“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.
The World Health Organization has declared the rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak a ‘global health emergency‘. The classification is the highest alert that the UN health agency can issue and was decided on at the end [...]
The post WHO Issues Highest Alert Level For ‘Rapidly Growing’ Monkeypox Outbreak appeared first on News Punch.
A Queen Mary University of London study published in The New England Journal Of Medicine on Thursday found monkeypox is primarily found in gay or bisexual men.
The massive study looked at 528 infections diagnosed between April 27 and June 24, 2022, at 43 sites in 16 countries.
Large monkeypox study: "98 percent of those infected were gay or bisexual men" These are the important studies we need the CDC to be doing rapidly. https://t.co/PxqR7iLZWm
— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) July 22, 2022
According to the finding, “many, but not all, cases have been linked to men who have sex with men.”
Another interesting find was that 41 percent of the gay or bisexual men with monkeypox also had HIV.
Lesions on patients were most commonly located near the genitals and the anus with the next most common areas being the trunk, arms, or legs.
Over half of the individuals in the study suffered from swollen lymph nodes and fever.
While the data shows the outbreak is clearly concentrated among gay or bisexual men, the study stated, “Research is still underway to determine whether monkeypox is being sexually transmitted.”
The study also claimed monkeypox is not “a gay disease” despite the connection.
“It can affect anyone. We identified nine heterosexual men with monkeypox. We urge vigilance when examining unusual acute rashes in any person, especially when rashes are combined with systemic symptoms, to avoid missing diagnoses in heterosexual persons,” the study noted.
When will public health officials begin warning gay men about protecting themselves from monkeypox?
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
As suspected, SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate. This was entirely expected and predicted, as vaccinating against any highly mutable virus, such as the coronavirus, pressures the virus to adapt.
One of the latest variants, BA.5 — now believed to be the cause of nearly all COVID infections — is tied with measles in terms of its infectiousness and transmissibility.1 That makes it the most infectious of all SARS-CoV-2 variants,2 and one of the most infectious viruses known to man. Fortunately, it’s also considerably less deadly than the original Wuhan strain. According to a July 5, 2022, Deadline report:3
“BA.5 was first identified in South Africa on February 26. Less than a month ago, on June 4, it only accounted for 9.6% of cases in the U.S., while predecessor BA.2.12.1 sat atop the heap at 62%.
Today, the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] estimates the subvarient is responsible for about 54% of new cases here. That’s double BA.2.12.1, which now accounts for 27% of infections. BA.5’s rise also leaves sister subvariant BA.4 in the dust at 16%. It’s a faster ascension than that of any other variant over the course of the pandemic …
One reason BA.5 is so dominant is that it seems to be more transmissible than even BA.2.12.1 … ‘The Omicron sub-variant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,’ said Eric Topal, who is Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, Professor of Molecular Medicine and Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research, in a substack post4 last week.
‘It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, well beyond Omicron (BA.1) and other Omicron family variants that we’ve seen.’
In other words, BA.5 is much better at evading the immunity provided by vaccines and especially good at dodging the immunity conferred by previous infection.5“
Even if you’ve had COVID before, got the jab and all your boosters, and even if you have hybrid immunity (meaning you’ve had both past infection and the COVID jab), chances are you’ll probably catch BA.5, as it seems particularly adept at circumventing all previous defenses.
This immune-evading ability is likely an outgrowth of mass injection, as vaccinating a population during an acute outbreak pressures the virus to mutate more rapidly. The image below, from Topol’s Substack article,6 illustrates the genetic distance between BA.5 and previous strains.
This scenario was predicted even before the mass injection campaign began, but no one in a position to make decisions paid any attention to reason. So, here we are.
What remains to be seen is whether BA.5 will cause worse or milder infection than Omicron, which was on par with the common cold. The problem we have is that governments around the world have done a spectacularly good job of undermining good data collection and reporting, so it’s extremely difficult at this point to tease out what’s really going on in the real world.
For example, in the U.S., COVID cases are at an “all-time low,” Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and chief science officer at telehealth company eMed told CNN, July 11, 2022.7 However, that same day, NPR reported8 that BA.5 was “driving up cases and reinfections” in the U.S. So, which is it?
Europe, meanwhile, is reporting a sharp rise in both cases and hospitalizations.9 Keep in mind that “cases” simply refer to positive PCR tests, which are unreliable at best, as they cannot identify active infections, and COVID hospitalizations are frequently patients who are hospitalized for other conditions and just happen to test positive for COVID.
The only experimental study10 we have for BA.5 so far suggests the virus replicates more efficiently in human lung cell cultures than the Omicron subvariant BA.2, and infection experiments on hamsters suggest it may cause more severe infection than BA.2. That said, there’s really no evidence to suggest BA.5 is deadlier than any previous version.11
Despite the fact that BA.5 was a predicted outgrowth of pressure from mass “vaccination,” governments around the world are doubling down on the failed strategy of boosters. As reported by Time magazine, July 11, 2022:12
“European regulators are urging second booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines for people over 60 years old as cases and hospitalizations are again rising sharply … Weekly case rates among people age 65 and over increased 32% in 22 of the 24 reporting countries in the week ending July 3 compared to the previous week …
The [European Medicines] agency said that, at present, there is no clear evidence to support giving a second booster to people under 60 who are not at higher risk of severe disease …
Separately, EMA Executive Director Emer Cooke said work is under way toward possible approval of vaccines adapted to counter newer variants in September.”
Two days later, July 13, 2022, the Biden administration followed suit, announcing all adults, including those under 50, will be eligible for a second booster this fall, to quell worries about waning immunity. The announcement came just one week after Biden signed a $3.2 billion agreement with Pfizer for 105 million doses that will target Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.13
Interestingly, as rapidly as BA.5 took over the world, it’s already on pace to be replaced by another strain with the designation BA.2.75. In a second July 11, 2022, article, Time reported:14
“The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious Omicron mutant … BA.2.75 … may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection.
It’s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other Omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5 … Fueling experts’ concerns are a large number of mutations separating this new variant from Omicron predecessors.
Some of those mutations are in areas that relate to the spike protein and could allow the virus to bind onto cells more efficiently, [director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic, Matthew] Binnicker said.
Another concern is that the genetic tweaks may make it easier for the virus to skirt past antibodies — protective proteins made by the body in response to a vaccine or infection from an earlier variant.”
As discussed in “Omicron Variant and Vaccine Resistance,” Omicron initially arose in “fully vaccinated” patients, raising suspicions that the mass vaccination campaign itself was driving the rapid mutation of the virus.
A problem we now face is that these newer strains all appear to be able to break through both natural and artificial defenses, i.e., both natural immunity and COVID jab-related antibodies, resulting in repeat infections.15
By that I don’t mean we’re facing reinfection with a dangerous virus. That’s not the case. We’re essentially looking at endemics of something similar to the common cold; the main difference being that it’s no longer seasonal.
No, the real problem is that authorities are responding to COVID as if it was a deadly plague, and are using what are essentially cold symptoms to lock down economies and strip people of their rights and freedoms, over and over again.
Newer variants, such as BA.5 and BA.2.75, have all developed ways to circumvent our immune defenses, including natural immunity, and this unfortunate and largely manmade circumstance now provides the fearmongerers with fresh fodder.
That reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 is possible isn’t really a great surprise. The coronavirus, after all, is the virus responsible for the common cold, and throughout history, there have been people who have succumbed to more than one cold episode in a given year.
What’s surprising is that governments are willing to destroy economies, the education of children, mental health and the very notion of democracy over endemic cold symptoms. Unless run by clinically insane individuals and/or hypochondriacs, no government would do such a thing.
Assuming world leaders are free of such diagnoses, the fact that they’re doing these things suggests there’s an entirely different reason behind their actions. COVID just happens to be the only excuse available, so they have no choice but to milk it for all it’s worth, even if it makes no sense from a medical perspective.
In January 2022, it looked as though the COVID-19 narrative had crumbled past the point of no return, as many health officials and world leaders finally acknowledged the COVID shots couldn’t end the pandemic and that we had to “learn to live with the virus.” Some even started speaking out against repeated boosters.
I discussed this in “Are We at the End of the Pandemic?” A major driver for that U-turn in the pandemic narrative was the emergence of the Omicron variant. While incredibly infectious, it caused only mild cold symptoms in the vast majority of people, leaving natural herd immunity in its wake.
Alas, newer variants, such as BA.5 and BA.2.75, have all developed ways to circumvent our immune defenses, including natural immunity, and this unfortunate and largely manmade circumstance now provides the fearmongerers with fresh fodder.
So, at this point, it seems the pandemic will remain a key justification for a “Great Reset” of societal norms, medicine, finance, transportation, food and the rest. In my estimation, the only way to eliminate this “Trojan Horse” justification once and for all is for the people of the world to cease fearing COVID.
As long as the fear of infection persists, it will be used to control and enslave us. In other words, the pandemic narrative will continue to be used for evil ends until and unless people start fearing global tyranny more than they fear a case of fever and sniffles, and respond accordingly.
The post Scamdemic 2.0: Why BA.5 Is the “King” of Coronavirus Variants appeared first on based underground.
It is now widely accepted the allegations that presidential candidate Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election were falsely made as part of a defamation campaign launched by Hillary Clinton. The allegations went far beyond the dirty tricks politicians are known to play – going on to impair Trump's presidency. Trump remained the target of critics believing he was not legitimately elected. Playing a major disinformation role in the Russian hoax were two publications – the New York Times (NYT) and Washington Post – that were subsequently recognized for their "contributions" by the Pulitzer Prize Board.
In 2018, praising the two newspapers for their national reporting, the board awarded them a Pulitzer "for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration."
Despite findings more recently coming to light that no Trump/Russia collusion occurred, which true "deeply sourced, relentless" reporting should have revealed, the tribute above to the two newspapers remains memorialized on Pulitzer's website, with the NYT and Washington Post proudly acknowledging the award as a badge of honor and good journalism.
On May 27, 2022, Trump sent a letter to the Pulitzer Board as follows:
"There is no dispute that the Pulitzer Board's award to those media outlets was based on false and fabricated information that they published. The continuing publication and recognition of the prizes on the Board's website is a distortion of fact and a personal defamation that will result in the filing of litigation if the Board cannot be persuaded to do the right thing on its own."
Trump's letter caused Pulitzer to engage two independent sources to review the matter. It claims these two sources, acting separately, arrived at the same conclusion, i.e., "that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes."
What Trump will do in response to Pulitzer's refusal to revoke the awards remains to be seen.
By way of background, the Pulitzer Prize is the result of an endowment by newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer in 1917 to recognize outstanding reporting. It has come to be highly esteemed, being awarded every May since 1917. Awards are made by Columbia University upon the recommendation of a Pulitzer Prize Board of judges appointed by the university.
To its credit, the NYT has now received 133 Pulitzer awards. This is more than any other publication. In second position to the Times is the Washington Post, which has received 65 Pulitzers. However, for the NYT, it is not the first time the newspaper has received an award despite questionable reporting.
In 1932, Pulitzer granted the NYT an award for a series of dispatches written by Walter Duranty. He was head of the newspaper's desk in Moscow where he wrote about the Soviet Union's Five Year Plan. That series failed to report on a major failure of the program in the form of a 1932-1933 famine, which claimed the lives of an estimated 5 million people (1 million Russians and 4 million Ukrainians). Duranty helped feed Soviet leader Josef Stalin's propaganda machine by suppressing the truth. He covered up the death count, writing, "there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation."
Fake news had won the NYT a Pulitzer which, after Durranty's false reporting was exposed, the Pulitzer Board twice declined to revoke.
We are now living in an era of fake news reporting, reflected by the fact that recent polls show public trust in the media has hit an historic low. Only 16% of adults in America say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers.
Some newspapers have taken positive steps to root out fake news and heighten accountability. USA Today recently removed 23 articles from its website after an internal investigation revealed a reporter had fabricated quotes. But this, unfortunately, is more the exception than the rule. Pulitzer's refusal to accept accountability for wrongly awarding prizes only encourages fake news "fiction" writers to continue their ways as they know a Pulitzer may be their ultimate reward.
If Pulitzer is not going to demand such accountability, it then falls to the newspapers that inappropriately received the awards to take some kind of action. Sadly, returning the Pulitzers will not happen. Nor can we hope to see minimal accountability in the form of a simple asterisk on their websites acknowledging the award's faulty foundation of truth. How long will it take to restore the public's faith in journalism? However long it takes for journalists to realize they must take positive steps to restore honesty and integrity in their profession.
While woke activists have managed to put a pox on our Founding Fathers and others for not eradicating slavery, far more people died from the 1932-1933 famine Duranty knew about but failed to report. One would think these activists, ever respectful of human life, would therefore push to honor the unreported famine casualties by demanding the newspapers relinquish their Pulitzers.
The Pulitzer Prize Board should be setting a corrective course for journalism in America. Failing to withdraw awards for false reporting does not do so. As long as it embraces the attitude of wrongly awarding a Pulitzer means never having to say you're sorry, there is little hope such a course correction will be quickly undertaken.
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The post Wrongly awarding Pulitzers means never having to say you're sorry appeared first on WND.
Prozac pill, screengrab
A review by University College London has concluded that depression is not a chemical imbalance in the brain, and scientists have no idea how antidepressants work.
According to the British study, one in six adults in England are currently prescribed antidepressants. Most of the prescribed medications act by maintaining serotonin levels. However, the new study suggests low serotonin levels do not cause depression.
Instead, the study suggests depression may be more strongly correlated with adverse life events, which lower mood.
Wow…turns out depression has nothing to do with "chemical imbalances" to the best of our knowledge. Antidepressants? We don't really know why they work.https://t.co/HRztRjvANa
— Angelica
(@AngelicaOung) July 20, 2022
Since the 1990s, antidepressant use has grown alongside the theory that drugs establish correct levels of chemicals in the brain. However, researchers say that is unfounded.
“I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin,” said Joanna Moncrieff, a professor of psychiatry at UCL who authored the study.
“Many people take antidepressants because they have been led to believe their depression has a biochemical cause, but this research suggests this belief is not grounded in evidence,” she noted
“The popularity of the ‘chemical imbalance theory of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants,” she continued.
Moncrieff also pointed out that “thousands of people suffer from side-effects of antidepressants, including the severe withdrawal effects that can occur when people try to stop them, yet prescription rates continue to rise.”
“We believe this situation has been driven partly by the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance.”
Moncreiff then said, “It is high time to inform the public that this belief is not grounded in science.”
Researchers in the report reviewed studies regarding serotonin and depression and found no difference in levels between thousands of people diagnosed with the condition and healthy control participants.
They also looked at studies where serotonin levels were artificially lowered in hundreds of people by depriving their diets of the amino acid required to make serotonin. The study surprisingly found that it did not make them depressed.
The researchers say that patients should not be told a chemical imbalance causes depression. They also noted that patients should not be informed that SSRIs can correct the problem. However, antidepressants can work but must do so through a different route.
It is worth noting that experts have warned people against stopping their medication.
The post A New Study Says Antidepressants Are Not The Answer to Depression appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Authored by Bruno Manno via RealClearEducation.com,
COVID-19 disrupted American K-12 education, with calamitous consequences for young people. Here are seven realities that resulted from that calamity.
Four describe the tragedy, and three explain what advocates and stakeholders are doing to overcome it.
1. Parents know that there are problems and want new solutions.
More than two-thirds (69%) of parents say that they’re worried their child isn’t on track in school, almost twice as many as the 35% who were worried about this pre-pandemic. Nearly six in ten want schools to continue using statewide tests to show what students are learning so that schools will know where to focus assistance. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of parents worry about their child’s mental health. All this leads nearly six in ten (56%) to want schools to rethink how they educate children and create new ways to teach children.
2. COVID-19 led to much less student learning.
Analysts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) studied mathematics and reading test scores across the country, tracking what students learned using online instruction compared to what they learned in reopened schools. Online instruction was associated with growing achievement gaps, especially for black and Hispanic students attending high-poverty schools. The average student learning remotely lost the equivalent of 13 weeks of in-person instruction, a gap that reached 22 weeks for students in high-poverty schools. The average student in reopened schools lost between 7 and 10 weeks of in-person instruction. Other studies reach similar conclusions, including one that found pandemic learning loss greater than that experienced by New Orleans students after schools closed following Hurricane Katrina.
3. COVID-19 changed young people’s college-going plans.
The 2022 high school graduating class lived more than half their school time during the pandemic. Nearly 1 in 3 seniors (28%) have changed their post-high school plans since the pandemic began, up from 18% in a spring 2020 survey. Three out of four (74%) seniors report that they want to go to college, though they’re now facing new challenges. There are significant differences across student groups, with seniors who are Hispanic, black, and male less likely to want to go to college than those who were seniors in 2019.
4. COVID-19 affected young people’s mental health.
The Surgeon General issued a public advisory report with troubling information. Mental-health visits for children aged five to 11 increased by 24% compared to 2019, with visits for 12- to 17-year-olds rising almost 31%. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that since the start of the pandemic, 70% of public schools experienced an increase in the number of children seeking school mental-health services, with 76% of school staff voicing concerns about students showing signs of depression, anxiety, and trauma. The General Accounting Office found that during the 2020-21 school year a higher percentage of teachers using online or combining online and in-person learning reported that their students experienced learning difficulties than did teachers in an in-person environment.
There are reasons for optimism. Here are three promising pathways to overcoming the COVID-19 learning calamity.
5. Many parents responded to this calamity by voting with their feet.
Parents enrolled children in new non-public school education settings, shrinking public school enrollment since 2020 by almost 1.3 million students (though some of this decline owes to decreasing birth rates and immigration). Parents enrolled their children in private and parochial schools, micro-schools, and learning pods, with homeschooling reaching record enrollment levels. In particular, large urban districts experienced a significant student exodus, especially those with lengthy periods of remote-only learning. For example, over the last two years, New York City schools lost around 64,000 students; Los Angeles around 43,000 students; and Chicago around 25,000 students.
6. State and local public school leaders are responding to the calamity.
States and school districts have received $190 billion in federal pandemic education funding. Money is being used to implement programs that accelerate student learning, including evidence-based ones like intensive small-group tutoring; competency-based instruction that develops specific student knowledge and skills; summer school; extra instruction in core subjects; lengthening the school year; and offering modest financial incentives and other rewards to students, parents, and teachers.
7. Policymakers are creating new options for parents and young people.
Elected state leaders have expanded school-choice options or created new ones, including open enrollment across school district boundaries, vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts. This has produced a more pluralistic K-12 system with more educational options for families and students.
School closures produced an education and mental-health calamity for young people. The debate about whether school closures were mistaken will continue. The onus is now with K-12 advocates and stakeholders to do whatever it takes to support families and students in their efforts to make up lost ground.
* * *
Bruno V. Manno, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, is senior advisor to the Walton Family Foundation’s education program. Some of the research described in this piece was supported financially by the Foundation.
Well, we just received a Youtube “strike” for allegedly spreading “medical disinformation.” This means we are unable to post anything for a week to our channel and raises the prospect of losing the entire channel permanently. My crime? “Medical misinformation.” And this was on top of a warning and the automatic removal last week of …
On Monday, the San Diego Unified School District, the second largest K-12 system in the state of California and among the top 25 in the country, reimposed an indoor masking requirement on all students and staff, in response to increased COVID-19 infections in the surrounding community.
The re-masking was triggered automatically via a district decision this past May when San Diego County on Friday crossed the threshold deemed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to indicate a "high" level of community spread—above 200 new cases per 100,000 residents over a 7-day rolling average and above 10 percent of staffed hospital beds in use by COVID patients. The CDC's guidance for schools and child care facilities, which San Diego adheres to, is that "universal indoor mask use is recommended at a high COVID-19 Community Level."
According to CDC metrics as of Tuesday morning, 35 percent of U.S. counties had "high" community levels, 40 percent had "medium," and 25 percent "low." That does not mean 35 percent of school districts will go back to masking—far from it. According to the tracking site Burbio, school masking is banned statewide in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Utah, and as of July 18, face coverings were mandated in only 1.2 percent of districts nationwide.
But that number will surely grow with the BA.5 subvariant over the coming weeks, largely in the Democratic-controlled polities that have, since the onset of the pandemic, adopted the most restrictive school policies not just in the United States but among industrialized nations the world over. Los Angeles County, the nation's most populous, will impose a blanket indoor masking requirement on July 29 if the community level remains "high," officials said earlier this month. The University of California campuses in Los Angeles, Irvine, and Riverside have all brought back mandatory masks.
In a Monday interview with KUSI News that has gone semiviral, San Diego Unified Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne said that kids and parents who don't want to wear masks should the mandate remain in place in the fall "can go to our school that's online, they can opt not to return to the regular school, but to go to the school where they don't have to go to school at all other than via Zoom." As for mask-averse summer school kids presented with the brand new requirement, "They should just make it known that they don't feel comfortable and at that point just not return."
The no-big-deal, rules-are-rules, take-it-or-leave-it tenor of Whitehurst-Payne's comments are best experienced audiovisually:
"They can go to our school that's online. They can opt not to return to the regular school, but to go to the school where they don't have to go to school at all other than via Zoom."
-@sdschools President Whitehurst-Payne on those who don't want to mask.pic.twitter.com/xG9KyM9oHT
— Anthony LaMesa (@ajlamesa) July 19, 2022
As fate would have it, San Diego schools were making national news just days after all eyes were on New York City, where the Department of Education (DOE) just projected yet another staggering drop in enrollment, projected at 30,000 more disappeared students from government-run schools this fall.
"We have a massive hemorrhaging of students—massive hemorrhaging," Mayor Eric Adams said last week. "We're in a very dangerous place in the number of students that we are dropping."
One of the dangers brought on by the ongoing public school defections is surely political—last week, 41 of the 51 members of the New York City Council signed a joint letter demanding that Adams restore the $215 million in DOE cuts in a 2022–23 budget that most of them had voted last month to approve. (New York, as in most school districts nationwide, has a funding formula tethered to enrollment; the $190 billion worth of federal-government pandemic bailouts to K-12 systems was able to paper over that shortfall for a while, but that source is winding down.)
It is a brazen play indeed for Democratic politicians and the teachers unions that help elect them to demand the same (or more) in taxpayer funding in return for providing a service that a decreasing number of taxpayers are willing to accept, even for free. But unions, in particular, have been willing throughout the pandemic to trade public affection for public money. The problem for them now is that they may be running out of both.
An annual Gallup poll released last week showed the second-lowest public confidence in the U.S. public school system—28 percent—in the survey's history, with trend lines shooting sharply downward. There have been record amounts of school-board recall activity, including the historic repudiation of three board members in San Francisco this past February. National polls have been showing the GOP erasing the longstanding gap vs. Democrats on the issue of education; even a poll commissioned by the heavily Democratic-leaning American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in seven battleground states showed the two parties running neck-and-neck.
As the union/Democratic-run districts and counties and states return to school masking, it's worth remembering that the very CDC guidelines on which they tether their policies have never included a single study that isolated the effectiveness of masks in school settings. This was true when the agency recommended universal school masking (all the way to February of this year), and it remained true after the CDC hastily announced a guidelines shift in the face of some blue-state governors abandoning their deference to the federal government's public health apparatus.
While the benefits of school masking, particularly at a time of widespread vaccination (which teachers enjoyed long before the rest of the population), have eluded quantification, the damages from the type of remote learning now recommended to holdouts by the SDUSD chief have been documented exhaustively. "The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Education," deemed professors Meira Levinson and Daniel Markovits in The Atlantic last month.
Unsurprisingly, the same big-city districts that have embraced these restrictions are the same ones to experience enrollment wipeouts. The America Enterprise Institute found in an April study that the districts with the most remote learning saw a two-year enrollment decline of 4.4 percent since COVID-19 hit, while the most open lost just 1.1 percent. Burbio that same month showed that in the 2021–22 school year, only the "big cities" category among the four main geographical designations continued to lose enrollment.
There are other factors leading to population shifts out of metropolitan areas altogether, including high housing costs, reduced immigration, and an increase in remote work. But it's hard to escape the conclusion proffered this week by Mary Katharine Ham at The Daily Beast: "Many parents learned for the first time in 2020 just what it looks like to be trapped in a failing public school. They also learned some leaders they thought were prioritizing their kids' educations were not."
Every video of a school bureaucrat treating remote learning as a trivial byproduct of necessary safety measures will create another enthusiast for school choice. It's been two and a half years, and the public education establishment still looks far from learning that lesson.
The post Big-City Public Schools, Facing a 'Massive Hemorhagging of Students,' Are Reimposing Mask Mandates appeared first on Reason.com.
Last Updated on July 19, 2022
Reffitt spent more than a year in a D.C. prison before opting to become the first January 6 defendant to stand trial. It ultimately took a D.C. jury just hours to convict Reffitt on a number of charges, including two counts of civil disorder, two counts of obstruction, and one count of carrying a handgun on restricted grounds. Prosecutors tacked on the handgun charge after Reffitt had already been in prison for months, arguing that a holster he was carrying that day contained a handgun.
Reffitt was arrested by the FBI after his son, then 18-year-old Jackson Reffitt, turned him in after seeing his picture online. Jackson Reffitt proudly defended his actions during a January 2021 interview with CNN, saying he “followed his moral compass.” He added that he would gladly do it again.
To date, a GoFundMe for Jackson Reffitt’s “college fund” has raised close to $200,000 after he was disowned by his mother.
Jackson Reffitt also secretly recorded his father after he returned from the D.C. jail in January 2021. His videos ultimately landed his father in prison for more than a year while awaiting trial, and he now faces up to 15 years in federal prison.
"Yes, I would do it again," 18-year old Jackson Reffitt told @FOX4 after he tipped the @FBI to his father who, reportedly, took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 6. "If you have any experiences about this, please speak up about it," he pleaded toward others. pic.twitter.com/kPLliqinq2
— David Sentendrey (@DavidSFOX4) January 25, 2021
In a 58-page sentencing guideline, U.S. Attorney Jeffery Nestler asked for Reffitt’s obstruction conviction to be given domestic terrorism enhancements. Nestler argued that since Reffitt — who never entered the building — was present while the election was being certified, his intent was to overturn the results.
Nestler repeatedly claimed that Reffitt played a “central role in leading a mob that attacked the United States Capitol.” Nestler went on to write that, “Reffitt returned home to Texas on January 8, triumphant about the integral role he played in the attack on our democracy.”
For several pages, Nestler portrays Reffitt as a dangerous militia leader who used his influence to initiate a violent assault against the U.S. Capitol Building. “Reffitt did not intend to simply obstruct Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. Rather, Reffitt intended to physically remove the legislators from the building (using his firearm and flexicuffs, and the power of the crowd) and actually ‘take over’ Congress,” Nestler wrote.
Nestler and his boss, U.S. Attorney Michael Graves, did not argue any of this in court. They simply want a federal judge to add terrorism charges on to Reffitt’s sentence after the fact.
Prosecutors are seeking a whopping 15 years in federal prison for Guy Reffitt, who never entered the building.
Florence Reed of UnHerd News recently talked with filmmaker Alex Lee Moyer about the Big Tech censorship of her upcoming documentary “Alex’s War,” focusing on Infowars founder Alex Jones.
Google refused to allow the film’s team to take out ad space to promote the movie, ignored their calls and permanently revoked the producer’s ability to purchase ad spaces.
“It’s one thing to deplatform Alex Jones, but should we deplatform anyone from even discussing Alex Jones?” she asked.
Facebook-owned Instagram also prevented Play Nice, the independent production company that produced the documentary, from paying for promotions on the platform.
Facebook – now Meta – told the film crew the movie’s trailer couldn’t be advertised because it displayed “inauthentic behavior or violations of our Advertising Policies and Community Guidelines.”
Meanwhile, a screenshot provided to UnHerd shows TikTok deleted the film’s trailer, claiming the video contained “hateful behaviour.”
Lee Moyer went on to point out that the film is second to the new “Top Gun” movie on Apple’s iTunes pre-order movie charts despite the censorship campaign.
“Despite all these efforts, there’s obviously a massive demand for people who want to see content that’s culturally relevant and authentic,” she told Reed.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald bashed “left-liberals” who are upset by the movie in a lengthy Twitter thread on Monday.
Between Greenwald’s thread going viral and “Alex’s War” preparing to debut, “Alex Jones” began trending on Twitter Monday afternoon.
The establishment’s information gatekeepers simply cannot contain Alex Jones as his message of freedom crashes through their censorship thanks to Americans thirsty for the truth.
Glenn Greenwald will host a live Q&A with Alex Jones and Alex Lee Moyer on July 23rd.
On July 23rd ALEX’S WAR will World Premiere on the Big Screen with renowned Journalist Glenn Greenwald hosting a LIVE Q&A with Alex Jones and film director Alex Lee Moyer exclusively on Rokfin. Thanks @TheRokfin, @PlayNiceLtd and @ggreenwald !!!https://t.co/nc1NG2tUZF pic.twitter.com/fGPZhJTBog
— ALEX’S WAR (@AlexsWarMovie) July 18, 2022
You may not want to buy a house right now. What goes up must eventually come down, and we have just entered the “down” side of that equation. Over the past two years, home prices in the United States have gone up nearly 40 percent. Now mortgage rates are rising at a pace that is truly frightening, and they are likely to go even higher in the months ahead as the Federal Reserve continues to fight a relentless war against inflation. Needless to say, higher mortgage rates mean higher potential mortgage payments for prospective home buyers, and so millions of Americans are being priced out of the marketplace right now. The only thing that is going to bring those buyers back into the marketplace is for home prices to go down, and that is already starting to happen in some areas of the nation.
We were already in a historic housing bubble heading into 2020, and over the past two years we have witnessed another housing bubble develop on top of the previous housing bubble.
Overall, home prices in the U.S. rose 37 percent between March 2020 and March 2022.
That is insane.
Of course our incomes have not been going up as fast as home prices have. In fact, it is being reported that “home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes” over the past year…
Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put the real estate industry on edge this spring after they published a paper titled Real-Time Market Monitoring Finds Signs of Brewing U.S. Housing Bubble. Why the renewed concern? Over the past year alone, home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes. Simple economic theory, which dictates that neither home prices nor incomes can outgrow the other for very long, tells us that isn’t sustainable.
There is no way that this could continue for long, and we have reached a point where home prices in the United States are “overvalued” by almost 25 percent…
The analysis conducted by Moody’s Analytics aimed to find out whether economic fundamentals, including local income levels, could support local home prices. On a national level, Moody’s Analytics finds U.S. home prices are “overvalued” by 24.7%. In other words, U.S. home prices are 24.7% higher than they would historically trade at given current income levels.
Does this mean that home prices will come down by 25 percent?
Well, it all depends on what the Federal Reserve chooses to do.
If the Fed decides to stop raising interest rates by the end of this year, the damage could potentially be minimized.
But if the Fed continues to raise interest rates throughout 2023, we are likely to see carnage that is unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Personally, I have been stunned by how rapidly mortgage rates have risen. According to Peter Schiff, the last time that average 30 year mortgage rates crossed the 6 percent threshold was just before the last housing crash…
Average 30-year mortgage rates have pushed to nearly 6.4%. The last time we saw mortgage rates over 6% was right before the housing crash of 2008. Until mid-April, mortgage rates were in the 4% to 5% range. Just one month ago, rates were 5.49%.
Lower-income homebuyers have already been priced out of the market by spiking mortgage rates. The houses that are selling tend to be in higher price ranges.
Officials at the Federal Reserve can see what is happening, but they consider taming inflation to be a much higher priority right now.
So the housing bubble will inevitably continue to implode, and the numbers for the industry will just get even uglier. Here is more from Peter Schiff…
Air is hissing out of the housing bubble faster and faster every week.
Pending sales plunged in June and the inventory of homes on the market jumped as mortgage rates continue to rapidly rise.
Pending home sales plunged by 16% year-over-year in June. This follows on the heels of a 12% drop in May and a 9% dip in April. June marked the 10th straight month of year-on-year declines in pending sales.
Some of the hottest markets in the country have started to cool off really fast.
For example, just look at what is happening in California…
The pace of California home sales plunged 21% in June from a year earlier as soaring mortgage rates took a bite out of buyer interest, the state Realtors group reported Monday.
And what we are witnessing in Boise is really alarming.
Boise was once one of the hottest markets in the entire nation, but now sales are dropping faster than Joe Biden’s approval rating…
Before governors relaxed stay-at-home orders two years ago, white-collar professionals were already fleeing their exorbitantly priced apartments in cities like San Francisco and Seattle. The biggest beneficiary of that WFH homebuying wave was undoubtedly Boise—where home prices skyrocketed 53%. You could even call it the poster child of the pandemic housing boom.
But that Boise honeymoon is over. While spiking mortgage rates have pushed the overall U.S. housing market into a slowdown, it has delivered a particularly hard blow to the Boise housing market. That has seen both Boise home sales plummet—down 28% on a year-over-year basis—and inventory levels surge—up 161% this year. It’s also chipping away at home values. According to Zillow, the median Boise home sales price fell 3.5% in June.
This downturn is going to have enormous implications for home builders as well.
Sales are falling, and a key measure of home builder confidence just declined for the seventh month in a row…
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which measures the pulse of the single-family housing market, fell for the seventh consecutive month to 55, the lowest level since May 2020. It is the second-biggest, one-month decline in the survey’s 37-year history.
The only time that the index has fallen more in a single month was during the very early stages of the COVID pandemic.
National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard fears that things will continue to get worse in the months ahead, and he is warning that “we’re going to go into a recession” unless something dramatic happens…
“For the last seven straight months it has been going down and this is a huge drop – and I think all it says is, ‘Somebody do something or we’re going to go into a recession,’” Howard said.
I am sorry to tell you this Jerry, but we are already in a recession right now, and it is going to get really bad.
Our leaders have been making decisions that have been mind-numbingly bad for a long time, and now we are all going to suffer the consequences.
If you are searching for an easy way out of this mess, you can stop looking, because there isn’t one.
What we are heading for is going to make 2008 and 2009 look like a Sunday picnic, and it will shake our nation to the core.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior today.
The post We Are About To Experience An Absolutely Epic Housing Crash The Likes Of Which America Has Never Seen Before appeared first on The Most Important News.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald bashed “left-liberals” who are up in arms over the forthcoming documentary “Alex’s War,” based on Infowars founder Alex Jones, despite the film not yet being released.
In a pointed Twitter rant Monday, Greenwald criticized triggered liberals who “stupidly” believe journalists should only speak to people with whom they agree.
“Of course a bunch of left-liberals who believe journalists should only speak to left-liberals are upset about this — that’s why their faction is so irrelevant — but Alex Lee Moyer’s film about incel culture (“tfw no gf”) was a brilliantly objective study, as is this new film,” Greenwald tweeted.
Of course a bunch of left-liberals who believe journalists should only speak to left-liberals are upset about this — that's why their faction is so irrelevant — but Alex Lee Moyer's film about incel culture ("tfw no gf") was a brilliantly objective study, as is this new film: https://t.co/qGqHPab8br
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
Lee Moyer’s new film, which has seen unprecedented pre-sales on Apple iTunes, seeks to answer: “Who is Alex Jones? Is he a dangerous lunatic or a patriotic hero?”
The New York Times bestselling author went on to chastise pro-censorship leftists for choosing to side with ignorance, instead of knowledge when faced with issues they don’t truly understand.
With any significant phenomenon, one can choose to either to understand its roots or just jump up and down denouncing it. The old left always advocated understanding root causes (crime, terrorism, etc). The new version thinks you should never study or engage with anything Bad.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
The Intercept co-founder added that Lee Moyer’s new documentary presents an objective perspective of Jones allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions on the controversial subject of the film.
The best documentaries avoid preaching and shoving pre-packaged beliefs down the audience's throat. They instead do their best to objectively show the phenomenon and its causes, and let the audience decide for themselves (!). @jacobin on "tfw no gf":https://t.co/cqk7cIJrBv
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
Comparing it to Lee Moyer’s previous film, “TFW NO GF,” which objectively looked at incel culture, Greenwald said “Alex’s War” “avoids sanctimony and posturing,” and “Shows the audience why Alex Jones happened,” adding he’s “excited” to host a Q&A alongside Jones and the director at an upcoming premiere.
This new Alex Jones doc by the same filmmaker, Alex Lee Moyer, debuts in Austin this month. Like her film on "incels," it avoids sanctimony and posturing. Shows the audience why Alex Jones happened. It's fascinating. I'm excited to speak at the preview:https://t.co/gw5yCBUlER
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
Importantly, Greenwald notes Jones was the canary in the coal mine in terms of cancel culture and Big Tech censorship, which have evolved to epic proportions over the last few years.
The film is already being censored by Big Tech, including Facebook, Google and TikTok. Jones was the first test case of Big Tech uniting to immediately "de-person" someone from the internet. Many warned how quickly that would grow. More here on the film:https://t.co/OnkBFsfauI
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
The renowned journalist also took issue with people on the internet falsely claiming the documentary legitimizes Jones and lends him credibility – while the film is still as yet unreleased.
Like clockwork, a bunch of liberal idiots who haven't seen the film arise to say it gives him "credibility." They have no idea what's in the film. One could easily walk away hating him. They just think the only way to deal with Bad Things is ignore them:https://t.co/WzRoFISpyz
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
“Anyway, not only would a rule that one speaks or engages with exclusively left-liberals be a corrupting and absurd way to do journalism, I also can’t think of a drearier or less interesting way to navigate life. Imagine: your whole world consists of Amy Klobuchar and Chris Hayes,” he pointed out, highlighting various instances in which journalists have conducted interviews with people they disagree with politically.
How fucking stupid does someone have to be to think that doing a film about someone or interviewing them means you think they're great people who have done great things? What kind of stunted brain can produce such a primitive belief? Only liberal culture: pic.twitter.com/3WLs6wx9ZX
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
That journalists interview all kinds of people – good, bad & between – is one of those previously accepted conventions nobody ever questioned until liberals decreed 6 second ago that nobody they dislike should be "platformed": just as they decry publication of non-liberal op-eds.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
Anyway, one of the best aspects of being fully independent is that not only are you completely emancipated from what liberal establishments demand, but your reach and impact expand by virtue of that independence and by being attacked by them, given how much they're despised.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
Greenwald credited the filmmakers for producing the independent documentary, especially as the progressive liberal establishment appears more and more to be embracing cancel culture and censorship.
Anyway, one of the best aspects of being fully independent is that not only are you completely emancipated from what liberal establishments demand, but your reach and impact expand by virtue of that independence and by being attacked by them, given how much they're despised.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2022
“The world premiere of Alex’s War will take place in Austin on July 23rd, with Glenn Greenwald hosting a Q&A with director Alex Lee Moyer and subject Alex Jones live streamed on Rokfin afterwards,” the filmmakers announced in an email regarding the event.
On July 23rd ALEX’S WAR will World Premiere on the Big Screen with renowned Journalist Glenn Greenwald hosting a LIVE Q&A with Alex Jones and film director Alex Lee Moyer exclusively on Rokfin. Thanks @TheRokfin, @PlayNiceLtd and @ggreenwald !!!https://t.co/nc1NG2tUZF pic.twitter.com/fGPZhJTBog
— ALEX’S WAR (@AlexsWarMovie) July 18, 2022
Watch a trailer for Alex’s War:
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