested retraction of the study.

When I asked Lawrence why he and his colleagues had not looked for fraud in the Roman et al study, he said “We are reviewing every RCT for ivermectin with over 100 patients for fraud, but not every systematic review which is why we have not focused on Roman et al.”

This can be interpreted as an admission of their selective bias in determining which studies they choose to find flaws in. Perhaps, it was Roman et al conclusion of ivermectin not being a viable option to treat Covid-19, which gave it a free pass.

When I asked him about the Lopez-Medina study, his response was “Lopez-Medina was very forthcoming with his data, and we have looked into it.” His response did not address whether they found flaws in that study. One can be forgiven for presuming that it was given a pass like Roman et al, based on its ‘findings that it did not support the use of ivermectin.’

Even though ‘the fraud detectives’ seemingly found no problems with the Lopez-Medina study, more than 100 physicians did. They signed an open letter concluding that the Lopez-Medina study was fatally flawed.

It’s odd that this group specializing in investigating ivermectin studies for fraud and ‘dodgy science’ failed to find the evident flaws in these previously mentioned studies when so many others did.

The TOGETHER Clinical Trials (one of the largest randomized clinical trials in the world evaluating the effectiveness of repurposed drugs, including ivermectin) is another study with flaws and conflicts of interest. The trial is associated with MMS Holdings. This is the same company that helps pharmaceutical companies get approval by designing the scientific studies that help them get approved. As it happens, one of their clients is Pfizer. It’s not surprising that their results showed no benefit for ivermectin in the treatment for Covid-19.

The co-lead investigator of the TOGETHER trial is Dr Edward Mills, an associate professor in the Department of Health and Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University in Canada. He’s also a clinical trial advisor at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The fraud detectives are of the collective opinion that if the Elgazzar study is removed from the meta-analyses – ‘the revision will show no mortality benefit for ivermectin.’ In contrast, scientists with decades of experience disagree, such as Dr Tess Lawrie M.D., Ph.D., Andrew Bryant, and Dr Edmund Fordham. They wrote a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Therapeutics and explained when the Bryant et al. study was re-analyzed to exclude the Elgazzar study, the results showed a ‘49% reduction in mortality in favor of ivermectin.’

Dr Pierre Kory, MD, who won the British Medical Association‘s 2015 President’s Choice award, along with Dr Paul Marik MD, also wrote a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Therapeutics stating ‘we decided to redo the original meta-analyses excluding this study [Elgazzar et al]. The summary point estimates were largely unaffected when the study by Elgazzar et al was removed.’

Another mainstream media report targeting ivermectin is the October 7, BBC article, written by Rachel Schraer and Jack Goodman. It reads: ‘The scientists in the group – Dr Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, Dr James Heathers, Dr Nick Brown, and Dr Sheldrick – each have a track record of exposing dodgy science.’

Meyerowitz-Katz is a PhD student and not eligible for the ‘Dr’ title. Kyle Sheldrick, is a medical doctor, James Heathers and Nick Brown have PhDs. It’s interesting to note that Sheldrick received almost $1 million in grant money from the Australian government for his bio-tech company, Merunova.

Since my report was published on TSN, the BBC article has been revised and the ‘Dr’ title for Meyerowitz-Katz has now been removed.

‘The group of independent scientists examined virtually every randomized controlled trial (RCT) on ivermectin and Covid.’ This is another false statement. As stated earlier, in Lawrence’s response to my question, he admitted that they did not examine every RCT.

The article incorporates commonly used derogatory phrases such as ‘pushing anti-vaccine sentiments,’ ‘hype around ivermectin,’ and ‘conspiracy theories of ivermectin cover-ups’ in referring to those who support the use of ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment. The referenced scientists who are stated as being ‘pro-ivermectin’ are not described in favorable terms. Dr Pierre Kory is considered by the BBC to have ‘an exaggerated influence’ and Dr Tess Lawrie is accused of making ‘unsubstantiated claims’ regarding the Covid vaccines’ adverse events. Perhaps the BBC is unaware that Covid vaccine adverse events (including deaths) have been recorded on databases such as VAERS and the UK’s Yellow Card scheme, since their rollout.

‘The BBC can reveal that more than a third of 26 major trials of the drug for use on Covid have serious errors or signs of potential fraud.’ This statement not only reveals the BBC’s bias but is overt disinformation. The BBC has not supplied any independently verified evidence to back up its claim. The defamatory accusation that a third of all scientists involved in the 26 major trials are implicated in fraud and erroneous trials, is yet another example of them publishing an unsubstantiated ‘fact’ and pushing “fake news.”

Both the BBC and the Guardian are guilty of publishing articles with the presumption that the Elgazzar study is fraudulent, purely based on the claims of this group and the prima facie retraction of the study. In truth, the Elgazzar study is under current investigation and no verdict has yet been announced. In fact, they have declared someone guilty before the evidence has been independently examined and judgment made–this is shocking. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Similar to the Guardian, the BBC has received generous grants from the BMGF via its Global Development Fund. However, it has received significantly more than the Guardian with grants dating back as early as 2006.

When reviewing this very polarized debate over the use of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, the motive has an essential role to play. The question that needs to be asked is what do these scientists have to gain by promoting the use of ivermectin as a treatment?

They are not promoting the use of a patented expensive drug but advocating the use of a cheap generic one. They are putting their well-established careers on the line. They are sticking their heads above the parapet and by doing so exposing themselves to slander or worse. Yet, they continue to do so because they know lives are worth saving.

And why is ivermectin being so negatively targeted by Big Tech and Big Media? One could argue conflict of interest plays a major role, given how intertwined they are with Big Pharma and the far-reaching grasp of the BMGF. A cheap and effective early treatment for Covid-19, like ivermectin, can be seen as a significant threat to the financial interests of those involved with Covid vaccines and expensive anti-viral drugs.

One fact is for certain, the disinformation war surrounding ivermectin shows no signs of abating.



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Empty Christmas Stockings? Don't Blame COVID, Blame California

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Empty Christmas Stockings? Don't Blame COVID, Blame California

Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,

The conventional wisdom from the left is that COVID is the reason that shipping containers are in the waters off California with no stevedores or truckers available to take care of them.

The implication, of course, is that if people would stop being selfish and take the vaccines, the whole problem would magically vanish.

That’s nonsense.

As a couple of astute articles explain, the problem is that California has passed two laws—one for “climate change” and the other as a sop to the unions—that destroyed much of California’s trucking industry.

Add in woes unique to the industry and COVID payments that discourage people from working and...voila!...empty Christmas stockings.

Stephen Green, at PJ Media, explains some of what’s going on.

As a preliminary matter, truckers are aging out of the job and new ones aren’t coming along. Because federal law requires that truckers be at least 21, kids who leave school at 17 or 18 get involved in other careers, leaving trucker shortfalls. Women don’t offset this problem because, as is typical for most physically difficult jobs, it’s not their thing. Those are long-term problems.

The short-term problem, though, is that California has passed laws taking trucks off the road:

Twitter user Jerry Oakley reminds us that “Carriers domiciled in California with trucks older than 2011 model, or using engines manufactured before 2010, will need to meet the Board’s new Truck and Bus Regulation beginning in 2020.” Otherwise, “Their vehicles will be blocked from registration with the state’s DMV,” according to California law.

“The requirement is to purchase electric trucks which do not exist.”

Sundance, at Conservative Treehouse, expands on this, explaining that the EPA reached an agreement with the California Air Resource Board...

...to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards. [snip] In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.

In an effort to offset the problem, transportation companies started using compliant trucks (low emission) to take the products to the California state line, where they could be transferred to non-compliant trucks who cannot enter California.   However, the scale of the problem creates an immediate bottleneck that builds over time. It doesn’t matter if the ports start working 24/7, they are only going to end up with even more containers waiting on a limited amount of available trucks.

That’s Problem No. 1.

Problem No. 2, again according to Green, is California’s infamous AB-5, the law that, as a sop to the Democrats’ beloved unions, killed the gig economy:

“Traditionally the ports have been served by Owner Operators,” Oakley says, who are non-union. But under AB-5, “California has now banned Owner Operators.”

Just like the union longshoremen, union truckers work under a whole host of work rules that simply can’t accommodate crisis conditions like the ones in Los Angeles.

(Incidentally, Green says that AB-5’s language is included in the “Build Back Better” bill in Congress.)

All of this means that Biden’s grandstanding about having the ports operate 24/7 won’t make a difference. The greenies and the unions killed the infrastructure to unload those ships, with COVID restrictions, trucking restrictions, and free money landing the coup de grâce that led to this situation. Biden does have the emergency power to order those California laws in abeyance, but you know he’s not going to do so.

But of course, the more serious underlying problem is that, in a distant, wonderful past, America didn’t need to rely on containers from Asia to fill her store shelves and Christmas stockings. America was a manufacturing dynamo that fulfilled American needs and still had enough left over for the rest of the world. Those things were well-made, too.

Thanks to our Devil’s bargain with communist China, we have no manufacturing sector and are utterly dependent on China, both for things we like and things we need. Biden’s inflationary politics and crackdown on fossil fuels mean that it will be virtually impossible for a renaissance in American manufacturing. Trump tried to stop this situation but China owns so much of America’s political and industrial class that the pushback shackled his presidency and pushed him straight out of the White House.

It's a depressing scenario but the rosy side is that China’s got a problem if America can’t open the door to her products. Add to this the disastrous collapse in China’s real property sector and China may be hurting as badly as we are.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/15/2021 - 11:30

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