The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday ended its COVID-19 program for cruise ships that reported cases of the virus, while saying that ships can handle their own testing and mitigation.
“CDC has worked closely with the cruise industry, state, territorial, and local health authorities, and federal and seaport partners to provide a safer and healthier environment for cruise passengers and crew,” the federal agency’s website said in an update on Monday. “Cruise ships have access to guidance and tools to manage their own COVID-19 mitigation programs.”
“While cruising poses some risk of COVID-19 transmission,” the agency said, the “CDC will continue to publish guidance to help cruise ships continue to provide a safer and healthier environment for crew, passengers, and communities going forward.” The agency did not post a date for the latest guidance, but an Epoch Times review of archived pages shows that the update was posted Monday.
Throughout the pandemic, the cruise industry worldwide has been gutted by lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and other government-imposed rules. Cruise industry groups have called on the CDC to end its program for months.
Health officials have often scrutinized cruise ships and warned that the vessels allow for widespread transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. In early 2020, extensive media coverage was dedicated to an outbreak on the Diamond Princess ship in Japan, prompting health agencies worldwide to place curbs on cruises.
‘Important Step Forward’
In a statement Monday, Cruise Lines International Association spokeswoman Anne Madison told USA Today that it’s pleased the rules were dropped “in favor of a set of guidelines for public health operations on cruise ships
“We look forward to reviewing the details, which we understand will be posted on the CDC website in the coming days,” she told the news outlet. “This is an important step forward in the CDC aligning the guidelines for cruise with those it has established for other travel, hospitality, and entertainment sectors.”
The CDC used a so-called “Conditional Sailing Order” throughout the pandemic after having first issued a no-sail order in 2020. The CDC dropped the conditional order as well as its color-coded COVID-19 warning system earlier this year, which was also hailed by cruise industry groups.
As for mandatory vaccination rules on ships, severalfullyvaccinated cruises have faced respective COVID-19 outbreaks so far in 2022.
A “100 percent vaccinated” Princess Cruises vessel, for example, reported a COVID-19 outbreak before it docked in San Francisco, officials said in late March.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fought against COVID-19 restrictions for cruise ships, including vaccine mandates. Last year, the Republican governor vowed that he would take legal measures to end the enforcement of CDC rules at ports in Florida, which are used by major cruise operators.
A top U.S. health agency is refusing to identify which employees are working on vaccine safety teams, drawing criticism from watchdog groups.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a database in which people file reports of adverse events following vaccination. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) manages the database with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Epoch Times sought the names of employees on three CDC teams charged with analyzing data from VAERS, including a team that looks at data pertaining to post-vaccination heart inflammation. The CDC denied the request in full.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires agencies to comply with information requests but establishes exemptions that agencies can cite to withhold requested information. Roger Andoh, a CDC FOIA officer, cited an exemption that protects “personnel and medical files and similar files” if the disclosure of the files “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
“The information that has been withheld under Exemption 6 consists of employee names. We have determined that the individual(s) to whom this information pertains has a substantial privacy interest in withholding it,” Andoh wrote to The Epoch Times.
Calls for Transparency
Watchdog groups questioned the move.
“If Democrats and Republicans want the American people to trust government institutions, i.e. CDC, NIH [National Institutes of Health] and all the others, one would think members of Congress, agency bureaucrats, and the president’s administration would be motivated to start by offering transparency and eliminating the taxpayer’s justifiable questions and worries,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Not having the ability to see into the bureaucracy is troubling and these agencies are rife with conflicts of interest. Denying transparency to the public is never the answer.”
Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the government watchdog organization OpenTheBooks.com, in Washington on March 22, 2022. (Courtesy of the Conservative Partnership Institute)
Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, noted that Americans’ trust in the government, and health agencies in particular, has declined during the pandemic, according to surveys.
“Pulling the veil of secrecy over basic agency information only serves to make this situation worse,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.
The CDC’s FOIA office reviewed its decision after a request from The Epoch Times.
“I’ve taken a look at your case and we stand by the full denial of the requested information due to the potential for harassment and to protect the physical safety of the employees on these teams,” Bruno Viana, a deputy director who handles FOIA questions, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The Epoch Times has appealed the determination to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the CDC and the NIH.
VAERS Teams
The CDC describes VAERS as “the nation’s early warning system” for the detection of vaccine safety signals, or signs that specific side effects are linked to a vaccine. Health care workers are required to report serious adverse events following vaccination to the database, and other interested parties, such as relatives, can also file reports.
Health officials have repeatedly said that signals from the COVID-19 vaccines would be detected by VAERS and other systems like it, but one of the most prevalent serious side effects, heart inflammation, appears to have been first identified by the Pentagon, not the CDC. Even after the Pentagon discovered the issue, the CDC’s director said no signal was found, though the agency has since acknowledged the side effect.
Raw data from VAERS doesn’t alone constitute a safety signal, according to the CDC. The agency says experts must analyze the data to figure out if signals truly exist.
The three teams whose members the CDC is shielding are among those tasked with analyzing the data, including digging into medical records from reports. One focuses on post-vaccination blood clotting—a condition identified after Johnson & Johnson vaccination. Another looks at the post-vaccination heart inflammation, which has appeared in many more people—especially young males—than expected after receipt of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. A third analyzes an assortment of data.
The work of the teams has been cited by CDC officials during meetings about vaccines.
If the names of the team members were released, they could be used to file additional records requests, which could shed light on how the CDC is analyzing the VAERS data. For example, one could request emails sent between two team members during the time when the heart inflammation issues were first uncovered to see if they were aware of the issue before U.S. military doctors.
The names of all CDC employees are listed in the Department of Health and Human Services’ employee directory, but it isn’t clear from the directory which workers are on the VAERS teams.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that after about five decades in the federal government, he’s planning on leaving his position by the end of resident Joe Biden’s current term.
“We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” Fauci, 81, told Politico in an interview published on July 18 that he plans to retire by the end of Biden’s current term, which ends in January 2025.
Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became a household name as the face of the federal government’s response, often generating criticism from Republicans and conservatives about his generally dire predictions about the pandemic.
Of his relationship with former President Donald Trump, Fauci said that “we developed an interesting relationship … two guys from New York, different in their opinions and their ideology, but still, two guys who grew up in the same environments of this city. I think that we are related to each other in that regard.”
And if Republicans win back either the House or Senate in 2022, Fauci noted that he will likely be investigated by GOP lawmakers. But he claimed that regarding those investigations, “I don’t make that a consideration in my career decision.”
In the Politico interview, Fauci continued to defend his public recommendations, including school closures, mask-wearing, vaccination regimes, and lockdowns.
“My telling somebody that it’s important to follow fundamental good public health practices … what are you going to investigate about that?” he asked.
Possible Investigations
However, Fauci has faced public questions from Republicans in Congress about his agency having given funding to third-party groups to carry out research in China. COVID-19, caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, emerged in Wuhan, China, and a significant number of U.S. intelligence officials last year released a report suggesting the virus may be linked to the top-level Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Last month, amid questions from Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Fauci conceded that he isn’t able to halt federal funding from being doled out to researchers in China.
“The NIH [National Institutes of Health] is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020,” Marshall said. “In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars.”
Later, he asked Fauci, “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”
Federal health agencies, Fauci said in response, “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”
“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he said.
NIAID officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
The Biden administration dramatically reduced migrant prosecutions by nearly 80 percent in the 2021 fiscal year, even as illegal crossings skyrocketed.
Just 2,896 migrants apprehended on the southwest border were transferred into U.S. Marshals Service custody in the 2021 fiscal year, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. In the 2020 fiscal year, 13,213 migrants were transferred to federal authorities for prosecution.
Internal DHS memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon
The precipitous drop in migrant prosecutions illustrates resident Joe Biden’s break from prior administrations’ policies toward illegal immigration. Refraining from bringing criminal charges against the vast majority of individuals entering the country illegally also provides evidence for critics who say the White House is exacerbating the migration crisis on the southern border.
The decline in prosecutions for illegal border crossings also happened amid the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Migrant encounters on the southern border exceeded two million in 2021.
Under federal law, it is a misdemeanor crime to illegally cross the border. A second arrest for illegally crossing the border can be prosecuted as a felony. According to federal law, those found guilty of an illegal border crossing face fines and up to two years in prison.
“The lack of accountability from this administration encourages the worst people flooding our borders, criminals, to keep violating our laws until they finally commit a crime so egregious that the Department of Justice is forced to prosecute,” a senior DHS official told the Free Beacon.
In the 2019 fiscal year, 20,604 migrants were transferred to Marshals Service custody for prosecution. The previous year, former president Donald Trump halted prosecutions of parents who crossed into the country illegally with children.
Defenders of the White House will likely say the drop in prosecutions can be almost entirely attributed to Title 42—a public health regulation that allows authorities to rapidly expel migrants who enter the country. With Title 42 in effect, law enforcement does not need to process migrants in a typical manner and instead works to expel them as quickly as possible.
But Trump instituted Title 42 in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and still prosecuted far more migrants than in Biden’s first year of his presidency. Moreover, illegal border crossings in 2020 were much lower than in 2021, which saw the most migrant apprehensions in U.S. history.
Biden ordered an end to Title 42 in April, although legal challenges from Republicans have temporarily kept it in place. The Biden administration has not yet released border crossing prosecution data for the 2022 fiscal year.
Beyond attempting to eliminate Title 42, the Biden administration has worked to undo immigration policies from the Trump administration. Last month, the Supreme Court authorized Biden to terminate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces many migrants to wait in Mexico before their asylum court hearing in the United States.
The Free Beacon in December reported on deportations plummeting to the lowest number in decades under Biden. The White House has also stonewalled congressional investigations into where DHS is placing illegal immigrants after they are released into the U.S. interior.
The first hospital in America to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine for all employees is now facing a staffing shortage from infections.
Houston’s Methodist Hospital has hundreds of employees out of work because they tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. At the same hospital in 2021, 153 staff members who refused to get vaccinated quit or were fired. Now Methodist leadership is trying to avert a crisis.
“What is worrisome is the climbing number of our employees who cannot work because they are home sick with COVID-19. Almost 400 employees tested positive last week,” Dr. Robert Phillips, the executive vice president and chief physician executive of Houston Methodist, wrote in an internal email on July 12 obtained by The Epoch Times.
“While most of these employees are getting COVID-19 from the community, it is vital that we don’t face a situation where too many employees are out sick and we find ourselves with a staffing shortage,” he added.
Houston Methodist, with a workforce of around 28,000, was the first hospital system in the country to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all of its employees. It also was the first system in the nation to mandate the vaccine for its private health care providers who are credentialed members of its medical staff. The hospital later required all its employees to get a vaccine booster by March 1.
Most employees got vaccinated and stayed, but the system is having trouble with staffing as the vaccines prove increasingly worse at protecting against infection as new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerge.
“The spike in cases is happening all over the country and is likely attributed to the highly contagious and more vaccine-resistant omicron subvariant,” Phillips wrote. “BA.5 is now the most infectious variant so far and is thought to be four times more vaccine evasive than the last dominant variant.”
BA.5 is a subvariant of Omicron. It recently became the dominant strain in the United States, according to federal data.
Phillips nodded at how the vaccines provide little protection against infection, describing BA.5 as four times more “vaccine-evasive” than the last dominant strain, which was BA2.12.1.
While many employees are sick, Phillips said the spike is “not yet correlating with a large surge in hospitalizations” in Houston Methodist, with just 290 COVID-19 patients in the system as of July 12.
None of the patients are Methodist employees, according to Stefanie Asin, a spokeswoman for Houston Methodist Hospital. Asked how many of the hospitalized COVID patients are vaccinated, Asin said she didn’t know. Nearly half of the patients in the system in late 2021 were vaccinated.
Jennifer Bridges poses in Houston, Texas, on June 22, 2021. (Francois Picard/AFP via Getty Images)
Problem With Mandates
“The problem with vaccine mandates is that they are immunologically ignorant by ignoring the powerful effect of natural immunity,” Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor, told The Epoch Times. “Natural immunity has been formally studied in over 200 studies and has been found to be more effective than vaccinated immunity.”
Studies from scientists in Qatar, the United States, and other countries have found those who survived COVID-19 had superior protection than the vaccinated, though a smaller number of studies indicate the opposite.
Nurse Jennifer Bridges was fired by Methodist in June 2021 for refusing the vaccine. “This only proves our point that the vaccine doesn’t work. A true vaccine would prevent you from catching the virus. It’s time Methodist owns up to its mistakes,” Bridges told The Epoch Times after reviewing Phillips’ memo.
“That is absolutely a false premise,” Asin, the hospital’s spokeswoman responded. “The vaccines were never intended to stop you from getting it. The point of the vaccines is to keep you from severe illness and being hospitalized. The mandates and the vaccines are absolutely working.”
Bridges now works at a private COVID-19 clinic located in Houston called BreatheMD, which is owned by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden.
“I had COVID two years ago and have never gotten sick again—even though all I do is care for COVID patients,” she said.
Bridges and a number of other former Houston Methodist workers sued their employer over the refusal to recognize natural immunity and other aspects of the mandate, but the lawsuit was thrown out and the appeal was rejected.
But Makary, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, said the science shows the naturally immune should have been retained.
“When Methodist fired nurses who had natural immunity for not being vaccinated, they fired those least likely to spread the infection at the workplace,” he said. “Many nurses have circulating antibodies that neutralize the COVID virus, but they are not antibodies that Methodist hospital recognizes.”
Bridges said, “The patients are suffering in the hospitals, and the little staff they have are overworked due to these shortages. It’s sad that they would rather keep away very healthy, unvaccinated nurses with natural immunity when they need us so badly.”
“What does natural immunity actually mean?” Asin responded. “We required the vaccines for our employees to keep the patients safe.” She said they do not currently have staffing shortages.
Filled vials wait to be distributed ahead of a COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Houston, Texas, on May 13, 2021. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Change in Tune
The vaccines were authorized by federal regulators to prevent symptomatic infection, and were touted by vaccine makers and numerous health officials as offering high protection.
As that protection has waned, authorities focus on the protection the vaccines provide against severe disease.
While Methodist Hospital now says the vaccines were intended to protect its employees from severe illness, that is not what its leaders said a year and a half ago, according to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times. In February 2021, the hospital emailed an offer of a $500 bonus to any hospital employee who got two shots of the vaccines. The email says, “The Hope Bonus is a reward for setting the right example and doing our part to stop the spread.”
Dr. Marc Boom, the president and CEO of Houston Methodist, emailed employees on April 15, 2021, telling them that the mandate was for preventing infection and spread to patients: “We’re seeing positive results as the number of employee infections has dropped inversely with the number of employees receiving the vaccine. It appears we’ve successfully created herd immunity at Houston Methodist.”
Herd immunity means the level of protection that comes from vaccines, prior infection, or both, is so high that the spread of a disease is no longer an issue.
“COVID vaccines were originally thought to reduce COVID transmission, but that understanding quickly changed, rendering policies for unvaccinated people obsolete,” Makary said. “If someone who does not have natural immunity chooses not to get vaccinated, they do so at their own individual risk, but they pose no public health threat now that population immunity is high.”
Bowden, Bridges’s new employer, lost her privileges with Houston Methodist after she announced that she would only treat unvaccinated patients who couldn’t get care elsewhere. The hospital said Bowden was spreading “misinformation.” Bowden was suspended, and then she resigned.
Bowden said the number of vaccinated employees who are out sick means Houston Methodist leaders owe an explanation “to those of us who were persecuted for questioning the mandates.”
“We have 400 employees out sick with COVID. They are out sick without severe illness. We stand by the effectiveness of the vaccine,” Asin responded.
Phillips told his employees to do their best to not get sick.
“Our patients need us to stay healthy, so I strongly encourage our employees to be as vigilant as possible,” he said, adding later, “please use good judgment in your personal lives as community spread … is high right now.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it’s “astonishing” that mainstream media is not holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his remarks on Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect “overly well” against the CCP virus.
“One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that … vaccines—because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus—don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection,” Fauci said.
“It’s astonishing that mainstream media allows [Fauci] to blindly make that statement without any effort to hold him accountable for the costly national policies and the lockdowns that were utterly built upon his initial assertion that the vaccines would prevent transmission and end the pandemic,” Kennedy told The Epoch Times.
The lockdowns initially were imposed to flatten the curve in two weeks. Kennedy asserts that they “were contrary to every previous advisory for pandemic countermeasures by the CDC and the WHO.”
He believes that “the house of cards should be falling” and that the media should be putting pressure on the NIH.
“The national media, which was fooled by all these lies, should be surrounding NIH with pitchforks and torches. And yet it’s like water on a duck,” he said.
Kennedy is the author of the best-selling book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” an encyclopedic work that encompasses Big Pharma’s meddling in public health and people’s liberties.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responds to questions during a congressional hearing in Washington in a file image. (Greg Nash/Pool via Reuters)
He’s an attorney, environmental activist, and founder of Children’s Health Defense. He is the son of former U.S. Senator, Attorney General, and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and the nephew of former Democrat President John F. Kennedy.
“If they don’t prevent transmission, then how does he justify the mandates? Particularly for children?”
The Epoch Times reached out to Fauci’s office for comment.
THE NEWS RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ENDORSEMENT OF BIRX BY NH-1 CANDIDATE MATT MOWERS.
Dr. Deborah Birx – who often appeared in front of COVID-19 task force briefings on behalf of the Trump administration – has admitted to doctoring data associated with the government’s response, as well as quietly altering the Centers for Disease Control advice without authorization, according to her own book.
Birx – who was brought into the White House task force following recommendations from Republican Party figures such as Matt Mowers (now running for Congress in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District) – writes in her underperforming book ‘Silent Invasion‘:
“I devised a work-around for the governor’s reports I was then writing. Instead of including those recommendations in the common bulleted list, I’d include them in the pandemic summary and state-specific recommendations in the governor’s reports, where they wouldn’t be so obvious. These weekly reports couldn’t go out on Monday without administration approval. Week by week Marc’s office began providing line-by-line edits. After the heavily edited documents were returned to me, I’d reinsert what they had objected to, but place it in those different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit. Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected.”
Birx’s appointment was welcomed by her former Chief of Staff in the State Department, Mowers, who tweeted:
I served as Chief of Staff to Ambassador Birx and I have the utmost confidence that she will ensure America is prepared to confront the Coronavirus outbreak. Her passion and commitment to ensuring our nation’s health and safety are second to none.
Indeed, press reports indicate that Birx’s ability to operate in such a manner was specifically due to Mowers’s influence:
Though Birx was not personally close to the President, she was able to develop a close relationship with this White House in part because Trump campaign official Matt Mowers served as her chief of staff for nearly two years, according to a source familiar with her situation.
Within weeks, however, Birx was thwarting the will of President Trump and his team, in order to prioritize the demands of pharmaceutical lobbyists and Chinese Communist Party sympathisers like Anthony Fauci. She further revealed:
This wasn’t the only bit of subterfuge I had to engage in. Immediately after the Atlas-influenced revised CDC testing guidance went up in late August, I contacted Bob Redfield. He confirmed my suspicions: he had disagreed with the guidance, but had felt pressured by HHS and the White House to post it. Also, many on his staff in Atlanta were still comfortable prioritizing symptomatic individuals. Even at this late point, eight months into the pandemic, many at both the White House and the CDC still refused to see that silent spread played a prominent role in viral spread and that it started with social gatherings, especially among the younger adults. We had to find a way around them. Recognizing the damage to public health the Scott Atlas–driven testing guidance could do and was doing with testing rates dropping across the country, Bob and I agreed to quietly rewrite the guidance and post it to the CDC website. We would not seek approval. Because we were both quite busy, it might take a week or two, but we were committed to subverting the dangerous message that limiting testing was the right thing to do.
As this was going on, Republican figures like Mowers were running cover for the scarfed bureaucrat:
Worse still, Birx claimed to offer little contrition over her outright insubordination, when challenged on the matter by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows:
“On September 18, I was still on the road—in Arizona again, for a meeting with those conducting proactive testing at the University of Arizona—when Mark Meadows’s name and number flashed across my White House–issued smartphone.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You rewrote and posted the CDC testing stuff.”
“Yes, I did, but—” “There’s no ‘buts’ here. You went over my head.”
I explained why I had done it. We’d already seen the drop in testing numbers resulting from Scott Atlas’s dangerous guidelines. Those few pages we’d rewritten would change how states could test, and we’d prevent even more community spread going into the dangerous winter ahead. Mark Meadows took this in and then, biting off each of his words, said, “You went over everyone else on the task force’s heads. You went around the whole approval process. You do not make unilateral decisions. It’s that simple. Period. End of sentence. Understood? Don’t ever do this again.”
“Understood. I did what I needed to do.”
“Don’t do that again without talking with me first.”
The news will raise questions about the work of Birx and those around her in the White House, and whether or not she acted illegally during her employment. The developments could also cost Mowers – whose lead in the New Hampshire 1 Congressional race has narrowed in recent months.
His main opponent – former Trump admin official Karoline Leavitt – has experienced a bumper fundraising quarter as well as garnering endorsements from key Trump-world figures such as Steve Cortes:
The new district attorney in San Francisco fired at least 15 employees from the prosecutor’s office after her left-wing predecessor Chesa Boudin was recalled last month.
“Today, I made difficult, but important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms,” DA Brooke Jenkins said in a statement about the firings.
Jenkins added in a statement that she “promised the public that I would restore accountability and consequences to the criminal justice system while advancing smart reforms responsibly”
“My new management team … with decades of prosecutorial experience at the highest levels, will help our office deliver on that promise. I have full faith and confidence that these women will promote and protect public safety while delivering justice in all of its various forms,” she said.
Among those who were fired include former San Francisco Managing Attorney Arcelia Hurtado, who headed the city’s Innocence Commission. Hurtado expressed her disappointment on Twitter, invoking her ethnicity and sexual orientation.
“After over 2 years of tireless and devoted service to the City and Cty of SF, I was unceremoniously fired without cause via phone by the Mayor’s appointed DA,” she wrote. “I am the highest-ranking Latina/LGBTQ member of the management team at that office. I will continue the fight 4justice.”
Other staffers to lose their jobs at the district attorney’s office included Rachel Marshall and Simin Shamji, reported KRON-4.
Recall
Boudin was recalled on June 7 amid criticism of a citywide surge in crime, homelessness, and drug usage in public. Jenkins quit Boudin’s office in 2021 after joining in 2014.
And last month, Boudin told San Francisco Chronicle he became a scapegoat for the spike in crime.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin looks on during an election-night event in San Francisco on June 7, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“A lot of my supporters and endorsements and donors and Democratic clubs that were behind me are urging me to run now, or in 2023,” Boudin said. “I’m committed, as I always have been my entire life, to doing the work to support our communities, to fight for a fairer system of justice.”
Controversial billionaire investor George Soros’ network of left-wing organizations provided Boudin with $600,000 for his 2019 election, according to the Washington Times. However, after he was recalled, a spokesperson for Soros said that he never contributed to Boudin.
“We disagree with any analysis that labels any prosecutor as a ‘Soros prosecutor’—each candidate stands on their own,” a spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon. “Justice & Public Safety PAC, the political action committee through which Mr. Soros supports prosecutor candidates, has not supported—in the past or in the present, directly or indirectly—Boudin.”
But according to the Free Beacon report, Smart Justice California Action Fund donated about $180,000 to oppose Boudin’s recall. That group got funding from the California wing of the Justice & Public Safety PAC.
The protection afforded by surviving COVID-19 was strong against the latest virus subvariants, including the one currently dominant in the United States, scientists in Qatar found.
People who were infected with Omicron, a variant of SARS-CoV-2, had 76.1 percent protection against symptomatic reinfection from BA.4 and BA.5 and 80 percent shielding from any reinfection, regardless of symptoms, according to the preprint study.
Omicron became the dominant virus strain in many countries in late 2021. Since then, a number of subvariants have taken hold. BA.5 is the strain currently dominant in the United States.
While protection from an Omicron infection provided robust shielding against reinfection, those who contracted a pre-Omicron strain had little protection, according to the Qatari scientists, who were led by Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.
Pre-Omicron infection provided just 15.1 percent effectiveness against symptomatic BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection and just 28 percent infection against any reinfection.
The scientists analyzed data from national COVID-19 databases.
Infections before Omicron were those that occurred before Dec. 19, 2021, when the variant wave started in Qatar.
Protection ‘Strong’
“Protection of a previous infection against BA.4/BA.5 reinfection was modest when the previous infection involved a pre-Omicron variant, but strong when the previous infection involved the Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 subvariant,” the scientists wrote.
Natural immunity has long been found to be superior to the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, and the new study is no exception. Vaccines provide little protection against Omicron infection and perform worse against infection and severe illness from the BA.4 and BA. 5 subvariants, studieshave shown.
Natural immunity also waned against BA.4 and BA.5, highlighting how the subvariants are better at evading protection, the Qatari researchers found.
The group has been studying natural immunity for years and recently discovered that the protection from prior infection against severe disease showed no signs of waning, regardless of what strain infected the person.
Among the listed limitations for the new study was the young population of Qatar, where just 9 percent of residents are 50 years of age or older. That means the findings “may not be generalizable to other countries where elderly citizens constitute a larger proportion of the total population,” researchers wrote.
Some experts, including Abu-Raddad and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, continue recommending vaccination for people with natural immunity, pointing to studies that indicate one or more doses increase protection, but others say vaccination isn’t needed for people who survive COVID-19, since some research suggests the elevated protection is minimal and that the naturally immune are at higher risk of vaccine side effects.
Who’s the better boy: Hunter Biden or Mohammed bin Salman?
Resident Joe Biden visited oil-rich Saudi Arabia on Friday to grovel before its authoritarian leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), in a desperate attempt to stem the soaring price of gasoline in the United States. The president fist-bumped MBS upon arriving in Jeddah, which was an embarrassing moment. Not quite as embarrassing, however, as Barack H. Obama’s servile bow before the late King Abdullah during his 2009 apology tour.
The trip revealed that Biden’s campaign pledge to make Saudi Arabia “pay the price” for human rights abuses—including the 2018 murder and bone-saw dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi—and “make them in fact the pariah that they are” was a blatant lie. (Yes, a lie. The Washington Free Beacon is using that word in contravention of longstanding journalistic norms in an effort to highlight the president’s dangerous dishonesty.)
Above all, Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia provides an opportunity to discuss a topic the American mainstream media too often neglect: fatherhood. One of the reasons why the president’s meeting with MBS is so significant is that the crown prince is merely the country’s de facto leader after gently seizing control from his 86-year-old father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud.
Shortly after Biden took office in 2021, the White House insisted that King Salman—not the 36-year-old MBS—was “the president’s counterpart” in Saudi Arabia. Friday’s fist-bump suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, Biden and King Salman have a lot in common. As of Nov. 20, they will both be octogenarians. More importantly, they both understand what it’s like to be the famous father of an infamous son.
Speaking of which, Hunter Biden and MBS have a fair amount in common as well. They are both fans of prostitutes and cocaine. Hunter’s exploits are legendary, of course, but almost certainly pale in comparison with the debauchery of the crown prince. New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard noted in his 2020 book, MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman, that MBS once rented out an entire resort in the Maldives and “hosted a string of blowout parties.” Shakira and Pitbull reportedly performed at the gatherings, which also featured “an abundance of prostitutes and cocaine.”
Both sons would presumably have amounted to nothing if not for their powerful dads, who helped finance their lavish and degenerate lifestyles. Just as MBS tapped the royal bank account to pay for his drug-fueled island orgies, Hunter persuaded Joe to keep wiring him money to help cover his $30,000 escort bill. It is safe to say that Hunter is more likely than MBS to film himself having threesomes with crack-addled hookers, but who’s to judge?
Hunter and MBS both have five children, although King Salman probably recognizes all of them, unlike Joe, who continues to deny the existence of the baby girl Hunter sired with a stripper named “Dallas.” To be fair, it is not publicly known how many children MBS has fathered with strippers and prostitutes who may not enjoy the protections granted by the U.S. justice system.
Unlike his Saudi counterpart, the Biden heir has not yet been credibly accused of murdering and dismembering a journalist. Yet Hunter does enjoy some of the same benefits afforded to Saudi royalty. For example, U.S. mainstream media outlets and tech companies actively suppressed negative stories about Hunter during his father’s 2020 presidential campaign. The revelations once denounced as “fake news” have since been largely corroborated.
It is difficult to say, given the facts, which famous father has raised the better boy. Perhaps the most notable difference between Joe Biden and King Salman is that the elderly and infirm Saudi royal knew when it was time to call it quits and hand power to a younger generation. Biden does not appear to share this outlook. This is not to suggest that he should anoint Hunter as his heir apparent, although there’s no question the whore-loving crackhead scion would get more votes than Kamala Harris.
The opening paragraph of Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, on their website reads:
“The National Guard is a lethal, cost-effective, dual-role operational force that provides strategic depth to the Army, Air Force, and Space Force, and responds to crises in our homeland. We are capable of operating in a complex global security environment, and continue to invest in modernization and readiness to prepare for the threats of the future. Today’s National Guard is an integral part of addressing the gravest challenges facing the Joint Force.”
Sort of… at least it should be.
Unfortunately, these days the Guard is being manipulated and often attacked on all sides as the proverbial political football.
First came the question of its use. Although the Guard was properly called into Minneapolis after the George Floyd rioting and into Portland after that benighted city’s post-election violence (maybe it should have been earlier), the question of why it was not present for the Jan. 6 events—however you want to define them—remains unanswered. From what we understand, then-President Donald Trump, under whose leadership they served, offered them to the Congressional leadership who, for whatever reason, were disinterested.
Yet worse, however, is what has happened now to the actual members of this volunteer army, the National Guard. (Yes, we should never forget that National Guardsmen, many of whom served previously, are all volunteers. What could be more patriotic than that?)
Those volunteers who did not dutifully—subserviently might be a better word—take the COVID-19 vaccines will be ejected from the National Guard.
“About 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers will be blocked from service for rejecting the COVID vaccines, U.S. Army officials said on July 8.
“’Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,’ an Army spokesperson told Military.com.
“The deadline for the Defense Department’s vaccination mandate passed at midnight on June 30. The order cuts off pay and some of the military benefits to the 62,000 service members.”
I’m going to say right now that those 62,000 are most likely among the bravest of the National Guard because they have the courage to stand by their beliefs as few do.
Ironically, news of this despicable treatment of the very people to whom we owe our thanks arrived not long before the father of it all, Dr. Anthony Fauci, began to backpedal.
“White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci conceded Wednesday morning that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect ‘overly well’ against the virus.
“Speaking during a Fox News interview, Fauci told host Neil Cavuto that ‘one of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that … vaccines—because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus—don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection.’”
So if they don’t protect “overly well” why are we kicking all those people out of the National Guard?
Few of those being ejected are anywhere near the supposed danger age of over 70 or so with the requisite co-morbidities. Most are reasonably physically fit, possibly quite fit. But they have to go. No “our bodies, ourselves” for them.
Fauci, in the Cavuto interview, suggested the vaccines indeed did work against severe reactions for older people because he had evidence. It turned out, however, that the evidence he provided was from a study with only one person—himself. He had taken an array of shots and boosters and, at 81, only got a self-described mild case of COVID.
I will counter that with another study of one person—myself. I’m only a few years younger than Fauci. I took the initial Pfizer shots way back in February 2021, abjured all boosters after that, almost never wore a mask except when forced on airplanes, and have been in many crowds, unmasked, in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Nashville and have never contracted COVID at all, at least as far as I know.
Does that prove anything? Of course not, but neither does what Fauci told Cavuto “as a scientist.” Not remotely.
I don’t know for sure what inspired Fauci’s backpedaling and his ludicrous cover, but I suspect there’s a world of potential lawsuits out there that could cause grave financial harm to Big Pharma and those like Fauci who work so closely with them. One of the reasons some say they recommend these dubious shots to children is to avoid these devastating suits. When the government makes vaccines mandatory for children, the companies that produce them are held harmless.
Following on the theme of volunteers, and since I live in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), I would be remiss in not noting that as of now our Republican governor, Bill Lee, has been on the wrong side of the National Guard story, doing nothing, despite many asking, for the ejected Guardsmen. (The Tennessee Star has been covering this closely.)
Also in Tennessee, 5th District Congressional candidate Kurt Winstead, a brigadier general in the National Guard himself, has been curiously silent on his beleaguered fellow Guardsmen.
This, although the policy endangers far more than just the National Guard—it seriously endangers the already endangered national security of our country. As Breitbart is reporting, it’s on the brink of engulfing our entire army:
“At least 260,000 American troops—or about 13 percent of the 2.1 million total force—are not fully vaccinated despite a Biden administration vaccine mandate for the military, and many of them could face discharge.
“According to the Department of Defense website, at least 268,858 service members as of July 13 are still not in compliance with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 mandate for every member of the military to be fully vaccinated with two doses of a vaccine. That figure does not count the thousands who have not taken any doses.”
I guess Biden is planning on having Ukrainians do all our fighting for us. Sorry, folks, we just don’t have the troops.
After White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra issued warnings about a new COVID-19 subvariant, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said they are not providing key facts about the latest strain.
“How come the flu vaccine changes every year and they’re not willing to change this vaccine?” Paul told Fox News on Tuesday. “Now, you might have me with an argument. I’ll listen to you if you tell me, ‘We’ve got a new vaccine that actually has something to do with the current virus,’” he said.
It came after Fauci, who has given hundreds of media interviews since the start of the pandemic, told CNN this week that the Omicron subvariant BA.5 is concerning due to its high transmissibility. People infected in the first COVID-19 waves “really don’t have a lot of good protection” against the latest subvariant, Fauci also said at a White House briefing several days ago.
But Paul, himself a doctor, told Fox that Omicron “was about 90 percent less likely to put you in the hospital than the first variant,” saying that Americans should “discount” what both Fauci and Becerra are saying about the latest subvariant.
“So if no one’s telling you any information, how can you make any judgment other than the emotionalism and the sensationalism of the government?” he asked.
Fauci himself was infected with COVID-19 several weeks ago and confirmed he took Pfizer drug Paxlovid before his symptoms recurred, although he’s received two booster shots.
In a recent interview, Fauci conceded that most COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect “overly well” against the latest variant. However, he used that statement to claim that they are effective at limiting the most severe symptoms.
“At my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” said Fauci, who is 81 and has worked in various capacities in the federal government since the late 1960s.
In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Fauci suggested that Americans ages 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster shot.
The federal government, he argued, “need[s] to allow people who are under 50 to get their second booster shot, since it may have been months since many of them got their first booster.”
“If I got my third shot [in 2021], it is very likely the immunity is waning,” Fauci proclaimed.
The Epoch Times has contacted the National Institutes of Health for comment.
A federal district court in Ohio has temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on thousands of U.S. Air Force service members who remain unvaccinated after having opposed the shot on religious grounds but have had their religious exemption applications denied.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew McFarland, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in late 2019, issued a temporary restraining order filed on Thursday preventing the Biden administration from taking any action for at least 14 days against any Air Force member who opted not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
The judge’s ruling also grants the case “class status,” which means the temporary restraining order will grant relief to all members of the Air Force who submitted a religious accommodation request from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from Sept. 1, 2021, to the present, and were confirmed via the Air Force Chaplains as having a sincerely held religious belief, but had their requests denied or not yet acted upon. Plaintiffs had contended that such a class would include over 12,000 airmen.
The action stems from a case filed in February 2022 challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Plaintiffs comprise 18 active-duty members of the Air Force serving at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; Hurlburt Field in Florida; Randolph Air Force Base in Texas; and Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, plus all similarly affected members.
“The court has already granted a preliminary injunction to our 18 original plaintiffs,” an attorney in the case, Tom Bruns of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. “The court has now granted a class certification—and that’s kind of the historic moment—Air Force-wide, service-wide, it covers every member of the Air Force. And now he’s saying, ‘Why shouldn’t I grant the preliminary injunction to all those folks?’”
McFarland wrote in his order (pdf) in granting the class status: “They face separation from the Air Force and other disciplinary measures. A single injunction would provide relief to the entire class. Indeed, the main purpose of a [lawsuit class] is to provide relief through a single injunction or declaratory judgment. Because Defendants have uniformly maintained a policy of overriding Airmen’s religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine, they have acted ‘on grounds that apply generally to the class.’
“Moreover, the class definition requires that a Chaplain certify that the airman’s religious beliefs are sincerely held. Finally, a single injunction would provide the proposed class with the relief they seek from the harm they stand to suffer.”
McFarland gave Air Force officials until July 21 to file a response “identifying why this Court should not grant a class-wide preliminary injunction.” He also gave plaintiffs an opportunity to then file a response by July 25.
According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, over 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests. Only 104 have had their applications approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the force. According to the figures, 97.1 percent of the Air Force has been fully vaccinated, and 0.1 percent has been partially vaccinated.
Nurse and Army veteran Renee Langone administers a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to U.S. Air Force (active duty reservist) Dr. Pei-Chun McGregor at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center in Boston, Mass., on Dec. 23, 2020. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
Painful Consequences
McFarland’s order came in the nick of time for some airmen. Many have received notices in the last week, with a date of their final day, an airman at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska told The Epoch Times.
One client was in the middle of a board hearing determining his future with the service, Attorney Wendy Cox of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. Objecting to the COVID-19 shot put airmen at risk of job loss and disciplinary measures.
“One of the officers we were representing was facing $1,000 a month pay reduction for two months as well as an official letter of reprimand,” Cox said. “We’ve had people removed from positions of commands because of their alleged violation of this order to get a vaccination, of which they are unable to get because it violates their religious beliefs.”
“Some were stranded in foreign countries after refusing the shot, and missed weddings. There’s some pretty tragic stories about what has happened,” Cox said.
The Air Force officials told the court that they had every consequence still on the table for service members who refused to get the shot, and those consequences included everything up to court martial and two years incarceration at Leavenworth, the attorneys said.
“The proof in the case was very clear. The Air Force tried to pretend that they did individualized analysis of each service member’s religious objection, and, and that did occur in terms of the service member proving they had a sincerely held religious belief,” Bruns said. “But then the Air Force, in its affidavits, proved that when it came to accommodating that belief, they took the position we can’t grant religious exemptions, because we have to save these slots for administrative and medical exemptions. So their own proof was ‘We didn’t do the individualized analysis on the back end, because we weren’t granting any religious exemptions.’ And it was only once the lawsuits got filed, that they granted a few religious exemptions. And all of those folks were near the end of their career.”
The Air Force wanted the airmen’s cases heard individually, but in his decision allowing class status, McFarland noted how the Air Force did not consider each case individually when denying religious accommodation requests.
“Defendants appear to again argue that the court must individually analyze each airmen’s claims on the one hand, while systematically denying all religious accommodation requests despite the factual differences defendants claim the court should consider on the other,” McFarland wrote.
“The Court appreciates there may be minor factual differences between the members of the class, including roles, responsibilities, levels of proximity, likelihood of deployment or travel, and ability to telework, as well as different religious beliefs and reasons for objecting to the COVID-19 vaccine.
“However, these minor differences do not outweigh that defendants’ typical response when receiving a religious accommodation request is to deny it. The typicality of the putative class is reflected in the fact that defendants have indiscriminately denied almost all religious accommodation requests, and their use of form letters to deny the accommodation requests. Such facts suggest that defendants do not individually weigh each applicant’s belief or circumstances in issuing their response, further cementing the typicality of the class.”
Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.
Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.
In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.
Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.
On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.
He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.
Straightforward from here:
1. Biden announces not running again.
2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.
3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.
4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.
As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.
A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.
Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.
“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.
“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”
At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.
Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.
Federal prosecutors have indicted a violent convicted drug trafficker for fentanyl distribution after a Virginia prosecutor boosted by the left-wing billionaire George Soros released the felon without bail just a day after his arrest.
Alpha Kamara last week was charged and taken into federal custody for conspiracy to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, according to a Justice Department filing unsealed on Monday. The indictment supersedes charges brought by Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.), who on June 27 filed charges against Kamara for the same case, only to release the offender without bail one day after his arrest.
The Justice Department’s decision to charge Kamara ensures Descano’s office won’t mishandle the case. Descano has a history of releasing offenders before trial, dropping charges, and reducing sentences—sometimes with deadly consequences. His office last year dropped felony charges for a man who was charged later for killing two homeless men and wounding three others in New York City and Washington, D.C. In June, the prosecutor released on probation a violent repeat offender who went on to beat an elderly homeless woman to death at a bus stop.
Descano’s soft-on-crime approach is typical of Soros-backed prosecutors, who have in the past decade received more than $40 million in donations from the Democratic megadonor. Soros contributed more than half-a-million dollars to Descano’s campaign, along with fellow far-left Virginia prosecutors Buta Biberaj in Loudoun County and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti in Arlington County, dwarfing any other donation amounts in the races and helping to oust veteran prosecutors. Fueled by citizens’ concerns over rising crime and lenient prosecution, recall efforts have spawned in each of the three Virginia counties, as well as in major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the Bay Area, city residents in June voted out far-left prosecutor Chesa Boudin by double digits. Top Democrats in Virginia are similarly courting candidates to challenge Biberaj.
Virginia State Police arrested Kamara on June 26 following a high-speed chase involving a stolen vehicle that ended in a crash on a highway interstate. State troopers seized a loaded 9 mm handgun and more than two kilos of fentanyl pills from the wrecked car, and Kamara was charged with driving without a license, failing to stop at the scene of an accident, resisting arrest, eluding police, grand larceny auto theft, and possession with intent to distribute a schedule I substance. He had been out of federal prison and on supervised release for just three days before his June joyride, having served slightly less than the length of his five-year sentence.
Descano’s decision to release Kamara before his trial surprised prosecutors who spoke with the Free Beacon, given his criminal record. Virginia Republican attorney general Jason Miyares said the release was “just another example of the criminal-first, victim-last mentality pushed by far-left prosecutors.”
“Fentanyl has rapidly become one of the most dangerous opioids to infect neighborhoods across our country,” Miyares said. “Nationally, we’ve lost 105,000 Americans to overdoses from opioids, most commonly fentanyl. Continually letting repeat offenders get back onto the street only encourages more crime and creates even more victims. I am grateful for our partners in the DOJ stepping up when these local prosecutors fail to do their jobs.”
The 25-year-old felon’s first brush with law enforcement came in 2018, when he was sentenced to five years in prison as part of a major federal crackdown on Blood gang members and violent drug dealers in Northern Virginia. Operation Tin Panda, a joint effort between the FBI and ATF, resulted in 36 convictions and seized scores of firearms and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and assets, as well as hundreds of pounds of drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. The federal agencies greenlighted the operation following a series of murders and violent incidents in Prince William County.
It is unclear whether Descano will pursue the charges he initially filed against Kamara. The Virginia prosecutor would have to wait until federal prosecution is completed. A preliminary hearing for the county charges is scheduled in August. Descano’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Descano during his tenure has abolished cash bail, told his attorneys to avoid mandatory minimum jail sentencing, and declined to prosecute many misdemeanors. A policy memo he distributed in his first year as Fairfax County’s top prosecutor urged assistant commonwealth’s attorneys to seek misdemeanor charges over felonies whenever appropriate. He has reportedly told his staff that they “will never get in trouble for prosecuting light.” In one fraught meeting, Descano reportedly told one of his prosecutors to reduce a 20-year sentence by 5 years and to not “listen to victims” because they tend to be “overly dramatic.”
In Fairfax, Virginians for Safe Communities has gathered more than half of the roughly 30,000 signatures necessary to trigger a special election.
“It is stunning that Steve Descano would cut loose a fentanyl-dealing gun felon after Kamara endangered the lives of the public and law enforcement,” said Sean Kennedy, the president of Virginians for Safe Communities. “The citizens of Fairfax need to know that the single biggest threat to public safety is the chief prosecutor and his disregard for the laws and lives of this commonwealth.”
Drug overdose deaths have risen nationwide since 2019, driven by new synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the CDC. The Drug Enforcement Administration reported synthetic opioid-related deaths shot up 56 percent from 2020 to 2021.
Fairfax County has yet to release its annual police report. Preliminary data show homicides were up 40 percent last year and are on pace to be higher in 2022.
Kamara is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals and being held without bond pending trial.
Vicente Gonzalez’s South Texas district has long history of cartel activity
Before joining Congress, Vicente Gonzalez agreed to legally represent drug smugglers and gang leaders who flooded his border community with illegal drugs. Now, the Texas Democrat stresses the need to stop the flow of drugs and maintain “law and order.”
In 1997, Gonzalez founded his law firm, V. Gonzalez and Associates, through which the multimillionaire Democrat still earns tens of thousands of dollars a year. One year later, Gonzalez was retained to represent Richard Contreras, who pleaded guilty to federal charges after he conspired to import more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana from Mexico, court documents show.
In 1999, meanwhile, Gonzalez was retained to defend Frank Tijerina, the leader of a Texas street gang called the “Corrupt Criminal Mob.” Tijerina was sentenced to 30 months in prison on federal drug charges after conspiring to distribute nearly $420,000 worth of marijuana. Tijerina later pleaded guilty to selling large quantities of meth in a scheme that also started in the late 1990s. In total, Gonzalez agreed to represent an array of felony drug dealers who conspired to distribute eight pounds of MDMA, nearly half a pound of cocaine, and more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana, easily worth millions of dollars.
Gonzalez’s decision to represent high-level drug dealers in his South Texas border community—long a hotspot for Mexican cartels working to traffic narcotics into the United States—is at odds with the Democrat’s rhetoric as a member of Congress. In June 2018, Gonzalez called himself a “law and order member” who “believe[s] in strict border security.” Two months later, the Democrat said he was working to “bring security to our border” and ensure “drugs are not coming across as freely as they are now.” The issue could haunt his campaign as voters sour on resident Joe Biden’s border policies amid record-high illegal immigrant encounters—according to a February Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, just 32 percent of voters approve of Biden’s handling of immigration.
A former Border Patrol agent who served in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which Gonzalez represents, criticized the Democrat for the “stark inconsistencies” between “where he’s at today versus what he did before.” “Most South Texas Democrats act as if they’re not threatened to lose their jobs,” the former agent told the Washington Free Beacon. “[Gonzalez] is on that list—he’s been very comfortable, at least until now.”
Gonzalez’s campaign, which touts his record as an attorney, did not return a request for comment.
McAllen, Texas, where Gonzalez lives, is no stranger to cartel activity. The city borders the Mexican city of Reynosa, which is known as a “key trafficking point” for “cartel violence.” As a result, the New York Postreported in 2019, McAllen is “‘ground zero’ in the border crisis between the U.S. and Mexico” and even features “a new Maserati dealership and ads for Rolex and Cartier watches” as cartel traffickers look to launder their cash. Roughly two decades earlier—as Gonzalez defended drug dealers in the area—federal agents arrested individuals in McAllen and nearby Brownsville who were implicated in a Mexican trafficking ring that held more than 5,200 kilograms of cocaine, nearly 10,000 pounds of marijuana, and roughly $11 million in cash, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration press release.
Despite the long-standing flow of cartel drugs into McAllen, Gonzalez has criticized former president Donald Trump’s border wall, which he called “useless” and “wasteful.” Instead of funding the wall, the Democrat argued, Congress should send billions of dollars to Central American countries to slow illegal immigration. Gonzalez also said the idea that the wall would “stop illegal drugs from coming to our country” is a “myth.” Former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Ronald Vitiello disputed that claim, calling the wall an “important” tool that “makes the work of agents safer.”
“It provides an anchor for the operation, it provides an anchor for technology, and it makes the agents safer, because they have the ability to slow people down and have this base of operations,” Vitiello told the Free Beacon. “So saying that doesn’t work is not an informed opinion. It doesn’t comport with my experience and wisdom.”
Gonzalez made big money from his legal career, his financial disclosures show. The Democrat owns an array of rental properties—his latest disclosure lists eight in McAllen, two in Washington, D.C., one in Monterrey, Mexico, and one in Madrid, Spain. Those properties earned Gonzalez at least $235,000 in 2020. Gonzalez also earned a combined $280,000 in “attorney fees” income from his law firm in 2019 and 2020, according to his disclosures.
Gonzalez in 2020 narrowly defeated Republican challenger Monica De La Cruz in Texas’s 15th Congressional District. One year later, he announced his decision to run in the 34th Congressional District in 2022, as the state’s redistricting process made that area considerably more blue. Still, Republicans are hopeful that Republican congresswoman Mayra Flores can give Gonzalez a run for his money in November.
Flores in June became both the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress and the first Republican to represent parts of the 34th Congressional District since 1870 after she won a special election against Democrat Dan Sanchez. That race saw Flores best Sanchez in historical Democratic strongholds—the Republican, for example, won in Cameron County, which is 90 percent Hispanic and voted for Biden by double digits less than two years ago. After her win, the New York Times said Flores’s win marked “the rise of the far-right Latina,” citing the Republican’s support for religiosity, strong borders, and traditional values.
The Chinese Communist Party-run Wuhan University has reported a case of an individual contracting the virulent disease of cholera, media reports suggest.
Located in the same province as the Wuhan Institute of Virology – believed by many scientists and government intelligence officials to be the source of COVID-19 – Wuhan University is less than two miles from the controversial lab. The university has also received nearly three quarters of a million dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In November 2018, the vaccine advocate’s foundation sent $499,944 to the university to “establish international research networks and data sharing platforms as well as develop policy recommendations for improving the medical insurance system in China.” In January 2021, even after the Chinese Communist Party purposely hid data relevant to the origins of COVID-19, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sent the university an additional $127,650 to fund research into broadening access to drugs for Tuberculosis.
The district’s health department claims to have collected samples, undertaken contact tracing, and closed certain venues for disinfection after a Wuhan University student was found to have the disease.
Chinese Communist Party health officials claim no further cases have been reported.
Cholera is a virulent disease that can be spread through contaminated food or water, typically resulting in acute diarrhea. The incident at Wuhan University is rare, as only one other case has been identified in China this year and five were detected throughout the entirety of last year.
The incident follows intense scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for its role in the origins of COVID-19, as the lab manipulated bat coronavirus strains to become more lethal to humans. Resembling the hallmarks of gain-of-function research, which has previously been banned in the U.S. due to its risky nature, Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers have also hidden troves of data relevant to COVID-19.
A team of Harvard research scientists, publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine, have found that SARS-CoV-2 virus has mutated so much that the Pfizer mRNA vaccines developed against the original Wuhan strain now have little to no effect.
The study, “Neutralization Escape by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5,” evaluated neutralizing antibody titers of participants vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, against multiple SARS-CoV-2 strains.
The scientists found that the titers dropped from 5,783 (against the WA1/2020 isolate, Wuhan strain) to 275 (against the BA.4 or BA.5 subvariant, omicron variants), by a factor of 21.
In other words, they found the mRNA vaccine to be essentially ineffective against Omicron variants currently in circulation.
SARS-CoV-2 Mutations
SARS-CoV-2 has been a quickly evolving virus since late 2019. Like all RNA viruses, it has a strand of RNA that is packaged in a delivery vehicle that allows it to attach itself to host cells and inject its RNA into the cells and hijack the cells to make more copies of its RNA.
A virus must interact with living cells in order to reproduce. Without this interaction, the virus itself is inert. It has no metabolism. It cannot move. It doesn’t eat. It cannot reproduce with other viruses. What this means is that a virus has none of the characteristics of living organisms. Because of this, some scientists want to classify viruses as part of life while others point out that viruses are not alive. At least not without hosts.
Life or not, all viruses must have genetic material RNA (ribonucleic acid) or DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). RNA or DNA make copies using templates of complementary strands of RNA or DNA. There is always a chance for errors to happen during this process. We call these “errors” mutations.
Often these errors make the DNA or RNA too imperfect to carry on functioning, so the mutation goes nowhere. But if the mutated version is viable, the result is a new, slightly changed version of the DNA or RNA.
A virus that does not kill its host but is able to keep using the host to replicate itself is able to continue replicating. There is an advantage to a virus developing a way to become chronic or endemic, rather than being rabidly lethal to the host.
By every indication, that is what is happening with SARS-CoV-2, the novel virus that likely originated in Wuhan, China, and quickly spread around the globe, using humans and other animals as its host.
Anti-Spike Antibodies
Many of the mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 RNA do not change any of the proteins the virus needs to survive and proliferate. These are called silent or synonymous mutations. Others, known to scientists as non-synonymous mutations, do change the amino acid composition of the proteins.
The amino acid sequence differences (about 3 percent) observed between SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins from the original Wuhan strain (GenBank # YP_009724390) and an Omicron isolate from Norway on January 3rd, 2022 (GenBank # UOU35996.1) are the results of two years of evolution of the virus on its spike protein.
(National Library of Medicine’s online Blast service)
Using the National Library of Medicine’s online Blast service, the authors compared the spike protein sequences from the Wuhan strain and an Omicron variant. The red lines highlight the mismatches.
Compared to other parts of the virus genome, the gene that codes for the spike protein evolve faster, as the spike protein is on the surface of the virus and is under much more selection pressure.
This poses a problem for the current vaccines and any future vaccines based on the spike protein. The fast-changing spike protein would likely make the existing vaccines and any new vaccines less effective. In other words, the virus has moved on, but the vaccines have not.
Existing vaccines based on the spike protein generate multiclonal antibodies against different epitopes of the spike protein. If an antibody reacts to an epitope that is not affected by the mutations that Omicron has, then this antibody would be effective against Omicron. Otherwise, it will not be effective.
When most, if not all antibodies that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines developed based on the original Wuhan strain fails to react to the current SARS-CoV-2 variant, the vaccine becomes ineffective.
Vaccinated Have Negligible Antibodies Against Current Strain
In the new Harvard study, the scientists tested 27 participants who had been vaccinated with Pfizer’s messenger RNA vaccine (BNT162b2) and 27 participants who had been infected naturally with the original Wuhan strain.
Most of those who had had COVID already had also been vaccinated, so most, but not all, had hybrid immunity.
Those who had recovered from COVID had a strong immune response to the original virus, which is no longer circulating in the world.
But those who had been vaccinated just six months prior to the test had only 1 percent as many antibodies as those who had recovered from having the virus.
Participants who had been boosted just two weeks before the test and were at the peak of their immunity did have a strong response, though it was still half as strong as those with natural immunity. Evidently their vaccine-acquired immune response was not long lasting, either.
And these results were only for the original, outdated virus, which is no longer a danger.
Against the strain currently dominant in the United States, those who had been vaccinated, even at the peak of their protection two weeks after the booster, had a very scant antibody response to the current virus, about 7 percent as strong as their antibody response to the original 2020 virus.
Those who were vaccinated six months before, but not boosted, had negligible antibodies against the current virus.
Those with natural immunity after recovering from COVID had a substantial immune response to the current virus.
Though it was only 10 percent as strong as their response to the original 2020 virus, their immune systems still responded with three times as many antibodies as the boosted group’s peak response.
More importantly, compared to immunity acquired through the spike-protein-based vaccines, natural immunity from SARS-CoV-2 infections covers the whole spectrum of immunity, giving the body short-term antibody protection as well as memory B and T cells for long-term protection. In addition, the short-term antibodies cover not only the fast-changing spike protein (S), but also other viral proteins, such as nucleocapsid protein (N) and envelope protein (E), making natural immunity less vulnerable for immune escape.
The takeaway is that even for the brief period right after a booster, vaccination was not as effective as natural immunity. Six months later, it was essentially useless.
The good news is that almost everyone in the U.K. has SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. This suggests that almost everyone there has had a SARS-CoV-2 infection at some point, and so has some level of natural immunity.
This does not mean that COVID-19 is over. It does mean that nature has provided people in the U.K. with protection better than the current spike-protein-based vaccines.
We believe that the same is true in the United States and Canada.
Take the jab, if you want, and get the boosters. But don’t be fooled. They will not give you any more protection than what you already have.
Things have not been the same since June 2021 for 53-year-old Douglas Howey from Colorado.
Around a year after he received the second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the 6 foot 4 and a half inch paraplegic man who once weighed 262 pounds lost over 100 pounds after the sudden onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an incurable and fatal disease that gradually kills a person’s motor neurons.
Douglas Howey before and after amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Douglas has lost more than 100 pounds between the two photos (Courtesy of Linda Howey/The Epoch Times)
Though he never told his doctors that he started developing symptoms a month after the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, his family thinks that his sudden sickness a month later and dramatic weight loss within weeks seemed like too much of a coincidence.
This suspicion was further confirmed after Linda Howey, Douglas’s mother, heard a podcast by Del Bigtree where Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a senior researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, talked about her research on possible links between neurodegenerative diseases and the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
Once patients are diagnosed with ALS, they are normally given a life expectancy of two to five years. The disease is mostly diagnosed in men, and often between the ages of 55 to 75.
Douglas is younger than this and his illness has progressed much faster than most. He has already entered the late stage of the disease and is experiencing breathing difficulties although he has only been sick for one year.
Linda recalled that Douglas’s fever began in June, around a month after he received his second Moderna COVID-19 vaccine dose on May 21, 2021. He experienced high fever and was bedridden for a month.
Douglas’s father passed away in 2011 after a 25-year battle with a brain degenerative disease called frontotemporal dementia (FTD) that has a genetic component.
Within the last week or so of life, Douglas’s father began to experience ALS symptoms. Though Douglas also has the FTD gene, he was not expecting any significant progression for the next 20 years.
However, after Douglas recovered from his month-long fever, he began to notice constant fatigue and weakness in his grip strength.
Within six weeks of falling ill, he lost 40 pounds and his weight only continued to decline as his appetite deteriorated.
Five months later, Douglas was too weak to handle silverware properly and needed to feed himself with both hands.
Douglas has been a paraplegic since he was hit by a truck in 2012. As a result of that accident, he developed strong upper arms that he used to hoist himself up from bed and to propel himself around in a manual wheelchair.
His ALS disease quickly spread to the motor neurons in his arms so that by January 2022, just seven months after he fell sick, Douglas required a bed hoister and an automatic wheelchair which he now has much difficulty using.
Gone are Douglas’s days of gardening, traveling, working full-time, and acting as an active advocate for people with disabilities. Caregivers that used to help around the house for only a few hours are now there around the clock every day taking care of him.
Douglas has also gradually developed a cough and has trouble speaking.
A test in February 2022 showed that he had lost much of his functional lung capacity and was only using 40 percent of his diaphragm. The once eloquent and talkative physics instructor was reduced to spelling out his words to enable basic communication.
The destruction of his motor neurons has caused him pain and crippled his sleep but he has not been able to verbalize it. Caregivers may jam his toe in the bed hoister or bruise his back on the machinery yet he could only text his mother Linda who would later tell the caregivers that he was in pain.
“His lack of ability to talk has caused a lot of pain and suffering. When he texts me the details later, I communicate to the caregiver the pain he was enduring when he could not speak at the time the pain or injury was happening. By then, the damage has happened,” Linda told The Epoch Times through an email.
Mundane things that he once did without much thought now needed much effort to instruct caregivers to do, such as wiping his eyes, adjusting his glasses, and moving his cap.
With much effort, Douglas spelled out to his mother that he even needed to tell the caregivers to clean out mucus in his nose.
Linda said that she had searched up the batch numbers of his Moderna injections on How Bad is My Batch, a website that has gathered data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Each search will show the reported adverse events, deaths, and disabilities associated with the batches that have been reported to VAERS.
Douglas’s batch numbers were 001c21a and 25c21a, respectively associated with 779 and 523 reported adverse events, eight and five deaths, and 10 and eight disabilities. However, these numbers were far from the number of reported cases from the batches highest on the list.
According to Pfizer, each batch can consist of 1 to 3 million vaccine doses, though it is not certain if Moderna is the same.
Researchers’ Suspicions
Dr. Stephanie Seneff and many others have been suspicious of the actual safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines from the moment they started to be administered to the population.
Research into this novel technology made her very concerned that the vaccine could cause incurable prion diseases and prion-like diseases within the population in five to 10 years, or even further down the line.
“To have [almost] 100 percent success rate with [a] few months of testing, it just seems completely reckless to me,” she said on the call with The Epoch Times.
Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Courtesy of Stephanie Seneff)
In 2021, months after the rollout of the mRNA Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, Seneff published a peer-reviewed paper with Dr. Greg Nigh (pdf).
In the study, she and Nigh declared that a vaccine that produced the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be a health concern as the spike protein has a prion region that is able to interact with proteins on human cells.
Prions are common proteins that naturally exist in the human brain. However, in the case of prion diseases, the prion will come into contact with a misfolded (pathogenic) prion, and just like a set of dominoes, the single contact will cause all other normal prions to become pathogenic, slowly killing the individual.
Awful as it sounds, it generally is a slow kill, often taking decades after the first exposure for symptoms to appear.
Examples of prion diseases include Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), an incurable and fatal disease.
Recent studies also show neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS have prion-like features with protein misfolding and clumping in the brain which kills neurons. Some studies also suggest these diseases may also be prion disease, though this has not been proven.
Seneff and her colleagues expressed concern that an mRNA or DNA (adenovirus AstraZeneca) vaccine may serve as a trigger to cause prion or prion-like diseases and that we may see a spike in such diseases in the coming years.
In their rigorously peer-reviewed study (pdf), Seneff and her colleagues speculated that the vaccine may cause prion misfolding, causing damage to the brain in the forms of CJD, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and so on.
The mRNA and DNA vaccines carry instructions for making the spike protein into cells. Once cells receive these instructions, they start making spike protein. Cells then stick these spike proteins on their cellular surface, and when immune cells recognize the proteins as foreign, an immune response is triggered.
However, mistakes can occur during the process of translating RNA or DNA into protein.
Seneff speculated that errors could also happen for the spike protein, causing misfolding. If misfolding also happens in the prion region, it may be able to interact with human prions and trigger prion diseases such as CJD, or a prion-like disease.
However, compared to the current CJD, Parkinson’s, and the other neurodegenerative diseases, Seneff said that disease, if caused by the vaccine, would, most likely, progress faster.
Since the vaccine hijacks cellular processes to make more foreign proteins than in a natural infection, there would be greater opportunities for misfolding.
“We suggested that you might not see anything for a year or even five years or a decade…it would take a long time for the symptoms to appear,” Seneff said.
“We were predicting that we would see an increase in the rate of Parkinson’s [and other diseases], and that would happen in younger people in the coming years.
Soon after Seneff appeared on Fox News highlighting her concerns, her inbox was immediately flooded with emails from individuals who believe that they themselves or their loved ones were affected by prion disease or prion-like diseases because of the vaccine.
Some saw a worsening of already-present neurodegenerative symptoms; some developed a neurodegenerative disease just weeks or months after vaccination.
A New Variant of Prion and Prion-like Diseases?
The sudden influx of people contacting her suggested to Seneff that the vaccine may have accelerated the process even faster than she expected.
“It’s possibly a new variant [of brain-degenerating disease], because it is sufficiently different than anything we’ve seen before,” she said.
Neurodegenerative diseases such as CJD, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS all take many years for symptoms to manifest.
Seneff’s understanding of prion and prion-like disease is that individuals need to first be exposed to a protein that triggers misfolding of the body’s prions, which then build up for years before showing any symptoms.
“There’s a certain point at which it starts just to show symptoms, but it takes a whole process beforehand,” she said.
“You can have evidence of misfolded amyloid beta (a protein involved in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease) in the spleen … and even in the brain before you have any symptoms … it’s a slow disease, but … it’s a progressive disease.”
Other research studies are also suggesting a possible link between prion and prion-like diseases and the COVID-19 vaccine.
Seneff’s friend and Nobel laureate, the late Prof. Luc Montagnier, co-authored a preprint study on 26 patients that developed CJD and died after receiving the vaccine.
The majority of the cases occurred within 11.38 days after vaccination, with deaths occurring at around 4.76 months.
The authors were fairly confident that the cases were related to the vaccine. The study’s corresponding author Dr. Jean-Claude Perez said his friend Montagnier feared, during the initial release of the vaccine, that the “new form of CJD would affect the millions of adolescents or children vaccinated with COVID-19.”
“All this confirms the radically different nature of this new form of CJD, whereas the classic form requires several decades,” the researchers wrote.
Other studies on the worsening of Parkinson’s or similar diseases also surfaced with some researchers pondering the links between the two events.
The “hidden process is happening faster with people who are getting the vaccine such that they’ll get the Parkinson’s disease [and other related diseases] sooner than they would have gotten it without the vaccine,” Seneff said.
Why so Toxic?
Seneff told The Epoch Times that the mRNA technology in the majority of the COVID-19 vaccines may be why we are seeing greater instances of reported adverse effects than from all previous vaccines.
She said she was concerned the moment she heard the term “warp speed”—the operation between the department of health and vaccine manufacturers to accelerate the vaccine production process—and started studying mRNA technology.
Her immediate verdict was “I was not going to get it; there was no way I was gonna let anyone inject it into my arm,” she said.
Studies have shown that the spike protein on the COVID-19 virus is toxic, therefore the mRNA and DNA (AstraZeneca) vaccines that force a person’s cells to make more toxic proteins are very likely to cause damage, though many media platforms have stated that the spike proteins produced by the vaccines are harmless.
Seneff’s study mostly focused on the mRNA vaccines.
“The coronavirus is very good at adapting, which is why they never were able to develop a vaccine in the past,” she said. Seneff, therefore, could not understand how the technology suddenly became so skilled and was able to do something they could not do before.
Even Bill Gates, a major public figure behind the movement to vaccinate the globe for COVID-19 funded a report through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stating that unprecedented vaccines like the mRNA vaccines would take 10 to 12 years to be fully tested before release.
Further, of all these unprecedented vaccines, only 2 percent would be able to pass through the clinical trials.
Bill Gates speaks onstage at the TIME100 Summit 2022 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, on June 7, 2022. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME)
Seneff’s second study highlighted that although existing vaccines confer immunity by mimicking the natural infection process, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do not mimic natural infection at all.
“The messenger RNA (mRNA) [in the vaccine] is extremely … not natural,” she said.
Compared to natural mRNA that quickly degrades in the cell, the mRNA from the COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to take over two months to degrade, even though the manufacturers promised that degradation would occur in a few days.
“They were so worried about the mRNA not lasting long enough that they way overdid it, I think,” Seneff said.
Unaltered mRNA injected into the body triggers immediate immune responses, particularly interferon release, that will degrade the mRNA before it can reach target cells to initiate the manufacture of spike proteins. Therefore, in order to evade these fundamental immune defenses, Moderna and Pfizer altered the mRNA’s uridine molecule (a basic component of mRNA) into 1-methylpseudouridine to “dramatically reduce innate immune activation against exogenous (outside sourced) mRNA.”
Natural infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus triggers innate immune responses such as the production of interferon. Altering the structure of the vaccine mRNA allows the synthetic mRNA to persist in the body as it bypasses these fundamental immune responses. It can be argued that the vaccine’s version of the spike protein is not the same as the native one.
Further, to make the mRNA more stable, Moderna and Pfizer changed the chemical bases that make up the strand of RNA. The original RNA strand in the virus is made up of 36 percent of guanine (G) and cytosine (C).
mRNA low in G and C bases are less stable and degradable; Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines had this percentage raised to 53 percent and 61 respectively.
Previous experiments showed that genes that had higher G and C content were more likely to be read and their information made into proteins. Having a high G content also increases the speed at which the gene is read, but faster reading also means more likelihood of errors, and a higher likelihood of misfolding.
This potentially means that not only will this instruction remain in the cell for longer for its information to be made into protein, cells will also preferentially express information from the vaccine mRNA.
“The increasing evidence [is] that the vaccines do little to control disease spread and that their effectiveness wanes over time,” Seneff’s study read. “SARS-CoV-2 modified spike protein mRNA vaccinations have biological impacts is without question.”
Papers Refused ‘As Soon as the Word Prion Is Mentioned’
It should be noted that many of Seneff’s studies are her own speculations that have not been proven although they have been rigorously peer-reviewed.
It has been difficult for her to develop a solid case, as very few studies examine the negative implications of COVID-19 vaccines. For Seneff and her colleagues, who write papers that tell an alternative story, it has been difficult to find a journal to publish their work.
Dr. Jean-Claude Perez, the co-author of Prof. Luc Montagnier’s study on 26 CJD cases, told The Epoch Times via email that it was very difficult to publish his previous study with Montagnier and Dr. Valère Lounnas in reputable neurology journals.
That study found that Omicron is the only COVID-19 variant that does not contain a prion region, and despite receiving consent from all participants in the study, reputable journals cited ethical constraints as a major barrier to publication.
The authors considered publishing their research in smaller journals, but then fewer people would read it.
The authors therefore chose to publish their work as a pre-print which has fewer constraints, and although findings published in this way are generally less trusted, a wider range of people can be reached.
“But even certain types of preprints that we will not mention refuse such articles as soon as the word prion is pronounced there, such was the case for our article,” Perez wrote.
Seneff also experienced rejection of her work on spike proteins; both she and Montagnier have had their expertise in the matter questioned by the media and other members of the scientific community.
Linda said that Douglas and she decided to go public with his story as they want to raise awareness about the possible dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“Douglas, pretty much knows he’s gonna die from this … and that’s a terrible thing that happened to a 53-year-old man,” she said.
“If anybody could hear this story, because … the regular news media does not cover this at all.”
Seneff encourages other people affected to report the adverse event to VAERS and investigate and confirm if it may be linked to the COVID-19 vaccines.
Asked about a cure, Seneff says she doesn’t know of any cures but some of her friends have been using herbal medications to treat long COVID-19 symptoms seen in vaccine-injured patients to see if such treatments could be efficacious.
Yeah. If customers feel sated simply drinking alcohol they might miss out on a life altering/threatening fentanyl addiction [US Patriot]
New Jersey’s Democratic state government imposed new restrictions on breweries in July, banning happy hours and prohibiting them from serving mixed drinks.
New Jersey brewers under the regulations must also give tours to all customers and will only be able to hold 25 pre-advertised events per year. The state government is prohibiting collaboration with food trucks and the sale of food that is not pre-packaged, such as crackers or chips. The New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control said allowing microbreweries to operate in their current capacity gives them an unfair advantage over traditional restaurants. A spokesman for the division told the Philly Voice the updated regulations”strike a fair and appropriate balance” between restaurants and craft breweries, many of which are family-owned.
“They are crippling the breweries by telling us we can’t have events, we can’t do fun things,” one brewer told a Philadelphia NBC affiliate. “Why is anyone going to want to come here?”
Ed Gangi, owner of the Cricket Hill Brewery in Fairfield, told the Washington Free Beacon his business “has been through a lot.”
“The industry dealt with COVID for 2 plus years, currently inflation and supply cost increases, now the restrictions on our day-to-day business,” Gangi said. “It’s time for the N.J. legislature to modernize the brewery laws and allow us to survive. Without change, we’re going backward.”
Some critics of the regulations have argued that they will stem economic growth in the Garden State. Following its strict lockdown policies, New Jersey already has a growth rate trailing the nation at large.
Mike Testa, a Republican state senator, introduced a bill last week to combat the new prohibitions.
“These breweries, like most small businesses, suffered under Governor Murphy’s pandemic shutdowns and restrictions,” Testa said in a press release. “To increase their burden with these new rules only adds insult to injury.”
Dr. Robert Malone is warning of immune imprinting after Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his backing for second COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans aged 5 and older.
“I couldn’t design a vaccine if I wanted to, to be more likely to drive immune imprinting,” Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA technology the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on, told The Epoch Times.
Immune imprinting refers to a phenomenon whereby initial exposure to a virus strain may prevent the body from producing enough neutralizing antibodies against a new viral strain.
The COVID-19 vaccines currently in circulation are based on the Wuhan strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.
A number of strains have emerged and become dominant since the Wuhan strain was prevalent, including the currently dominant Omicron variant.
Researchers with Imperial College London and the United Kingdom Health Security Agency found that people who received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and were infected with the Wuhan strain had a lower level of protection against later strains when compared to people who had not been infected. Other groups, including researchers with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have found the vaccines much less effective against Omicron subvariants than the Wuhan strain.
A number of studies have found negative effectiveness among vaccinated groups. That means those who get vaccinated are more likely to get infected.
In some areas, the vaccinated account for a majority of those infected or in hospitals or dying with COVID-19. In Louisiana, for example, 70 percent of the deaths recorded between June 23 and June 29 were among the vaccinated.
Second Booster Push
The vaccines were originally promoted as two-shot primary regimens (Pfizer and Moderna) or a one-shot immunization (Johnson & Johnson). They were said to have efficacy as high as 100 percent against symptomatic infection.
Due to waning effectiveness against the emerging variants, U.S. officials authorized booster doses. In March, because the effects of the boosters against infection didn’t last long, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cleared and recommended second boosters for all adults over the age of 50.
Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and resident Joe Biden’s top medical adviser, is now saying Americans 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster dose.
Fauci told the Washington Post that the United States “need[s] to allow people who are under 50 to get their second booster shot, since it may have been months since many of them got their first booster.”
“If I got my third shot [in 2021], it is very likely the immunity is waning,” he added.
Fauci has no authority over authorizing or recommending boosters, but has signaled major changes in U.S. vaccine policy in the past.
White House, FDA Respond
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters on July 12 that “we have conversations all the time about what are possible things we could be doing to better protect the American people” but that the decision on second boosters will be made by the FDA and the CDC.
Fauci uttered a similar statement during the briefing.
“The FDA is evaluating the current situation, including the emerging epidemiology indicating increased hospitalization, and will be open to all potential options to address this, if necessary,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
Vaccine makers and the FDA are working together to develop variant-specific shots for the fall, which they say will offer better protection. But the updated shots aren’t yet on the market.
Many U.S. adults have received a primary series of a vaccine, including 91 percent of those 65 and older and 77 percent of those 18 and older. But booster doses have been a harder sell. Only 70 percent of elderly persons who got a primary series have received a first booster, along with just 51 percent of those 18 and older, according to CDC data. A second booster has only been administered to 28 percent of the population 50 and older.
Few of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates included a booster, and most of the mandates have been rescinded due to factors like plunging COVID-19 metrics and the waning effectiveness of the vaccines.
The new BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants—which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness—are “more likely to lead to vaccine breakthrough infections,” researchers with Columbia University found.
‘Vaccine-driven Disease’
The COVID-19 metrics in the United States have been creeping up in recent weeks, with the weekly average of cases jumping by 75 percent since late March and hospitalizations with COVID-19 doubling since April.
Officials blame the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness.
People should get a booster as soon as they’re eligible, which is typically about five months after their last shot, Jha and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said. “Don’t delay,” Jha said.
But Malone is among the scientists who are challenging the idea that the old vaccines are the solution.
“You got a major problem with the new Omicron, that’s the BA.5. The people that are getting infected chronically and hospitalized and dying are predominantly the vaccinated. It’s happening all over the world,” Malone said. “Now they’ve got a problem because they have driven this because of immune imprinting. This is increasingly becoming a vaccine-driven disease.”
Fauci, a major vaccine proponent, “has basically created a situation through the insistence on the hyper vaccination where he’s actually driving the disease in the United States,” he added.
Government officials disagree. Walensky said CDC data show that people who either have not received a vaccine or have not been boosted have less protection than those who have been boosted, including against infection, even as studies show the boost against infection quickly drops after the first and second booster.
Fauci said that people who were previously infected, or have natural immunity from surviving COVID-19, “don’t have a lot of protection” against the new subvariants.
Neither mentioned how natural immunity, according to a new study, remains stronger than the protection from vaccines even with boosters, particularly against severe disease.
The details in the stories of the families whose loved ones died in the hospital due to what they call “death protocols” are strikingly similar.
The patients were all scorned because of their unvaccinated status and were given a combination of sedatives and the antiviral drug remdesivir.
The patients were also kept isolated, malnourished, and ultimately put on a ventilator before dying.
After death, the families were left in confusion and with inconceivable stories that many don’t believe—stories of chilling administrative cruelty.
The FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation (FFFF) has gathered about 200 of these stories through its COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project to build an online database of testimonies for the purpose of surveying accounts of treatment for the sick unvaccinated and prosecuting any cases involving alleged abuse.
“They are horror stories,” Carolyn Blakeman, media director and task force coordinator for FFFF, told The Epoch Times.
Many of these deaths in hospitals occurred in 2021 after COVID-19 vaccine mandates were announced by resident Joe Biden.
In some cases, people who didn’t want to take the experimental vaccine were being fired, while unvaccinated patients in hospitals were being treated much differently than the vaccinated.
The phrase “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” was used by public officials to place blame on those who chose not to take vaccines that later proved to not be as safe and effective as touted.
Reports from people such as Scott Schara in Wisconsin and Anne Quiner in Minnesota began to reveal patterns of behavior by hospital administrators that suggested medical discrimination and protocols that many, like Schara and Quiner, alleged led to the barbaric death of their loved ones.
To grasp how health officials, physicians, and citizens were falling in lockstep with what appeared to be a global trance, Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer of mRNA technology, presented the idea that many have fallen into “mass formation psychosis.”
‘We Need Massive Investigations’
Brad Geyer, a former federal prosecutor for 21 years with the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told The Epoch Times, “We found these testimonial accounts to be so overwhelming, unimpeachable, and compelling that it might be exactly what we need to break the spell.”
Dr. Peter McCullough, the renowned cardiologist who has spoken out against COVID-19 protocols, is the president of FFFF, a New Jersey-based nonprofit comprised of former federal agents, prosecutors, lawyers, medical professionals, researchers, and volunteers whose efforts are geared toward exposing what it has determined are fraudulent COVID-19 practices established by the medical establishment and Marxist ideologies infiltrating American institutions that have directed society into a “new normal” of unconstitutionality.
There are several goals of the project, one being to create a historical document on what has taken place for those who can’t get their voices heard in mainstream media outlets that have been corrupted by the “safe and effective” feedback loop, Geyer said.
Then, FFFF finds representation for the victims while building a larger, collective case for crimes against humanity investigations, Geyer said.
There is also the goal of putting pressure on elected officials to hold everyone involved accountable, Geyer said.
“What is the purpose of sedating patients with fifteen different drugs, including fentanyl, and withholding food and water while keeping them isolated from their families?” Geyer asked. “We need massive investigations.”
‘They Scare These People to Death Through Emotional and Psychological Abuse’
In each story, Blakeman said family members have told her that doctors presented the same case for a ventilator.
“If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 200 times in the exact words: ‘We’re just going to put you on the vent for a couple of days to give your lungs a rest,’” Blakeman said. “It’s like they all got the same memo on what to tell their patients. It’s insane.”
There is also the “COVID Cocktail” that is set before every patient, Blakeman said, which is what she called a kidney-failing concoction of remdesivir, vancomycin, and dexamethasone.
Each report also includes vitriolic contempt from doctors for the unvaccinated patients, Blakeman said.
“They scare these people to death through emotional and psychological abuse,” Blakeman said. “We had a victim whose husband literally had to break her out, with cops chasing them down the hallway to their getaway car. They are treated worse than prisoners.”
The value of the interviews as historical documents will help future generations to remember and not repeat these atrocities, Geyer said.
“Imagine if we could have interviewed all of those in the concentration camps,” Geyer said. “That’s what we are doing here in trying to build a machine that unearths the full truth of what occurred while it can deprogram enough people to get engaged in our effort to ensure our government continues to honor and respect the full measure of rights associated with citizenship and protect our constitutional rights.”
Another goal is to set up a humanity restoration board of physicians who have been uncorrupted, such as Drs. McCullough and Malone, to administer an organization that would confer, recommend, and advocate for physicians and nurses who want to come forward to make full disclosures of what they’ve done in exchange for leniency and amnesty.
“If we could create a quasi-governmental entity of physicians and scientists to administer a whistleblower program that would initially be a trickle, it could eventually become a stream and then hopefully a river of testimonies from physicians and nurses who want to get off their consciences what they’ve done,” Geyer said.
Richard and Katrin Crum. (Courtesy of Richard and Katrin Crum)
‘Our Stories are Eerily the Same’
Among the people FFFF has interviewed are Katrin Crum, Aletha Chavez, and Ashley Wines, each of whom also spoke with The Epoch Times about their experiences.
“It’s been eight months since my husband was killed, and I say killed because that’s exactly what happened,” Crum said. “He did not die of COVID. He died from the federal COVID protocols that were dictated to every hospital in the country.”
Crum started the private Facebook group C19 Widows/Widowers that want JUSTICE, where she met Chavez and Wines.
The group now has 600 members.
“All of our stories are eerily the same, and there’s a reason for that,” Crum said.
Crum’s husband, 58-year-old Richard, was a principal in Washington state at a private school that served special needs students, Crum said.
“Over 20 of his former students attended his memorial and spoke about the positive impact he had on their lives,” Crum said.
After his death—a more detailed account of which can be found here on FFFF’s web page—Crum said she turned her grief and anger into activism and advocacy, pouring herself into research.
“When the pandemic started, the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) handed down protocols for hospitals to follow in treating COVID patients,” Crum said. “Never before in the history of our country did a three-letter agency dictate to the doctor what the standard of care for a patient was going to be.”
Neither the NIH nor the FDA responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
Individual treatment had been left up to the physician and was an open discussion between the physician and the patient, Crum said.
“But now, all of that has been thrown out the window,” Crum said. “My 58-year-old husband in Washington received the exact same treatment as a 40-year-old woman in Florida who had none of the same health issues that my husband had.”
Richard was admitted on Oct. 21 and died in the hospital on Nov. 5, 2021, with Crum, who had been able to advocate her way into finally seeing him after 11 days, in the room with him as nurses attempted CPR.
“He had wrist restraints on, a sore on his face from the mask, and had lost 36 pounds in 14 days,” Crum said.
Before he died, one doctor had attempted to coerce Crum into agreeing to change his classification to “Do Not Resuscitate,” Crum said.
“I kept refusing, and finally, at the end of our conversation, she was so mad she told me, ‘Fine, if you won’t change him to DNR when your husband goes into cardiac arrest, I’ll refuse to give him chest compressions,’” Crum said.
Crum had a private autopsy and toxicology report that listed medical conditions that caused his death other than COVID: a 90 percent blockage in the main artery of his heart that went untreated throughout his 16-day stay at the hospital, and a lethal dose of fentanyl, she said.
The protocols make the patients like her husband sicker and lead to death, Crum said, while reaping high financial incentives from the federal government through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan supplemental funding to hospitals.
The hospitals get reimbursed for admitting or having a patient test positive for COVID, which is why there are reports such as Crum’s in which staff will continue to test a patient even if they weren’t admitted with a positive test, Crum said.
In addition, Crum said hospitals get reimbursed for using remdesivir, putting a patient on a ventilator, and having a patient die with COVID on the death certificate.
‘A Perverse Agenda’
Tom Renz, an attorney with America’s Frontline Doctors and Make Americans Free Again—organizations that oppose unconstitutional federal health mandates, spoke with The Epoch Times in a previous article about the reimbursements.
Renz said hospitals get federal funding through the CARES Act, which gives a 20 percent increase in reimbursement to hospitals for inpatient stays resulting from COVID-19, Renz said.
“The laws are structured in a way that incentivizes hospitals to kill people,” Renz said. “The hospital makes more money if you die from COVID-19 than if you recover from it. Why don’t we incentivize hospitals for getting people cured of COVID?”
In a Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services in June, Texas state Sen. Bob Hall alluded to the stories like ones collected by the FFFF when he said, “Never before have we seen the government step between the patient and the doctor and usurp that doctor’s right to exercise their conscience, their training, and what they know that patient needed.”
Hall said it’s something “we need to get to the bottom of” so that it doesn’t become “the norm” because the treatment is not only not helping, but also causing harm.
“How many people walk into U.S. hospitals and don’t walk out again because of this perverse agenda?” Crum asked. “A very high number.”
Roberto and Aletha Chavez. (Courtesy of Aletha Chavez)
‘I Trusted Them’
Chavez’s more detailed account of her husband Roberto’s death in a hospital in California can be found on FFFF’s web page.
Roberto was a deputy sheriff for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who lifted weights and hiked every day.
“We were told he was the healthiest person there with COVID,” Chavez said. “He never took any medications, worked out every day, and had no co-morbidities.”
Roberto was aware of stories of neglect in nursing homes and hospitals throughout COVID, Chavez said.
“He didn’t want to be admitted, but we just thought that he would go in and get a breathing treatment and come home, so, I took him to the hospital,” Chavez said. “It’s my biggest regret after all I know now.”
Roberto was admitted overnight on Aug. 17, Chavez said.
From the beginning, he was isolated, treated with neglect and disrespect because of his unvaccinated status, and put through the same series of protocols that led to Richard’s death, Chavez said.
“He had told me he needed to use the bathroom but couldn’t get a nurse to help him,” Chavez said. “He asked me to call the nurses station at least five times since they would not respond to him.”
Chavez received a call at 4 a.m. from a nurse telling her that he had fallen out of bed, she said.
“I know my husband,” Chavez said. “He’s not just going to lay there. He’s going to get up and use the bathroom.”
The nurse told Chavez there were no injuries from the fall, but because he lost his oxygen mask, he had gone into respiratory failure, which then led to their petition to put him on ventilation, Chavez said, though it was never a treatment he wanted.
“We had been texting and talking on the phone every day, so I knew he had been fine,” Chavez said. “They told me if we don’t vent him he’ll die, so I was put on the spot. I agreed. When given that choice, what would you do? I trusted them.”
The next day his heart stopped twice, and on the third time, he could not be resuscitated, Chavez said, and he died on Aug. 26, 2021.
“That was the worst day of my life,” Chavez said.
At first, Chavez said she thought it was just neglect, then she paid an outside company of physicians and nurses to review Roberto’s medical records which showed what they referred to as many red flags and, among other issues, that Roberto had been saturated with cross-interaction drugs while kept on fentanyl.
“As I delved further into this, I found that my story is many, many other people’s stories,” Chavez said.
Phillip and Ashley Wines. (Courtesy of Ashley Wines)
‘They Told Us It Was His Fault’
Ashley Wines, a nursing student herself whose story in more detail can be found on FFFF’s webpage, lost her 32-year-old fiance Phillip Carron on Oct. 14, after he was admitted on September 23, 2021.
“Phil was a real estate agent here locally in Bellingham, Washington,” Wines said. “He actually just became sales manager and senior vice president for NW Premium Homes shortly before everything happened. We pretty much had our future set up for us.”
Like Crum and Chavez, she encountered rabid discrimination because of Phillip’s unvaccinated status, she said.
“When I tried to drop off some food, one nurse yelled at me, telling me that because he was unvaccinated, he was going to die and that he’s not going to be eating or drinking for the rest of the time he’s here,” Wines said.
Initially, Phillip was going to be kept for observation; however, after he denied vaccination, Wines said he was put on morphine overnight, which she said increases respiratory distress.
“The next morning, he’s getting sent to ICU and labeled ‘imminent death,’” Wines said. “A couple of days later they start giving him precedex, which is a strong sedative, and remdesivir.”
After one dose of remdesivir, Phillip went into complete liver failure, Wines said.
Wines’s questioning of the protocols eventually got her banned from calling the hospital, Wines said, and she could no longer speak with Phillip, so she relied on Phillips’s mother, Pam, as power of attorney.
While Phillip was on the ventilator for 15 days, Wines said he lost 86 pounds.
“I would say 75 percent of the nurses were just nasty,” Wines said. “Every single doctor was nasty. We had doctors laugh at us. They told us it was his fault because he was not vaccinated.”
Wines and Phillip’s mother, Pam, were with Phillip the day he died, but had left two hours earlier, Wines said.
“I worked in hospice; I know what end-of-life looks like,” Wines said. “There’s no way we would have left had I thought he was going to pass. I find it interesting that two hours after we left, he passed.”
These are just brief vignettes skimming the surface of Crum’s, Chavez’s, and Wines’s stories that can be found in more detail— in addition to the stories of others—on the FFFF’s COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project’s webpage.
‘We Are Going to Get Justice’
“People don’t want to believe that this is happening,” Crum said. “But as more stories come out, you cannot deny it.”
There are hundreds of people willing to come forward to share stories like theirs, Crum said.
“This has got to stop,” Crum said. “I think whoever set this evil system in place thought we would just dissolve into a heap of grief.”
Though there are times when they may want to, Crum said, it’s now become bigger than that.
“We are going to fight. We want the protocols to stop, and we want to hold these people accountable,” Crum said. “We are going to get justice.”
Gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried has promised to legalize marijuana
The Florida Democrat who promised to “legalize weed” if elected governor owns a stake in a marijuana dispensary worth thousands of dollars.
Florida commissioner of agriculture Nikki Fried holds more than $130,000 of stock in cannabis dispensary Harvest Health and Recreation Inc., according to her most recent financial disclosure. The dispensary was acquired in October 2021 by Trulieve, the nation’s most profitable medical marijuana company, which sells cannabis in 117 locations in Florida. Fried confirmed her stake in the cannabis dispensary during a June 2021 interview, shortly after launching her gubernatorial campaign. At the time, Fried denied that her dispensary holdings posed a conflict of interest, since her office did not “regulate [the] marijuana space.”
Fried, a former medical marijuana lobbyist, has fought to advance marijuana interests throughout her career. Fried’s pro-pot platform helped her win the agriculture commissioner’s seat in 2018. The following year, her office lobbied for a bill legalizing hemp, a cannabis plant stripped of the majority of its psychoactive component. Fried handed out nearly 800 hemp cultivation licenses, including at least one to a firm that counted her former fiancée as an investor.
Florida legalized medical marijuana in 2015. Fried, who holds a medical marijuana card herself, championed the cause. She continues to advocate for legal recreational marijuana for all adults. Florida lawmakers have attempted a variety of recreational marijuana legalization efforts, including a bill proposed by state house Democrats to legalize recreational marijuana, which died in March. The state Supreme Court in 2021 rejected two proposed ballot amendments to the state constitution aimed at expanding marijuana access.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R., Fla.) campaign spokeswoman Lindsey Curnutte said Fried is “pushing her own interests ahead of what’s best for the people of Florida.”
“This is a classic example of Democrat disingenuousness,” Curnutte told the Washington Free Beacon. “It has nothing to do with freedom or democracy, but rather it’s all personal and political.”
Fried is vying for the Democratic nomination against former Florida governor Charlie Crist (D.), who shares her stance on marijuana legalization. Fried is trailing Crist by a large margin, according to St. Pete Polls’s latest survey. Whichever candidate emerges from the Aug. 23 primary will face DeSantis in November. A Real Clear Politics average of polls suggests DeSantis would prevail over either Democratic challenger.
This is not the first time Fried’s business interests have gotten her in hot water. In 2021, the Florida Commission on Ethics reprimanded Fried for failing to disclose $400,000 in lobbying income.
Fried is set to release her Fiscal Year 2021 financial disclosures by Sept. 1. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
A Massachusetts pregnancy clinic was vandalized on July 7 by two people affiliated with Jane’s Revenge, a violent pro-abortion extremist group.
The Worcester clinic shared a surveillance video of the attack with The Epoch Times, with the footage showing two people dressed in black and their faces covered approaching the clinic. One of the people spray-painted the clinic’s front steps with the words “Jane’s Revenge.” The other person then pulled out a hammer and used it to damage the clinic’s door and windows.
Jane’s Revenge has taken credit for vandalizing and firebombing pro-life organizations, churches, and other pregnancy clinics. The group surfaced shortly after the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion, which suggested that the nation’s top court may be prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade, the seminal opinion that largely legalized abortion nationwide.
The Supreme Court subsequently overturned Roe v. Wade.
Republicans have called for the Department of Justice to classify Jane’s Revenge as a terrorist group. The Department of Homeland Security described the group in a June memo as “a network of loosely affiliated suspected violent extremists.” The federal agency warned that there was a risk of violence from the group following the Supreme Court decision.
The attack took place the morning after state Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said in a lengthy statement that pregnancy clinics don’t provide abortions.
The July 6 statement also warned that pregnancy clinics engage in deceptive practices, don’t have to adhere to any code of ethics, and often provide inaccurate and misleading information about abortion and the medical and mental health effects of abortion.
Kelly Wilcox, executive director of the Clearwater Clinic, told The Epoch Times that the FBI was on site on July 8 investigating the attack along with local law enforcement.
She told The Epoch Times that she doesn’t understand the motive behind the attacks nor the comments made by Healey. She said her clinic, which opened in 2000, has always been transparent about not providing abortions.
For more than a decade, Clearway, which also owns a second clinic in Massachusetts, has been doing exit surveys for all clients, according to Wilcox.
“We have never had anyone claim we have deceived them,” she said. “So I have no idea where these allegations are coming from.”
The clinic provides post-abortion counseling and a host of other medical services, including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and STD testing. The clinics also offer other forms of help, including baby clothes and supplies to expecting mothers.
Wilcox said they don’t refer to themselves as crisis pregnancy centers (CPC), despite the use of the term by those opposed to them.
Thomas Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), which represents 1,600 pregnancy centers in the United States, told The Epoch Times that Planned Parenthood has long been “leveling a smear campaign against pregnancy centers.”
Planned Parenthood didn’t respond to calls from The Epoch Times.
In her statement, Healey, at times using all capital letters, said that “CPCs do NOT provide comprehensive reproductive healthcare.”
“CPCs are organizations that seek to prevent people from accessing abortion care,” she said.
Healey, a Democrat who’s running for governor, is also a well-known supporter of Planned Parenthood.
Last year, Planned Parenthood contributed $1,700 to her bid for reelection and ran a picture and a quote from Healey saying: “Planned Parenthood’s endorsement was a game-changer for my campaign.”
She was also a guest speaker at Planned Parenthood’s “Sexual Health Lobby Day” held at the statehouse in June.
Healey’s office condemned the attack in a statement to The Epoch Times.
“Our office will continue to focus on ensuring that patients seeking abortion care are safe and well-informed about their options,” a spokesman for Healey’s office said in the written statement.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also criticized pregnancy centers prior to the Clearwater attack. In a July 3 Twitter post, Warren said that in Massachusetts, “so-called crisis pregnancy centers outnumber legitimate abortion care providers 3 to 1.”
“We need to crack down on the deceptive practices these centers use to prevent people from getting abortion care, and I’ve got a bill to do just that,” she said.
Warren entitled the legislation the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act, which she’s co-sponsoring with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.)
They defined the legislation as a measure “to combat false advertising by crisis pregnancy centers.”
The measure, which was just recently introduced, has already won the backing of Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups.
Newly obtained emails confirm that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed its definition for both “vaccine” and “vaccinated” because people were pointing out that definitions didn’t seem to apply to the COVID-19 vaccines.
“The definition of vaccine we have posted is problematic and people are using it to claim the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine based on our own definition,” Alycia Downs, a CDC official, wrote in an email on Aug. 25, 2021, to a colleague.
“Vaccine” was defined since at least 2011 by the CDC as a product that triggers immunity, while “vaccination” was described as an injection that prevents a disease, according to archived versions of the page. However, a flood of inquiries on the definitions was triggered by the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines have been increasingly ineffective against infection by the virus that causes COVID-19, the emails show.
“Our question is how is the CDC and the rest of the world allowed to call the shot a vaccination when it doesn’t even meet your own definition,” one person wrote to the CDC.
“Right-wing covid-19 pandemic deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines,” another said.
The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are both built on messenger RNA technology. They are two of the three COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States.
Downs and colleagues Allison Michelle Fisher, Cynthia Jorgensen, Valerie Morelli, and Andrew (no last name given) worked on changing the definitions for “vaccine” and “vaccination,” according to the emails.
The changes were pushed through on Aug. 31, 2021, and Sept. 1, 2021, respectively.
Changing Definitions
“Vaccine” is now defined as “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.”
The previous definition was “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.”
“Vaccination” was changed to “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease” from “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”
Attorney Travis Miller obtained some of the missives in 2021 and published screenshots of them. At the time, the CDC didn’t dispute their authenticity. The Epoch Times has obtained the emails, and additional messages concerning the changes, and has published all 67 pages of them.
The batch of emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that Andrew, a CDC employee on the agency’s Vaccine Task Force, boosted a Washington Post article that downplayed criticism of the change.
“I’ve only seen a couple of inquiries about the change to this page. I think the WaPo article explains the problem well—that people are misinterpreting ‘immunity’ to mean 100% protection,” Andrew wrote.
“Thank you, Andrew! I really appreciate your response,” Downs replied.
A CDC spokesperson has told The Epoch Times that the “slight changes in wording” haven’t altered “the overall definition,” of “vaccine,” adding, “the previous definition at Immunization Basics | CDC could be interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered.”
Some other portions of the CDC website still say COVID-19 vaccines confer immunity. One page, for instance, says that “getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19.”
Decision to not get COVID-19 vaccine comes with consequences, but maybe not for the health care system
A large-scale international study of those unvaccinated against COVID-19 finds a pattern of discrimination—and a relatively low hospitalization rate.
While the study’s findings are limited by the nature of the selection process, in which unvaccinated people opted in to participate, the new study suggests that those who declined the vaccine may not be the burden to the health care system many have claimed them to be. The study is now available as a preprint (which means it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed). It was uploaded to ResearchGate earlier this month.
The findings hold significant importance to policymakers. According to Our World in Data, 60 percent of the world is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The 40 percent who aren’t vaccinated against the virus have been frequently blamed for the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as vaccination rates reached up to 90 percent in many jurisdictions.
With government agencies, news media, and social media algorithms ignoring or misrepresenting the contending science around COVID-19, the unvaccinated have faced often intense pressure to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“What the survey aimed to do is gather insights about health outcomes, choices, and discrimination experienced by the marginalized subpopulation of people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures who have elected to exercise their right of refusal of COVID-19 injections,” the study authors said.
In many places in the United States, those who declined the COVID-19 vaccines have been discriminated against, stigmatized, and marginalized from society. Nurses and health care workers were fired, Air Force cadets were denied commissions, and family members found themselves ostracized within some of their most intimate and important relationships.
The vilification of the unvaccinated has come with the censorship of both science and personal experience. Many doctors, nurses, scientists, and other health care professionals who speak out about the safety and necessity of these vaccines have been threatened with the loss of their medical licenses, deleted from social media, canceled from events with their peers, and fired from their jobs.
The Control Group
The study is based on data collected from the Control Group Cooperative (CGC), which was founded in July 2021 by a citizens group in the UK to represent and connect people who elected to not get the COVID-19 vaccines.
The goal of the CGC has been to analyze the long-term health outcomes and experiences of these individuals through self-reported surveys. According to their website, there are currently more than 300,000 unvaccinated participants from more than 175 countries participating in their long-term study.
The study was conducted by Robert Verkerk, founder of the Alliance for Natural Health International, an affiliate of the CGC. A team of international scientists contributed to the research. The study analyzes the data from the CGC survey from the first five months of its operation—from September 2021 through February.
The Cohort
The cohort analyzed by Verkerk consisted of 18,497 individuals out of the 297,618 people who had joined the CGC by the end of February.
A plurality of participants were from the continent of Europe (40 percent), followed by Oceania (27 percent), and North America (25 percent). Three percent of participants were from South America and Asia, while less than 1 percent were from Africa. Ages ranged anywhere from 1 to more than 90 years old, with most participants being middle-aged.
Motive for Refusal
Individuals participating in the study declined COVID-19 vaccination for various reasons. These included past vaccine injuries, preference for more natural remedies, lack of trust in pharmaceutical companies and government entities, and concerns about the validity of vaccine study results.
One-third of the individuals in the study self-reported that they received vaccinations as children. That figure may be low, as others may not have reported—or even remembered—their previous vaccinations.
While some had never been vaccinated, the cohort was mainly concerned about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines, not all vaccines in general.
Discrimination Based on Vaccination
Between 20 and 50 percent of respondents, depending on where they lived, reported being personal targets of hate and discrimination. Many felt victimized for their vaccination status, especially those living in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America.
They reported that they faced discrimination in the workplace, from friends or family members, and from their respective state authorities, because of their “unvaccinated” status.
The prejudice experienced within the workplace by respondents resulted in heavy economic burdens for many. For example, 29 percent of respondents from Australia and New Zealand reported losing their jobs during the five months that the survey was administered.
These survey results dovetail with what unvaccinated individuals have been facing globally. Those who don’t succumb to peer pressure, advertising, or incentivizing are then threatened with an ultimatum: Get the vaccine or get fired.
That’s what happened to Destiny Carpenter, a former nurse at Colorado Canyons Hospital. Carpenter is among one of the hundreds of U.S. nurses who have been fired for refusing to get the vaccine, as Fox News reported in September 2021.
Carpenter was nominated for the Daisy Award for extraordinary nursing three times during her tenure at the hospital. This award is granted to the most deserving nurse for exuding compassionate care to their patients.
In February, FiercePharma reported that more than 15,500 health care workers in the United States had been fired or suspended or had chosen to resign from their hospital jobs over their decision to remain unvaccinated.
About 40 percent of respondents, regardless of age, reported that they experienced mild or moderate mental health issues during the duration of the survey, while approximately 20 percent reported experiencing severe mental health issues.
In an analysis of the mental health issues experienced by the cohort, the scientists noted that the mental health burden “may be associated more to the human response to the pandemic, rather than psychological, fear-based reactions to any threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.”
In other words, the respondents’ mental health problems appeared to mainly be a result of being stigmatized and marginalized from society.
A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?
While the study gives insight into the experience of the unvaccinated, it always raises questions about assertions that this group is an undue burden on the health care system.
“Only 74 respondents out of the 5,196 (1.4 percent) who reported suspected or known SARS-CoV-2 infection also reported that they were hospitalized following infection. Therefore, outpatient or inpatient hospitalization was reported in just 0.4 percent of the full survey cohort. Of these, 15 were outpatient only, another 15 were hospitalized for less than 3 days, 26 were hospitalized between 3 and 7 days, 11 for between 7 and 14 days and only 10 for more than 14 days,” the study reads.
While the study is potentially prone to bias because of the selection pool for the survey, an infection-hospitalization ratio of 0.4 percent would certainly challenge many assertions about the burden of the unvaccinated.
“Infection-hospitalization ratio estimates ranged from 0.4 percent for those younger than 40 years to 9.2 percent for those older than 60 years.”
The study also found that hospitalization rates based on case counts overestimated the IHR by a factor of 10, “but this overestimation differed by demographic groups, especially age.”
Most of the CGC respondents who reported that they had caught COVID-19 had only mild symptoms and were sick for less than a week. Fatigue and coughing were the most common symptoms recorded.
Beyond the fact that they were unvaccinated, another unique trait of the CGC cohort may also be their propensity to try various therapeutics to treat their COVID-19 infections.
Against the Grain
Participants reported that they didn’t need a vaccine to lessen their symptoms: Most infections were mild to begin with, and many respondents said they turned to natural remedies when they did get sick.
A study published in June 2021 in the journal Inflammopharmacology by an international team of researchers from India, Italy, and the United States, shows that using natural remedies is a scientifically sound choice.
This study explored the immune-boosting properties of vitamins and minerals in combating COVID-19 infections. The scientists found that if administered at higher-than-recommended daily doses, many vitamins had the potential to reduce viral load and risk of hospitalization from COVID-19.
The decision to combat COVID-19 with non-pharmacological immune-enhancing interventions may also help explain why the hospitalization rates of the unvaccinated in the study were so low.
What About Ivermectin?
A portion of the participants reported that they also took ivermectin, an anti-parasitical that has been both promoted and hotly criticized as a treatment for COVID-19, as The Epoch Times has reported.
While ivermectin remains controversial, a meta-analysis published in June 2021 in the American Journal of Therapeutics states: “Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.”
The announcement has raised concerns that side effects from the vaccine aren’t being weighed against potential benefits.
As of June 12, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicated that there have been 1,301,354 adverse events and 28,859 deaths from COVID-19 vaccines. A recent analysis of VAERS reports done by two journalists in Israel revealed that there were 58 serious adverse effects in babies prior to the rollout of the vaccine authorization for those aged 6 months and older. The reports failed to indicate if these infants and toddlers were involved in the Pfizer clinical trial or why they received vaccination.
Verkerk is deeply concerned about the CDC vaccine authorization for children younger than 5. He holds master’s and doctorate degrees from Imperial College London and is co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles in the areas of health, agriculture, and environment. He’s also the co-chair of the World Council of Health’s Health & Humanity Committee. He told The Epoch Times via email that many parents want this vaccine for their children because, like every parent, they want what’s best for their child.
“However, they’ve been misled as to the known science on both the benefits and the risks,” he wrote. “There could be disastrous long-term consequences for some children if they are exposed to the spike protein via the vaccine before they are exposed to circulating coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which would otherwise result in broader-based, more robust, naturally-acquired immunity.”
For Verkerk, it’s about choice. We shouldn’t vilify those who rely on natural immunity or refuse the vaccines for religious, medical, or ethical reasons, he said.
“We have seen a dramatic erosion of the principles of medical ethics,” he wrote.
We need to respect autonomy (the right of competent adults to make individualized and informed decisions about their own medical care) and adhere to the principle of first doing no harm, as well as to the principles of beneficence and justice, according to Verkerk.
WNBA star Brittney Griner is still imprisoned in Russia, and political leaders in America have begun speaking out about efforts to bring her back.
At the same time, Hollywood star Nick Searcy said there are more important priorities.
“Tell you what: when the @joebiden Occupation releases the Jan. 6th political prisoners who have been held in a DC gulag for 18 months without bail, maybe then I’ll give a damn about some basketball player who hates America who is in jail in Russia because of her drug habit,” Searcy wrote on Twitter.
Tell you what: when the @joebiden Occupation releases the Jan. 6th political prisoners who have been held in a DC gulag for 18 months without bail, maybe then I’ll give a damn about some basketball player who hates America who is in jail in Russia because of her drug habit.
— Nick Searcy, INSURRECTIONAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) July 10, 2022
Harsh as his statement was, Searcy was correct that Americans should not have their constitutional rights stripped in this country.
Last year, Searcy teamed up with filmmaker Chris Burgard for a documentary called “Capitol Punishment.”
In the documentary, Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin detailed the treatment he received following the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021.
“They put me in a cell by myself, total solitary confinement, in a cell not much bigger than a walk-in closet,” Griffin said in the film. He remembered being called an “effing white cracker” on multiple occasions.
In December, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar further detailed the alleged rights violations the prisoners had to endure.
“They have been beaten by the guards. They are called white supremacist,” Greene said, according to the Post Millennial. “They are denied religious services, haircuts, shaving, the ability to trim their fingernails.
“There’s more outrageous things happening there. They’re denied time with their attorneys. They are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there. They are denied bail and being held there without bail.”
While Biden has yet to address these allegations, he said on Friday that he replied to a letter from Griner, The Guardian reported. Griner wrote to Biden about her fear of being stuck in Russia long term, but he reportedly assured her of his efforts to bring her home.
“I was able to read [Biden’s] letter, and it brought [me] so much joy, as well as BG,” said Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner.
“I believe every word that she said to [Biden] he understood, and he sees her as a person, and he has not forgotten her, which was her biggest cry in her letter.”
She said Biden promised he is “exhausting all efforts” to get Griner home.
While there is nothing wrong with Biden trying to get Griner home, he should be making the same or more effort to ensure prisoners in the United States are not being mistreated.
By focusing efforts on Griner instead of major issues occurring in America, Biden is showing just how powerful his political bias truly is.
We spend a good deal of time on this Substack articulating the vast array of negative consequences of lockdowns on society. As I note in my upcoming book:
Many of those who joined Rational Ground and what we came to call Team Reality had similar experiences. Life isn’t always fair, and we adults are willing to bear with the challenges foisted on us, but when the government’s insane rules harm our children, watch out.
Below are links to some of the more prominent impacts we’ve cataloged against children from the egregious policies foisted on families during the pandemic. We’ll be discussing these and other items today at noon on our Rational Ground podcast.
This week a new study scanned the literature to determine what countries across the world are experiencing because of the pandemic and stringency measures. Here’s a thread on that:
Meta-study: “… anxiety, depression, [PTSD], and sleep disorders.” “… measures such as quarantine and isolation for infection prevention may have immediate and prolonged mental health impacts.”
Our illustrious overlords of health determined it was better for kids that they be banished from school and locked indoors eating takeout. The result? BMI rate of change for 2 to 19 year olds DOUBLED! COVID didn’t do this. OUR POLICIES DID.
A group of parents in Gainesville, FL, sent 6 face masks to a lab at the University of Florida, requesting an analysis of contaminants found on the masks after they had been worn. The resulting report found that five masks were contaminated with bacteria, parasites, and fungi, including three with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria.
Our friends at the Brownstone Institute have compiled a tremendous list of resources, analysis and commentary on this subject:
This article originally appeared in Rational Ground. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.
The protection against severe illness from so-called natural immunity remains superior to the protection bestowed by COVID-19vaccines, according to a new study.
People who survived COVID-19 infection and were not vaccinated had sky-high protection against severe or fatal COVID-19, researchers in Qatar found.
“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, and colleagues said after studying long-term natural immunity in unvaccinated people.
That percentage is higher than the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, according to other studies and real-world data.
Swedish researchers, for instance, found in May that two doses of a vaccine were just 54 percent effective against the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
South African scientists, meanwhile, found the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines peaked at 88 percent, and quickly dropped to 70 percent or lower.
The Qatar group found natural immunity for over 14 months after a person’s first infection “remains very strong, with no evidence for waning, irrespective of variant.”
Few researchers have studied natural immunity long-term among unvaccinated persons, in part because many of the people have eventually received a COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccines, meanwhile, have waned against both infection and severe illness over time, triggering recommendations for booster doses, with some Americans even getting five doses within 10 months.
Natural Immunity Performs Poorly Against Reinfection
The vaccines were once said to provide close to 100 percent protection against symptomatic infection. They now provide under 50 percent protection against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses, following the emergence of Omicron.
That strain and its subvariants are dominant in countries around the world, including the United States and Qatar.
Natural immunity was thought to providestrong protection against reinfection. But the Qatari researchers found it also provides poor protection against reinfection from Omicron.
Pre-Omicron infection against pre-Omicron reinfection was as high as 90.5 percent, and remained around 70 percent by the 16th month, according to the study. But pre-Omicron infection against Omicron reinfection was just 38 percent effective, although it was higher among people infected with the original Wuhan strain or with the Delta variant, and lower among those who got sick from the Alpha or Beta strains.
Modeling signaled a drop to zero percent protection by 18 months, but the shielding still appears to last longer than that of vaccines, researchers said.
“Vaccine immunity against Omicron subvariants lasts for <6 months but pre-Omicron natural immunity, assuming Gompertz decay, may last for just over a year,” they wrote.
Limitations of the study included differences in testing frequency among the cohorts studied, and depletion of groups who had a COVID-19 infection due to deaths.
The Biden administration is funding the distribution of crack pipes, according to a report from the Daily Caller, which indicates that so-called harm reduction facilities that received administration grants are in fact distributing the pipes.
The news comes after administration officials insisted taxpayer dollars would not be used for this purpose and described a WashingtonFree Beacon report on their harm reduction grant program as “misinformation.” The Callerreported Friday, however, that it received two smoking kits that contain crack pipes, condoms, and lubricant from the New York Harm Reduction Educators, which received $398,960 in May from the Department of Health and Human Services through its harm reduction grant program.
The Caller received its crack pipes “after spending about 10 minutes on paperwork with basic information,” according to the report. Not only were they given drug paraphernalia: The reporters were invited to smoke on the premises. One employee asked a reporter to use the crack pipe in a supervised room at the harm reduction center, saying the drug paraphernalia could not be used outside the facility because it was too close to a school.
When HHS announced the recipients of its $30 million harm reduction program in May, it included a note at the top of its grant webpage stating that “no federal funding is used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to purchase pipes in safer smoking kits.” The announcement came after the Free Beacon first reported in February that the HHS harm reduction program was set to fund the distribution of crack pipes. The White House denounced the story as “disinformation” and said smoking kits funded by its program would not include a crack pipe. The Free Beaconsubsequently obtained smoking kits in five East Coast cities that all contained crack pipes.
HHS, in a statement to the Caller, claimed the New York Harm Reduction Educators has yet to use the federal funds it received and that its purchases will have to be approved by the government.
The report comes as Congress moves to stop the Biden administration from funding crack pipe distribution. The House Appropriations Committee this month voted unanimously to include a provision in the HHS budget that prevents the agency from funding the drug paraphernalia.
“None of the funds made available by this Act should be used to purchase, procure, or distribute pipes or similar cylinder objects for smoking or inhaling any controlled substance in schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act,” the amendment states.
The amendment vote comes one week after the House passed a separate Democrat-sponsored bill that similarly banned the department from funding crack pipes through mental health and substance abuse programs.
The votes signal that resident Joe Biden’s congressional allies no longer believe White House claims that the administration never planned to fund crack pipes. Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), who sponsored the amendment in the HHS funding package, said he was pleased that Democrats have now joined Republicans to hold Biden accountable for his radical policies.
“While most of the media stopped following the crack pipes story and some outlets tried to suppress it, the Free Beacon deserves a lot of credit for continuing to shine a light on this issue,” Moolenaar told the Free Beacon. “Now even Democrats are recognizing this was an abuse of tax dollars.”
Sixty-two thousand Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers are being deprived of pay and benefits, due to noncompliance with the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate.
The military service members who are not vaccinated, or do not have a pending or approved exemption, will no longer be allowed to drill or train, Army officials said last week. If noncompliance continues, officials say they will discharge them. The move to bar soldiers from service, pay, and benefits comes as the armed forces have struggled with recruitment. The Army cited “maintaining readiness” as the branch’s rationale for enforcing the vaccine mandate, according to a statement.
Army officials point out their “policy affords every Soldier the opportunity to request an exemption, such as for medical or religious concerns.” Previous reporting by the Washington Free Beacon, however, found that military leadership has granted few. In the Marine Corps, just three service members were granted religious exemptions. Congressional Republicans have pressured the Pentagon for more information about the armed forces vaccine mandate, but their calls have gone unanswered.
Republican leaders have attempted to ban the use of taxpayer funds to implement the Department of Defense’s vaccine mandate. “Hundreds of service members and their families have reached out to our offices about the direct impact of this mandate, their careers of service, and toll on their families,” a coalition of Republican House lawmakers led by Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) wrote in February.
Republican governors have pledged not to discharge guardsmen who refuse to get vaccinated. Options available to governors to maintain soldiers’ pay and benefits, however, appear limited. Governors can deploy soldiers on state active-duty orders, which would entitle them to pay, but not federal benefits. It is also unclear how conflicting orders from state and federal authorities would be handled in the National Guard’s chain of command.
WNBA player Brittney Griner on Thursday pleaded guilty in a Russian courtroom to possessing less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage when she landed at a Moscow airport in February.
It’s a sad story, but Griner is hardly the political prisoner that resident Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have made her out to be. And under no circumstances should the Democratic Party’s identity politics allow a black lesbian millionaire athlete who broke the law in a foreign country to receive preferential treatment—as she already is receiving—over genuinely innocent hostages long left to rot in foreign prisons. Even if one were to leave aside the fact, which we simply cannot, that Griner clamored for the removal of the national anthem from WNBA games.
So far, the administration is sending all the wrong signals, elevating Griner’s case above that of actual political prisoners like Paul Whelan: A senior U.S. diplomat on Thursday hand-delivered a personal note from Biden to Griner, a move that followed a phone call from Biden and Harris to Griner’s partner, Cherelle, in which Biden assured her that he is “working to secure Brittney’s release as soon as possible, as well as the release of Paul Whelan and other U.S. nationals who are wrongfully detained or held hostage in Russia and around the world.”
That may sound like inoffensive boilerplate, but equating Griner and Whelan is indecent. Whelan has been locked up since 2019 on trumped-up espionage charges. He insists he’s innocent, and he was almost certainly framed by Russia’s spy service.
Whatever one thinks of Russia’s draconian drug laws, Griner has quite plausibly admitted her guilt, so it’s unclear why Biden and Harris have made Griner’s ordeal a higher priority than Whelan’s. Now, his family wants to know why. His sister, Elizabeth Whelan, said this week she was “crushed” and that if the president wants to talk about securing Whelan’s release, “he needs to be talking to the Whelans!”
Beyond that, Griner is not exactly an American patriot. She launched a campaign in the summer of 2020—in the wake of George Floyd’s murder—to press the WNBA to stop playing the national anthem before games. “Yeah, we’re here to play basketball. But basketball doesn’t mean anything in a world where we can’t just live,” she told the Washington Post at the time. “We can’t wake up and do whatever we want to do. Go for a run, go to the store to buy some candy, drive your car without the fear of being wrongfully pulled over.” Maybe after her brush with Russian law enforcement, she’ll realize conditions back stateside aren’t as oppressive as she made them out to be.
In the meantime, Griner should not jump the line in any prisoner swap negotiated by the Biden administration. Russian media have reported that Moscow wants the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout cut loose in exchange for Griner. His arms trafficking fueled some of the worst wars of the 21st century, from Africa to South America to southwest Asia. He was finally convicted in 2011, after federal agents posing as Colombian Marxist guerrillas caught him in a sting. Should Bout go free because a WNBA star wanted to get high when she was playing basketball in an authoritarian police state? Clearly not.
Biden should reject that rotten deal, but if he’s tempted to make a trade, he should demand the Russians first release Paul Whelan.
An undercover investigator has obtained hidden camera footage from an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., that raises grave ethical concerns.
The candid video, taken by a 28-week-pregnant woman, reveals a nurse saying that the babies they abort do not receive digoxin — a lethal injection given to infants in utero during an abortion to ensure the baby is not born alive during the procedure. This increases the chances of a baby being born alive and possibly being illegally killed after birth.
The nurse also told the patient she may deliver the deceased child in her hotel room after the procedure; and furthermore that the doctor would not speak to her until she took Xanax, a mind-altering drug, prescribed by the clinic. This raises ethical concerns about how the clinic obtains proper consent. The patient has since filed a formal medical complaint.
“The undercover footage released today shows that the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion facility is forcing mothers to take mind-altering medications before meeting with the abortionist and giving final consent. This is a likely violation of basic medical ethics, and so the patient has filed a complaint with the D.C. medical board,” said Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, in a June 23 press release. Live Action is a leading prolife organization in the United States.
Rose continued, “The footage also provides first-hand testimony that the Washington Surgi-Clinic may kill later-term babies without using a feticidal drug, increasing the chance that the babies would be born alive and then brutally and illegally killed. Whether or not this drug is used, this facility is ending innocent lives through violence. Tragically, this footage also shows the nurse relaying the reality that the patient may be left to deliver her dead child alone in her hotel room.”
The investigator is heard asking the nurse what to expect during the procedure.
Nurse: No. We don’t do the — a lot of people do the injection through the heart and all that. We don’t do that here.
Patient: Okay. I didn’t even know.
Nurse: Yeah. She’ll be alive when you go to sleep, but she will definitely have passed before he does anything.
Abortionist Cesare Santangelo, who runs the Surgi-Clinic, has been under scrutiny in recent months after prolife activists found five late-term aborted babies being disposed of as medical waste from the clinic. Some were deemed by medical experts to have likely been viable births.
Live Action shared the experts’ conclusions: An incision behind the neck of one baby girl, between 28–30 weeks’ gestation, indicated she was possibly killed via the federally banned D&X abortion procedure, more commonly known as partial-birth abortion. Her neck was cut and brain removed. An intact baby boy, who may have been nearly full-term, may have been the victim of infanticide. Another baby, found in her gestational sac, may have been born alive and left to die; while two other children, a boy and a girl, about 22 weeks and 28 weeks respectively, were found brutally dismembered, indicating D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortions.
Patient: This is the possibility of labor, basically?
Nurse: Yeah. Spontaneous abortion.
Patient: I’m sorry, that means …
Nurse: You may go into premature labor and deliver the fetus in your hotel.
Patient: Right. What do you tell me to do when that happens?
Nurse: That depends on what happens.
Patient: Do you guys come and like —
Nurse: He could come and help you take care of it. We could just tell you what to do with the remains. It just depends on what happens.
“This footage also shows the unethical and coerced administration of Xanax prior to seeing the abortionists,” Rose added. “Xanax is a substance that medical experts attest impairs a patient’s ability to give truly informed consent, particularly when a patient is not used to taking the drug.”
Patient: Does the Xanax effect, like —
Nurse: — The fetus?
Patient: No, not the fetus, just my clarity of thinking.
Nurse: It shouldn’t. I mean, you might be a little sleepy, but other than that …
Patient: I would really — I don’t mind if I have to stay longer, I would really rather talk to him first.
Nurse: Um …
Patient: Is that not usually how you guys do it?
Nurse: Yeah, that’s unfortunately — cause like I said, we have to make sure that’s in your system before you talk to the doctor. He’s not going to be able to speak with you until he is ready to do it.
The patient has now filed a medical complaint, calling on the D.C. medical board to investigate the apparent unethical activity, Live Action reported.
Experts reviewed the footage and shared their opinions, including Dr. Christina Francis OBGYN CEO-elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who said: “Xanax is a substance that, in a patient who is not used to taking it, would most definitely impair her judgment and therefore her ability to give truly informed consent. There is no reason a medication like this should be routinely given to a patient prior to her meeting with a physician and going through the consent process. Often times patients are not allowed to drive or operate heavy machinery for up to 24 hours after even minor procedures due to sedating medications they have received that impair their competence to make complex decisions. Xanax is a clear sedative, especially in a patient naïve to that medication.”
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, ethicist and former Graves Chair of Moral Philosophy at Union University, also studied the video.
“The footage I viewed indicates a likely ethical violation and could warrant further inquiry due to it demonstrating that patients were required to ingest Xanax before a full medical consultation could occur,” he said. “Being a physician entails profound ethical responsibilities and professional duties to the patient to inform, treat, and care. The physician himself or herself is ultimately responsible to ensure informed consent, in which the patient understands the diagnosis, treatment options, potential outcomes, and possible complications of a procedure or medication. That means being available to the patient to answer any questions the patient has about his or her care. Failure to do so is a dereliction of duty.”
Rose is now calling for the D.C. government, including the mayor, medical examiner, and chief of police, to investigate Santangelo and his facility.
“They are not only killing children through abortion, but they may be committing illegal infanticide, as well as other federal crimes such as partial-birth abortion,” she added. “We demand justice for these babies, and the closure of D.C.’s House of Horrors, the Washington Surgi-Clinic.”
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a Nobel prize-nominated physician who famously discovered and distributed an early treatment protocol for COVID, dubbed the “Zelenko Protocol,” passed away from cancer on June 30, 2022.
The next day, some Twitter users started taking note of the suspension of the account of the Zelenko Freedom Foundation, a group dedicated “to provide funding to social entities and social activities surrounding education, leadership development, health literacy, advocacy, public policy, social, health and community development,” according to their website.
“It is no secret that big tech abhors free speech and instead worships at the altar of Marxist collectivism and group-think. The Silicon Valley speech cartel has sunk to new lows when twitter suspended the Zelenko Freedom Foundation account less than 24 hours after the passing of Dr. Vladimir Zelenko,” co-chair of the Zelenko Freedom Foundation, Ann Vandersteel, told The Epoch Times.
She maintains that no one from Twitter reached out to verify who was managing the account.
“If they had bothered to do even the most basic of inquiries they would have learned that the account was run by the foundation, not by Dr. Zelenko. The account wasn’t established for some end around their ridiculous ban of Dr. Zelekno, the account was established to represent the interests of the Foundation, which is committed to investing in individuals and technologies that will save and extend the lives of people all across the globe,” she said.
Vandersteel thinks that the suspension of the foundation’s account was done for “no reason other than petty vindictiveness.”
“The question is, what does Elon Musk think? Does he believe in saving lives or does he want those lifesaving technologies silenced?”
Zelenko had been practicing in Monroe, New York, in 2020 during the outbreak of COVID-19, and is credited with having treated about 7,500 patients with his method.
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko. (Courtesy of the Zelenko Freedom Foundation)
Zelenko could not sit back and wait for politicians and health officials to agree on prescribed treatments, so he came up with the “Zelenko Protocol”—a combination of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), zinc, azithromycin, and other drugs, including steroids, and later informed then-President Donald Trump about it via a letter.
The other co-chair of the foundation, Kevin Jenkins, told The Epoch Times that the suspension reminded him of a Martin Luther King quote:
“All we say to America is ‘be true to what’s on paper.’ If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privilege, because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so, just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around; we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around.”
“When Ann and I spoke with Dr. Zelenko, regarding the mission of this Foundation he said, ‘I want the truth to spread like a mantra!’” Jenkins said.
“Our team at the Zelenko Freedom Foundation will stay true to Dr. Zelenko and Dr. King! We will fight to the end to save humanity! Come join us Zfreedomfoundation.com. Dr. Zelenko’s dream will not be deferred!” he added.
A plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccine shots for hundreds of thousands of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will remain on pause after a Los Angeles County judge ruled on July 5 that the district lacks the authority to do so.
In his ruling, Judge Mitchell Beckloff of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County sided with a parent, whose 12-year-old son attends a public magnet school in North Hollywood. The parent filed the complaint in October 2021, about a month after the LAUSD announced its vaccination mandate.
Under the district’s mandate, all eligible students aged 12 and above must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, or get approved for exemptions by Jan. 10 in order to attend school in person. Those who don’t comply would be transferred into the district’s remote learning program, City of Angels, which offers a mixture of live instruction and self-study.
The suing parent, identified as G.F., argued that it is unfair and unlawful for the child, identified as D.F., to have to lose his hard-earned place at a competitive school just because he and his parent have chosen to not get vaccinated on the basis of personal beliefs.
According to G.F., his son had acquired natural immunity after recovering from COVID-19. He also said he worried that vaccinating the child would put the child’s health in jeopardy.
“Either I get him a vaccine that I fear could harm him, or I send him to a virtual school that I know from experience and LAUSD’s own data would prove academically vastly inferior,” the father said earlier this year in a sworn declaration, reported City News Service. “The idea of dumping him into an online school, free of a rigorous academic program and torn away from his like-minded classmates, breaks my heart.”
Beckloff, who wrote in March in a tentative opinion that he might dismiss the case, agreed with the father in his final ruling, acknowledging that if D.F. refuses to comply with the mandate, he will be forced to accept a very different education.
“The [mandate] is not merely about how education is delivered or who may be physically present on campus as the court previously viewed it. Instead, the [mandate] dictates which school the student may attend, and the curriculum he may continue to receive,” the judge wrote, reported the Los Angeles Times.
The judge also noted that the LAUSD mandate is in conflict with California’s public health law, which allows personal beliefs-based vaccination exemptions.
“Judge Beckloff’s ruling confirms that individual school districts do not have the authority to impose local vaccination requirements in excess of statewide requirements,” Arie Spangler, an attorney for G.F., said in a statement. “We are very pleased with the ruling, as it ensures that no child will be forced out of the classroom due to their COVID-19 vaccination status.”
The decision doesn’t have an immediate impact on LAUSD, since the mandate has already been placed on hold after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in April that the state would wait for the federal government to give full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine for young children. The Newsom administration and school district have both said they won’t pursue the pediatric vaccine mandate until at least the summer of 2023.
Former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson has been allowed to return to Twitter, which banned him in 2021 for allegedly spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
Berenson and Twitter released similar statements on July 6.
“The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. I have been reinstated. Twitter has acknowledged that my tweets should have not led to my suspension at that time,” Berenson said in a blog post on July 6, which he linked to in his first post on the platform since he was permanently suspended,” Berenson said in a blog post.
“The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. Twitter has reinstated Mr. Berenson’s account. Upon further review, Twitter acknowledges Mr. Berenson’s Tweets should not have led to his account’s suspension at that time,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
Vaccines
Minutes after Berenson posted for the first time following his reinstatement, he re-posted the words that triggered the ban.
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity,” he wrote.
Berenson was referring to the COVID-19 vaccines, which have proven increasingly unable to prevent infection from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as the SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.
Though the vaccines have been authorized and approved for prevention of the virus, they’re actually recommended primarily for helping prevent severe disease among those who contract the illness.
Twitter had initially claimed that Berenson’s post was “misleading,” even though the company acknowledged that “studies indicate a reduction in vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant” of the virus.
Studies show that the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson shots—the only three available in the United States—provide little protection against Omicron, and that the protection quickly wanes.
Some studies indicate that the vaccinated are more likely to contract the virus after certain periods of time elapse following vaccination.
U.S. health authorities still recommend vaccination for virtually all Americans.
Lawsuit
Berenson sued Twitter after being banned, claiming the company breached its contract with him as a user.
A federal judge tossed all of the claims except for the breach of contract one. Berenson and Twitter recently announced they’d agreed on a settlement in principle.
The details of the settlement have not yet been entered into the court docket, with the parties saying they’re still negotiating.
According to court filings, Berenson was told by a senior Twitter executive that posts that sparked controversy would not lead to him being banned from the platform. But Twitter began taking action against him after Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to resident Joe Biden, said some of Berenson’s remarks were “horrifying,” first locking him out of his account and eventually enacting the ban.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, said in a recent ruling that Berenson “plausibly avers that Twitter’s conduct here modified its contract with plaintiff and then breached that contract by failing to abide by its own five-strike policy and its specific commitments set forth through its vice president.”
The National Institutes of Health canceled a nearly $2 million taxpayer-funded trial that would have force-fed puppies experimental drugs, after a Washington Free Beacon report.
NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is helmed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, was slated to spend $1,836,453 in taxpayer dollars to test an experimental hay fever drug on mice, rats, and dogs, including puppies, according to funding documents obtained by the White Coat Waste Project, a government watchdog group, and provided to the Free Beacon in May. The most severe symptoms of hay fever, also known as seasonal allergies, are a runny nose and sneezing.
Following the Free Beacon report, Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) launched an investigation into NIAID’s project, describing the puppy tests as “invasive, painful, and potentially deadly procedures.” Fauci informed Ernst late last month that the puppy trials are now canceled, according to a copy of the June 22 letter sent to Ernst and obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.
Ernst said the cancellation is a win for the taxpayers and should serve as a wake-up call to the NIH that Congress will not sit by while it abuses animals in the name of science. NIH’s animal tests have stoked anger from lawmakers and put the U.S. health agency under a microscope, particularly as questions linger about Fauci and the NIH’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. NIH’s funding for labs in Russia and China also have generated concerns about the agency’s priorities and led Congress to ban the practice last week.
A company called the Inimmune Corporation was tapped by NIAID to perform at least five separate experiments on dogs that were to include force-feeding them experimental drugs for several months. This included a proposal to purchase “six-month old puppies” to be used in the tests.
“Although the contract to Inimmune Corporation proposed the use of murine and canine preclinical animal models, after consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the company elected to proceed using two rodent models only,” Fauci wrote to Ernst. “No experiments utilizing the canine model are being conducted under this contract.”
Fauci attempted to justify the trials, saying that 60 million people in the United States have seasonal allergies “and many patients do not achieve adequate relief with available medications, resulting in substantial social and economic burdens.”
Ernst, in comments to the Free Beacon, said “Fauci was barking up the wrong tree when he decided to use government dollars on dog testing.”
“These inhumane practices have no place in our government—much less on the taxpayer’s dime,” Ernst said. “Thankfully, after voicing our concerns and shining a light on these heinous tactics, taxpayers can rest easy knowing their hard-earned money is not going toward dog abuse.”
Fauci also defended NIAID’s decision to use animals such as puppies as test subjects.
“I want to assure you that NIH and NIAID take the welfare of animals in research very seriously,” Fauci wrote, noting that such experiments are governed by strict ethical guidelines. “NIH has established guidance, procedures, and protocols to ensure that … scientists maintain the highest possible standards for the humane care and use of animals in research.”
Fauci also noted in the letter that, unlike other NIAID-funded experiments, the seasonal allergy trials were not slated to allocate funding to any labs in China. This practice has become increasingly controversial in the wake of China’s efforts to lie and cover-up its role in starting the coronavirus pandemic.
Devin Murphy, public policy and communications manager for the White Coat Waste Project—which first unearthed these experiments and others involving lethal tests on beagle puppies—said NIH and NIAID are on notice.
“This is a decisive victory in the War on Waste, and sends a message to big-spending white coats across the federal government: taxpayers should not be forced to pay for wasteful, unnecessary, and cruel animal experiments,” Murphy told the Free Beacon. “Taxpayers and animal lovers in Iowa and across the nation are grateful for Sen. Ernst’s outstanding commitment to government transparency and the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
Senate candidate John Fetterman took $3,500 trip to Ocean City, N.J., in June 2020
Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman (D.) took a taxpayer-funded security detail on a family vacation to the Jersey Shore while publicly advocating strict coronavirus lockdowns.
Pennsylvania state police spent $3,500 for overtime, food, and lodging during Fetterman’s trip to Ocean City, N.J., from June 24-27, 2020, according to records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee for Pennsylvania, made the trip amid a surge of cases in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Department of Health warned at the time against nonessential travel. New Jersey’s governor threatened to crack down on Jersey Shore revelers because of a spike in cases there two days before Fetterman’s junket.
Fetterman has aggressively pushed lockdowns, masking, and other measures to fight the pandemic. He vowed in March 2020 that he and his family would “stay at home, minimizing social interactions and trips to indoor public places.” He criticized “a small, tiny minority” of anti-lockdown protesters in May 2020, and said “renegade counties” in his state had caused COVID-19 outbreaks by violating his administration’s stay-at-home orders. He also said school closures, which have caused learning and behavioral setbacks for school kids, were “an absolute necessity” in the fight against the virus.
Fetterman campaign spokesman Joe Calvello acknowledged the vacation but said that Alleghany County, where Fetterman resides, “was not in lock down” at the time of the trip. He said Fetterman has never claimed reimbursement for travel expenses and that he cut spending on travel, food, conferences and office supplies during his first two years in office.
“John and his family do take modest summer vacations like many folks in PA,” Calvello told the Free Beacon.
A LendingTree study found that 88% of Pennsylvania residents canceled their vacations in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Fetterman’s security detail stayed during the 2020 trip at the Port-O-Call hotel, the “premier resort” where the Fettermans appear to have stayed during other vacations. While Fetterman did not post photos during the 2020 jaunt, as he did in other years, he was reportedly spotted maskless on the Ocean City boardwalk with his wife during the trip. Fetterman has been an avid supporter of universal-masking requirements during the pandemic. He urged people to “stay home,” “stay apart,” and mask up. He joins an extensive list of Democrats who haveviolated their own masking or social distancing policies.
State police spent $1,149 on security during Fetterman’s family vacation from July 5-8, 2021, according to state records. The Fettermans visited Ocean City again last month, as Fetterman was recovering from a near-fatal stroke that has kept him off the campaign trail since the middle of May.
Bee Nguyen called immigration enforcement agency ‘rogue,’ ‘cruel’
A Georgia Democratic nominee repeatedly called to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and argued that carrying out the country’s immigration laws is rooted in “white supremacy” and “xenophobia.”
Bee Nguyen, Georgia Democrats’ nominee for secretary of state, has a long history of anti-ICE rhetoric. From September to October 2020, Nguyen called to abolish ICE on fiveseparateoccasions—in one instance, the Democrat called to “shutdown the detention centers,” where illegal immigrants—many of whom have a criminal record—are housed ahead of removal proceedings. In another, Nguyen called ICE “rogue” and “cruel” and contended that illegal immigrant enforcement is conducted “in the name of power, white supremacy, money, xenophobia, and political pandering.” Roughly 30 percent of ICE agents are Latino.
Nguyen’s calls to abolish ICE continued into January 2021, when resident Joe Biden took office. The United States went on to experience a surge in illegal immigrant encounters. In 2021, for example, the country hit a record-high 1.73 million illegal immigrant apprehensions. That number is on pace to exceed 2 million this year.
Nguyen’s anti-ICE activism could prompt political peril as voters sour on Democrats’ immigration policies, which critics say have emboldened cartel-connected smugglers. On Tuesday, police arrested two illegal immigrants over their alleged role in the deaths of more than 50 migrants in San Antonio, which marked the worst migrant death incident ever recorded in the United States. Those Mexican nationals never left the country after their travel visa expired and possessed an assault-style rifle, multiple handguns, and a shotgun.
According to a July 2021 Federation for American Immigration Reform poll, 61 percent of Georgia voters hold the Biden administration responsible for the ongoing “border crisis,” while 54 percent say that mass amnesty proposals pushed by Democrats would “encourage more people to enter the country illegally and make an already difficult situation worse.” Roughly 50 percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they would be less likely to vote for Georgia’s Democratic senators should they support mass amnesty.
Nguyen’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
In addition to Nguyen’s abolish ICE push, the Democrat vocally opposed the 287 (g) program, which enables state and local law enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities. Atlanta’s Gwinnett County participated in the program for years but ended its involvement after Democrats won the county’s sheriff race. The program has allowed local law enforcement to take violent criminals off the streets—in 2020, for example, the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office encountered a Guatemalan national charged with felony murder and a Mexican national charged with rape and aggravated child molestation, according to ICE reports.
Nguyen’s statewide run in Georgia comes roughly five years after the Democrat joined the state legislature, replacing Stacey Abrams, who resigned in favor of a failed gubernatorial campaign. Nguyen won a primary runoff by 54 points in late June and will face Republican incumbent Brad Raffensperger in November. Her candidacy is backed by both Abrams and Rep. Hank Johnson (D., Ga.), who has compared Jewish settlers to termites and expressed concern that stationing thousands of Marines on the island of Guam would cause it to “tip over and capsize.”
GOLIAD, Texas—Sheriffs in Texas are experiencing the impact of the border crisis in their counties every day—whether it’s armed cartel operatives smuggling illegal immigrants, vehicle pursuits resulting in crashes and deaths, or drug overdose deaths from fentanyl brought across the southern border.
In Goliad, Sheriff Roy Boyd sits 200 miles from the Texas–Mexico border, between McAllen and Houston—a major transport corridor of illegal immigrants and illicit goods.
As a 29-year law enforcement veteran in the region, Boyd said he’s never seen a border crisis so bad or border-related crime so egregious.
“There’s no end to it,” he told The Epoch Times on June 23. He monitors 16 cartel-operated sites in his county that are currently dormant, but have been used to stash illegal immigrants on their way to Houston. Currently it’s mostly carloads of illegal immigrants being smuggled straight through his county to the city.
“It’s a movement of individuals from third world countries, all over the place, into our country. But the farther you get into it, the more you realize it’s all done by design—and it’s at the design of the federal government.
“We’re in a transformation of America from a free Republic to moving to something that’s more of a Marxist state.”
Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd checks a site used by cartels to smuggle illegal immigrants through Goliad County, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Since resident Joe Biden took office in January 2021, border authorities have apprehended more than 3.2 million illegal border crossers, according to Customs and Border Protection data. An additional 800,000 or so have been detected, but evaded capture.
When asked how allowing millions of people from more than 160 countries through the southern border results in the transformation to communism, Boyd harkened back to the 1960’s and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty.”
“LBJ sold the war on poverty to the Democratic National Party … and the DNC’s response was, ‘Why would we give those people something for nothing?’” Boyd said.
LBJ responded by saying he’d have them voting Democratic for 200 years, Boyd said, paraphrasing an infamous quote that has been widely attributed to the former president.
“This is nothing but a replication of the soft enslavement of people through entitlement,” Boyd said. “Because if you understand psychology and you look at the history of things, this is how it functions. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop.”
Trevor Loudon, a communism expert and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in a previous interview that the communists’ main enemy is the United States.
“And if you can’t bring it down through nuclear weapons, you bring it down through illegal immigration, which is maybe just as effective in the long run,” Loudon said.
“This is an orchestrated, communist assault on America, to destroy America’s borders, to create confusion in America, to overwhelm the system politically.”
Loudon said an additional 15 million to 25 million Democratic voters would ensure perpetual Democrat control of government.
“You will have a one-party state in America. And that is the plan. That is why they are doing this,” he said.
“This is Marxist. This is Leninist. And this goes back to American politicians cooperating with hostile foreign powers in the destruction of America. And their No. 1 weapon is illegal immigration and overwhelming the border.”
in Goliad County, Texas, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Traditionally, noncitizens have voted about 80 percent Democratic and 20 percent Republican, according to a 2014 study by Old Dominion University.
“We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections,” the study concluded.
“Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.”
Now, the number of non-Hispanic illegal aliens entering the United States is increasing at the same time that Hispanics are skewing more Republican, as evidenced by Rep. Mayra Flores’s recent win in south Texas.
It’s illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, however, for years there’s been a push for municipal elections to accept noncitizen voters, including visa holders.
Loudon said Eliseo Medina, a labor union activist and former immigration consultant to President Barack Obama, is a main driver of the illegal immigration movement.
In 2009, Medina spoke at the America’s Future Now progressives’ conference in Washington.
“[If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters,” Medina said. “Can you imagine … [even] if we get 8 million new voters that care about our issue and will be voting—we will create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”
Fourteen municipalities currently allow noncitizens to vote, including 11 in Maryland, two in Vermont, and one in San Francisco.
A recent court ruling quashed a New York City law that would have allowed at least 800,000 noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams allowed the measure to become law on Jan. 9.
“I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,” Adams said in a statement at the time. “I believe allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process.”
Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and former member of the Federal Election Commission, said allowing noncitizens to vote “cheapens and diminishes” the concept of citizenship.
“The whole point of the open borders crowd is to do two things: one, extinguish the line between legal and illegal aliens in this country. And second, to frankly get rid of the whole concept of citizenship,” Spakovsky said in a previous interview.
Biden has said he wants a pathway to citizenship for all illegal immigrants in the United States.
A sign depicts the Goliad County line in Goliad, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Boyd said the Biden administration is working hard to purge conservative and constitutional thinkers at the federal level and replace them with people with a socialist mindset.
“But always remember, as Stalin said, the aim of socialism is communism,” Boyd said.
He said his focus remains in Goliad to protect his county and make it an unwelcoming place for criminals. The sheriffs in the region try to work together to “help each other to fight this massive wave of criminal activity,” he said.
“We don’t deal with immigration, we’re not tasked with it, we’re not authorized with it, we don’t want anything to do with it.
“But we’re fighting all the felonies that are being brought to our doorstep as a result of the national policy that’s causing this problem. And to be quite honest with you, I have no faith in the federal government.”
“My faith is in our Lord and Savior. One day we’re going to meet the end and we’re going to have to answer for what it is we’ve done, and so I want to have a good answer when I get there.”
Major cities across the United States saw a violent Fourth of July weekend, with reports saying that at least 50 people were shot in Chicago, children being shot in Houston, and more in Baltimore.
Authorities told NBC Chicago on Monday that nine people died and another 48 were shot across Chicago over the weekend. Last year, more than 19 were shot and killed and 100 more were injured during the same time period.
That included a mass shooting in Chicago’s Parkway Gardens on the 6500 block of South Martin Luther King Drive Monday morning, according to officials. A 17-year-old was counted among those who were shot, authorities said.
Authorities in Indianapolis, Indiana, told WISH-TV said that 11 people were shot in 10 incidents over the Fourth of July weekend.
And the Baltimore Police Department said it is investigating separate shootings in the city that left nine people shot and two dead over the weekend, according to WBAL.
A 14-year-old boy was injured in one of the shootings, officials told the Baltimore Sun. Police say the boy, who was not named, was shot in his hip at around 4 p.m. while he was in the backyard of a home.
In Houston, a 5-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting that also left an 8-year-old injured in the Greenspoint neighborhood, police told ABC13.
From Friday night through Sunday night, there were 24 shooting incidents across New York City, officials told PIX11. That’s a 60 percent increase over last year’s numbers, where there were 19 victims shot.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said that at least 16 people were shot and five were killed since Friday, according to KMOV.
2 More Kids Shot
Two children were among six people who were wounded Saturday night in an apparent drive-by shooting, police in eastern North Carolina said.
Officers responded to a home for a report of shots fired around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, the Clinton Police Department said in a news release. They found six people suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.
A preliminary investigation suggests the suspects arrived in a car and drove past the home, where people were gathered outside. They circled the block and then opened fire toward the home, striking the victims in what appeared to be a targeted attack, according to the news release.
Last year, the FBI said that homicides in the United States in 2020 increased nearly 30 percent over the previous year, representing the largest single-year jump since the agency started keeping track of statistics.
Homicides and non-negligent manslaughters climbed an estimated 29.4 percent to 21,570, an increase of 4,901 over 2019, FBI data showed. It is the highest estimated total since the early 1990s, when homicides stayed above 23,000 a year as drug wars played out in many places in the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday said his department will continue to warn migrants to not show up at the U.S.-Mexico border, as the current “Remain in Mexico” policy is not going away for “several weeks.”
Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Mayorkas was asked whether the border enforcement agencies have the manpower and resources needed to handle “thousands of people who departed on Friday and are moving towards the U.S. border.” He responded by blaming “exploitative smugglers” who use “false information” to motivate migrants to illegally cross the border.
“We have said repeatedly and we continue to warn people not to take the dangerous journey,” Mayorkas told CBS’ Margaret Brennan, noting that his department is working with “our partners to the south” to “break up very often” migrant caravans. “We continue to enforce immigration law, as is our legal responsibility.”
“These migrants receive false information from smugglers,” he added. “They put their lives, their life savings, in the hands of these exploitative organizations, these criminal organizations that do not care for their lives and only seek to make a profit.”
Brennan pressed Mayorkas about the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s methods, pointing out that even last week’s tragedy, during which 53 illegal immigrants were found dead in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, didn’t seem to deter people from coming to the border en masse.
“Those words are not being heard—people are moving right now, so the efforts to stop the root causes are not stopping them,” she said, referring to resident Joe Biden’s strategy to “address the root causes of migration in Central America.” “Are you predicting that this is only going to get more significant from here, that we’re going to go beyond the record surge in migrants?”
“No, I’m not predicting that at all,” the secretary replied. “We’re working with our partners to the south because this is a regional challenge that requires a regional response.”
Mayorkas was also asked about the fate of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which requires foreign nationals who claim to be asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases are being processed. On Thursday, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration has the authority to end MPP, which is commonly known as “Remain in Mexico.”
According to Mayorkas, MPP will continue to be enforced for now because it takes time for the lower court to lift its injunction that prevents the Biden administration from ending the protocol.
“In light of the favorable Supreme Court ruling, we have to wait for that ruling to reach the district court that issued an injunction preventing us from ending ‘Remain in Mexico,’” he told Brennan. “So we have several weeks to go before the district court lifts its injunction and until then, we are obligated by the district court’s ruling to continue to implement the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program, and we will do so in accordance with law.”
In a 5–4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled against Texas and Missouri, which had argued that the Biden administration violated the federal immigration law by rescinding MPP. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in the majority.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the case was “wrongly decided” and will only “make the border crisis worse.” He said he agrees with the dissenting opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito, who said the government can’t guarantee that those who have already been released into the United States for later processing will show up for their scheduled asylum hearing to decide if they qualify for asylum.
“In fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol reported more than 1.7 million encounters with aliens along the Mexican border,” Alito wrote. “When it appears that one of these aliens is not admissible, may the Government simply release the alien in this country and hope that the alien will show up for the hearing at which his or her entitlement to remain will be decided?”
“Congress has provided a clear answer to that question, and the answer is no.”
The DMED, one of the best databases in the world, shows a disturbing trend with post-COVID jabs – dramatic increases in medical visits for malignancies, neurological and autoimmune diseases, and infertility. But after being exposed, DMED was shut down and its data spikes washed clean.
In the wake of the COVID jab rollout and additional boosters, a number of health conditions are on the rise, including cancer, most notably cancers of the uterus, endometrial cancers, and very aggressive blood and brain cancers
Cancer has been on the rise for decades, thanks to dietary factors, but the COVID jabs appear to dramatically accelerate the disease process. Many doctors report cancer patients with stable disease, and those who have been in remission for years, will suddenly and rapidly develop Stage 4 disease
A military whistleblower has come forward with data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) database showing dramatic increases in medical visits for cancers and other conditions, post-jab
For neurological side effects of the shot, four remedies that can be very helpful are fluvoxamine (an antidepressant that blocks cytokine production in neural tissues), pharmaceutical grade methylene blue (improves mitochondrial respiration and repair), near-infrared light (triggers production of melatonin in your mitochondria) and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (boosts mitochondrial function, decreases inflammation and much more)
The COVID jabs also downregulate toll-like receptors 7 and 8, which allows latent viruses such as herpes EBV4 — Epstein-Barr, aka, mononucleosis — to flourish that would otherwise have been kept in check
Dr. Ryan Cole, an anatomic clinical pathologist with a subspecialty in skin pathology and postgraduate Ph.D. training in immunology, has been on the frontlines exposing the fraudulent COVID narrative.
Since 2004, he’s been operating his own business, a pathology laboratory, which gives him rare freedom and flexibility to comment on what he’s seeing. Most others would lose their jobs for speaking out the way Cole has.
Truth Telling Is a Risky Business
That doesn’t mean he hasn’t paid a price for speaking out about and defending real science though. He’s triple board certified and has 12 state licenses, and because of his stance against COVID recommendations, some of the credentialing organizations have taken action against him.
“I’ve seen 500,000 patients diagnostically in my career through the microscope. So, I have a long track record of diagnostics. I have not had a patient care complaint against me in 26 years of being a physician,” he says. “I still don’t, and this is what’s fascinating.
Of those 12 licenses, four were under attack, three are still under attack — in Washington, Arizona and Minnesota — [yet there’s] not a single patient care complaint. All the attacks against me have been political complaints to boards of medicine, which is not legal for them to do. Not a single one of those complaints is from a patient.
And then — really the most egregious thing — was ex parte, without me being present, without even sending a certified letter, the College of American Pathologists removed my fellowship status, which is defamatory.
I went back and found their complaint and looked at what they did, and I actually have a wonderful defamation lawsuit against them, because everything they did was anti-scientific. So, they can either restore [my fellowship] now, or just pay me a big check down the road. One or the other.”
He’s also lost about half of his business, as two insurance companies canceled him for “unprofessional behavior,” i.e., for sharing and discussing the science of COVID, and one of his best friends, whom he’s worked with for 12 years, canceled their business relationship as he didn’t want Cole’s outspokenness to affect his business. “All because of the defamation by the media, so to tell the truth in this day and age is a dangerous thing,” he says.
Suspicions Arose Early On
From his Ph.D. work in immunology, Cole was very aware of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS, having studied both, so when the warp speed program to develop a pandemic SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was announced, he became immediately suspicious.
“I thought, wait a minute, you can’t vaccinate against corona viruses!” he says. “This family of viruses is not amenable to vaccination, based on mutation rates. So, my concern was very high, early on.”
Cole’s lab ramped up PCR testing, using a cycle threshold (CT) of 35, rather than the recommended 40 to 45, as he knew that high a CT would result in 98% false positives. On a side note, pathologists not only assess tissue samples and biopsies, they’re also in charge of testing. The head of every major clinical lab is a pathologist. They’re basically in charge of quality control.
“As pathologist, we’re constantly looking at patterns, be it under the microscope or be it in lab data. We’re looking at blood reports. We’re looking at what’s out of range on blood reports. We’re looking at microbiology. We’re looking at molecular biology. We’re looking at cultures. We’re looking at pap smears. We’re looking, across the board, at those clinical parameters in addition to tissue biopsies,” he explains.
“I have 70 employees, and if there’s a blood smear that looks unusual, they bring it to me. If there are parameters on a test that look widely out of range, they bring it to me. And I call and talk to the clinician — [I’m the] doctor to the doctor. We have a consultation practice with the clinicians so I can help them understand what’s happening with their patient, and then they can make clinical decisions going forward.”
Post-Jab Cancer Explosion
One of the apparent side effects of the COVID jab that Cole has been warning and talking about is cancer. He explains:
“Obviously, during COVID, we saw some parameters change in blood tests. There was a concern about clotting. We saw elevated clotting factors. We know that the early variants were pretty severe in terms of inducing clotting, which was a shame because the whole world should have been simply using anti-inflammatories, steroids and anti-clotting agents, and so many more people would’ve lived.
My colleague, Dr. [Shankara] Chetty in South Africa, was having phenomenal success with antihistamine steroids and anti-clotting agents. So anyway, that first year, we saw drops in white blood cell counts, we saw decreases in certain subsets of T-cells. But when the shots rolled out, things changed.
At first I noticed kind of an innocuous little bump that we see usually in children. It’s a little virus called molluscum contagiosum [that causes] a little white bump.
Usually, by the time you’re a tween or early teen, you’ve built immunity to that and you never get them again, or rarely get them again. But after the shots rolled out, all of a sudden, in 80-year-olds, 70-year-olds, 60-year-olds, 50-year-olds, I started seeing literally a 20-fold increase in this little innocuous viral bump. And I thought, ‘Uh oh, this means they’ve lost immune memory’ …
Those subsets of T-cells that keep viruses in check are very important for keeping cancer in check. And this is where immunology jumps into the picture. All of us have some atypical cells, and we have the ‘Marines’ of our immune system, our natural killer (NK) cells. They’re on the frontline circulating. We have about 30 billion T-cells circulating in our blood, many of which are killer cells and NK cells.
Our other innate cells are our macrophages, monocytes and dendritic cells. They’re on that frontline. They’re shaking hands with every cell in your body all day long saying, ‘Friend or foe? Friend or foe? Oh gosh, this one has some mutations, it’s now a foe.’ They’ll poke a little hole in it, throw in a little enzyme called a grandzyme — a ‘hand grenade’ — blow up that cell, and we’re good.
But what happened after these shots rolled out is that many of those cell subsets started decreasing in number. The first cancer I saw uptick was cancers of the uterus, endometrial cancers. Usually, I would see maybe two endometrial cancers a month. All of a sudden, a few months after the rollout of the shots, I was seeing two or three a week.
Another subspecialty area of focus for me is melanoma. And I started seeing melanomas, not only in younger patients, as the shots dropped down in age cohort, but they were thicker. The other fascinating thing was they’re more aggressive in terms of how many dividing cells was present in each tumor. I’m still seeing this.
Beyond that … I’ve been traveling the country and the world quite a bit … and wherever I go now, I have doctors and nurses approach me saying, ‘What you’re saying, we’ve been seeing.’
I was having a conversation with a chair of a large oncology department in Tallahassee, and he said, ‘I usually see an aggressive brain cancer in a young patient maybe every decade.’ After the boosters rolled out, he saw five astrocytomas, five aggressive brain cancers, in one month.
Then, I’m in Jacksonville the next day, having a conversation with a family doctor. He said, ‘Gosh, it’s strange, I usually see a kidney cancer in a young patient every decade or so. I’ve seen five in the last month.’
Then I was in the UK a couple weeks ago. I had a doctor from Ireland who’s been a practicing family doc, GP, for 36 years, and he said, ‘I have seen more cancer in my young patients ever since the shots rolled out, and the booster, than I have ever seen in my entire career.’
Same thing, a nurse that works emergency department in the UK, [said she’s seen] not only the heart inflammation in young children, but cancers in young patients and aggressive leukemias. So everywhere I go, I have doctors confirming my observations … I’ve had many of them approach me and say, ‘Hey look, I’m seeing what you’re saying, but I can’t say it because I’ll get fired.’”
Cancer Spike Is Being Covered Up
Aside from what Cole has seen in his own lab, a military whistleblower has also come forward with data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) database showing dramatic increases in medical visits for cancer, neurological diseases, infertility, autoimmune diseases and several other conditions, post-jab.1
The DMED is one of the best databases in the world, as the Department of Defense keeps very close tabs on what’s happening with our troops. This DMED data was presented during a hearing led by Sen. Ron Johnson. A week after that hearing, the DoD froze access to the DMED, and when it reopened a week later, the data were all changed to eliminate the data spikes.
“That’s what was really shocking,” Cole says. “I think this is basically fraud to the level of Watergate, in terms of [there being] somebody behind the scenes, and then the private company that actually manages that database … manipulated it.”
The DoD has tried to explain this suspicious activity claiming a “bug” in the system had resulted in underreporting of medical conditions in the five years prior to 2021. The number of cancers and other health problems were actually higher in 2015 through 2020 than initially indicated, they said.
However, how can a program error cause data corruption for five consecutive years and then self-correct, resulting in perfect numbers for 2021? And how did they not notice the error earlier? Again, this is one of the best-kept databases in the world. And how come this “bug” only affected conditions that also just so happen to be known and/or suspected side effects of the jab?
Future Prognostication
Clearly, cancer has been on the rise for decades, thanks to dietary factors, but the COVID jabs appear to dramatically accelerate the disease process. There are no published studies to help us foretell the future, but based on what Cole has found so far, how long does he think it’ll be before conditions like cancer spiral out of control?
“That’s a great question,” he says. “One of the important findings I’ve heard from many of these clinicians is that many of their patients who have been cancer-free for three, four, five years, their PET scan looks great, no detectable disease, and after that second or third shot, all of a sudden there’s Stage 4 disease. It’s like wildfire.
And this goes back to immune suppressive mechanisms, the damage that the persistent spike protein and the persistent modified RNA (mRNA) cause. So, aggressive cancers arising very quickly are one thing we’re seeing. Because it’s a dose-dependent poisoning curve — in terms of the more spike you have circulating, the worse your immune system seems to be doing — the No. 1 thing is, don’t get another shot.
Because it is causing that immune suppression that’s allowing those cancer mechanisms. Over time … I would say we’re going to see a consistent twofold to threefold increase in certain cancers, endometrial cancers, breast cancers, cancers of the prostate, cancers that are testicular or ovarian, neurologic cancers.
This spike protein has a propensity to cross the blood brain barrier and invade neural tissues. We know what it does to mitochondrial activity in terms of inhibiting it, blocking it, ruining cytochrome C oxidase systems, decreasing ATP.
Cancer is a hypoxic state. When you don’t have good cellular activity and cellular respiration and hypo-oxygenation, you end up with mechanisms that can induce more aggressive cancer. So, I think, at a minimum, [there’ll be a] two- to threefold [increase] … over the next year or two.
We can only hope that the immune system can normalize and we come up with enough interventions and treatments that will reverse some of this, what some people call spikeopathy, or the different diseases that are being caused by this persistent spike. ‘I don’t know’ is the honest answer, but that would be my projection based on I’ve seen.”
Excess Mortality Has Dramatically Increased
Abnormal blood clotting is another commonly reported side effect of the jabs. Post-mortem investigations have revealed thick, extremely long rubbery clots, including in the arteries, which is rare. The longest Cole has seen was about two feet. We’re also seeing a lot of micro-clotting, heart inflammation (myocarditis), strokes and heart attacks — all of which can have lethal consequences.
It’s highly concerning that we have regulatory agencies allowing the most dangerous medical product ever released on humanity to persist in the marketplace.
— Ryan Cole, dr
In early January 2022, OneAmerica, a national mutual life insurance company, announced2 the death rate of working-age Americans (18 to 64), in the third quarter of 2021, was 40% higher than prepandemic levels. And this excess mortality was not due to COVID infection. Many of those deaths were in fact cardiac deaths and strokes, which fits the injury profile of the COVID shots.
“After they came forward, additional insurance companies said, ‘We’re seeing anywhere from 30% to 50% increase in claims as well.’ They have no horse in the race. They’re just observing. And I say that as a pathologist too. Look, I don’t create disease. I don’t prevent disease. I’m a reporter at the scene of the crash.
My job is simply to report patterns, and then we can scientifically confirm those data patterns. And the all-cause death is increased in those who’ve gotten two, three shots. Again, it’s a dose-dependent curve. The more spike your body is making, the worse people tend to do over time.
Even Walgreens came out a couple weeks ago and showed their data. Individuals that got shots are getting COVID at higher rates. Even the mainstream media finally, last week — I think it was Good Morning America — said, ‘It’s looking like the boosters are a bad idea because it’s immune suppressing people.’
So, we’re finally making some progress and getting traction in the mainstream where at least the narrative is cracking. There’s a crack in the dam and it’s starting to leak. Hopefully it’ll rush forward and people will go, ‘Whoa, this was a bad idea. Let’s stop this chaos.’ But the FDA is trying to roll it out on [infants] of all things now … It’s really tragic.”
Why Was the Most Toxic Part of the Virus Chosen?
Considering autopsies have shown spike protein is still present at least four months after their last shot, it seems reasonable to assume that severe health problems can arise months or even years down the road. In fact, we still don’t know if the body ever stops producing spike protein once this genetically modified mRNA is injected.
“We know the spike is the inflammatory aspect of the virus, and our cells are made into spike toxin factories,” Cole says. “Studies out of the Salk Institute show that the spike is the cytotoxic aspect of [COVID-19], so we’re giving a shot that makes the toxic part of the virus, and it’s persisting.
That’s why I think we’re going to see this consistent elevation of different diseases related to the spike, be it cardiac, strokes, chronic clotting conditions, individuals dying from pulmonary emboli … It’s highly concerning that we have regulatory agencies allowing the most dangerous medical product ever released on humanity to persist in the marketplace.”
Strokes in young people and children are also on the rise. Media are now trying to convince you that this is “normal,” but it is anything but. Historically, children and teens do not die from strokes. This is a brand-new phenomenon, courtesy of the COVID jabs.
Microvascular clots (microvascular infarcts) are also a known contributing factor, in the long term, to early onset dementia. So, that’s yet another potential health avalanche in the making.
Four Helpful Remedies
I’ve quickly become a fan of pharmaceutical grade methylene blue, as it’s been shown to improve mitochondrial respiration and aid in mitochondrial repair. At 15 to 20 milligrams a day, it could potentially go a long way toward resolving some of the fatigue many suffer post-jab and post-COVID. It may also be helpful in acute strokes. The primary contraindication is if you have a G6PD deficiency (a hereditary genetic condition), in which case you should not use methylene blue at all.
Another important remedy is near-infrared light. It triggers production of melatonin in your mitochondria3 where you need it most. By mopping up reactive oxygen species, it too helps improve mitochondrial function and repair. Natural sunlight is 54.3% near-infrared radiation,4 so this treatment is available for free.
For neurological side effects of the shot, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant called fluvoxamine may be helpful. Cole explains the mechanism behind it:
“[Fluvoxamine] upregulates a receptor called sigma-1, which blocks another receptor called inositol-requiring enzyme 1, which is a precursor for cytokines. So, fluvoxamine will block cytokine production in neural tissues. And that’s why [it works]. It’s not because of its antidepressant effects. It’s a cytokine precursor blocker. So, you actually are decreasing a cytokine storm in neural tissues.
This is why one uses fluvoxamine. There are other SSRIs, but this mechanism is very specific to fluvoxamine. It’s a tough to tolerate drug for some people. It makes some people anxious and agitated, but if you can tolerate it for two weeks, you can really turn down those inflammatory pathways in many patients. I’m not going to say everybody, but I’ve seen it work in many patients.”
A fourth treatment suggestion is hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). This too can be phenomenally helpful for strokes, heart attacks, autoimmune diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. To learn more, see “Hyperbaric Therapy — A Vastly Underused Treatment Modality.”
IMPORTANT: COVID Shots Are Not Pharmaceutical Grade
Seneff also warned about potential unknowns arising from fragmented mRNA and impurities, as tests have shown these jabs really are NOT pharmaceutical grade, as you’d expect. Cole comments:
“These aren’t pure products, and I think this is a very important point. When Pfizer submitted vials to the European Medicines Agency to look at purity … they were in the 50% range … The TGA in Australia looked at it and said, ‘Look, these are only about 60% pure.’
This means you have a lot of fragmented sequences of mRNA that don’t have a stop or a start code on. They’re not coding for what you think they’re coding for. They’re coding for other tinier, shorter fragments. Are those mitogenic? Probably, but we don’t know. Can those reverse transcribe into our own DNA? Studies out of Sweden … show yes, they can …
And then, when they manufacture, they can’t spin and agitate these, so you get all these lipids that collect at the top of these big vats. So now you get some batches that are hyperconcentrated and some are hypoconcentrated. It appears about 5% of the batches are responsible for about 80% of the harms.”
Autoimmune Diseases of All Kinds Are To Be Expected
As explained by Cole in the interview, there’s a reason there’s never been a successful mRNA gene therapy product brought to market, despite 20 years of research effort. The persistence of synthetic mRNA with pseudouridine always caused too many problems in the animal trials to move into human trials. It caused autoimmune disease. It caused mutations. The manufacturers don’t even know if the nanolipid used to protect the mRNA is safe in humans.
“Based on the animal trials, we know there were problems and we can only predict that that’s going to happen in humanity. I want to be wrong, but from a basic immunology point of view, I don’t think I am,” Cole says.
“The nanolipid particles vary in size, interestingly. I’ve looked at some under the microscope. Some of them congeal and some of them stay tiny. But because of the fatty nature of them, they will carry their little mRNA and fractionated mRNA package to any cell in the body. And that’s the biggest concern. Now it has turned any cell in your body to a potential target [for your immune system].
An important paper came out in the European Journal of Immunology just about a month ago by Dr. Hagemann. There’s a condition called antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity. What that means is that [the mRNA] sequence gets into your cell [and] that cell now becomes the spike factory.
That spike is on the surface of your cell. Now your NK cells that I talked about earlier say, ‘We better blow that cell up.’ So now, because there’s that spike on the surface, your immune system will destroy your own cells. This is another one of the detrimental effects.”
Pipeline Now Filled With Risky mRNA Shots
Making matters worse, even though the COVID shots have been shown to be a complete disaster, the drug industry is already working on dozens of different mRNA “vaccines,” thinking they now have carte blanche to put out whatever they want using this platform.
And the reason for this continued insanity is because our health and regulatory authorities are corrupted to the core. They are completely dishonest. They’re covering up the shocking harms, and unless something radically changes, they will allow dozens of equally dangerous mRNA gene transfer injections to be put out.
Reactivation of Latent Viruses
The COVID jabs also downregulate pattern receptors in your body called toll-like receptors. Specifically, toll-like receptors 7 and 8 are downregulated by the mRNA and pseudouridine in these shots. What does that do? It allows latent viruses to flourish that would otherwise have been kept in check.
“We’ve seen a big uptick in herpes family viruses, especially herpes EBV4, which is Epstein-Barr virus [aka] mononucleosis,” Cole says. So, for those with post-COVID or post-jab fatigue, long-COVID and those with MS-like symptoms, he recommends checking for Epstein-Barr.
About 80% of MS patients have high Epstein-Barr titers. “You will find that a lot of these individuals will have reactivated mono,” he says. For reactivated mono, methylene blue, HBOT and nebulized peroxide would all be indicated.
Fertility Under Attack
In the interview, Cole also reviews the potential impacts of the COVID jabs on the reproductive system. Menstrual dysregulation appears extremely common, as is the inability to become pregnant, despite trying for months, and spontaneous abortions are off the charts. The DMED database also showed a strong signal for fetal malformation before it was frozen and altered.
“What we’re doing to society and humanity with a previously never before used modality and product is causing horrendous harm to the human race, with no regard for science, with no regard for scientific integrity. It’s a machine gone amuck,” Cole says.
“There are darker forces behind it. A lot of people are making billions, but they’re killing people to do it. And it’s just so unethical what we’re experiencing societally. Yes, we’re causing infertility. Yes, we’re causing mutations in cancers. Yes, we’re causing heart attacks and strokes. Yes, we’re destroying the longevity of a younger generation. It is horrendous.
There’s no justification for any doctor who can look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘I feel comfortable giving this experimental product to my patients all day long.’ They need to reflect and realize they’ve lost their mind, [their] critical thinking skills.”
More Information
Sadly, almost everyone who’s credible and trustworthy has been censored and deplatformed at this point, so finding them can be a challenge. To follow Cole’s work, be sure to bookmark his website, RColeMD.com. You can also find him on the GlobalCovidSummit.org forum.
If you are vaccine injured, the Global COVID Summit has a blockchain-based forum where you can share your experience and it will never be taken down. You can’t be censored or deplatformed. Cole is available to answer questions in that forum.
They’re also starting up another website to compete with WebMD and similar pharma-run medical sites. It will eventually be available on DMED.com, which stands for “decentralized medicine.” This site is not yet live, but you can try it later. Cole will have a page there as well.
Other thought leaders worth tracking down and following include Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Richard Urso, Dr. Paul Alexander, and Dr. Kirk A. Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, and his wife, Dr. Kim Milhoan, just to name a few.
“These have been wonderful leaders in this movement for truth and sharing science,” Cole says. “All of us are part of the Global COVID Summit. We are 17,000 doctors strong and it’s very important that people understand that.
I mean, that’s more doctors than they have at the CDC or the FDA or the NIH. This is a group of critical thinking people standing up for your health, your freedom and your right to your own bodily autonomy.
I think, going forward, as people are starting to wake up and part of this narrative is cracking, let’s come back together, let’s communicate, let’s be kind, let’s help each other get back to a more loving, peaceful, communicative society. I think if we can forgive — obviously, there are things we don’t want to forget, because we don’t want this to happen again — but try to forgive people and try to help people ‘come to’ again.
Just come back together in community. I think it’s important that we really try to circle the wagons again as humanity, and hopefully come back to our senses. That’s a hopeful message I would like to share.”
An Israeli study assessed the effectiveness of BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer) against the Omicron variant in children 5 to 11 years old using a large health care database and found the vaccine effectiveness (VE) to be 48 percent 7–21 days after dose 2 for symptomatic infection.
People with evidence of prior COVID infection by PCR, antigen, or serology test were excluded.
A U.S. study of a lesser scale found that VE in children declined from 60 percent to 28.9 percent from month 1 to month 2 after the second dose of Pfizer.
Cardiologist Sanjay Verma concluded that “therefore, if this Israeli study were to follow the children beyond 21 days, it is probable the VE would be lower than 48 percent.”
The authors of the study noted that assessment of “vaccine effectiveness against more severe outcomes such as hospitalization were not possible, because they were very rare in the study population.”
“In the US, American Academy of Pediatric data note a hospitalization rate of 0.7 percent in children based upon officially confirmed PCR+ infections. This study and this study previously found that 40 percent of pediatric COVID+ hospitalizations may have been over estimated when differentiating those hospitalized for COVID pneumonia versus those who were hospitalized for other causes but had incidental COVID+ testing during routine surveillance,” Verma noted.
“Therefore, the true hospitalization rate may actually be 0.42 percent of children infected with SARS-CoV2. CDC seroprevalence data report 75 percent of all children have already been infected (4.5 times more than officially confirmed PCR+ results). Perhaps the true SARS-Cov2 hospitalization rate for children then is as low as 0.09 percent. With such low incidence of COVID+ hospitalizations in pediatric population, most trials are not large enough to detect a statistically significant difference in COVID+ hospitalizations (or deaths) between vaccinated and unvaccinated children,” he concluded.
The study notes that 17 percent of the children were obese or overweight, while for the U.S. study, 35 percent of the children were so.
For the Israeli study, 43 percent of the population had received at least three doses of influenza vaccine in the past five years, while in the United States, an estimated 58 percent of children receive an annual flu vaccine, and some schools require the influenza vaccine.
The Israeli study also notes that “many of the children in our study cohort did not receive a second dose within the study follow-up period.”
“mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations do have a known risk of myocarditis and other rare severe adverse reactions. To better contextualize the risk-benefit analysis it would be helpful to know why the children did not receive the second dose,” Verma added.
“Statistics show the rate of COVID-19 associated hospitalization among children aged 5 to 11 is 0.0008 percent,” writes Dr. Joseph Mercola. “In real-world terms, that’s so close to zero you basically cannot lower it any further. Yet, despite such reassuring data, children in this age group are urged to get two to three doses of the COVID jab, even though side effects of the injection could harm them for life, or kill them.”
Hunter Biden was lying from the moment he met his future wife, Kathleen Buhle, in 1992. The less-favored son of Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted he came from a normal middle-class background. During her first visit to the sprawling Biden estate in Delaware, Kathleen explained to Hunter that “a kid from a middle-class family does not have a ballroom.”
The only member of Buhle’s family who saw any red flags was Grandpa Dutch, who served prison time for armed robbery. “What does he want from us?” he wondered after meeting Hunter. His first impression of the Biden estate: “Who’s buried here?” Game recognize game, as the saying goes.
If We Break is Buhle’s account of how becoming a Biden changed her life—for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till divorce they did part. The book is quite obviously the product of years of therapy, candid self-reflection, and recovery from trauma—one of the many ways it differs from Hunter’s crack-centric memoir, Beautiful Things, which opens with a quote from Bukowski and likens the author to an artistic genius in the mold of Hunter S. Thompson and Jim Morrison.
Buhle quickly came to realize being a Biden had its perks. Six months after marrying Hunter, she gave birth to their daughter Naomi and was ushered into a large private room—”a gift from the hospital”—where the doctor asked her to deliver a letter to her father-in-law. If that all sounds a bit legally and ethically dubious, keep in mind that Bill Clinton was president so casual grifting was the vibe. Shortly thereafter, Hunter “met with someone to get career advice” and returned with a lucrative job offer (including signing bonus) from the Delaware-based credit card firm MBNA, as in “the senator from MBNA,” aka Joe Biden. An early addition to a résumé composed entirely of peddled influence.
The author’s clear-eyed assessment of her privileged status, among other things, makes her more reliable and relatable as a narrator than Hunter, whose own memoir suggests his admission to Yale Law School had nothing to do with his father’s prestige and everything to do with the quality of the poem he included with his application. She enjoyed the perks of being a Biden: living in big houses, driving fancy cars, sending the kids to expensive private schools. Hunter’s career really took off after Joe became vice president, and Kathleen jetted off to Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America on the taxpayer’s dime. She peddled influence in her own right, bringing Joe along as a special guest to help raise money for her friends’ nonprofits.
Life was good, until it wasn’t.
Hunter comes across as an insufferable prick at the best of times, a spoiled rich kid who “listened to Johnny Cash’s working-class ballads but drove a Porsche” and constantly expressed his “disdain for the showiness of new money.” As tragic as his story is, he is not a sympathetic character. At the worst of times, he was an absolute monster.
Buhle thoughtfully recounts the hell Hunter put her through when his addiction spiraled out of control, her efforts to keep it all a secret, and her gradual descent into madness while attempting to “solve” his drinking problem—she didn’t find out about the crack and the (many, many) prostitutes until much later. Anyone who has loved an addict will relate to her struggle with codependency. The frantic searches for empty bottles, the paranoid stalking, the propensity to forgive. The endless lies.
There are, perhaps inevitably, some major discrepancies between Kathleen’s and Hunter’s version of events, which is a polite way of saying that Beautiful Things did not undergo an extensive fact-check. It could be that Hunter was not even aware that, according to Kathleen, she wasn’t the first to learn about his affair with Hallie, his brother Beau’s widow, by finding text messages on his iPad. It was his daughters. Maybe he doesn’t remember. Maybe he would rather forget.
The divergence is downright comical at times, a Rashomon saga for degenerate élites. For example, they both agree they had a frank conversation while hiking along the Potomac River on their 22nd anniversary in 2015, and met with a couple’s counselor the following day. According to Hunter’s version of the counseling session, Kathleen shot down his suggestion that the hike had been “cathartic” and told him, “I’m never going to forgive you.” He stormed out of the session and “drained” a bottle of vodka.
Kathleen’s version is slightly different. “Hunter, I forgive you,” she recalls saying. “Yesterday’s hike was a turning point for me. … We never need to discuss your infidelity again.” To which Hunter responded, “Thank you. I’m sorry. I have to get back to the office,” and walked out. The next morning she found Hunter passed out on the couch and a broken crack pipe in his ashtray. Allegedly. Who’s to say which one is telling the truth—the crackhead or the woman scorned?
Joe, meanwhile, is conspicuously absent from this telling. He appears early on, introducing himself to Kathleen by putting “his hands on my cheeks and [looking] me in the eyes, his nose almost touching my own.” Classic Joe. He shows up again years later, heroically attempting to stop a woman from playing in a golf fundraiser because she’d never swung a club in her life. “Honey, you can’t golf if you’ve never played before,” he told Kathleen. For once, he wasn’t wrong. Otherwise, the Biden patriarch looms over the entire story as the source from which Hunter’s lifelong immunity from consequence flowed.
Kathleen’s former family, which once kicked her out of a photo restricted to “Biden blood only,” was presumably happy to let her bear the brunt of Hunter’s burden, especially after the death of the other, better son. As president, “Sleepy Joe” seems to have adopted a similar approach to the nation’s problems. Whether due to age, incompetence, temperament, or all of the above, his leadership in a time of crisis leaves much to be desired. Kathleen Buhle dropped the “Biden” in 2019 and seems to be doing well. America may yet recover, too.
If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing By Kathleen Buhle Crown, 304 pp., $21.99
The flurry of rulings from the Supreme Court has everyone’s head spinning. The most significant among them, even if it doesn’t capture all the headlines, is West Virginia vs EPA. The majority opinion is impressive but the part I found truly wonderful is the concurring opinion by Neil Gorsuch. This is where we see things headed, toward a major and much-welcome curbing of the power of the administrative state.
Just to review what this thing is, it is the unelected bureaucracy that rules the country without oversight from voters or legislatures. For well over 100 years, most courts have given it a pass, just assuming that the “experts” in the bureaucracies are handling things just fine, faithfully interpreting legislation, and merely creating rules for easy compliance.
Generations have gone by as this 4th branch of government has grown in size, scope, and strength. For the most part, its baneful impositions have been felt by one business or one industry at a time. You have heard the stories. The car dealer complains of how the Department of Labor is making him crazy. The machine-parts manufacturer is going bonkers about letters from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The energy company can never satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency.
They are stories and we find them unfortunate but we’ve generally avoided thinking of these as systematic, all pervasive, and truly dangerous to the idea of freedom itself. However, there are some 432 of these agencies. The authors of the Declaration of Independence noted their existence back in the day when they accused the English king of having “erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.” They fought a revolution to end the tyranny but now we have a home-grown form, starting in 1883 with the Pendleton Act and continuing throughout the 20th century as each new administration creates its own bureaucracy.
The thing has taken on a power of its own. Strangely, the topic hardly comes up at all during elections, and this is for a reason. Politicians running for office like to advertise their power to make change. They might even believe it. In reality, elected officials have very little influence over the conduct of public life relative to the administrative state. As Trump found it, not even the president is a match for the deep state.
Here is what has happened since March 2020: the beast showed its face. Seemingly out of nowhere, these strange agencies and people for whom we never voted were ruling our lives. They restricted travel, forced us to cover our faces, closed our churches and schools, and forbid our businesses from operating unless they were big enough to afford a powerful lobbying arm in Washington. The whole scene was appalling. It caused many people—including some earnest judges—to take notice.
Once you see the problem, you cannot unsee it.
Consider the problem with inflation alone: it is largely the responsibility of the Federal Reserve, which is among the most terrifying of the deep-state agencies. This thing was founded in 1913 with the promise that it would end “wildcat banking” and contain the expansion of money and credit so that we would have a more stable economic environment to encourage growth.
Even now, people believe that the Fed is going to somehow fix recessions and inflations, even though a deeper analysis reveals that the Fed itself is the cause of both. The Fed cannot be both the problem and the solution, surely. This is becoming as obvious as the fact that the CDC cannot make a textbook pathogen go away with power and potions.
Let’s take a quick look at the supposed 2 percent inflation target of the Federal Reserve. It might seem to you that they have long ago blown past this such that it is entirely cosmetic. But the Fed has a little trick up its sleeve. It says it doesn’t follow conventional inflation indexes like the Consumer or Producer Price Index. It is fancier than that. It follows instead the index of Personal Consumption Expenditures. And sure enough when we look at the PCE, we find that the Fed is pretty good at its job!
All that changed recently when the PCE itself blew up. Now the Fed has been revealed to be utterly incompetent, in a way that is not different from the CDC, NIH, DOL, DOE, DOT, HHS, DHS, FTC, SEC, and all the rest of these glorified 3-letter agencies employing nearly 3 million people who cannot be fired or controlled. The unique feature of our times is that the expert class in government has been unmasked as fakes at best and unrelenting menaces as worst.
Here is where the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation stands today:
(FRED/Jeffrey A. Tucker)
So much for competence at the Fed! And yet, how exactly is this institution supposed to be controlled? We don’t vote for them. The Fed board is appointed by the president with Senate approval but this control is mostly mythical. The fancy economists run circles around the political actors with big words and fancy finance, so what can they do but approve?
The political class too often acts like absentee owners of a far-off land: they have little choice but to trust the hired landlords to do a good job. That’s the administrative machinery that has become the real power, not only implementing the policies but making and enforcing the rules too.
With COVID, this whole scam was revealed to absolutely everyone—not just to small businesses but to every single individual and family in the United States. The whole bureaucracy announced to us what they have always believed but rarely said: your life is not your own. Your job is to comply. And so this raises the fascinating question of what precisely are we going for here and what kind of society and government do we want? Surely this should be up to the people!
The Supreme Court in its most recent decision was dealing with a technical aspect of how regulations applied to a coal plant, but the implications of the decision are much larger. The EPA was determining policy, even making it, riffing wildly on legislation with the presumption that courts will always and everywhere defer to the agency over industry and even over the words of the legislation. The court said no: it was the EPA that had been operating illegally all along.
This decision is so startling because it shows a Supreme Court doing what it is supposed to do, serving as a legal check on the power ambitions of government itself. That’s what the framers intended. We’ve just begun, however. The Court needs to attack the whole machinery of the deep state at its very root, going after “Chevron deference” (1984), the Public Health Services Act (1944), the Federal Reserve Act (1913), and stretching all the way back to the Pendleton Act (1883). A nation ruled by a faceless deep state is not a representative democracy and it is not consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
When you consider the implications of this one decision, they are awesome. It doesn’t just apply to the EPA and its elaborate plans for changing the global climate through command and control. It also applies to every other agency, including the CDC and even the Federal Reserve itself. They all should be accountable to the people through their elected representatives. If we cannot get back to that system, we will lose everything.
A business owner in Chicago, Illinois tells Fox News Digital that skyrocketing crime in the city forced him to quit doing business in town adding to the list of individuals and businesses that have fled Illinois over the past couple of years amid surging crime…
“We would do thousands of jobs a year in the city, but as we got robbed more, my people operating rollers and pavers we got robbed, our equipment would get stolen in broad daylight and there would usually be a gun involved, and it got expensive and it got dangerous,” Rabine told Fox News Digital.
How unbelievable. Crime is getting so bad in Chicago that road workers were being robbed at gunpoint… in broad daylight.
Criminals stole expensive equipment, disrupting work as they robbed these employees.
Gary Rabine, who owned 13 businesses in the state, said enough is enough.
He, along with many other business owners, is leaving Chicago and the state.
This isn’t some odd coincidence. Both the left-leaning Governor of Illinois and the Mayor of Chicago have turned a blind eye to rising crime.
It’s getting so bad that a seemingly endless parade of residents is fleeing even nice parts of the state.
The costs related to all this crime were making jobs twice as expensive. That is unimaginable.
How can any leaders, regardless of party, allow this kind of thing from happening? How can Mayor Lightfoot just sit back and watch criminals get away with robbing law-abiding citizens?
But that is just what Democrats are doing, all over the country. Their “woke” politics are putting hardened criminals ahead of hard-working citizens.
And these leftists refuse to admit such policies are driving people away. There is only so much a person can take before they are forced to leave.
Nobody can blame them. The scary reality is, that wherever Democrats have power in state and local governments, this happens.
Unless serious law-and-order leaders take over, the trend will only continue.
Key Takeaways:
Numerous small businesses are fleeing Chicago due to rising crime.
In some cases, criminals are robbing workers in broad daylight.
The state’s left-wing governor and the city’s mayor are to blame.
Former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx revealed that the federal government was relying on “hope” that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent infection when officials publicly stated that Americans who received the jab would become immune to the virus.
The admission came during a line of questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan, who inquired to the former Trump administration official: “When the government told us that the vaccinated couldn’t transmit it, was that a lie or is it a guess?”
“I think it was hope that the vaccine would work in that way,” she replied.
Dr. Birx’s comments follow a host of studies determining that the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t confer protection as comprehensively as natural immunity. Data during the Omicron surge also showed that vaccinated people in Germany comprised the overwhelming majority of individuals contracting the variant.
“You were part of this effort when you were in the previous administration. And you’re saying in this administration that you can’t rule out the fact that our government was lying to us when they told us the vaccinated could not get the virus,” Rep. Jordan continued.
“I don’t know about their discussions that they had in the task force. So I can’t tell you that,” she began, adding “I can tell you as a family member who had individuals that were susceptible, of course, we got everybody vaccinated. But we still used layered protection during surges.”
Despite being vaccinated, Dr. Birx took additional precautions “because I knew potentially vaccine immunity would wane like natural immunity waned.”
“There was evidence that every four months, reinfection was occurring in South Africa.”
Revelations about the questionable efficacy of the vaccine come amidst the White House, Democratic governors, and left-wing companies attempting to mandate the jab for employees and customers. Users sharing data highlighting the weakness of the vaccine on social media platforms such as Facebook have also been hastily censored by left-wing “fact-checking” organizations.
The rate of hospitalization for COVID among children is so low, it’s basically zero. Then why is it so important to jab babies and toddlers two or three times, even though side effects of the injection could harm them for life – or kill them?
Statistics show the rate of COVID-19 associated hospitalization among children aged 5 to 11 is 0.0008%.1 In real-world terms, that’s so close to zero you basically cannot lower it any further. Yet, despite such reassuring data, children in this age group are urged to get two to three doses of the COVID jab, even though side effects of the injection could harm them for life, or kill them.
As noted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation in the video below, myocarditis — one of the recognized effects of the COVID jab — “has a mortality rate of 25% to 56% within three to 10 years, owing to progressive heart failure and sudden cardiac death.”
Sudden cardiac death is what the media and public health agencies are now glibly referring to as “sudden adult death syndrome” or SADS. The older and more appropriate description for SADS is “sudden arrhythmic death syndrome,” but they don’t even want to use the word “arrhythmic” anymore, as that tells you what the death is really caused by, and many are now aware that the jab can cause heart inflammation.
By avoiding the word “arrhythmic,” it’s easier for them to pretend as though people are dying for no apparent reason, and certainly not because of the COVID shots. Still, real-world facts tell us that SADS didn’t take off until after the shots were rolled out, and the vast majority of young healthy people who suddenly die for no apparent reason have been jabbed.2
Also, understand that if your child or you are injured by the shot, you cannot sue the drug company for damages and, so far, the U.S. government has rejected all but one of the claims filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).3 At the current pace of about 18 claims a month, it would take 38 years just to get through the current backlog, Reuters has noted.4 Basically, many may die before their case even gets through review.
COVID Jab Authorization Granted for Babies
As if the situation were not bad enough already, June 15, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel — the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — unanimously approved (21-0) to grant Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID shots for infants and young children.5
Pfizer’s EUA is for a three-dose regimen (3-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 5 years old, while Moderna’s EUA is for a two-dose regimen (25-microgram shots) for children 6 months to 6 years.
In the video at the top of the page, Steve Kirsch, president of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, interviews reporter Toby Rogers, who endured the entire nine-hour day of the recent VRBPAC meeting.
The day before that meeting, June 14, Rogers published6 a written summary of Pfizer’s trial on young children, which he referred to as “an embarrassment.” “Any VRBPAC member who votes Aye on this junk science application should be removed from his/her job,” he wrote. Apparently, they all need to go.
In the interview, Rogers laments the fact that the VRBPAC members remain “locked in their information bubble” and won’t allow any conflicting data to influence their preconceived biases.
As noted by Rogers, they have a sacred duty to protect public health, and they’re being flippant about it. They’re ignoring data, they’re ignoring the pleas of the vaccine injured, they’re ignoring serious questions, they’re ignoring everything except the flimsiest bits and pieces upon which their narrative is built. Rogers called the experience “heartbreaking.”
VRBPAC Refuses to Answer Lawmakers’ Questions
The VRBPAC members aren’t even swayed by concerns from lawmakers. They simply ignore their questions too. As reported by The Defender:7
“The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) ignored pleas from experts, the vaccine injured and a congressman representing 17 other lawmakers to halt authorization until questions about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines for the nation’s youngest children could be properly addressed …
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said there are many unanswered questions … ‘I’m deeply concerned that the push to vaccinate these children is nothing more than a dystopian experiment with unknown consequences,’ Gohmert told the committee. ‘Some of us have outlined these questions in a letter8 to VRBPAC but have not received any answers, and I pose some of them here.’ Gohmert said:
‘Number 1, why has the FDA refused to release the hundreds of thousands of pages of data from preapproval manufacturer studies, post-approval adverse events data and other post-approval manufacturer data?
Number 2, what is the cardiac risk factor in administrating these COVID vaccines to children?
Number 3, world-renowned immunologists have raised concerns about potential antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE, resulting from COVID vaccines, and since ADE was a problem in prior unrelated respiratory vaccine trials, we need to know what studies, if any, the FDA has that it’s used regarding ADE from COVID vaccines in children 5 and under or any age group. Can the FDA affirm there’s no risk of ADE for vaccinated children?
Number 4, if widely approved among children 5 and under, how many lives, if any, does FDA estimate will be saved next year? Given the injuries reported in the FDA’s VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] system, how will FDA evaluate serious vaccine injuries versus serious COVID outcomes?
Number 5, is it possible the proposed COVID vaccines in young children could create increased risk in future novel COVID variants?
Number 6, why has the FDA recently lowered the efficacy bar for COVID vaccines for youngest children? This change significantly lowers the expected benefits from any COVID vaccination for young children and it’s of particular concern given that over 70% of that age cohort already is seropositive.’
Gohmert said these questions and 13 other questions posed by lawmakers are critical and deserve answers from the FDA and VRBPAC prior to any EUA with the ‘accompanied protection for liability for all harm done.’”
Trial Showed COVID Jab Increases Infection Risk in Babies
In the video above, you can see Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, with a forced grin on her face, claiming “rigorous scientific review” has proven the shots to be safe and effective in infants and young children.
The video also features excerpts from a video in which Dr. Clare Craig, a diagnostic pathologist and “lover of data,”9 reviews what this “rigorous scientific review” actually found and what the FDA and CDC aren’t telling you. To hear Craig’s full summary of how Pfizer twisted its clinical data for young children, check out the video below.
Craig points out that of the 4,526 children, aged 6 months to 4 years, who participated in Pfizer’s trial, 3,000 didn’t make it to the end of the trial. Why did two-thirds of the children drop out? Oftentimes, this happens when side effects are too severe for the participant to continue. Here, we don’t know why two-thirds of the participants were eliminated, and “on that basis alone, this trial should be deemed null and void,” Craig says. Moreover:
•Six of the children, aged 2 to 4 years, in the vaccinated group were diagnosed with “severe COVID,” compared to just one in the placebo group. So, what this actually shows is that the likelihood the shot is causing severe COVID is higher than the likelihood that it’s preventing it.
•The only child who required hospitalization for COVID was also in the “vaccinated” group.
•In the three weeks following the first dose, 34 of the children in the vaccinated group and 13 of the unvaccinated children were diagnosed with COVID. That means the children’s risk of developing symptoms of COVID within the first three weeks of the first dose actually increased by 30%. These data were ignored.
Between doses two and three, there was an eight-week gap, and the vaccinated arm again experienced higher rates of COVID. This too was ignored. After the third dose, incidence of COVID was again raised in the vaccine group, and this was ignored as well.
In the end, they only counted three cases of COVID in the vaccine arm and seven cases in the placebo group. They literally ignored 97% of all the COVID cases that occurred during the trial to conclude that the shots were “effective” in preventing COVID.
•While they claim the triple-dose regimen reduced COVID, 12 of the children actually caught COVID twice in the two-month follow-up, and 11 of them were vaccinated.
•The confidence interval for Pfizer’s jab is -370% at the lower end of the 95%, which suggests children who get the jab are nearly four times more likely of getting sick with COVID than their unvaccinated peers.10
Unscientific and Unethical Behavior
As reported by The Defender:11
“Combining all ages together, Pfizer said its three-dose regimen for children 6 months to 5 years old was 80% effective at preventing illness from the Omicron variant based on preliminary data from its clinical trial.
The 80% number was calculated 30 days after the third dose. As noted by committee members, the efficacy number is likely to go down after 30 days and post-approval monitoring was suggested.
Moderna said its two-shot vaccine was about 51% effective against infection from Omicron in children under 2, and about 37% among kids 2 to 5 years old, citing different efficacy numbers than what was reported by the company in March.
In a March 23 press release, Moderna said its vaccine in the 6-month to 2-year age group was only 43.7% effective. In the older age group, the company said its vaccine was 37.5% effective. A top official at Moderna has already said a booster will be necessary.”
As noted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, vaccinating infants and children who have no need for the shots and don’t benefit from them, just to “protect” adults, violates medical ethics. And since those who are jabbed still readily transmit the virus, the children are actually put at risk for no reason at all.
It’s All About Securing Indemnification
🧐So I’m guessing everyone is wondering why the FDA voted unanimously to give not one — but THREE shots of the C@ViD 💉to the youngest of children when there’s N🚫 emergency.
It is IMPERATIVE they have this approval. R. obert K. ennedy Jr. tells us why: pic.twitter.com/denjlTchMF
So, how can we explain the irrational behavior of the FDA and CDC? Why don’t any of the data matter? Why doesn’t the science matter? Why don’t any of the red flags matter? And why are they handing out EUAs when the criteria for EUA are satisfied? Products must satisfy four criteria in order to get EUA:
There must be an emergency
A vaccine must be at least 30% to 50% effective
The known and potential benefits of the product must outweigh the known and potential risks of the product
There can be no adequate, approved and available alternative treatments (drugs or vaccines)
Unless all four criteria are met, EUA cannot be granted or maintained, yet here we are. COVID, by any reasonable measurement, is no longer an emergency, there are plenty of adequate alternative treatments, and the potential benefits in no way, shape or form outweigh the potential risks — especially not in infants and children under 5. That’s three out of four criteria that, clearly, are not met.
The short answer to the question, “Why are the CDC and FDA acting so irrationally?” is that both agencies are corrupt to the core and are no longer in the business of protecting public health. They are securing profits for the drug industry, and getting EUA for infants and young children is a crucial step toward securing permanent legal indemnity for the drugmakers.
They need this last remaining age group to be included under the EUA, because once the emergency is finally declared ‘over,’ the next phase of liability shielding requires that the shots receive approval by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Sam DOnce the vaccine is on the childhood vaccination schedule, the vaccine makers are permanently shielded from liability for injuries and deaths that occur in ANY age group, including adults.
As explained by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in the short video clip above, they need this last remaining age group to be included under the EUA, because once the emergency is finally declared “over,” the next phase of liability shielding requires that the shots receive approval by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
This is the group that decides which vaccines are to be added to the childhood vaccination schedule. Once the vaccine is on the childhood vaccination schedule, the vaccine makers are permanently shielded from liability for injuries and deaths that occur in ANY age group, including adults.
The only way to break that indemnity is by proving the vaccine maker knew about the safety issues and withheld that information. You can learn more about this indemnification process in “The Real Reason They Want to Give COVID Jabs to Kids.”
So, the end goal is permanent immunity against liability for injury and death from the COVID shots in all age groups, and to get there, they first need the EUA to cover all children. After that, the ACIP approval becomes more or less a matter of rubber stamping. This is why they’re playing Russian roulette with the health of infants and young children.
Murder Has No Statute of Limitation
That said, if fraud can be proven, all indemnity falls by the wayside, and there’s no statute of limitation when it comes to murder, which some insist is what’s happening here.
The video above features “To The Lifeboats” podcaster Sam Dodson’s comments to the FDA VRBPAC during its open public hearing session to approve the COVID jabs for children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. In a rapid-fire manner, he reviews several data points that ought to have put a halt to these injections, but didn’t; several instances where the FDA knew harm was occurring from these shots, or would occur, and they did nothing.
Another public comment was submitted by an as-yet unidentified individual. The submitted comment was provided to and reposted on Coquin de Chien’s Substack. Here are some select pieces:12
“This comment is NOTICE of possible criminal liability to Lauren K. Roth and members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee who owe duties of care, diligence, good faith, and loyalty in recommending ‘for’ or ‘against’ the EUA amendment for COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in children 6 months through 4 years of age.
Only two deaths are listed herein to establish knowledge. If the amendment is approved, it will have been done by committee members ‘knowing’ of felony crimes in context. Your investigation of these deaths should include death certificates, autopsy records, witness interviews, and immunization records.
Massachusetts Death Certificate 2022 SFN 5980 is a 7yo girl died January 18, 2022 listed as died from U071 ‘COVID-19,’ B49 ‘unspecified mycosis,’ J450 ‘predominantly allergic asthma,’ and R091 ‘pleurisy.’
VAERS_ID 2038120 is a 7yo girl in Massachusetts, who received her 2nd dose 1/13/2022 and was reported to VAERS 1/15/2022. PRIOR_VAX states, ‘Severe nausea and vomiting from 5 min post vaccination and for the next 8-10 hours.’
SYMPTOM_TEXT states, ‘Spiked a 103 fever, severe stomachache, has not had a bowel movement since the day before vaccination, which makes today 3 days without one. First vaccine caused severe nausea and vomiting from 5 minutes post injection and for the next 8-10 hours.’ This little girl suffered immeasurably 4 to 5 days as her intestines shut down due likely to impeded blood vessels servicing intestines.
Massachusetts Death Certificate 2021 SFN 56611 is a 48yo man died 11/16/2021 listed as died from U071 ‘COVID-19’ and E669 ‘OBESITY.’ SFN 56611 is known to have died less than 24 hours after inoculation.
In both cases, the Medical Examiners listed the cause of death as ‘COVID-19,’ when it was clearly not COVID-19. And in both cases, the Medical Examiners omitted listing causes Y590 ‘Viral vaccines’ and T881 ‘Other complications following immunization, not elsewhere classified,’ when these clearly were proximate and actual causes.
Death certificates from the state of Massachusetts are sent to the CDC, a federal entity. Thus, fraud on a state death certificate is a federal crime as it affects federal death records. Several federal felony crimes apply in this instance and are listed below.
If you dismiss this NOTICE and recommend the EUA amendment without first investigating these two deaths, you become liable for inchoate crimes and the felony crime of ‘misprision of felony.’ If a single person subsequently dies as a result of the amendment, all the elements will have been satisfied for you to face felony murder charges or involuntary manslaughter. Qualified immunity is not a valid defense …
There were found sixty likely C19 vaccine deaths in a 25-minute perusal of the 2021 and 2022 death certificates, which extrapolates to hundreds, probably thousands of C19 vaccine deaths in Massachusetts.
Refusal to investigate these fraudulent records is a crime that, because of the felony murder aspect, has no statute of limitations. Five, ten, or twenty years from now, if a federal prosecutor were to learn of this NOTICE, he or she would have significant evidence to bring charges for felony murder.
In summary, this NOTICE places you in a position requiring you to investigate these deaths prior to recommending the amendment. If you dismiss this NOTICE, you may be criminally liable for involuntary manslaughter, felony murder, and a list of federal crimes and inchoate crimes … Comment Tracking Number l4d-m52d-ge4m.”
Florida Bucks the Trend
My home state of Florida now stands out as the only U.S. state that is recommending AGAINST the COVID jab for 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds. Parents can still get their infants jabbed if they want, but the official state recommendation is not to do it, as there’s simply no scientific or logical rationale for doing so.
Florida also did not preorder any extra doses for this age group.13 In a June 18, 2022, Substack article, Dr. Robert Malone addressed the latest EUA authorization for infants and young children, and applauded Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to buck the trend. It’s hard to believe he is the only governor in the U.S. who resisted this murderous threat to the children:14
“Have you looked at the VAERS data lately? The CDC apparently has not. In the USA alone, there have been 831,801 adverse events, of which 12,776 are life threatening. There have been 63,978 hospitalizations. There have been 13,293 deaths and 14,232 permanent disabilities from these vaccines.
True, these are ‘unverified’ — but previous research has shown that the VAERS system under-reported adverse events associated with vaccines, not over-reported … Then there are the international post-vaccine adverse event summaries.15
The CDC, under Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) has now admitted16 that even though they had promised to analyze the VAERS data before advising about these vaccines for children, they did not.
The VAERS data were NOT taken into consideration before the authorization of these genetic agents for babies and young children. Frankly, this is shocking. So shocking, it is hard for me to even write about it.
Now, approximately 430 children with other severe illnesses have died with COVID in the last 2.5 years (that would be 172 per year). Plus there have been 2,600 hospitalizations of children, most with underlying conditions — over that 2.5 year period. These numbers show that even before Omicron, in the case of children, COVID is less severe than flu …
Omicron in children is much less severe. We know this. The scientific evidence is clear. Yet the FDA goes back to data from the DELTA variant when discussing the effects of this virus … Governor DeSantis again has it right. It is time to stop. Parents must stop. The time is now to just say no.”
Last but not least, if you’re still unsure whether the COVID shot is the “right” choice for your child, please read through Dr. Byram Bridle’s “COVID-19 Vaccines and Children: A Scientist’s Guide for Parents,”17 published by the Canadian Covid Care Alliance. It goes through how the shots work, what the known side effects are, results from the clinical trial, the effects of the spike protein and much more.
Why not start using the border for munitions testing; waste disposal (especially nuclear); etc.? [US Patriot]
The Supreme Court gave the Biden administration the green light on June 30 to end the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy that requires non-Mexican asylum-seekers arriving at the southern border to wait in Mexico for processing.
Resident Joe Biden’s decision to nix the program didn’t violate a 1996 migrant detention law, the court held, noting that the administration’s memorandum rescinding the program should have been examined by the lower courts.
The 5–4 opinion (pdf) in Biden v. Texas, court file 21-954, was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and comes as record numbers of illegal aliens are streaming across the U.S. border with Mexico, overwhelming the capacity of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deal with them.
Roberts’s opinion was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh. Breyer, 83, retired from the court at noon on June 30 and was replaced by Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kavanaugh also filed a separate concurring opinion. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett both filed separate dissenting opinions.
Texas and Missouri had argued that Biden broke the law by ending the program.
Upon taking office, Biden cut off enrollments in the program, part of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) created by Congress under then-President Bill Clinton. In 2018, the Trump administration said it would enforce the program to crack down on the practice known as catch-and-release, in which individuals would make fraudulent asylum claims knowing they would be released into the United States and be able to stay for years before their court appearance.
Under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a memorandum on Jan. 20, 2021, saying it would “suspend new enrollments in the [MPP] pending further review of the program.”
“Aliens who aren’t already enrolled in MPP should be processed under other existing legal authorities,” it reads.
Days later, Biden signed three new executive orders aimed at undoing Trump-era immigration policies. One of them, Biden said, “orders a full review of the previous administration’s harmful and counterproductive immigration policies, basically across the board.”
But in August 2021, at the urging of the two states, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, ordered the government to enforce the MPP policy until “lawfully rescinded.” The Biden administration had failed to properly justify ending the policy and to uphold a 1996 law requiring the detention of certain migrants, the judge held. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed Kacsmaryk’s ruling.
On May 2, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of asking the attorneys involved in the case to provide post-hearing submissions to the court. Both the Biden administration and the two states opposing it in the high-stakes litigation filed briefs arguing that the court does have the power to decide the central legal questions in the case, The Epoch Times reported.
In his new opinion, Roberts wrote that “the Government’s rescission of MPP did not violate” section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act” and reversed the decision of the lower court, remanding the case “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
By incorrectly interpreting the section as a command, the appeals court needlessly injected itself into administration affairs and “imposed a significant burden upon the Executive’s ability to conduct diplomatic relations with Mexico,” Roberts wrote.
The district court would force the administration “to the bargaining table with Mexico, over a policy that both countries wish to terminate, and to supervise its continuing negotiations with Mexico to ensure that they are conducted ‘in good faith.’” The law doesn’t allow the lower court “to tie the hands of the Executive in this manner,” the chief justice wrote.
In his dissent, Alito wrote that even though Congress gave the administration the option of returning “inadmissible aliens to Mexico while they await proceedings in this country,” the Biden DHS instead violated the law by releasing in the United States an “untold numbers of aliens who are very likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearings.”
“This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court looks the other way,” he wrote.
Christopher Hajec, director of litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), a nonprofit public interest law firm that filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, shared his views on the new ruling.
“We are certainly disappointed with the Court’s decision today,” Hajec told The Epoch Times by email.
“We think it was wrong on the merits and wrong on jurisdiction. Nevertheless, there are two silver linings. On the merits, the Court made clear that the lower courts in this case have yet to decide, and should decide, whether Biden’s extreme parole policies are lawful. We think they clearly are not. Also, on jurisdiction, the Court still left open a path for states and other parties to get relief from Biden’s disastrous immigration policies, though that path is narrower than before.”
Judy Rabinovitz, special counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, praised the ruling.
“The Supreme Court was right to reject the spurious argument that this cruel policy is statutorily required,” Rabinovitz said in a statement. “While, as noted in the decision, the case will return to the district court, the Biden administration can and should move forward swiftly to finally terminate ‘remain in Mexico’ for good—a result that has been long, and unjustly, delayed.”
The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
The risk was 13 times higher with Pfizer vaccination
A French peer-reviewed study concluded that for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the risk of myocarditis skyrockets a week after vaccination.
The risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination was 8 times and 30 times greater than unvaccinated control groups for BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna), respectively.
The largest association for myocarditis following the Moderna jab was 44 times higher risk for persons aged 18 to 24 years.
As for the Pfizer shot, in relation to the same age group, the risk was 13 times higher.
Infection with the Chinese Communist Party virus yielded, by comparison, a 9 times greater risk of the same condition.
Myocarditis refers to the inflammation of the heart muscle—a life-threatening condition. There are many established causes for this heart condition. The leading cause—according to modern science’s most recent discoveries—is viruses; but during the pandemic, COVID mRNA vaccines have earned a place as a top suspect for myocarditis.
The new study’s goal was to provide an assessment of association with vaccines across sex and age groups.
“Both SARS-CoV2 infection and COVID mRNA vaccines have been associated with myocarditis. Knowing the spike protein’s affinity to ACE2 receptors in the heart and spike protein’s injury to cardiomyocytes (cells of the heart), the association of myocarditis with SARS-CoV2 virus or spike protein-based mRNA vaccination was not entirely unexpected,” Dr. Sanjay Verma, a cardiologist, told The Epoch Times via email.
Verma also thinks the CDC’s analysis “erroneously suggests” that risk of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2 infection is greater than after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.
“For the cases of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2, CDC uses officially confirmed PCR+ ‘cases,’ even though their own seroprevalence data demonstrates that far more people have been infected than officially conformed PCR+ ‘cases.’ For example, seroprevalence data as of Feb 21, 2022, reveals 75 percent (about 54 million) of all children have been infected compared to 12 million officially confirmed PCR+ ‘cases’ (i.e., the actual number of kids infected is 4.5 times greater than PCR+ ‘cases’). Therefore, calculating the risk of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2 infection, the rate noted by CDC would therefore need to be reduced by 4.5 times. Thus far, CDC has not adjusted its COVID-19 morbidity and mortality data accordingly,” said the cardiologist, who practices in Coachella Valley, California.
The study analyzed 1,612 cases of myocarditis and 1,613 cases of pericarditis in France from May 12, 2021, to Oct. 31, 2021, involving 32 million people aged 12 to 50 years who received 46 million doses of mRNA vaccines.
It is limited by using solely hospital discharge diagnoses. Therefore, it does not include those who may have died before being hospitalized or those whose symptoms were not severe enough to be hospitalized.
“There have been reports (pdf) of autopsy-proven myocarditis after vaccination and anecdotal evidence of patients being dismissed by ER and never being hospitalized. Adjusting for these excluded subsets may yield even higher risk than reported in this study. Follow-up of the patients in this study was limited to one month after discharge. However, a previous cardiac MRI study found about 75 percent of patients with vaccine-associated myocarditis can have persistent MRI abnormalities 3–8 months after initial diagnosis,” Verma said.
The authors of the study didn’t analyze the effect of booster vaccination since it is not yet recommended for young adults in France.
In the United States, however, booster injections are mandated by colleges and universities, employers, and even some state public health departments irrespective of age or prior infection.
“In a preprint follow-up to their peer-reviewed study of myocarditis after vaccination, analysis found continued incremental risk of myocarditis after booster vaccination. In fact, while many countries have refrained from recommending COVID vaccination in very young children because the risks do not justify the benefits, the U.S. stands alone in recommending it in the youngest of kids,” Verma said.
A research paper published on May 18 studied the pandemic control measures—which included vaccine and mask mandates, as well as isolation and contact tracing—of Cornell University, which was almost completely vaccinated, and found these policies were “not a match” for the Omicron variant and its rapid spread.
Sudden Adult Death Syndrome
Recently, a new term has been highlighted in media outlets: “sudden adult death syndrome,” or SADS.
Underlying factors for SADS include undiagnosed myocarditis, inflammatory conditions, and other conditions that cause irregularities in the electrical system of the heart, thereby triggering cardiac arrest.
Data compiled by the International Olympic Committee shows 1,101 sudden deaths in athletes under age 35 between 1966 and 2004, giving an average annual rate of 29, across all sports. Meanwhile, between March 2021 and March 2022 alone—a single year—at least 769 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest, collapsed, or have died on the field, worldwide.
Denmark’s Christian Eriksen is taken away on a stretcher after collapsing on the pitch during the Euro 2020 soccer championship group B match between Denmark and Finland at Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, on June 12, 2021. (Stuart Franklin/Pool via AP)
Among EU FIFA (soccer/football) athletes, sudden death increased by 420 percent in 2021. Historically, about five soccer players have died while playing the game each year. Between January and mid-November 2021, 21 FIFA players died from sudden death.
Joseph Mercola contributed to this report.
The Epoch Times reached out to the CDC for comment.
Experts warn unregulated abortion pills put women at risk
CNN on Tuesday promoted an illegal abortion scheme that experts say could boost a dangerous black market for abortion pills.
CNN host Poppy Harlow interviewed the head of Plan C, a group that connects women with unregulated overseas pharmacies that mail chemical abortion pills to the United States—an illegal practice that skirts federal regulations. Elisa Wells, the cofounder of the group, encouraged women to obtain the pills without medical supervision or follow-up visit, even though chemical abortion pills have roughly four times the complication rate of surgical abortions.
“What I’m saying is in common practice, that most people are not doing the follow-up visit,” Wells told Harlow. “They don’t need them.”
The group’s website, however, admits it “cannot guarantee” the illegal pharmacies it refers “will be reliable.”
Plan C’s black-market network operates alongside the thriving FDA-regulated chemical abortion pill industry. Chemical abortions outpaced surgical abortions for the first time in 2020, two decades after the pill was first approved. Still, women turn to unregulated pharmacies like those promoted by Plan C to avoid doctor visits or obtain the pills in advance of a pregnancy. Many states require women to take FDA-approved pills in the presence of a doctor and return for a visit after a designated time period.
Resident Joe Biden directed his agencies to increase access to chemical abortion pills in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday outlined a plan to explore how federal law can maximize access to these pills and ensure federal programs will cover them.
Wells said there is no reason for women to inform doctors that they took abortion pills when they seek medical care for side effects such as intense bleeding or lingering fetal remains.
“There’s no information that the clinician needs to have,” Wells said on CNN. “They do not need to know that you’ve taken abortion pills in order to provide safe follow-up treatment.”
But a recent Charlotte Lozier Institute study showed that women who failed to disclose they took abortion pills during an emergency room visit averaged more than three in-patient hospital admissions to treat subsequent complications—a 78 percent higher rate than women who did disclose. Tessa Longbons, a senior research associate at the institute, said groups such as Plan C overlook this data because they value advocacy over science.
“Women deserve to know the facts about the abortion pill, and unfortunately, they won’t find them in this CNN interview,” Longbons told the Washington Free Beacon. “Mailing women abortion pills with no medical oversight is literally playing games with a woman’s health.”
CNN is not the only media outlet to promote the chemical abortion pill industry in recent weeks. New York magazine published a piece in June that encouraged women to take abortion pills and lie to doctors. Several mainstream outlets have featured Aid Access, another abortion pill network, as the model group on how to provide unregulated abortion pills in areas with limited abortion access.
The FDA in December made permanent its pandemic-era decision to allow mail-in orders of abortion pills. The agency justified the decision by citing its adverse event database, which does not require reports from emergency rooms, where women often go to seek care after complications from the drugs.
Federal agencies under former president Donald Trump attempted to crack down on the abortion pill black market. The FDA in 2019 sent Aid Access a cease-and-desist letter in an attempt to counter the illegal scheme. These efforts stalled after the group filed a lawsuit.
THE LATEST GRIFT FROM THE ECOHEALTH CHIEF INVOLVES A NUMBER OF KREMLIN-LINKED RESEARCHERS.
Peter Daszak – a controversial U.S-based researcher whose collaborations on coronavirus research with a Chinese laboratory were funded by Anthony Fauci – isolated Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus strains in Russia using funds from the Russian government in a recently published research paper, The National Pulse can reveal.
Daszak, 49, appeared to play a critical role in the origins of COVID-19, as his organization, the ‘EcoHealth Alliance’, facilitated a “longtime” joint research effort with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is believed to be the source of the virus. Throughout the pandemic, Daszak also featured prominently in promoting the “natural origins” theory while simultaneously discrediting supporters of the “lab leak” theory, most notably in the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 investigator.
His latest study appears to be yet another controversy. Daszak, who is originally British, is listed as the sole U.S. researcher on the paper: “Identification and Genetic Characterization of MERS-Related Coronavirus Isolated from Nathusius’ Pipistrelle Near Zvenigorod (Moscow Region, Russia).”
DASZAK’S LATEST GRIFT.
The paper was published on June 10th 2022 and counted an additional 11 Russian researchers from Kremlin-run facilities including the Federal Service on Consumers’ Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Surveillance and Moscow State University.
The study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the national science funding body of the Russian government, and the state-run Russian Science Foundation.
Researchers conducted “analyses of bat viromes,” which “have been used to identify novel viruses with potential to cause human infection.”
“We characterized the fecal virome of 26 samples collected from six bat species captured during 2015 in Moscow Region. Of these 13/26 (50%) samples were found to be coronavirus positive,” continued researchers.
“We sequenced and assembled the complete genome of a novel MERS-related Betacoronavirus from Pipistrellus nathusii, named MOW-BatCoV strain 15-22.”
The capture and sampling of bats were carried out by Moscow State University researchers in the summer of 2015.
Appearing to use similar tactics as researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Russian scientists and Daszak focused on the spike protein. The spike protein allows viruses to penetrate host cells and cause infection and is believed to have been manipulated by researchers in Wuhan to become more lethal to humans.
“To predict and analyze the interaction of MOW-BatCoV Spike glycoprotein with DPP4 receptors of the different mammalian species, the three-dimensional structures of these proteins were obtained by homologous modeling. The DPP4 proteins of two bats (Myotis brandtii and Pipistrellus kuhlii), the hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), domestic cat (Felix catus) and mouse (Mus musculus) were used for analysis,” explains the paper.
Analysis of the complete genomes the novel coronavirus discovered in the paper shows that it “falls into clade of human/camel’s MERS viruses together with a few bat viruses.”
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) could hardly contain his amazement when Dr. Rahul Gupta, resident Joe Biden’s national drug control policy director, claimed that “protecting the border” with Mexico was among the administration’s top priorities.
Gupta’s claim came during his opening statement on June 27 before a lengthy digital hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the focus of which was to be on how the president was dealing with the explosion of drug overdoses that killed more than 107,000 Americans last year.
“Did you say that? Am I right, did you say he is doing a great job of protecting the border?” the incredulous Norman asked the hearing’s sole witness.
Gupta responded: “We believe strongly that it is an important part of every nation to be able to secure and protect its border. There are a number of things that are going on in this area of counter-narcotics that I think are important to note.
“As I visit the border, I speak to the women and men on the border.”
But Gupta was interrupted by Norman, who asked him if Biden “is taking the steps to close the border. Is that what I understand you to mean?”
Gupta replied, “The president is certainly taking the steps to ensure that our border remains secured—”
Norman interrupted, murmuring “Oh, my Lord,” and said, “Okay, doctor, this is two different universes. … I mean this is a mischaracterization, at best, for you to say that of this administration. … We don’t want words, we don’t want hearings, we want actions.”
The exchange between Norman and Gupta came early in the hearing, and it typified much of what was heard throughout the balance of cross-examination by committee members, including all of the Republicans and at least one Democrat.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) set the tone of the proceeding in his opening statement by pointing to Biden’s open border policies as the chief culprit in the overdose epidemic.
“Fentanyl is being smuggled across the southwest border at unprecedented rates. U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over 11,000 pounds of fentanyl in Fiscal Year 2021. That is more fentanyl seized in one fiscal year than fiscal years 2020 and 2019 combined,” Comer said. Comer is the top Republican on the oversight panel.
“The standard fatal overdose of fentanyl is 2 milligrams; 11,000 pounds of fentanyl is more than 5 billion milligrams. That means we seized about 2.5 billion lethal doses of fentanyl in one fiscal year. That does not include all the fentanyl that we know has been smuggled across our borders undetected.
“Cartels are overwhelming Border Patrol agents and providing a steady supply for dealers and users alike. So a primary question is ‘What is resident Biden going to do to secure the border and cut off the free flow of illicit drugs into our country?’”
Gupta told the committee in his opening remarks that Biden’s national drug control strategy, which was made public in April, “was released in a time of unprecedented challenges. For far too many years, the overdose crisis has been unraveling the social fabric of the nation and destroying American lives and livelihoods.”
The Biden strategy, according to Gupta, emphasizes getting treatment services and health care to as many victims of drug addiction as possible, while minimizing correctional penalties whenever possible.
The strategy also includes efforts to reduce the drug-trafficking profits of the drug cartels in the United States by blocking their ability to move cash, weapons, and people around internationally and within the United States.
Stopping drugs such as fentanyl at the border received only cursory attention in the White House statement on the drug control policy, focusing on border ports of entry despite the fact most of the narcotics enter the country across unsecured portions of the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
While Democrats on the panel praised the policy for emphasizing treatment, Republicans repeatedly turned the hearing’s focus on the unprecedented surge of narcotics, especially fentanyl, crossing the border that began shortly after Biden took office.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) challenged Gupta to join him on a surreptitious visit to the border in his state after pointing to testimony given earlier in the year that CBP agents manage to stop only about 5 percent of all the illicit drug traffic coming across the border.
“I would love for you to come with me, just you and me, incognito. … Just you and me, come on down to the border and I will take you to places where you can watch what is happening, you can watch our men and women of CBP overrun, so there are literally hundreds of miles unprotected, which is where the drugs are coming in,” Biggs told Gupta.
Spokesmen for Biggs and Gupta couldn’t be reached to determine if he plans to accept the congressman’s invitation.
When Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) asked Gupta if he considers it more important for CBP agents to focus on processing people crossing the border illegally or stopping illicit drug smuggling, the White House official said he believes it is important to do both.
Donalds pointed out to Gupta that “when a border agent is at the Southern border and a group of people come out of the brush crossing our border illegally, the border agent, which usually just himself or herself, has to actually stop controlling the section they are responsible for and they have to go through the process of intaking everybody that approached them.”
Gupta declined to respond to Donalds’s question except to say, “I hope we can do both.”
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) told Gupta, “It seems we have gone from one policy of trying to get people clean and sober to helping them go from one drug to another drug.” Lynch was referring to the drug Suboxone, which is used in addiction treatment to minimize the negative effects of withdrawal from narcotics.
“We’ve taken the lid off and allow doctors to have hundreds of patients and just give them Suboxone and not really deliver any behavioral help services that would get at the underlying addictive activity,” Lynch said.
Lynch said he has observed patients who had just received Suboxone from a treatment clinic go out on the street and trade it for narcotics.
“I’m just questioning this whole policy, we seem to be moving away from getting people straight, getting them clean, getting them sober, getting them back into their lives, and instead, we’re getting them on different drugs and I just don’t see a good result from that policy,” Lynch said. “It’s not working where I am, it’s not working in the 8th Congressional District of Massachusetts.”
Committee Chairman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) concluded the hearing by saying, “Today’s hearing makes clear that we cannot reduce the prevalence of drugs in our communities through interdiction and law enforcement alone. Nor is it possible through public health measures alone. Instead, we need to address both supply and demand.”
Gretchen Whitmer says the state has added 25,000 auto jobs since she took office. It has actually lost thousands.
Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer says she’s added 25,000 “good-paying auto jobs” during her tenure. The state has actually lost thousands of auto jobs on her watch, labor statistics show.
In a June 2 press release, Whitmer said she was “proud” to announce Michigan has “added nearly 25,000 auto jobs since I took office.” The Democrat roughly three weeks later repeated the claim, writing in a “mobility and electrification” fact sheet that she “is ensuring Michigan lives up to its legacy as the place that put the world on wheels by creating nearly 25,000 good-paying auto jobs.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics data, however, contradict that claim. Whitmer inherited 169,500 auto jobs when she became governor in January 2019, according to the agency. As of May 2022, that number is 166,700—a decrease of nearly 3,000 jobs.
Whitmer’s deceptive declaration shows how the Democrat is attempting to rebound on economic issues following her stringent stay-at-home orders, which shuttered local stores but deemed marijuana dispensaries, lottery ticket vendors, and big-box retailers “essential.” While Whitmer has touted leading the “best economic recovery in Michigan history,” a June WalletHub report ranked Michigan 46th in unemployment claim recovery.
Michigan Rising Action communications director Mary Drabik said Whitmer’s “gaslighting” on auto jobs is “not surprising.”
“When Gov. Whitmer’s claims are this far detached from reality, it becomes difficult to believe anything she says,” Drabik told the Washington Free Beacon. “But coming from the governor who claims her nursing-home policies saved lives and vacationed in Florida while telling Michiganders to avoid flying south, the gaslighting is not surprising.”
Whitmer’s office acknowledged that the governor’s claim stems from “the number of jobs announced since January 2019,” some of which are not yet actualized. Still, Whitmer communications director Bobby Leddy said the governor “is proud of her record of job creation, particularly in the auto industry, as we move to cement Michigan’s legacy of manufacturing.” Leddy did not address why Whitmer’s statistic does not account for jobs that have left the state since 2019.
This is far from the first time Whitmer has faced criticism for failing to deliver on a claim. In April 2020, the Democrat pledged to give back a portion of her salary for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. But Whitmer ended the pledge just five months later in September, even as her indoor gathering restrictions and public face mask requirements lasted for 15 months.
Whitmer, who implemented a policy that required nursing homes to accept positive coronavirus patients who were discharged from hospitals, is up for reelection in November after a roller coaster of a first term. Whitmer’s national profile exploded during the beginning of the pandemic thanks to her harsh restrictions and public feud with then-president Donald Trump. Whitmer went on to ramp up those restrictions, which sparked large protests, particularly as the Democrat defied her own rules.
Whitmer’s potential Republican opponents include political commentator Tudor Dixon, chiropractor Garrett Soldano, and businessman Kevin Rinke. Republican voters will choose their nominee during Michigan’s August 2 primary.
There is no safety profile for the effects of vaccines on children
As the Biden administration rolls out vaccines for the nation’s youngest children (6 months to 5-year-olds), Dr. Jeffrey Barke, chief medical officer at the Convention of States, said there is absolutely no evidence supporting that these youngest children are at any serious risk of death from COVID-19 and should not get be broadly vaccinated.
“I think it’s important that we tell the truth first, and then let parents and adults make informed decisions about whether or not to get vaccinated,” Barke said during a recent interview with NTD’s Capitol Report. “And to recommend this product to 6-month-olds makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So, to start with, there is no COVID emergency, especially as it relates to younger people. It simply doesn’t exist.”
Barke referenced the CDC’s own website, saying that according to the CDC’s data, just over 1,000 children have died since the beginning of the pandemic as of the interview. “While every death of course is tragic, the reality is every one of those deaths occurred in a child that had significant underlying comorbidities. Healthy children simply do not die from this illness,” said Barke.
Meanwhile, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha made a contrary statement, saying that the infant vaccines “have been thoroughly tested. Millions of children above the age of 5 have gotten these vaccines. They’re exceedingly safe,” Jha told CBS News in a June 20 interview.
The CDC last Saturday signed off on giving both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to infants and children between 6 months and 5 years old. It came after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel unanimously voted to authorize the use of the vaccines.
Jha also said while the majority of children likely have natural immunity, getting the vaccines will help keep children out of the hospital if they get it again.
The White House is echoing the FDA and CDC’s message to get young children vaccinated.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, speaks to reporters in Washington on June 2, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“COVID has been quite common in children actually. We think maybe almost 70 percent of kids have ended up getting infected with COVID, [but it’s] still worth getting the vaccine. It really offers an extra level of protection, an extra layer of protection,” said Jha.
Barke disagreed with Jha and said there is a risk to young children from vaccines themselves because they have no long-term safety profiles.
“It’s ridiculous what’s going on here. And the part that makes me the saddest is the FDA and the CDC already have trust issues amongst the American public, and for them now to authorize and recommend that a 6-month-old receive a COVID-19 vaccine when they’re not at risk, and there have been no long-term safety studies with these products, is going to erode whatever little trust is left in these organizations,” said Barke.
He added that if a child has an adverse reaction to the vaccine, that child’s parents could not sue for damages because the authorization prevents the companies from being held liable.
“[The vaccine] is experimental by definition. A product that’s being used under emergency use [EU] authorization definitionally is investigational, and it makes no sense whatsoever. The EU authorization gives these vaccine companies blanket liability protection,” said Barke.
In addition, the virus has mutated since the vaccines were developed, so we don’t know if these vaccines protect against strains like Omicron, Barke said.
USAF pilot Lt. John Bowes dreamt of flying and protecting the country his entire life—since he was a child.
He is heartbroken now that he had to put his religious faith over his dream due to the COVID vaccine mandates within the U.S. military, but believes that God is helping him get through the tribulation and that he has a duty to speak up.
The 24-year-old was an F-16 student pilot but was taken out of training and prevented from flying since September of last year when he first submitted his religious accommodation.
“I exercised my constitutional and statutory right to receive a religious accommodation. And then I was, as a direct consequence of doing that, removed from training to fly the F-16. I personally believe that is religious discrimination,” Bowes told The Epoch Times.
He made clear that his views are not representative of the USAF.
“Now that my religious accommodation is denied, I have been formally removed from training. I’ve received a letter of reprimand, which is a disciplinary action that goes on my record as an officer. And I’ve been told that I’ll be processed for discharge here pretty soon,” he said.
Bowes says that nine months ago he filed an equal opportunity complaint with the Air Force Equal Opportunity office, but has not heard back from them so far.
“I’m absolutely heartbroken,” Bowes said, “it’s sad to see that my dream is at risk over something like the COVID vaccine, which doesn’t stop you from getting or spreading COVID.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the USAF for comment.
What’s more, cases of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—and pericarditis—inflammation of the lining outside the heart—have spiked dramatically since the COVID vaccines started being administered worldwide.
“My faith is what gets me through it because I know that God has called me to speak up about these mandates, and God has called me to stand up for the beliefs that I have—that he gave me, and I’m risking my dream and my career and my future and my financial stability, and my honor as an officer, which is being tainted by these disciplinary actions. All because of my oath to my faith, my oath to God which got me here in the first place, as well as my oath to the Constitution of the United States, which all officers take,” Bowes said.
“And so I’m not here to be rebellious. I’m not here to stick it to the man and so many service members aren’t here to do that, either. We’re simply doing what we swore to do. And standing up for our religious beliefs.”
Lt. John Bowes (Courtesy of John Bowes)
As the June 30 deadline nears for compliance with the U.S. military’s COVID-19vaccine mandate, U.S. Army officials publicly claim a very small percentage of its members are unvaccinated, reporting 96 percent or more of its members are fully vaccinated.
However, the Army’s vaccination rate could be far lower than 96 percent, an anonymous active-duty senior Army official told The Defender.
Sanctity of Life
As a Catholic, Bowes believes in the sanctity of human life and doesn’t want to use the COVID vaccines because aborted fetal cell lines are involved in either the production or the testing of these.
“That action, the use of that vaccine is not in line with my belief that all human life is sacred and ordained by God to exist on this earth. And the use of abortion, in order to accomplish the production of these vaccines, is just morally abhorrent to me,” Bowes said.
Disclosed CDC emails show that they have been producing and culturing human stem cell lines.
Bowes added that he knows “a lot of service members” whose primary argument in their religious accommodations is the sanctity of their genetic material and not wanting to be forced into having it altered.
According to official data from the Air Force, over 9,500 religious accommodations requests had been denied approval as of June 14.
This is despite Archbishop for the Military Service Timothy Broglio saying in October 2021 that: “The denial of religious accommodations, or punitive or adverse personnel actions taken against those who raise earnest, conscience-based objections, would be contrary to federal law and morally reprehensible.”
Bowes personally knows a few pilots who “developed myocarditis from the vaccine, and they don’t fly anymore.”
Pilot Shortage
The Air Force has been struggling with pilot shortages for years now.
Former Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein testified before congress in 2017 about a shortage of aviators, writing in 2016 that the situation was a “quiet crisis.”
A DoD report (pdf) from 2019 noted that by the end of FY 2018, the Air Force was “short 2,000 pilots out of a total inventory of 18,400.”
“I know of personally more than 700 pilots who are actively unvaccinated and have filed a religious accommodation or have filed for a medical exemption or something of the sort,” Bowes said.
A letter from November 2021 (pdf) from DoD pilots submitting religious accommodation for vaccination to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees details the impacts based on an analysis of a group of 357 pilots that did not want to take the COVID vaccines.
Their estimated value was totaled at $7.8 billion tax dollars, 4,842 years of cumulative service, and 14 years of service on average.
Nineteen percent of them support the mission of nuclear deterrence, 69 percent are instructors, and nine percent are Air Force Weapons Instructors or Navy TOPGUN graduates.
“The implications of 700 pilots is pretty extreme,” Bowes said in an interview with LifeSite news.
Attorneys and doctors have also charged that the FAA is violating its own rule that pilots should not fly after having taken medications that have been approved for less than a year.
An advocacy group called Freedom Flyers is assisting pilots to come forward and speak out about their conditions.
“Many of these pilots are afraid to come forward because if they come forward they lose their flight physical, they lose their flight medical. So they’re continuing to fly. We have a lot of pilots that are flying with chest pain and neurological conditions, because if they come forward they lose their careers,” Josh Yoder, a spokesperson for Freedom Flyers told The Epoch Times.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed in late 2021 that a person died from blood clotting after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine that had been linked with an increased risk of blood clotting, but did not alert the public for two weeks, newly obtained emails show.
Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC official, told colleagues at the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Dec. 2, 2021, “We have confirmed a 9th TTS death following Janssen vaccination,” according to emails obtained by The Epoch Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.
TTS refers to thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, a condition that features low platelet levels combined with blood clots.
Officials had recommended a nationwide pause on the administration of the vaccine, produced by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) subsidiary Janssen, in April 2021 after six women experienced TTS after J&J vaccination and three died. But they lifted the pause after determining the vaccine remained safe and effective.
The condition was not discussed much in the ensuing months, despite the CDC laterreporting that five additional deaths occurred before Aug. 31, 2021. Shimabukuro gave a single update, in mid-October 2021, saying five total deaths had been reported.
That was until December 2021. Twelve days after Shimabukuro alerted colleagues of the ninth death, the FDA urged healthcare workers not to administer the vaccine to people with certain conditions because of the TTS risk. Two days after that, Dr. Isaac See, another CDC official, informed the public during a meeting that nine deaths had occurred post-vaccination.
It’s unclear when the CDC learned of the sixth, seventh, and eighth deaths.
The CDC takes reports made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and attempts to confirm the reports, including post-vaccination deaths. A higher number of post-vaccination TTS deaths have been reported to the system than the number the CDC has verified.
One day after Shimabukuro confirmed the ninth death, his message was forwarded by Dr. Amanda Cohn, another CDC official, to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
“See below, information on a 9th completely tragic death from TTS,” Cohn wrote.
“Many thanks for letting us know … any tragic case,” Walensky responded.
The emails were partially redacted; one was fully redacted.
Four days after Shimabukuro’s email, CDC officials gave an update on post-vaccination TTS to the COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group, part of the agency’s vaccine advisory panel, in a closed-door meeting. The Epoch Times has asked for presentations and audio from the meeting.
It took 14 days to update the public. That happened during a virtual meeting of the advisory panel that anyone was free to tune into.
Asked about the delay in making the public aware of the deaths, the CDC provided a comment from the team that works on verifying deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
“For all reports classified as serious (which includes deaths after vaccination), VAERS (within one business day of receiving the report) requests all available medical records, including death certificates and autopsy reports, for the reported patient. For some reports, including some potential reports of TTS, consultation with experts to determine if the report meets a standardized case definition is performed. Regarding verified reports of TTS where the patient died, these processes occurred during their usual timeframes,” the team said.
During the virtual meeting, advisers recommended the CDC say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was not “preferred” because of its link to TTS. Walensky endorsed the recommendation.
The agency said it conducted an updated analysis of reports and identified 60 confirmed cases, including nine confirmed deaths. It said it was limiting the availability of the shot because the reported cases and deaths were “not appreciably lower than previously reported.”
A group of doctors is urging top government officials to quickly reverse recommendations that have left children in isolation for days and advice that virtually every child get a COVID-19 vaccine.
“We strongly urge you to revise the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines with regards to testing, isolation, and vaccine recommendations for children to ensure that public health policies are not doing more harm than good,” the group, Urgency of Normal, wrote in a June 21 open letter to Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s guidelines say that people, including children, who are exposed to COVID-19 should quarantine for at least five days, and encourage widespread COVID-19 testing.
The agency also recommends that all children 6 months of age or older get a COVID-19 vaccine, following the recent authorization of the Moderna and Pfizer shots for kids under 5.
The doctors noted that many European countries, U.S. states, and other areas have updated COVID-19 policies to greatly reduce periods of quarantine, COVID-19 testing frequency, and forced vaccination.
They’re asking U.S. officials to adapt to a “test-to-treat” approach, which would focus on recommending vaccination and treatments to those at the highest risk from COVID-19, which are primarily the elderly and others with serious underlying health conditions.
The CDC should also change its vaccine recommendations, which have led to vaccination mandates at colleges and even some lower-level schools, to state that children getting a vaccine should be discussed between the individual and their doctor.
“The emergency phase of COVID-19 is over. We call upon the CDC to update current guidelines to reflect the era of endemic management in which COVID-19 infections are treated similarly to other seasonal respiratory viruses, which do not require routine testing or isolation. It is time to join our peer countries in recognizing the importance of restoring equitable and maximal access to education, sports, and social connectedness for all children. Their health and well-being depend on it,” the group said.
The White House and the CDC did not return requests for comment.
Dr. Jeanne Noble, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the doctors, told The Epoch Times in an email that the group has not yet heard back from the White House or the CDC.
“The timing of this letter is to push for normalization of children’s social and extracurricular activities over the summer, so that our highest need students can benefit from unfettered access to summer enrichment programs and that all kids enjoy summer camps and sports without exclusion based on testing and vaccination requirements,” Noble said.
“It is our hope that moving beyond pandemic policies over the summer will further pave the way for a full return to a normal school year in the fall, free of COVID-specific restrictions.”
The nation of Austria has suspended its controversial COVID-19 vaccine mandate, with government officials citing concerns about the policy infringing on individual freedoms.
Ministers for health and constitutional affairs announced the move on June 22nd, just six days before individuals who failed to comply with the policy would have begun receiving fines for their decision.
The measure was the most comprehensive mandate within the European Union, as it applied to all adults with virtually no exceptions. It had been in effect since February 5th, 2022, but enforcement formally began on March 15th, 2022z
“We will… suspend the vaccine mandate in accordance with the principle of proportionality,” constitutional affairs minister Karoline Edtstadler remarked during a news conference.
“Why? Because there are many convincing arguments at the moment that this infringement of fundamental rights is not justified.”
Edtstadler detailed how the Austrian government was acting on the recommendation of a panel of experts that must regularly review the public health and constitutional law aspects of the recently overturned mandate.
She and Health Minister Johannes Rauch, however, said the vaccine mandate could yet be reintroduced if necessary, with the next review due within three months.
Austria’s decision to scrap its COVID-19 vaccine mandate comes amidst controversy in the U.S. over resident Joe Biden’s efforts to force the jab on federal workers. Many private companies have issued similar ultimatums to employees, despite a host of recent studies demonstrating the harmful side effects of the vaccine.
Studies have show the COVID-19 vaccine affects male and female reproductive organs while other research suggests the efficacy of the jab is far weaker than natural immunity.
Despite the fact that more research into the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine needs to be done, pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Moderna have increased their lobbying efforts to record-breaking highs in terms of personnel hired and overall money spent.
Twitter has suspended a doctor for sharing the study that shows men who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine had lower levels of semen and a loss in motile sperm count.
Dr. Andrew Bostom, with the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention, shared the peer-reviewed study on June 19.
Twitter informed Bostom that the missive violated its policy against “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19, according to a message reviewed by The Epoch Times. It suspended Bostom’s account over the post.
“It seems to fit into the whole pattern of silencing open discussion,” Bostom told The Epoch Times.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Bostom’s post included a link to the Israeli study, which analyzed semen and sperm in men who received two doses, or a primary series, of Pfizer’s vaccine.
The study was published online ahead of publication in Andrology.
Researchers found that the men had lower levels of semen concentration and lower numbers of sperm after receiving a vaccine.
They alleged that the issues were resolved after 150 days, but figures from the paper actually suggested that was not the case. The authors wrote that the values “did not reach statistical significance.”
In his post, Bostom wrote that primary vaccination with Pfizer’s vaccine “temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors, with apparant rebound by ~5mos, but no data on boostering effect.”
“Does boostering yield another decline?” he wondered.
“I kind of understood what they really showed, which is that some of the metrics, whether it was the counts or the motility, were still depressed,” Bostom told The Epoch Times. “And I used their terminology … I didn’t do anything to exaggerate their findings.”
The authors said they excluded men with boosters.
“I just pointed out that if this happens with the first series of vaccinations, maybe if they take these guys and have data on people that were semen donors and they had boosted them, when they followed them after the booster, you’d see another round of depression, and maybe it would be depressed—who knows—would it be depressed more? Would it be depressed, less? Would the effect last longer? We just don’t have any data on that,” Bostom said. “So that was the only other thing I put into my tweet—that we just don’t know what the effect of boosters is going to be. I don’t know why any of that was such a big deal.”
At least one other prominent figure has shared the study and not been affected.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, shared on Twitter a screenshot of The Epoch Times article along with an image from the study highlighting how men still had lower semen concentration and sperm counts when measured 150 days or more after getting the vaccine.
“Indiscriminate use instead of targeted, risk-stratified EUA rollout has led to a myriad of concerns. Never broadly apply a brand new experimental biologic agent on a large population without assessment of risk stratification,” McCullough wrote. “Over-used and now uninvited concerns in young men.”
Retired U.S. Army Major General Paul Vallely is vigorously sounding the alarm against a potential communist takeover of the country and is also very concerned about the mandatory COVID vaccination of all members of the military.
“The mandatory vaccines and boosters … under Department of Defense guidance and directives to the commands throughout the Armed Forces have caused a great deal of controversy. Number one: those that declined mandatory vaccination under the First Amendment religious rights,” Vallely told The Epoch Times.
He believes that there is no need to force COVID vaccines on them, as “these are the healthiest men and women we have in the country.”
“They can take [the vaccines] as an option, but we’ve got to stop this mandatory vaccination. It’s hurting the armed forces. And of course, our enemies see that—the Russians, the Chinese, the cartels. And then [there’s] the wokeism, the teaching of critical race theory. So there are a lot of things going on that are affecting the status and the readiness of our forces right now. I’m very worried about that.”
According to U.S. Army Public Affairs, 97 percent of the active army and 88 percent of the army reserve is completely vaccinated. It also states that 2,846 exemption requests have been refused and there have been 3,330 official reprimands, as of April 13. However, an anonymous whistleblower told The Defender that the actual vaccination rates may be significantly lower.
The Army had separated 669 soldiers “for refusing the lawful order to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” as of May 19.
Vallely served for 31 years in the U.S. Army and retired in 1992 as the deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has over 15 years of experience in special operations, psychological operations, and civil-military operations.
He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and earned his commission in the Army in 1961, at the height of the Vietnam war.
After serving two combat tours in Vietnam, Vallely also served in several other overseas theaters in Europe and Pacific Rim countries. Vallely also served on U.S. security assistance missions and civilian–military relations tours all over the world.
Paul E. Vallely MG U.S. Army (Ret). (Courtesy of Paul E. Vallely)
Time Spent on CRT and Communist Ideology Could Be Used for Gun Training
“I think the Russians and the cartels and the Chinese, they’re letting us destroy ourselves from within. They don’t have to even do anything. It’s self-destruction within our own government. They see that, and of course, that makes us very, very vulnerable when we have critical race theory and ideology and what we call indoctrination, rather than putting forth the training and education that has to go on within our military,” Vallely said.
He believes that there “absolutely” is an agenda to transform the republic, that the country is being dismantled from within, and that a socialist takeover has already made substantial progress.
“When you take away to teach a critical race theory and communist ideology, you’re taking away from the time that could be used for learning how to shoot better, how to operate airplanes better, take care of airplanes through maintenance; and even within the medical corps of the armed forces, it has affected many the doctors and nurses. So it’s a terrible thing. They need to stop it right now. They need to stop enforcing the mandates,” he stated.
“This is terrible tyranny that’s going on.”
How to Stop a Communist Takeover
Despite the gloomy prospects, Vallely keeps a positive spirit and thinks that if the country is to be preserved, Americans need to awaken and act, starting at the local level—and quickly turn the tides before it’s too late.
“We have to have the sheriffs and the governors enforcing the 10th Amendment. We need to have that happen. I’m not sure that the elections are going to be fair in November.
“People have to stand up before we are led into a really bloody civil war. And that’s what it’s looking like.”
Vallely further asserted that there are “high-tech oligarchs” that, behind the scenes, want to “change the direction of this country, and they’re doing it. They’re dismantling this country. They don’t believe in our Constitution, for example they don’t care about the First Amendment or Second Amendment. They want to completely dominate the society culturally.”
“2022 is the awakening of America. We need to wake up to see what’s happening to our country and to our government—the demolishing of our Constitution, increased burglaries, crime, and deaths within our cities. We got to enforce the law. These are all things that are on the table that must be done to turn the country around. If not, we’ll be destroyed,” Vallely concluded.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reportedly admitted to a senior European politician that the virus that causes COVID-19 most likely came out of a Wuhan lab. The Daily Mail reports that Tedros made the admission citing a catastrophic lab accident.
The disclosure comes on the heels of a WHO investigative report that was published earlier this month, concluding that the pandemic may have started at a Wuhan lab and that Chinese authorities have been blocking access to crucial data.
At the same time, Jeffrey Sachs, leader of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19, now says that he is convinced that the pandemic started in a lab and that SARS-CoV-2 was created with the aid of U.S. biotechnology.
Sachs made his stunning admission last week at a conference in Spain where he had been invited by former Spanish prime minister José Luís Zapatero.
The admissions from two of the world’s most prominent COVID-19 authorities, who also happen to be establishment stalwarts with a record of appeasing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is a significant development in the search for the origin of the pandemic.
Early in 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to unfold, Xiao Botao, a whistleblower from China, published an article claiming that the virus had come out of a Wuhan lab. The whistleblower’s paper was quickly removed from the internet and an all-hands-on-deck effort to scrub and censor the idea of a lab leak quickly ensued.
Two institutions played a key role in that scrubbing effort. The World Health Organization and esteemed British medical journal The Lancet.
White House Chief Medical Adviser on Covid-19 Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., on Feb. 11, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
WHO chief Tedros and his organization famously pushed CCP propaganda, including lavishly praising Xi Jinping and claiming that the virus did not transmit between humans. Tedros also spearheaded efforts to “combat the spread of rumors and misinformation.” In addition, two separate WHOinvestigations aggressively dismissed the lab leak theory.
For its part, the Lancet published a statement that maligned anyone who deigned to so much as contemplate that the virus might have come out of a lab.
That Lancet statement—which was published before most Americans even knew that there was a pandemic spreading around the globe—was signed by a number of notable leaders in the field of virology and set the tone for the corporate media’s coverage.
It also served as a warning to other scientists and science publications around the globe that lab-leak discussions were off-limits.
Most virological research in the Western world is funded through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci—who was himself instrumental in shutting down any discussion of the lab leak theory—and Jeremy Farrar, the British pharmaceutical trust director who sits on billions of dollars’ worth of grant money and has long-standing ties to China’s CDC head, Gao Fu. Farrar co-authored the Lancet statement.
The Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, is a recipient of the CCP’s Friendship Prize. Before the pandemic, he published a glowing tribute to Xi and the Chinese regime. Horton later went on Chinese state TV where he praised Chinese authorities, impugned Western governments, and asserted that claims that the pandemic might have started in a Wuhan lab were part of a “pandemic of disinformation.”
Horton also set up a commission to investigate “the nature, origin, and prevention of zoonotic diseases.” The focus on zoonosis—or a natural origin—meant that The Lancet had predetermined what the commission was supposed to conclude.
Sachs was appointed as head of the commission while Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance who helped Fauci funnel U.S. taxpayer money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was made a member of the group. It was Daszak’s enormous conflicts of interest, as well as the emergence of new evidence pointing to a lab leak, that led to the eventual disbanding of the Lancet Commission in September 2021.
An exterior view of building one of National Institutes of Health (NIH) inside Bethesda campus, in Bethesda, Md., on Nov. 21, 2020. NIH funds majority of biomedical research in United States. (grandbrothers/Shutterstock)
However, the group did not publicly dismiss the natural origin narrative until last week, when Sachs attended a conference in Madrid where he made his surprising admission:
“I chaired a Commission for the Lancet for two years on COVID. I’m pretty convinced it came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature.”
Sachs’s statement is not only hugely significant because of his role as chairman of the Lancet Commission but also—and perhaps even more so—because of his admission that U.S. biotechnology was used to create SARS-CoV-2.
We have known for some time about the cooperation between the so-called godfather of gain-of-function experiments, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli. In fact, it was the disclosure of that collaboration in a Jan. 31, 2020, article in Science magazine that led Fauci’s team to scramble to cover up the NIAID’s involvement with, and funding of, Shi’s lab.
Baric and Shi’s collaboration traces back to 2015 when they created a modified coronavirus that was not only uniquely able to latch on to human cells but also able to efficiently replicate in human lungs. While the virus they created was not SARS-CoV-2, the virus did have the attributes that we would later find in SARS-CoV-2.
Their collaboration proved that Shi had gained the technical know-how to do the kinds of experiments that might have resulted in COVID-19. Baric also sent transgenic mice with human lung receptors to Shi’s Wuhan lab. Humanized mice mimic human lung tissue and act as experimental stand-ins for humans. They are used to test whether newly created viruses can replicate and spread quickly among humans.
It is not a big leap to go from infected lab mice to infected lab workers. This is even more evident when one considers that the Wuhan lab conducted its coronavirus research under biosafety level two conditions, which even Baric acknowledged as dangerous, stating that there is much less oversight and that lab-acquired infections occur much more frequently at biosafety level two than at higher levels.
After the pandemic started, Chinese authorities directed their labs to shift coronavirus work to biosafety level three labs.
An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei Province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
But even that might not offer sufficient protection against a biosafety accident. Late last year, a lab worker in Taiwan contracted COVID-19 from handling infected lab animals in a biosafety level three lab.
To underscore how significant Sachs’s sudden shift is, he has also co-authored a paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calling for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that would reveal the origin of the pandemic.
While it is correct that Chinese authorities have been concealing crucial data from the Wuhan lab, as well as data on early patients, many of the answers to the pandemic’s origins are held in the United States by organizations such as Fauci’s NIH and NIAID, by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, by Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and by Baric’s lab, which provided the Wuhan lab with biotechnology.
Sachs’s observations further highlight the significance of the highly unusual furin cleavage site, the part of SARS-CoV-2 that makes it so virulent. It has been known since the start of the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 is the only coronavirus of its kind that has a furin cleavage site. But Sachs now goes further, pointing out that the critical amino acid sequence of SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site insertion happens to be identical to one that is present in the human body, strongly suggesting that it was deliberately inserted into a SARS-like virus.
Lastly, Sachs is also raising the issue of the 2018 partnership agreement between the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Daszak’s EcoHealth, and Baric that had the specific goal of inserting such furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses.
It has always strained credulity that a bat virus traversed all of China without leaving a trace only to suddenly erupt on the doorsteps of a lab that was known to have been creating COVID-like viruses. Sachs and Tedros appear to have come to the same conclusion.
The fact that the two institutions at the center of efforts to aggressively push the natural origin narrative have now changed course will give considerable momentum to finally get to the bottom of what really happened at the Wuhan lab. It also—very belatedly—vindicates Xiao Botao who, at great personal risk, tried to tell the world where the virus came from.
According to a new report that just came from the government watchdog agency responsible for overseeing the NIH, it turns out that nearly three-quarters of the scientists and researchers who accept NIH grant money—meaning, people who receive NIH tax-payer funding to conduct research—fail to properly report their ties to foreign countries and companies.
Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector-General’s office found that approximately 69 percent of the people who receive NIH research grants don’t properly report all of their ties to foreign entities—specifically, the Chinese Communist Party.
Furthermore, this same lack of transparency also applies here at home. According to another report from Open the Books, it turns out that in a 10-year time span, government scientists—like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and so on—received somewhere between $350 million to $400 million in royalty payments.
But the disclosure documents are so redacted that we don’t know which company is paying how much money to which scientist and for which patent.
In a stirring and spot-on campaign email, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis declares war on the Far Left calling it a “Radical Vigilante Woke Mob.”
While I’ve seen my share of them over the years and sent out a few myself, campaign fundraising emails are notorious for appealing to the hard-core base of both parties.
So, most of them are taken with a grain of salt by political observers.
However, the email I just received from the DeSantis re-election campaign really hit home. It accurately defined and summarized the aggressive domestic threat posed by the extreme Left to our nation’s very core:
Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.
This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.
A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.
We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”
DeSantis omitted the LGBTQ brainwashing of our young children and the collusion of major woke companies like Disney in doing so, but he has been at the forefront of battling both these evils in Florida.
The DeSantis campaign continues, noting something that impacted me directly on the huge social media platform LinkedIn: “We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.”
And of course, the last piece of the massive leftist effort: “We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.”
Referring to himself as the “Governor of the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis then goes on to make his pitch for how he will fight this grave threat to America, at least in Florida, with “faith, with reason, and with freedom.”
And of course, he asks for our financial support.
In my view, this email accurately and effectively summarizes the threat we face from the extreme Left in America today. DeSantis is on the front lines of this battle in Florida, but he also seems to be preparing to take the fight nationally as well.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
The Democrat-controlled House is set to pass a bill Wednesday that bans the Biden administration from funding crack pipe distribution through mental health and substance abuse programs.
The Democrat-sponsored bill, which reauthorizes several mental health programs that were set to expire this year, includes a measure that ensures the federal funds are not used to “purchase, procure, or distribute pipes or cylindrical objects intended to be used to smoke or inhale illegal scheduled substances.” This language appears to cover crack pipes and meth pipes—drug paraphernalia the Biden administration was poised to fund through its $30 million harm reduction program, the Washington Free Beaconreportedearlier this year.
The bill, which passed unanimously out of committee, specifically bars the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration—the same agency that oversees the White House’s controversial harm reduction program—from using funds allocated for substance abuse and mental health programs to fund crack pipe distribution. It is scheduled to get a vote on the House floor on Wednesday afternoon.
It is unclear why Democrats believe it is necessary to ban funding for the drug paraphernalia, given resident Joe Biden’s denial that his administration ever had plans to fund crack pipe distribution. The White House said the agency would not fund “smoking kits” that contain crack pipes, so the measure may suggest the president’s congressional allies doubt the administration’s claims. Following the Free Beacon report, Republicans introduced several bills to ensure federal funds do not go toward crack pipes but were unable to advance legislation.
The New York Times reported that the “uproar” over crack pipes “derailed” the Biden administration’s drug policy. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration later listed a notice at the top of its harm reduction grant webpage that states, “No federal funding is used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to purchase pipes in safer smoking kits.”
Harm reduction organizations across the country aim to make drug use safer for abusers, rather than rehabilitating those abusers. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R., N.D.), a member of the committee that passed the bill, said the provision distances Congress from the Biden administration’s radical approach to drug policy.
“Stopping the Biden administration from using taxpayer dollars to buy crack pipes is a win for those of us working on commonsense criminal justice reform,” Armstrong told the Free Beacon. “Handing them out did nothing to make our communities safer or help people struggling with addiction and mental health.”
Syringe exchange programs are supported by a majority of state governments, but smoking kits are a less common approach to harm reduction. Crack pipe distribution efforts are prominent in deep-blue cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, and Baltimore.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), who as the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sponsored the bill, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act of 2022 will also reauthorize programs for mental disorder screenings, suicide prevention, and mental health awareness for children.
Facebook – a platform that routinely censors posts critical of COVID-19 vaccines – has hired several alumni from Pfizer’s marketing and internal audit teams to lead similar efforts at the social media platform, The National Pulse can reveal.
The hires appear to present a conflict of interest for the social media platform, which has come under fire for censoring and banning users who’ve posted about the side effects or questioned the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
Facebook’s Internal Audit Director, for example, was formerly a Senior Director at Pfizer. The employee – Tiffany Stokes – has held the influential position at Facebook since January 2020.
“Build and own strong relationships with critical business partners, provide project oversight of operational audits, manage internal audit plan and risk assessment,” she lists as part of her job description on her LinkedIn profile. “Leadership requires close collaboration with the Sales, Partnerships, Global Operations, International, HR, and Legal teams to assess and prioritize risks across an ever-changing high-tech business landscape,” she adds.
Prior to joining Facebook, Stokes worked at COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer for five years as the Senior Director of its finance and legal operations.
“Established and managed legal, budgeting, and forecasting processes to achieve the business’s financial goals as well as cost control commitments made to shareholders and the financial and investment community,” she summarized her position.
Prior to serving in this role, which she also notes required her to “adjust financial forecasts based on fluctuating costs, prioritization of legal matters, and impending legal issues,” she worked as the pharmaceutical giant’s Assistant Treasurer for the U.S. and Capital Markets, where she “directed” the company’s $8 billion investment portfolio.
The National Pulse can also reveal that a Facebook Vice President for Global Clients and Categories was formerly Pfizer’s Chief Marketing Officer for consumer healthcare in the U.S. The employee, Brian Groves, worked at Pfizer for a total of 14 years before joining Facebook as a Director of its Global Accounts.
Similarly, a former Director for Digital Marketing and Innovation at Pfizer joined Facebook as a Client Partner for its Global Marketing Solutions branch in 2018.
In addition to Facebook hiring Pfizer marketing team alumni, the platform also added Pfizer’s former Senior Public Affairs and Corporate Communications Project Manager as its own Corporate Communications Manager in 2019.
The unearthed personnel links between Pfizer and Facebook follow the social media platform deploying its third-party “fact-checkers” – who have deep ties to Democratic politics and the Chinese Communist Party – to brand COVID-19 studies and articles at odds with mainstream narrative as “disinformation.”
Australians are still suffering from the trauma of government health mandates.
In the wake of Australia’s “zero COVID” policy, which boasts 95 percent of all citizens over 16 vaccinated and some of the world’s strictest lockdowns, Scott Morrison’s government was swept out of power in May. Yet broken businesses and people’s wrecked health struggle to recover.
Some fear they may never recover.
Ask Liz Mann, who was vaccinated and says she hasn’t been the same since. Mann, 50, who works in agriculture and runs a farm in northern Victoria, wasn’t an anti-vaxxer — she had her yellow fever, Hep-A, and other shots — but decided to pass on the corona vaccine. She had COVID already, she reckons, having suffered prolonged flu-like symptoms in January 2020. So she’d have immunity. With her health history of chronic fatigue, a UK study found, she had a 27 percent chance of a “severe reaction” to Pfizer’s vaccine. On those accounts, she ought to’ve been exempt.
None of that mattered.
(Courtesy of Liz Mann)
Per Victoria’s mandate, to work, she’d have to roll up her sleeve. Delaying the inevitable, she tried working remotely from home for two weeks and took another two weeks off, but the mandates loomed. So, she caved, visited the drive-through clinic in Murchison, got the jab, and was told to park and wait 15 minutes in case of aftereffects before driving home.
Her reaction was instantaneous.
“I wound down the window feeling like I was going to black out, I honked the horn, turned around and looked at the doctor out my rear vision mirror,” she told The Epoch Times. “And then I just dropped the seat because I was about to black out.” Medical staff at the clinic checked her blood pressure and it was “160 over 100,” she said, adding that she’s “normally low blood pressure.” “I had trouble standing up at that point,” she recalled, and told how chest pains followed. “Within about three hours, it felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.”
Doctors at the clinic watched on, arms crossed over their chests, and made remarks as she lay outside. “‘Well, wonder what will happen when she has her second vaccine,’ and I said, ‘I’m not having it,’” Liz recalled. “And they had a bit of a laugh and said, ‘We’ll see about that.’ I was pretty disgusted actually.”
We contacted Murchison Medical Clinic for comment, but they were unable to respond before publishing.
(Illustrations – Boyloso/Shutterstock)
Mann’s condition showed little improvement in the days and weeks following. She remained lethargic, was bedridden for weeks on end, and was unable to perform daily tasks maintaining the farm. When a tree fell onto a fence and she had to use a chainsaw, the physical strain spurred chest pains, which extended to her face, and she had to call an ambulance. Within two weeks of the jab, other symptoms, including rashes, spontaneous bruising, and a black eye, appeared. On day 41, one side of her face drooped, and she experienced “stroke-like symptoms.”
Despite all this, Mann couldn’t get a medical exemption for her impending second jab — unlike what one would expect with side effects from other drugs like penicillin. Meanwhile, her job demanded it. She refused. They terminated her contract, but the letter they sent made no mention of vaccine stipulations.
The point was moot anyway; she couldn’t work. Her health bottomed out.
Mann did eventually get a medical exemption after eight weeks, but couldn’t work at the level she once did. Any physical activity, such as tending to her livestock, brought on pain in her chest and face, with some days being lost entirely to poor health.
Adding insult to injury, when Mann was granted a public records request, she saw her doctor had written that she had “psychological issues,” placing the blame on “anxiety.” She also found a discrepancy: Her doctors had put in a claim for two doses (was it a double?) while her immunization history showed none.
(Courtesy of Liz Mann)(Courtesy of Liz Mann)Liz Mann’s medical record request yielded doctors’ notes that she had “psychological issues.” (Courtesy of Liz Mann)
Yet Mann is lucky in some respects. With her situation, having multiple jobs and the ability to work remotely or outside Victoria, where restrictions are less strict, she can earn a living. Not everyone’s so lucky.
Nevertheless, if the election proves anything, it’s that while Australians who’ve suffered due to health mandates struggle to reclaim their lost health and livelihoods, their collective faith in the medical industry and government may be beyond repair.
“I don’t trust them anymore. I never want to see another GP in my whole life,” said Mann, adding that, even while awaiting her exemption, all the doctors wanted to do “was to put the next vaccine in [her].” It’s not exactly lucid what lies behind the curtain of absurdities. She posits it’s “very much about control.”
There were medical professionals who were forthcoming in varying degrees. Doctors admitted Mann’s adverse reactions were due to the vaccine, yet referrals to specialists were few and excuses many: “Chest pain is nothing to worry about.” A nurse did look her in the eye and prod her to speak up — even though many in society aren’t open to it.
She did just that.
“I’m not afraid to speak out. I have lost friends over this,” said Mann. “People don’t want to know about this, and it annoys me when you hear from mainstream media about stories of long COVID, but ‘vaccine side effects’ is a dirty [term] that nobody wants to hear.”
In hindsight, faced with that ultimatum again — the jab or no job — would Mann choose differently? “I would have said, ‘I don’t want the job,’ and walked away at that point and had my health,” she said. “I lost the job anyway, so it would have been the same as what happened. But I would have had my health.”
Having two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine has been linked with negative protection against symptomatic infection with the disease, scientists say, while a previous infection without vaccination offers around 50 percent immunity, according to a study analyzing the Omicron wave in Qatar.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 15, examined the Omicron wave in Qatar that occurred from around December 2021 to February 2022, comparing vaccination rates and immunity among more than 100,000 Omicron infected and non-infected individuals.
The authors of the study found that those who had a prior infection but no vaccination had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the Omicron variant, even at an interval of more than 300 days since the previous infection.
However, individuals who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine but had no previous infection, were found with negative immunity against both BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron subvariants, indicating an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 than an average person.
Over six months after getting two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -3.4 percent.
But for two doses of the Moderna vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -10.3 percent after more than six months since the last injection.
Though the authors reported that three doses of the Pfizer vaccine increased immunity to over 50 percent, this was measured just over 40 days after the third vaccination, which is a very short interval. In comparison, natural immunity persisted at around 50 percent when measured over 300 days after the previous infection, while immunity levels fell to negative figures 270 days after the second dose of vaccine.
These figures indicate a risk of waning immunity for the third vaccine dose as time progresses.
The findings are supported by another recent study from Israel that also found natural immunity waned significantly more slowly compared to artificial, or vaccinated, immunity.
The study found that both natural and artificial immunity waned over time.
Individuals that were previously infected but not vaccinated had half the risks of reinfection as compared to those that were vaccinated with two doses but not infected.
“Natural immunity wins again,” Dr. Martin Adel Makary, a public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter, referring to the Israeli study.
“Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased,” the authors concluded, “however, this protection was higher” than protection conferred in the same time interval through two doses of the vaccine.
Columnist Naomi Wolf, author of “The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human,” asserts that after two years of pandemic policies, people in free societies are behaving more like those in authoritarian societies.
Wolf maintains that America is now less free, and becoming almost unrecognizable.
“A handful of bad actors” including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Big Tech, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) used the pandemic to “exploit the crisis in such a way as to reengineer our free democratic open societies, especially in the West, especially in the United States, into a post-free society, a post-humane society,” said Wolf during a recent interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
The Biden administration in April extended the 2-year-old coronavirus public health emergency for another 90 days.
Wolf said, based on history, the ongoing lockdowns and extension of the public health emergency indicate society is in the last phase of a tyrannical takeover, because with emergency powers, laws protecting liberty can be suspended.
According to Wolf, there are 10 steps every tyrannical government has followed. We are now at step 10, said Wolf. Some of the other steps include demonizing whistleblowers and critics, calling dissent “treason,” “espionage,” or “subversion,” and controlling the media narrative.
During the last two years of lockdowns and mandates, Big Tech and the elites have profited while the average Americans have seen the American Dream slowly “closing” on them, she said.
“And so often, when a democracy is dying, or a regime is turning the screws on freedoms to create an established new form of tyranny, it happens intentionally in a very incremental way,” said Wolf. “And you really see this from 1930 to 1933 in Germany.”
She said humanity is witnessing the formation of a two-tier society of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, in which people who would never discriminate against others based on categories of race and sex are now discriminating against the unvaccinated.
“Suddenly, they’re happily embracing a discrimination society in which some people are cast as clean and valuable members of society and other people are ostracized and marginalized and ‘othered’ and described as sort of dirty and causing infection to others,” said Wolf.
She argues that big tech companies had an active role in creating these perceptions and in “shaping legislation and certainly in presenting the drama of COVID and lockdowns to us, and then the vaccine rollout, in such a way as to change human behavior and to change human society,” said Wolf.
Wolf cited the emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing Facebook’s role in getting the right public health “messages out” during the lockdowns.
Mark Zuckerberg (L) and Dr. Anthony Fauci. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images; Greg Nash/Getty Images)
People had no choice but to rely on tech platforms while they were locked down, and Big Tech used that to manipulate the public, said Wolf.
“What I do trace in the book is how there was a vast profit that tech companies made by suppressing human assembly, by helping to message that it was unsafe or unlawful to gather in person,” she said. “And when you understand that big tech companies are competing with human beings gathering in human spaces, you understand why there was a vested interest in suppressing human assembly.”
Wolf thinks big tech companies will not stop at just harvesting data on the computer, but that they want to dominate peoples’ bodily autonomy with vaccine passports.
“What these companies want more than anything is to leave the parameters of your computer and to colonize other currently non-colonized spaces, notably the human body,” said Wolf.
This would give these companies and governments the ability to switch off peoples’ access to commerce, travel, and other goods and services if they did not comply with a particular mandate, Wolf added.
Some forms of digital tracking and surveilling are already here in the United States, she said.
“You’re now expected to swipe these QR codes just to see the menu, or just to get in. And the QR code uploads your data to a central database,” she said, adding that she’s seen the software “that maps the relationships of everyone sitting at that table, and then builds databases and networks of relationships.”
This illustration photo shows a person looking at the app for the New York State Excelsior Pass, which provides digital proof of a Covid-19 vaccination, in Los Angeles on April 6, 2021 (Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images)
Wolf said that on a scale of one to 10 on the Chinese social credit system, the United States is currently at a three.
“There’s a change that’s happened in American cities in the last two years,” she said.
Because most people around the world, particularly in U.S. cities, use digital apps to travel, do banking, and shop, a digital social credit system similar to China’s is imminent, she said.
Our data is being harvested and used by the “global technocratic elite” to control human behavior, said Wolf.
“We’ve assumed that the worst it can be is data are harvested from us with everything that we choose to do using our free will as human beings,” said Wolf.
“But what I’ve seen is that digital technology has its own logic, and it isn’t restricted by what human beings want to do. So once digital platforms and their oligarchical masters can figure out how to change people’s behavior to suit technology, there’s nothing, moral or ethical, that will keep them from changing people’s behavior to suit their technology, and to suit their business plans,” she added.
The pandemic has revealed how this type of digital control is playing out, because humans, before the prevalence of digital technology, did not choose to “socially distance” to fight pandemics, said Wolf.
“The dream of our digital overlords is for technology to tell humans what to do, and that’s exactly where we’re at,” said Wolf.
While some people might label her a conspiracy theorist, her opinions are based on a long career as a journalist, political consultant, and now tech CEO, Wolf said. Furthermore, she has witnessed firsthand the powerful elites making historical decisions under the radar, she said.
Wolf was well acquainted with this group of powerful people until recently when she was ejected from their circles for writing oppositional pieces on lockdowns.
“But it’s really true that the global technocratic elite have more in common with each other than they do with their fellow Germans or Americans or Russians or Chinese, and they now are able to align above the level of nation-states,” she said.
The panel ‘Leaders for Europe’s Digital Decade’ at the 2022 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on May 25, 2022. The yearly meeting takes place from May 22 to 26 with heads of governments and economic leaders. (Eric Lalmand/AFP via Getty Images)
For example, one of the WEF’s goals is to make nation-level decision-making less and less important, and the World Health Organization’s goal is to make public health decisions on a global scale, bypassing countries’ own authorities via the pandemic treaty, said Wolf.
“These technocratic elites really do believe that they can order the world better than you and I and that they have the right to,” she said. “That’s really scary.”
Little by little, humanity’s tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism has grown.
“The war wasn’t just on us as a political entity, the war was on American culture, and is on American culture,” she said. “And they’ve succeeded largely, unless we wake up, because we were a kind, decent, inclusive culture that respected other people’s boundaries and freedoms. … And now a CCP-style cruelty is something that we tolerate.”
What people believe is largely determined by the news they consume, said Wolf, and many people only watch news outlets that give a skewed picture of pandemic treatments and policies, largely funded by wealthy people like Bill Gates.
“I do trace in ‘The Bodies of Others’ how millions of dollars flowed and are flowing from entities like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the BBC and the Guardian and NPR and other formerly very credible, objective news outlets.”
Because most people get slanted news coverage, the country is more divided and many people on the left refuse to consider any other narrative or look at primary source documents, because they believe only government sources are giving them “scientific” information, said Wolf.
This skewed messaging has been able to convince people that the mandates and lockdowns are more American and important than liberty or critical thinking.
Wolf said the most brilliant aspect of the pandemic messaging was that it was framed altruistically.
“You know, ‘You’ve got to exclude those people for the good of the community,’ or ‘You’ve got to mask yourself and your child to save your child,’” said Wolf. “This really brilliantly upended American culture because it cast freedom as selfish.”
Now that those in power have effectively conditioned people to be fearful and submissive, they can keep reinstituting emergency powers, she argued.
“That’s what emergency law means,” she said. “They can do whatever they want, basically. It’s a weaponization of boards of health, it’s a weaponization of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [Department of Health and Human Services].”
Wolf said although the situation is dire, people can do something to push back against this tyranny by being informed about what is really going on in the country, assembling in groups, and getting involved politically on the local level.
As it stands now, “I will say that each side is being fed narratives and stereotypes about the other that would persuade each side that the other is absolutely insane and dangerous, dangerously insane,” said Wolf.
“I get that conservatives think, ‘liberals don’t know what a woman is.’ That is not actually literally true, and liberals think ‘conservatives all want to torch our democratic processes, storm the Capitol, and are misogynist, racist thugs who are trigger happy,” said Wolf.
The last two years have conditioned people to fear each other and so the conversations that would have normally occurred when people gathered are not happening and keeping the country divided, said Wolf. She said she will gladly talk to people on the right.
Communist Party cadres hang a placard on the neck of a Chinese man during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The words on the placard state the man’s name and accuse him of being a member of the “black class.” (Public Domain)
“People I love think I’m doing something wrong in even talking to conservatives and libertarians. That’s very dangerous. The left, especially, has decided that you’re morally complicit if you have a conversation across the aisle,” Wolf said. “That is censorship, that is cancel culture, that’s un-American, that is an importation from Communism.”
She urges people to remember what makes America unique and a beacon to other nations: to remember we are the great experiment where neighbors talked to each other, listened, and didn’t “rat” each other out if they did not agree with each other, Wolf said.
More than 50,000 residents left San Francisco last year, the highest population decrease of any major U.S. city.
Between July 2020 and July 2021, 54,813 people exited the Bay Area—a 6.3 percent decline resulting in San Francisco’s smallest population in a decade. High housing costs, rising crime, and rampant public vagrancy likely fueled the exodus, as residents have soured on the Golden City’s liberal leadership.
Voters in a June recall election ousted radical prosecutor Chesa Boudin for his soft-on-crime approach. Two-thirds of Asian Americans opposed Boudin, spurred on by his failure to quell attacks against seniors in their communities.
Driven by worries over public safety, a majority of Bay Area voters disapprove of Democratic mayor London Breed, according to a June San Francisco Examinerpoll. Breed slashed the city’s police budget by $120 million in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death but reversed course 18 months later, making an emergency request to beef up law enforcement funding as crime soared.
The homicide rate in San Francisco has shot up 37 percent in the past two years. A retail theft wave garnered national attention last year, following California’s move to lessen penalties for shoplifting. Seventy percent of San Franciscans think their quality of life has declined, and 88 percent believe homelessness has worsened in recent years.
Rising housing costs are another major factor being cited for the decline. Some blame the zoning policies of the liberal city for inflating the cost of living, exacerbating homelessness.
Other liberal-run, large cities grappling with crime and homelessness have seen substantial declines in population as well. The 15 fastest-growing U.S. cities sit in states run by Republican governors. And some San Francisco-based companies are fleeing California for red states.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) said the White House and media outlets lied about Florida’s health policies when they claimed he “reversed course” by permitting health care providers to order COVID-19 vaccines for children under the age of five.
“Not surprised the White House would lie, definitely not surprised that legacy media would amplify the lie because that’s what they do,” DeSantis said during a Monday news conference.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday said that after “repeated failures” to order vaccines, DeSantis “reversed course” and decided to allow health care providers to order the shots for children between six months old and five. But Florida surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo said the state has always allowed providers to place orders for vaccines. DeSantis said Thursday that Florida discourages COVID vaccination for young children and would not place orders for the vaccine to be distributed to them, but the state would not block providers from acquiring it themselves.
“Doctors can get it. Hospitals can get it. But there’s not going to be any state programs that are going to be trying to get COVID jabs to infants and toddlers and newborns,” DeSantis said. “That’s not where we’re going to be utilizing our resources.”
Florida is the only state in the country that did not place advance orders for the pediatric vaccines, a position media outlets including Forbes, CBS News, and McClatchy DC claimed DeSantis reversed after Jean-Pierre’s comments on Friday. DeSantis’s approach to infant vaccination mirrors that of Scandinavian countries including Sweden, which decided not to recommend vaccinating children under 11 due to the “low risk for serious disease for kids,” and Denmark and Norway, which do not offer vaccines to children under five.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines for children five and younger on Friday, but only 18 percent of parents are eager for their child under five to receive the vaccine, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed. Less than a third of children ages 5-11 have received the vaccine since it became available to them in November.
A White House official made a false claim on June 20 about COVID-19 vaccines while encouraging parents to get their young children vaccinated.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, said that “there have not been any serious side effects of these vaccines.”
Contrary to Jha’s claim, severe allergic reactions, blood clotting, heart inflammation, and paralysis are among the serious side effects linked to the three COVID-19 vaccines that are available in the United States.
“There is a well-documented risk of myocarditis from the COVID vaccine, especially in young men and adolescent boys, and an elevated risk of clotting in young women with the Moderna vaccine,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“It’s not right for government scientific advisers to downplay documented risks of the vaccine because it ultimately undermines confidence in public health.”
White House officials didn’t return a request for comment.
Jha, who recently took a post with the Biden administration and is on a break from being dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, was on a media tour on June 20 promoting COVID-19 vaccination for children younger than 5.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for young children last week, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that virtually every child who’s now eligible get one of the vaccines.
Jha said the steps happened because the data on the vaccines were “quite compellingly clear” and that the vaccines were both safe and effective, even though major questions have arisen about their safety and efficacy.
“It’s really reassuring to know that for young kids, these vaccines are exceedingly safe,” Jha said.
Children in Moderna’s trial were more likely to suffer a severe adverse event after vaccination than after getting a placebo, while more vaccinated volunteers in Pfizer’s trial experienced severe COVID-19 cases when compared to the placebo group.
“The phrase ‘safe and effective’ has become meaningless and can no longer be trusted. It has been hijacked by commercial interests. A more accurate phrase would be ‘buyer beware,’” Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who started a group called Woody Matters, told The Epoch Times in a recent email after reviewing the data from the trials.
Jha also said the vaccines “are doing an extraordinary job at keeping kids out of the hospital.” While that appears to have been the case earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, it may not be now, according to data presented during meetings with the government’s vaccine advisory panels last week.
For example, effectiveness against hospitalization was just 22 percent after 60 days among 12- to 15-year-olds who received Pfizer’s vaccine, according to data from the CDC’s VISION network.
Other studies indicate higher effectiveness, but it’s unclear whether the vaccines are doing an “extraordinary job.” There’s also no clinical evidence that the vaccines will shield against severe COVID-19 cases in young children.
Jha was speaking on CBS and ABC.
All of the experts who advise the government voted in support of the vaccines. But some said parents should know key details, including how the safety and efficacy data were based on small numbers of children.
“I think it’s the right decision today to make these vaccines available for this age group, but I also think it’s important that people understand it’s a small number of children who have received these vaccines, and the safety is not as well established as it is in adolescents and adults,” Dr. Cody Meissner, who advises the FDA on vaccines, said during one of the meetings. “So it’s important to continue to follow the safety profile of these vaccines. I don’t think they should be required for any specific situation.”
On the other hand, others said they think parents should get their children vaccinated, regardless of the child’s health.
“My personal hope [is] that every child in the U.S. seeks and gets vaccinated in the near future,” said Dr. Michael Nelson, another adviser.
Fox Business host Larry Kudlow didn’t hold back on a recent segment of his show and told his audience the full extent of the Biden Administration’s failing economic policies.
In part of the segment, Kudlow gives an insight into the latest Fox News poll numbers which show waning confidence in the President’s ability to lead an economic recovery.
He also refuted a common talking point the left often uses about wealthy individuals and major corporations not paying their fair share of taxes.
Notably, Kudlow actually agreed on a few observations recently made by resident Biden about issues plaguing the nation – before highlighting the fact that Biden’s own policies have led to the problems he wants to solve.
AFTER YEARS OF HIDING IT, THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION IS APPARENTLY ADMITTING THE TRUTH BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.
The director of the World Health Organization privately believes the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a leak from a Chinese laboratory, according to a new report which undermines the publicly stated position of the global health chief.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) – had previously stressed how unlikely the long-derided “lab leak” theory was, despite evidence to the contrary. Now, according to a report from the Daily Mail, Dr. Tedros “confided to a senior European politician that the most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
The quiet admission in support of the “lab leak” theory is especially at odds with the public position of his WHO, whose affiliated scientists have often branded the hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory” and sought to silence the voices of those who claims otherwise.
BOMBSHELL REPORT BY THE MAIL.
The admission also follows the WHO launching a COVID-19 origins investigation that ultimately discredited the “lab leak” theory in favor of a “natural origins” theory. At the time, The National Pulse exclusively revealed that several researchers included on the team retained compromising links to the Chinese Communist Party, most notably EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak. Advisors to the Chinese Communist Party also served on the team.
Daszak and his partners conducted research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology using funds from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci. Using this million-dollar grant, the lab has worked on isolating bat coronavirus strains capable of “direct human infection” and is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
The lab also appears to have engaged in gain-of-function research, which manipulates pathogens to become more lethal and transmissible to humans. The lab has done similar research on other viruses including influenza and monkeypox.
The WHO sponsored a second COVID-19 origins investigation following its botched first attempt, leading Dr. Tedros to publicly admit that “we do not yet have the answers as to where it came from or how it entered the human population” this month.
Tedros himself has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, helping the regime expand its financial and political control over his home country of Ethiopia while serving in government.
Former U.S. President Donald J. Trump attempted to shift away from relying on Tedros, the World Health Organization, and even Anthony Fauci. He was widely ridiculed and maligned at the time, despite the mounting evidence that most of the above actors are now either totally discredited, or have rowed back from their original COVID-19 claims.
Four key House Republicans are questioning a $500 million earmark sought by resident Joe Biden for an international group headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and led in the United States by political appointees of former President Barack Obama.
The $500 million would go to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), which was formed in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and the World Economic Forum (WEF), according to the group’s website.
The website claims that “CEPI’s early coronavirus investments combined with its global focus, multi-sectoral partnerships, and ability to move quickly resulted in 20+ vaccines against COVID-19 and its variants.” The website also quotes Microsoft founder Bill Gates as crediting CEPI with helping “develop COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.”
It’s not clear how CEPI can claim credit for vaccines that were prompted and overseen by the Operation Warp Speed program initiated at the outset of the virus in the United States by then-President Donald Trump in 2020.
Shortly after leaving the Obama administration, Dawn O’Connell, former Counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Obama, became CEPI’s Washington, D.C. Executive Director, according to the House GOPers in a June 16 letter. O’Connell is now back at HHS as Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), a position in which she could be helpful to CEPI.
The signers are Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), the Ranking Member of the House Administration Committee, Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
All four of the GOP signers could become chairs of their respective committees if Republicans retake the House majority in the November congressional elections. Their letter was addressed to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, and Samantha Power, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Acting Administrator.
“President Biden’s FY23 budget calls for a specific allocation to CEPI through no evident bidding process. In addition to the creation of a $4.5 billion Global Health Security and Pandemic Preparedness Fund to contract with international health organizations, the budget request includes a separate $500 million line item for CEPI,” the GOP letter signers wrote.
“This $500 million request for CEPI is significantly larger than the federal government’s previous five-year distribution of $20 million, making the United States the single largest contributor to CEPI,” the letter continued.
“The lack of transparency and justification for this funding increase raises concerns. Furthermore, CEPI’s close ties to the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris Administrations, suggest a revolving door of politically-connected personnel where Administration friends are rewarded with federal dollars,” the letter said.
In addition to moving from HHS to CEPI and then back to HHS, O’Connell, during her four years running the NGO’s Washington office, “lobbied the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in ‘support of appropriations from USAID to CEPI… [and an] Unsolicited Proposal Concept Note… for possible cooperative agreement funding relationship,’” according to the letter, citing federal lobbying records.
The letter further notes that O’Connell has never registered as a foreign lobbyist and that “CEPI’s current Director of the U.S. office is Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as ASPR under the Obama Administration.”
A spokesman for CEPI did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment. A spokesman for O’Connell did not reply after asking The Epoch Times for written questions and being given these queries:
Why did she not register as a foreign agent during her tenure in CEPI’s Washington, D.C. office as required by the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) statute, given her employment and lobbying activities targeting USAID?
Has she recused herself as ASPR from any decision-making process, both formally and informally, at HHS that potentially could result in federal dollars or other resources being directed to CEPI?
With whom at OMB or elsewhere in the White House has she discussed the proposed $500 million grant to CEPI prior to today?
The four GOP letter signers want to know how the Biden administration can justify a 2,400 percent increase in funding from the federal government’s current $20 million annual contribution to CEPI.
The signers also want to know if any other NGOs were invited to be considered as alternative grant recipients and which federal agencies, offices and individuals were consulted about CEPI during development of the $500 million grant proposal.
In addition, the signers want to know why has “no lobbyist for CEPI ever registered under [FARA], given the primary beneficiaries of such a large infusion of taxpayer dollars will be the foreign governments funding the group’s operations?”
On its website, CEPI describes the CCP Virus that is also known as the COVID-19 as the main reason for its formation for the development and implementation of the NGO’s proposal of a plan it claims can eliminate the prospect of any similar pandemics in the future.
“As COVID-19 has so amply demonstrated, emerging infectious diseases represent an existential threat to our way of life. It was not the first and, unless we take dramatic action, will not be the last pandemic of the 21st century,” according to the CEPI website.
“But unlike some of the other big threats that humanity faces, we have the tools to substantially reduce and even to eliminate the risk of future pandemics. A decade ago such an ambition would have seemed utopian; now, having compressed a decade of technology development into less than 12 months, it is well within our grasp—if we take action,” according to the site.
The site claims that “CEPI has secured financial support from Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, Denmark, the European Commission, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Switzerland, The Republic of Korea, United Kingdom, USAID, and Wellcome.”
“Severely flawed” is a cardiologist’s verdict on a peer-reviewed study funded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggesting possible risks of developing myocarditis and pericarditis after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
The recent FDA study published on June 11, 2022, used health insurance databases to identify myocarditis or pericarditis hospitalizations occurring in people aged 18 to 64 years, 1 to 7 days after a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
The authors found that though only 12 to 14 percent of the studied cohort were 18- to 25-year-olds, 33 to 42 percent of the myocarditis or pericarditis events occurred in people of this age group, suggesting that this age group may be linked with these vaccine adverse events.
“These results do not indicate a statistically significant risk difference between mRNA-1273 (the Moderna vaccine) and BNT162b2 (the Pfizer vaccine), but it should not be ruled out that a difference might exist,” the authors wrote in the study.
However, cardiologist Dr. Sanjay Verma told The Epoch Times that the study “using a 7-day limit for clinical endpoints” for myocarditis or pericarditis events after vaccination was “severely flawed.”
Explaining that spike proteins have been found in blood circulation even four months after injection, “there is no medical justification for a 7- or 21-day cutoff,” he said.
Verma pointed out further issues in the study, stating that it does not include 12- to 17-year-olds, “who are the highest risk cohort.”
The same CDC MMWR report also found that the 12- to 17-year-old cohort has “2 to 3 times increased incidence compared to the 18- to 29-year-old cohort,” the doctor explained.
After the second dose, males aged 12 to 17 years had an incidence of 22.0 to 35.9 myocarditis or pericarditis cases out of 100,000 as compared to males aged 18 to 29 years who had an incidence of 6.5 to 15 cases out of 100,000, demonstrating that teens have a higher risk than adults.
Verma also added that “the study does not account for those who may have died before hospitalization,” who would not be “included in insurance claims database.”
Nonetheless, the cardiologist noted a “tremendous improvement” in the study for using health insurance databases as compared to prior FDA studies that exclusively relied on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which would most likely result in a lower incidence of cases.
“Overall, the findings of the study are interesting, but the above limitations likely yield significant underestimation of the true risk of myocarditis or pericarditis after COVID vaccination.”
“Public safety and ethical post market pharmacovigilance warrants more robust active longitudinal follow-up to ensure informed consent and appropriate risk stratification counseling,” Verma concluded.
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out some uncomfortable truths. The ‘elephant in the room’ is being overlooked by our media, despite the fact it’s directly linked to the rise in mass shootings.
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems
Gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem, because the more gun control laws that have been passed, the more mass shootings have occurred
97.8 percent of mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones,” as the perpetrators know legally armed citizens won’t be there to stop them
Depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings really take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants
Antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are well-known for their ability to cause suicidal and homicidal ideation and violence
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems.
An article written by Molly Carter, initially published on ammo.com at an unknown date1 and subsequently republished by The Libertarian Institute in May 2019,2 and psychreg.org in late January 2021,3 noted:
“According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a mass murder occurs when at least four people are murdered, not including the shooter … during a single incident …
Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs … the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response — they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed ‘solutions’ on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.
Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are NOT the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.
Whether or not this is correlation or causation is debatable. What is not debatable is that this sick phenomenon of mass murderers targeting ‘gun-free zones,’ where they know civilian carry isn’t available to law-abiding Americans, is happening.
According to the Crime Prevention Research Center,4 97.8 percent of public shootings occur in ‘gun-free zones’ – and ‘gun-free zones’ are the epitome of the core philosophical tenet of gun control, that laws are all the defense one needs against violence …
This debate leads them away from the elephant in the room and one of the real issues behind mass shootings — mental health and prescription drugs.
Ignoring what’s going on in the heads of these psychopaths not only allows mass shootings to continue, it leads to misguided gun control laws that violate the Second Amendment and negate the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens.
As Jeff Snyder put it in The Washington Times: ‘But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.’”
The Elephant in the Room: Antidepressants
Thoughts, emotions and a variety of environmental factors play into the manifestation of violence, but mental illness by itself cannot account for the massive rise in mass murder — unless you include antidepressants in the equation. Yet even when mental health does enter the mass shooter discussion, the issue of antidepressants, specifically, is rarely mentioned.
The fact is, depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants.
Prozac, released in 1987, was the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) to be approved for depression and anxiety. Only two years earlier, direct-to-consumer advertising had been legalized. In the mid-1990s, the Food and Drug Administration loosened regulations, direct-to-consumer ads for SSRIs exploded and, with it, prescriptions for SSRIs.
In 1989, just two years after Prozac came to market, Joseph Wesbecker shot 20 of his coworkers, killing nine. He had been on Prozac for one month, and the survivors of the drug-induced attack sued Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac. Since then, antidepressant use and mass shootings have both risen, more or less in tandem.
In the two decades between 1988 and 2008, antidepressant use in the U.S. rose by 400 percent,5 and by 2010, 11 percent of the U.S. population over the age of 12 were on an antidepressant prescription.6
In 1982, pre-Prozac, there was one mass shooting in the U.S.7 In 1984, there were two incidents and in 1986 — the year Prozac was released — there was one. One to three mass shootings per year remained the norm up until 1999, when it jumped to five.
How can we possibly ignore the connection between rampant use of drugs known to directly cause violent behavior and the rise in mass shootings?
Another jump took place in 2012, when there were seven mass shootings. And while the annual count has gone up and down from year to year, there’s been a clear trend of an increased number of mass shootings post-2012. Over time, mass shootings have also gotten larger, with more people getting injured or killed per incident.
How can we possibly ignore the connection between rampant use of drugs known to directly cause violent behavior and the rise in mass shootings? Suicidal ideation, violence and homicidal ideation are all known side effects of these drugs. Sometimes, the drugs disrupt brain function so dramatically the perpetrator can’t even remember what they did.
For example, in 2001, a 16-year-old high schooler was prescribed Effexor, starting off at 40 milligrams and moving up to 300 mg over the course of three weeks. On the first day of taking a 300-mg dose, the boy woke up with a headache, decided to skip school and went back to bed.
Some time later, he got up, took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage at gunpoint. He later claimed he had no recollection of anything that happened after he went back to bed that morning.9
In one review of 484 drugs in the FDA’s database, 31 were found to account for 78.8 percent of all cases of violence against others, and 11 of those drugs were antidepressants. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The Risks Are Clear
The risks of psychiatric disturbances are so clear, ever since mid-October 2004, all antidepressants in the U.S. must include a black box warning that the drug can cause suicidal thoughts and behaviors, especially in those younger than 25, and that:10
“Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility (aggressiveness), impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric.”
SSRIs can also cause emotional blunting and detachment, such that patients report “not feeling” or “not caring” about anything or anyone, as well as psychosis and hallucinations. All of these side effects can contribute to someone acting out an unthinkable violent crime.
In one review11,12 of 484 drugs in the FDA’s database, 31 were found to account for 78.8 percent of all cases of violence against others, and 11 of those drugs were antidepressants.
The researchers concluded that violence against others was a “genuine and serious adverse drug event” and that of the drugs analyzed, SSRI antidepressants and the smoking cessation medication, varenicline (Chantix), had the strongest associations. The top-five most dangerous SSRIs were:13
Fluoxetine (Prozac), which increased aggressive behavior 10.9 times
Paroxetine (Paxil), which increased violent behavior 10.3 times
Fluvoxamine (Luvox), which increased violent behavior 8.4 times
Venlafaxine (Effexor), which increased violent behavior 8.3 times
Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq), which increased violent behavior 7.9 times
Depression Is Vastly Overdiagnosed
In her article, Carter also reviewed the clinical determinants for a diagnosis of clinical depression warranting medication. To qualify, you must experience five or more of the following symptoms, most of the day, every day, for two weeks or more, and the symptoms must be severe enough to interfere with normal everyday functioning:14
Sadness
Feeling hopeless
Feeling helpless
Feeling guilty
Fatigue
Loss of interest in hobbies
Restlessness
Abnormal sleep patterns, whether sleeping too much or not enough
Thoughts of death or suicide
Anxiety
Feeling worthless
Feeling ’empty’
Irritable
Lack of energy
Slow talking and moving
Trouble concentrating
Abnormal weight changes, either eating too much or having no appetite
The reality is that a majority of patients who receive a depression diagnosis and subsequent prescription for an antidepressant do not, in fact, qualify. In one study,15 only 38.4 percent actually met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria, and among older adults, that ratio was even lower. Only 14.3 percent of those aged 65 and older met the diagnostic criteria. According to the authors:16
“Participants who did not meet the 12-month MDE criteria reported less distress and impairment in role functioning and used fewer services. A majority of both groups, however, were prescribed and used psychiatric medications.
Conclusion: Depression overdiagnosis and overtreatment is common in community settings in the USA. There is a need for improved targeting of diagnosis and treatments of depression and other mental disorders in these settings.”
What Role Might War Games Play?
Aside from antidepressants, another factor that gets ignored is the influence of shooting simulations, i.e., violent video games. How does the military train soldiers for war? Through simulations. With the proliferation of video games involving indiscriminate violence, should we really be surprised when this “training” is then put into practice?
As reported by World Bank Blogs, young men who experience violence “often struggle to reintegrate peacefully into their communities” when hostilities end.17 While American youth typically have little experience with real-world war, simulated war games do occupy much of their time and may over time color their everyday perceptions of life. As noted by Centrical, some of the top benefits of simulations training include:18
Allowing you to practice genuine real-life scenarios and responses
Repetition of content, which boosts knowledge retention
Personalization and diversification, so you can learn from your mistakes and evaluate your performance, thereby achieving a deeper level of learning
In short, violent mass shooter games are the perfect training platform for future mass shooters. Whereas a teenager without such exposure might not be very successful at carrying out a mass shooting due to inexperience with weapons and tactics, one who has spent many hours, years even, training in simulations could have knowledge akin to that of military personnel.
Add antidepressant side effects such as emotional blunting and loss of impulse control, and you have a perfect prescription for a mass casualty event.
On top of that, we, as a nation, also demonstrate the “righteousness” of war by engaging in them without end.19 When was the last time the U.S. was not at war someplace? It’s been ongoing for decades.
Even now, the United States insists on inserting itself into the dispute between Russia and Ukraine, and diplomacy isn’t the chosen conflict resolution tool. Sending weapons to Ukraine and calling for more violence against Russians are. Sen. Lindsey Graham has even called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Showing just how serious such a suggestion is, the White House had to publicly disavow it, stating Graham’s comment “is not the position of the U.S. government.”20
Graham, meanwhile, does not appear to understand how his nonchalant call for murder might actually incite murder. In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, he now wants to mobilize retired service members to enhance security at schools, and while that might be a good idea, how about also vowing never to call for the murder of political opponents? Don’t politicians understand that this could translate into some kid thinking it’s acceptable to murder THEIR perceived opponents?
As far as I can tell, mass shootings have far more to do with societal norms, dangerous medications, a lack of high-quality mental health services, and the normalization of violence through entertainment and in politics, than it does with gun laws per se.
There are likely many other factors as well, but these are clearly observable phenomena known to nurture violent behavior. I’m afraid Americans are in need of a far deeper and more introspective analysis of the problem than many are capable of at the moment. But those who can should try, and make an effort to affect much-needed change locally and in their own home.
‘China is the drug he just can’t quit’: GOP Senator slams NIAD head’s remarks
Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was unable to commit to stop federal funding from going to Chinese scientific research, despite the U.S. intelligence community assessing the regime as America’s top adversary.
Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), made the remarks while appearing virtually at the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on June 16, during an exchange with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas).
“The NIH is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020. In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars,” said the senator during the hearing. “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”
Since 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a total of $8.3 million in grants to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and its division National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, along with five top public universities in mainland China and Hong Kong, according to the NIH website.
Although this amount doesn’t capture dollars later funneled to a Chinese institution through a U.S.-based organization, such as New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which had partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to perform coronavirus-related experiments that some experts said fit the definition of gain-of-function research, that is, experiments that increase the pathogenicity or transmissibility of a virus.
Fauci, in response to Marshall’s question, said that the U.S. federal agencies “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”
“So I don’t think I’d be able to tell you that we are going to stop funding Chinese,” Fauci said.
“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he continued, adding that “grants that go to foreign countries, including China, have State Department clearance.”
“Dr. Fauci’s remarks prove that China is the drug he just can’t quit,” Marshall later told The Epoch Times about the NIAID head’s response.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) questions Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at a Senate panel on June 16, 2022. (The Epoch Times via the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee)
“Dr. Fauci told the truth for once after years of repeated dishonesty that has eroded Americans’ trust in our public health institutions. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, our government should know it’s dangerous and wrong to continue funding research projects supported by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The senator, at the hearing, followed up by asking Fauci if he agrees that the American public lacks records and studies from EcoHealth Alliance’s research.
Fauci’s answer was evasive.
“We have access to an extraordinary amount of information that has gone there,” he said, arguing that the publicly available information in the scientific journals is sufficient.
“Obviously none of us know everything that’s going on in China but if the question at hand is the rather small … peer-reviewed high-priority grant that was given from Eco[Health] to China in a sub-award we have a lot of good information that’s in the publishing.”
The NIH gave a total of $3.1 million grant to EcoHealth over the five years from 2014 to 2019. A fifth of that, $599,000, went to the Wuhan lab, in part for identifying and altering bat coronaviruses deemed likely to infect humans, documents obtained by The Intercept show.
Fauci earlier this week tested positive for COVID-19 and joined the Thursday Senate hearing remotely. His response to Marshall omitted reference EcoHealth’s lack of disclosure over some of its research activities, which would have prompted an NIH review over biosafety measures.
In this image from video, Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies to a Senate panel via remotelink on June 16, 2022. (The Epoch Times via the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee)
In one experiment at the Wuhan facility, funded by NIH via EcoHealth, mice infected with a modified version of the original bat coronavirus “became sicker than those infected” with the original version, an “unexpected result” that was not “something that the researchers set out to do,” Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director at the NIH, told lawmakers last October.
He said EcoHealth had violated grant terms by failing to promptly notify the NIH about the finding.
Fauci, at the Thursday hearing, also told Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) that he believes the outbreak of the virus “is very, very likely a jump in species from an animal host,” and less likely to be the result of a lab leak.
“I believe it’s essential to have cooperation and collaboration with the Chinese,” he said when Braun asked him whether he thinks Beijing will cooperate with him to “get to the thorough bottom of” COVID-19 origins.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on June 16 pressed Dr. Anthony Fauci on the royalty payments he’s received while working for the federal government.
Recently disclosed information showed that Fauci was one of hundreds of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to receive royalty payments. Fauci got 23 payments between October 2009 and September 2014, but it is unclear how much money he made.
“Can you tell me that you have not received a royalty from any entity that you ever oversaw the distribution of money in research grants?” Paul asked Fauci. “Have you ever received a royalty payment from a company that you later oversaw money going to that company?”
“I don’t know, as a fact, but I doubt it,” Fauci responded.
“Why don’t you let us know? Why don’t you reveal how much you’ve gotten, and from what entities?” Paul said.
The Epoch Times has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all royalty payments that Fauci has received since becoming head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH, in 1984.
Open the Books received information in May showing that 1,675 NIH scientists received at least one payment during fiscal years 2010 to 2014, and that Fauci received 23 payments during that time.
In this image from video, Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies to a Senate panel via remote link. (The Epoch Times via the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee)
The amount of the payments is unclear “because of how these documents are redacted,” Open the Books said in a fact sheet.
The Associated Press previously found that Fauci received $45,000 between 1997 and 2004 in payments for interleukin-2, an experimental AIDS treatment. Fauci told the outlet at the time that he tried refusing the payments but was told that couldn’t happen, so he donated the money to charity. Fauci also said he tried reporting the payments on financial disclosures mandated for government employees but was told to remove them because they were considered federal compensation as opposed to outside income.
Adam Andrzejewski, founder and president of Open the Books, told The Epoch Times that every royalty payment “could be a conflict of interest” and urged the government to be transparent about the payments.
During Thursday’s hearing, Paul said his efforts to get the information have been stonewalled. “We asked them, the NIH, who got it and how much. They refused to tell us. They sent it redacted.”
Fauci defended the withholding of the information, telling Paul, “According to the regulations, people who have received royalties are not required to divulge them even on their financial statements, according to the Bayh–Dole Act.”
He then read off information he had brought up off-camera, which he said showed that from 2015 to 2020, the only royalties he received were for a monoclonal antibody he made.
“And during that period of time, my royalties range from $21 a year to $700 a year,” Fauci said. “The average per year was $191.46.”
On the 10th anniversary of the implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a law that gives illegal aliens who were brought to America as children immunity from deportation, Arizona’s Democrats are calling for a permanent solution.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of #DACA, Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-03) tweeted. “It’s a reminder that we have a moral obligation to protect Dreamers in AZ and across the nation. We must guarantee certainty for those who have known no other home but this one.”
It’s a reminder that we have a moral obligation to protect Dreamers in AZ and across the nation.
We must guarantee certainty for those who have known no other home but this one. #HomeisHere 1/3— Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) June 15, 2022
DACA recipients are commonly known as “Dreamers.”
“Despite the House’s best efforts, we continue to see xenophobic attacks and inaction,” he said. “The Senate must immediately pass the Dream and Promise Act. Anything less would shamefully neglect our values.”
Grijalva also said that DACA “remains the floor, not the ceiling, when it comes to protecting immigrant communities,” suggesting that Democrats may pursue citizenship for other illegal aliens.
“For the 60,000 DACA recipients who call Arizona home, pursuing their American Dreams by going to college or working has helped grow our state’s economy, culture, and community for the better,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-07) said Wednesday on Twitter. “We owe it to our Dreamers to repair our broken immigration system.”
For the 60,000 DACA recipients who call Arizona home, pursuing their American Dreams by going to college or working has helped grow our state’s economy, culture, and community for the better.
“Ten years ago today, I stood by President Obama as we carried out one of our proudest accomplishments,” Biden said. “On this 10th DACA Anniversary, we celebrate the transformational impact it’s had on hundreds of thousands of young people. It’s time for Congress to make this permanent now.”
Ten years ago today, I stood by President Obama as we carried out one of our proudest accomplishments. On this 10th DACA Anniversary, we celebrate the transformational impact it’s had on hundreds of thousands of young people.
The calls to make the program permanent are being made as the United States sees a record-setting spike in illegal alien crossings at the Southern Border.
In April, more than 234,000 illegal aliens were encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the most in history, as foreigners continue to pour across the open border.
Recent reports suggest that CBP’s morale is virtually non-existent, and that many of its agents harbor contempt for the Biden administration, which has stood by idly amid the crisis.
This article originally appeared in The Arizona Sun Times . The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.
Two police officers—one a 22-year veteran and the other a rookie—were shot and killed in the Los Angeles County city of El Monte late Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. The suspect is also dead. The mayor said the officers were “essentially ambushed.”
Two police officers—one a 22-year veteran and the other a rookie—were shot and killed in the Los Angeles County city of El Monte late Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. The suspect is also dead. The mayor said the officers were “essentially ambushed.”
The El Monte officers were identified Wednesday as Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana. Paredes, the longtime veteran of the department, is survived by his wife, daughter, and son, police said. Santana, who previously worked as a public works employee and with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department before joining the police department in his hometown, is survived by his wife, daughter, and twin sons.
Per FOX news sources, the gang member who fatally shot two El Monte PD officers was on probation for felon with a firearm after he received a bare minimum sentence in a plea deal under Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon last year, despite having a previous strike on his record.
Today’s Larry Elder Show guest is John Gardner, a launch operation specialist II (Starship) at SpaceX.
THE MICROSOFT NEWS WEBSITE FOUNDED BY BILL GATES HURRIEDLY DELETED THE STUDY FROM ITS PAGES.
A research paper found that people who did not receive a COVID-19 vaccine had a lower rate of suffering a severe case of the virus amidst the pandemic.
The article, which has been uploaded to the preprint server ResearchGate, relied on data from over 18,500 respondents across 175 countries. Analysis revealed that individuals unvaccinated against COVID-19 reported fewer instances of hospitalization in comparison to their vaccinated counterparts.
MSN – a news website launched by vaccine enthusiast Bill Gates’s Microsoft in 1995 – covered the study, titling its article “Severe COVID-19 ‘Rare’ In Unvaccinated People,” but appears to have taken down the story since its publication. Archived versions of the article are still available, however.
The survey – “Self-reported outcomes, choices and discrimination among a global COVID-19 unvaccinated cohort“– was conducted from September 2021 through February 2022. Data collected for the survey was analyzed by an independent, international team of scientists led by Robert Verkerk, Ph.D., the founder and executive and scientific director of Alliance for Natural Health International.
“It is important to recognize that because the cohort represents a self-selected, as opposed to randomly selected, sample, the findings cannot be directly compared with other observational studies based on self-reported data based on randomly selected subjects,” emphasized the study.
Many of the unvaccinated individuals included in the analysis opted for natural treatments such as vitamin D, zinc, quercetin, and drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
The study also found that people unvaccinated against COVID-19 faced discrimination for their decisions, with between 20 to 60 percent of people per country reporting being personal targets of “hate or victimization.”
“Respondents reported feeling even more victimized by their respective states, with rates among respondents being greatest in Southern Europe (61%), Western Europe (59%), Australia and New Zealand (57%) and South America (57%),” explained the paper.
The survey follows additional studies reaching similar conclusions about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine. A Koch Institute report assessing data from the German government, for example, found that 80 percent of cases of the Omicron variant occurred in fully vaccinated people in the country.
Dr. Peter McCullough and co-author John Leake spoke to ‘American Thought Leaders’
During the research for their book, “The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex,” cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough and author John Leake discovered that the “system” was primed by global leaders to make vaccination the principal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This was absolutely telegraphed from the beginning,” McCullough said. “[In] 2010, Gates says it’s the decade of the vaccines. Later on, Gates announces at meetings that the return on investment of vaccines is 20-to-1 anything else that he’s done.
“It is clear the system is juiced for a vaccine,” McCullough said during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
McCullough was referring to a 2010 post by Bill Gates on Twitter, in which the billionaire investor wrote: “Decade of Vaccines- a $10B, 10yr pledge for vaccine research, development & delivery.”
In 2019 Gates told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box” from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “We feel there’s been over a 20-to-1 return” on his $10 billion investment into vaccine development.
In the interview with McCullough, Leake questioned why the COVID vaccines, which were developed hastily, were advertised as safe and touted as the only solution to the pandemic while effective alternative and off-label treatments were demonized.
“What we discovered in our research and what we map out in our book is that this was being planned for, well in advance,” Leake said.
He also criticized Gates for his obsession with vaccines.
Bill Gates attends a press conference on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on May 25, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
“[Gates] seems to have sort of shifted his monopolistic spirit from the software business to the vaccine business,” said Leake.
Gates is also the founder and major contributing member of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), which was launched at the World Economic Forum in 2017. In the organization’s business plan, it appears to be entirely focused on the development of vaccines, with no mention of other treatments for viral outbreaks, said McCullough.
CEPI says it brings together heads of government, private businesses, and philanthropists to “accelerate” the development of vaccines to prevent future “epidemics and pandemics” and to ensure that “all people in need” have access to these vaccines.
Moreover, one of Gates’ most recent efforts in the proliferation of vaccines is his book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.” In the book, Gates makes the case for establishing a well-funded global organization that would be managed by the United Nations’ World Health Organization, whose job it would be to search for and respond to the world’s next pandemic, said McCullough.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for comment.
McCullough said that although vaccines generally do little to prevent illness from upper-respiratory infections, they were still pushed as the answer to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There isn’t a single shot in the arm that does virtually anything for a respiratory illness,” McCullough said, adding that the COVID vaccines were introduced “with an implicit talking point, and the talking point is, ‘They are safe and they are effective, and you will take them.’ Period. No discussions after that. No official discussions on safety and efficacy, no guarantee for reevaluation, no monthly review of safety.”
The safety was just assumed, even after a Chinese scientific paper was published pointing out that there were major health problems from the vaccine for people with underlying health issues, said McCullough.
McCullough called this broad use of the vaccines a “biological catastrophe.”
Furthermore, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried to bury information about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy by sealing, for 55 years, the “Pfizer dossier,” which is about half a million pages of documents detailing the key findings in the development and implementation of the vaccines, said McCullough.
The organization Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency sued the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and demanded the dossier be made public.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman said the group’s FOIA request was “of paramount public importance,” and ordered that the FDA release 55,000 pages per month (pdf).
From these documents, “we learned there were 1,223 deaths within 90 days of the release of the Pfizer program, worldwide. The standard is typically 50 deaths for some widely used product, [and it’s] taken off the market,” said McCullough
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) records deaths on its Vaccine Adverse Events Recording System (VAERS).
In the United States, McCullough said there have been 13,000 deaths recorded after receiving the COVID vaccine.
“That is astounding,” he said. “We have never let a product run like this for this period of time without revisiting safety, without reporting safety, without even questioning safety, and death being the final outcome.”
The Epoch Times reached out Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson for comment on vaccine safety.
“What I think a lot of the public didn’t understand is this is a completely novel technology,” said Leake. “These are genetic transfer technologies. You’re actually injecting messenger RNA that codes for the production of the spike protein, so this is Star Trek stuff.”
McCullough said it’s a false claim that vaccines reduce hospitalization and death.
He said there have been no thorough randomized trials with the active drug and placebo to show a reduction in hospitalization and death.
“None of the vaccines have had clinical trials done versus placebo with that composite endpoint,” said McCullough. “What’s happened over time is a false narrative that’s developed from observational data.”
There have been many “biased analyses by investigators and doctors and those in the biopharmaceutical complex who are invested in trying to promote the vaccines,” said McCullough
This file photo shows a box of ivermectin tablets. (Carl D. Master/Shutterstock)
He added that the analyses are based on faulty and biased data, which does not keep track of vaccinated individuals who come into a hospital. Instead, all who come into the hospital with a COVID infection are counted as unvaccinated by default.
“I can tell you those who’ve taken the vaccine are much more likely to have gotten early treatment, which really is the driver for reducing hospitalization and death,” said McCullough. He added that Gates, Anderson Cooper, and Vice President Kamala Harris all are vaccinated but also took Paxlovid, an early treatment for COVID-19.
Leake said the same rigor and safety standards that were applied to early treatment for COVID are completely ignored with the new messenger RNA vaccines. “Suddenly, the methodology and the rigor of ascertaining safety and efficacy is just thrown out the window with the vaccine,” he said.
McCullough said the pandemic could have ended quickly if resources had been put into giving high-risk patients early treatments with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, but instead these early treatments were maligned.
McCullough also brought up monoclonal antibodies, another safe and effective treatment that’s been throttled in favor of vaccines, he said.
Despite the fact that these early treatments work well, they are pulled off the shelf, but the vaccines, which are not proven to be either safe or effective, are pushed on the public as the solution for the pandemic, said McCullough.
Leake and McCullough described what they observed and documented as a “monolithic vaccine solution” for all public health problems.
“This is what these international foundations are: the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust. The big money guys have put all of their money on vaccines,” said Leake.
Their book documents how other national institutions, like the National Institutes of Health, profit from these vaccines and from a relationship with wealthy philanthropists.
“They actually had a meeting at Bill Gates’ grand house near Seattle back in 2000. For 20 years, they’ve been working together,” said Leake.
There is a vaccine agenda, in which the powers that be want every person to keep getting vaccinated indefinitely, McCullough said.
“They have advanced it forward and there is at the same time an oblivion to safety, and it’s global,” said McCullough.
McCullough and Leake said they’d like to see all vaccine mandates lifted and all COVID-19 vaccines pulled off the shelves for a thorough safety and efficacy review.
“We have been burned,” McCullough said. “This has been, in a sense, the crime of our lifetime, if not of all time, of mass vaccination of the world in the middle of a highly prevalent and evolving pandemic.”
A Tennessee sheriff’s department has warned the public not to pick up folded dollar bills found on the ground because they may contain fatal amounts of fentanyl.
The Giles County Sheriff’s Department issued a public safety notice after two instances where a folded dollar bill containing the deadly opioid was found and picked up.
“When it was found and picked up, the person discovered a white powdery substance inside. The substance was later tested and was positive for methamphetamine and fentanyl,” the notice stated.
The warning featured a photo of a penny next to a tiny amount of white powder laced with fentanyl that is “more than enough to kill anyone that it comes into contact with.”
“This is a very dangerous issue!” the Giles County Sheriff’s Department warned on Facebook. “Please share and education your children not to pick up any folded money they may find in or around businesses, playgrounds etc., without using great caution and even alerting a parent or guardian.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration states (pdf) that “Inhalation of airborne powder is MOST LIKELY to lead to harmful effects, but is less likely to occur than skin contact” and “is not expected to lead to harmful effects if the contaminated skin is promptly washed off with water.”
A public safety notice issued by the Giles County Sheriff’s Department on Facebook about folder dollar bills containing fentanyl, obtained on June 14, 2022. (Giles County Sheriff’s Department)
Record High Fatal Overdoses: CDC
Fentanyl overdoses are happening at rates Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called “truly staggering.”
“The net effect is that we have many more people, including those who use drugs occasionally and even adolescents, exposed to these potent substances that can cause someone to overdose even with a relatively small exposure,” Volkow said in a statement.
Figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that fatal overdoses in America have reached new heights, peaking at nearly 108,000 in 2021, amid increased usage of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
According to the CDC report, fentanyl was linked to the most (71,238) overdose-related deaths in 2021, while overdose deaths increased 15 percent from 2020 to 2021.
Overdose deaths had already increased by 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, according to the report.
Officials in Montana recently reported an “alarming number” of fatal overdoses due to fentanyl after eight people died between May 22 and June 1.
One year after Oregon decriminalized drugs, officials there have admitted the experiment has failed after overdoses in just one county jumped by 700 percent. Seizures of fentanyl and opioids have also skyrocketed, along with marijuana.
A 15-month old toddler in California died in May in a house where police found drug paraphernalia and fentanyl, authorities said.
Fentanyl is a dangerous opioid that is reportedly made in China and smuggled via Mexico cartels into the United States. It is sometimes cut into other drugs and is estimated to be upwards of 100 times more potent than morphine, another opioid.
Dr. Reni Moon has spent her entire career as an advocate for vaccines. A pediatrician who is double board certified in pediatric hospital medicine and pediatrics, Moon said she has counseled thousands of families and always encouraged them to vaccinate.
“I’ve trusted my governmental agencies to do the studies that needed to be done and the rigorous testing to make sure that what we are injecting into our kids is not going to harm them,” she said.
Until now.
Instead of unquestionably following the CDC’s recommendations without double checking, Moon has been tracking safety data about the mRNA injections herself.
She is so concerned about the safety signals she is seeing in the pediatric population, that, she said, giving COVID-19 vaccines for children is “the most appalling thing I’ve heard in medicine. The lack of regard for safety is highly unethical. I personally put it into the arena of crimes against humanity.”
Children More Vulnerable
Children’s bodies and brains are more vulnerable than adults’ to environmental toxicants. (1)
Since children are smaller than adults, they are more heavily exposed to toxicants, in proportion to their body weight.
Given their unique vulnerabilities, the safety threshold to give children any medication, medical intervention, or medical recommendation must be high, higher than for adults.
Children are the future of humanity. Protecting children is the duty of society.
Mild For Kids
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has always been a threat mainly to the elderly and to adults who have underlying health issues, while younger and healthy people have generally have done well and children have hardly gotten sick at all.
“All of the kids I know here at my institution had comorbidities,” explained a retired Colorado-based medical doctor and professor of ophthalmology and pediatrics who has a master’s degree in epidemiologist who worked at the state’s largest children’s hospital, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from his medical colleagues.
But Dr. Kirk Milhoan, M.D./Ph.D., a pediatric cardiologist who has had a long and successful career helping children with heart problems in both America and around the world, is speaking up.
Milhoan is the medical director of the non-profit For Hearts and Souls, which helps children with heart defects around the world. Based in Maui, he also works one week a month at the Texas Methodist Children’s Hospital in San Antonio.
Milhoan pointed out that the disease itself is mild for most children.
He cited a recent Turkish study that examined how many children were admitted for COVID versus for the flu. (3)
“They found that kids admitted for the flu went to the ICU at rates and ended up needing breathing machines more often than children admitted for COVID,” Milhoan pointed out.
Though he, like other medical doctors we spoke with, is concerned about putting his livelihood in jeopardy by telling the truth, Milhoan feels he has a moral obligation to speak publicly about the lack of safety, efficacy, and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines for children.
He told us, given the damage these vaccines are causing, that it is unethical for doctors to stay silent.
Vaccinating Kids Does Not Slow the Spread
“Let’s be honest,” Milhoan said. “It’s not stopping anything. Omicron is blowing through the vaccinated more so than the unvaccinated. After five months, for children, the vaccine has negative efficacy. It’s going to do more harm than good. What we’re seeing is that with those who are vaccinated they are more likely to get the infection than if they had nothing at all.”
Despite a concerted effort to massage the data to fit an orthodox narrative, high vaccination rates have not correlated in lowering COVID-19 cases or severity.
According to Milhoan, vaccinating children actually has the opposite effect: It encourages more—not less—viral spread.
But, despite this, there has been a push in the United States, Canada, and countries around the world to vaccinate even the youngest children. Even if the vaccine is not necessary or won’t protect them, parents are being told to get it for their infants, toddlers, small children, tweens, and teens for the sake of others.
Meanwhile, the country is saturated with the virus, which is quickly becoming endemic, as we have written about before. Testing reveals that COVID is everywhere, and that the vast majority of Americans and Canadians have already been exposed to it.
Vaccination rates among adults are high. The virus continues to behave like other endemic coronaviruses, mutating over time and continuing to cause milder illness and reinfections as few, if any, people are immunologically naïve to it.
The real irony is that the government had to roll back its early claim that the vaccine would prevent the spread of the virus after that was shown to be completely untrue. Yet the vaccine for kids is still being pushed for the sake of slowing the viral spread.
COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt Kids
We have spoken with over twenty-five medical doctors practicing in different states. They told us that COVID-19 vaccines side effects on children are real and very serious.
Their clinical experience is backed up by a growing body of peer-reviewed articles in the scientific literature that show that the vaccines can cause myocarditis (heart inflammation) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) in all age categories, but particularly in young men. There is also evidence that the vaccines can cause clotting disorders, facial paralysis, tinnitus, and other serious side effects. (4) (5) (6)
But what about long-term side effects? Children have a longer shelf life than adults, so to speak. They have many more years of life ahead of them than we do, so early exposure to pollution or endocrine disruptors or unsafe vaccines can result in longer-term ill effects.
Milhoan wrote his doctoral thesis on cardiac inflammation. “The vaccine is dangerous for adolescent males. Absolutely without a doubt, you’re more likely to go to the hospital with a vaccine injury than from COVID,” he said. “For many kids it’s all risk and no benefit. What are we doing?”
The race to vaccinate children has not been driven by the need to protect them. It is being pushed on parents in pursuit of the goal to vaccinate everyone. Parents, bombarded with messages of fear, have been duped. Many are eagerly vaccinating their children in the hope of protecting them, without realizing that the cure is by and far more dangerous than the disease.
This Crime Against Children Must Be Stopped
We cannot assume something is safe for children without proof. We invoke the precautionary principle here—the idea that a new product (like the vaccines against COVID-19) cannot simply be assumed safe in the absence of definitive proof that they are causing harm. The precautionary principle is a modern restatement of the Hippocratic oath that all doctors must adhere to” I will keep them from harm and injustice.”
Following the precautionary principle, the burden of proof is on the manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccines. These companies have an ethical obligation to prove they are safe. But in violation of this ethical principle, the vaccines were rushed to the public without adequate testing. Now that we have ample proof that they are causing harm to children, it is time to stop using them.
Just this week Milhoan treated a 14-year-old who was perfectly healthy until getting a second COVID-19 vaccine. Now this young adolescent has a major scar on the left ventricle of the heart. Scarring like this, Milhoan said, can cause sudden death now or in the future in these children.
“I was in the military. I’ve gotten every vaccine,” Milhoan said. “I’ve had my second dose of smallpox, the whole series of anthrax. I am a scientist and a physician. I have seen the benefit that vaccines have had for children. This one has no benefit and all risk.”
References
(1). Carroquino MJ, Posada M, Landrigan PJ. Environmental Toxicology: Children at Risk. Environmental Toxicology. 2012;239-291. Published 2012 Dec 4. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-5764-0_11
(2). Ledford, H. (2021). Deaths from covid ‘incredibly rare’ among children. Nature, 595(7869), 639–639. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01897-w
(3). Yılmaz K, Şen V, Aktar F, Onder C, Yılmaz ED, Yılmaz Z. Does Covid-19 in children have a milder course than Influenza? Int J Clin Pract. 2021 Sep;75(9):e14466. doi: 10.1111/ijcp.14466. Epub 2021 Jun 27. PMID: 34107134; PMCID: PMC8237020.
(4). Lee, Eun-Ju et al. “Thrombocytopenia following Pfizer and Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.” American journal of hematology vol. 96,5 (2021): 534-537. doi:10.1002/ajh.26132
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‘Not only were these conditions sub-human in the Jan. 6 pods but they were equally and even more so in other parts of the jail.’
A Jan. 6 prisoner who was released by a federal judge after being denied cancer treatment for eight months is now “in dire straights,” according to his girlfriend.
On March 10, 2021, Chris Worrell was arrested and charged with alleged offenses related to his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
According to the March 10, 2021, criminal complaint, Worrell is charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
According to the statement of facts (pdf), the FBI received a tip alleging that Worrell had participated in the breach at the Capitol, but there is no evidence that Worrell entered the Capitol building.
The statement includes photos of Worrell spraying pepper gel while standing in a crowd outside the Capitol, with police nearby.
An arrest warrant (pdf) was issued for Worrell on March 10, 2021, charging him with the aforementioned alleged offenses, as well as charges for allegedly engaging in acts of physical violence in a restricted building or grounds and obstruction of Congress.
Priller’s Story
Worrell’s girlfriend, Trish Priller, was also in Washington that day. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Priller shared her story of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and the disturbing events that have transpired over the subsequent 17 months.
“We were just there,” Priller insisted. “We were there with family members and friends. We had some ladies in their 70s that were with us. The ladies wanted to go down and hear President Trump speak at the ellipse and I had never been to anything like that so I went with them.”
As Priller explained, there was a large crowd there that day and once you were in a spot at the ellipse, you could not move out of it—even to go to the restroom—because you would never find your people again or be allowed back in through the crowd. They stood there for several hours, waiting to hear President Donald Trump speak.
“I was at the ellipse with Chris and we were separated for seven and a half hours because the crowd was so enormous we couldn’t meet up with each other,” Priller recalled, adding that while the cell towers weren’t working and they couldn’t communicate by phone, they could get the occasional text “here and there.”
Chris Worrell, a Jan. 6 defendant who was released from pretrial detention to undergo cancer treatment, is with his girlfriend Trish Priller. (Courtesy of Trish Priller)
“I don’t know what he did during that time because we weren’t in the same area,” she said.
Two months later, on March 11, Worrell and some of his friends headed off for a weekend canoeing trip in northern Florida. It was a Friday, and Priller was home alone when the FBI raided the house.
“They flash banged me and held me at gunpoint,” Priller recalled. “When I went outside,CC I had all of the lasers on me. They held me in my home for seven and a half hours. During that time they were rifling through everything in the house and I had to sit in a chair and watch them. I couldn’t go anywhere. If I wanted something to drink, they would bring it to me. When I had to go to the restroom I had to go with two agents with me into the bathroom. I was held prisoner in my home for all that time.”
Five hours into the ordeal, Priller said she was allowed to call Worrell and give the phone to the FBI. The agents agreed that Worrell could come home. During the 3-hour drive back home, Worrell checked in about every 30 minutes to let the FBI know where he was, Priller said. When Worrell arrived, he was immediately handcuffed, searched, and brought into the house. Documents (pdf) show Worrell was taken to Fort Meyers, Florida.
He was originally granted pretrial release on bond, but a second judge ordered a stay on Worrell’s release, and Worrell was instead transferred to Charlotte County, Florida, where he was held for three weeks.
Worrell has a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, and had been managing the illness since he was diagnosed in 2007. He remained at stage one of the illness for several years.
But Priller said that when Worrell was being held in Charlotte County, he didn’t have access to his medications during that time.
“They wouldn’t allow the doctor to bring them in,” Priller asserted. “They said I should go get them, but you can’t do that. You can’t bring medicines into a prison. They won’t let you do that. So our doctor wrote a prescription and sent it to them and they didn’t process it. It took almost the whole three weeks. At that point he was transferred to Oklahoma by Con-Air, I guess, where he stayed for another couple of days, still with no meds.”
As Priller explained, Worrell was then transferred to Northern Neck, Virginia, where he stayed for another couple of days. It was there that Worrell contracted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. At the time, it was already known the facility had many COVID cases.
Then he was transported to the Correctional Treatment Facility in Washington (pdf), referred to by Priller and many Jan. 6 prisoners as “the gulag.” At that point, Worrell had gone 75 days without his medications.
“They basically said his physician wasn’t qualified, even though he had been in the practice and treated cancer patients,” Priller charged. “They didn’t feel like he was qualified so he continued on with no meds. They would send him to doctors for visits but they falsified that.”
As Priller explained, Worrell would be taken from the prison and taken to the university hospital where he would see a doctor. The guards who went with him had paperwork they needed to have filled out, so the doctor would fill out the paperwork and hand it to the guards to return it to the prison where it was given to their medical team, she said.
“The notes from the doctor were then transcribed by jail personnel, who fabricated things, changed notes switched it up and then gave it to the medical facility in the jail,” Priller asserted. “They kept using the word ‘treatment.’ But the word ‘treatment’ means you’re actually receiving some sort of medicine. He didn’t have any ‘treatment.’ He had a consultation, not a ‘treatment’ for his cancer.”
Priller said Worrell filed hundreds of grievances through the jail, not just for the lack of medical care for his cancer and broken hand but for the deplorable conditions he and other Jan. 6 prisoners were forced to live under.
“They told him if he keeps putting in grievances they were going to put him in the hole,” Priller said. “and they did. They kept him there for 16 days.”
As described by Liberty Nation, “the hole”—solitary confinement—is where detainees are allegedly sent to be punished for daring to talk to the media about what is really going on inside the prison. Lawyers John Pierce and Steven Metcalf II, who represent several of the defendants, told EpochTV’s “The Nation Speaks” that among the nearly people 500 arrested so far in connection with Jan. 6, more than 50 are being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, in conditions that are “unconstitutional” and violate “every single basic human right.”
“Anything that they do, or if anybody speaks up on their behalf, all of a sudden, they get targeted even further and then get put into a dangerous, unsanitary condition,” Metcalf said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to corrections officials in Charlotte County, Florida, and in Washington, requesting comment about these allegations.
The Legal Fight
On May 26, 2021, Worrell’s attorney filed a reply to the government’s supplemental brief pursuant to the district court’s order (pdf), stating that “the essential undisputed fact of this case is that Mr. Worrell has cutaneous follicular b-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and has been held by the Government without treatment for his white blood cell cancer for seventy-five days.” It further asserted that the government was intentionally refusing “to issue the prescription authorized by Dr. Rucker, a licensed medical doctor in the state of Florida” and has “failed to issue an alternative medication.”
As the second attorney, Stavrou noted the numerous prior steps taken to seek conditions of release for Worrell.
“Of course, from a legal perspective,” Stavrou told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview, “the government and the courts were extremely reluctant to grant any of those conditions and I think that’s pretty evident by the fact you can see the number of individuals who are still incarcerated in various jails across the country waiting to be sent to the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Virginia or the Washington D.C. jail. Mr. Worrell, of course, received what could be argued as horrendous medical care while at the jail, and there were numerous attempts to thwart that medical care or to thwart the physicians of Mr. Worrell in regards to what treatment was needed.”
Aside from the cancer, one of the biggest issues Stavrou cited in Worrell’s case was the fact that his hand was broken while in jail and there was a surgical recommendation in writing. While jail officials tried to argue that they never recommended surgery, it had been in writing and the doctor changed his original position, saying he never recommended surgery.
“Of course, there was no follow-up care for several months,” Stavrou said (pdf). “And at the end of the day, the judge was not overly impressed with the overall care that Mr. Worrell was not receiving and then started to force the issue, which culminated with Chris receiving conditions of release.”
More importantly, Stavrou said what came out of Worrell’s plight was the exposure of “borderline medical malpractice” and caused the judge to order an inspection regarding the conditions inside the jail.
“The long and short of it was, not only were these conditions subhuman in the Jan. 6 pods but they were equally and even more so in other parts of the jail,” Stavrou asserted.
Stavrou described how there was rampant availability of drugs, primarily marijuana. While they knew inmates were buying drugs, they could only be coming in through staff. Jail staff would also allegedly turn off the water in the Jan. 6 pods for days at a time.
“Without water, you can’t flush a toilet,” Stavrou noted. “You can’t have drinking water. You can’t bathe. So you can imagine the beyond-subhuman conditions when in an 8-by-10 or a 6-by-6 [foot] cell. The smell of unflushed, clogged toilets and the smell of marijuana, fecal matter, urine and unbathed, unshaved gentlemen. These are completely atrocious conditions, especially in a country that supposedly prides itself on human rights.”
In response to the repeated complaints and reports regarding the deplorable “subhuman” conditions at the Washington jail, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia “directed the Clerk of the Court to transmit the civil contempt order to the Attorney General for appropriate inquiry into potential civil rights violations of January 6 defendants, as exemplified in this case.” (pdf)
The judge also held the prison warden and the director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt for failure to promptly produce Worrell’s medical records
On Nov. 3, a statement by the U.S. Marshals Service (pdf) said that their inspection of the Central Treatment Facility (CTF)—where some of the Jan. 6 prisoners are being held—”did not identify conditions that would necessitate the transfer of inmates from that facility.” However, the U.S. Marshals did admit that “based on the results of the unannounced inspection” of the Central Detention Facility, where an additional 400 detainees were held in the custody of the United States Marshals Service (USMS), it was determined “that conditions there do not meet the minimum standards of confinement as prescribed by the Federal Performance-Based Detention Standards. Therefore, working with the Lewisburg Bureau of Prisons, the USMS agreed to transfer those detainees to United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.”
Stavrou said he would argue that the conditions and treatment of inmates was being swept under the rug and that the “same kind of nonsense” was still taking place. “While they may have cleaned up the deplorable conditions, now they will do things like claim the internet is down for two to five days so the inmates can’t communicate with loved ones through email messages or there is something wrong with the phones. So now there are gentlemen in the prison who haven’t received release who can’t get in touch with their families.”
It was further noted in the U.S. Marshals’ statement that “the Lewisburg Bureau of Prisons facility provides attorney and visitor areas, medical care, and video teleconferencing capabilities.”
When Worrel was released from prison, he hadn’t had any medications for eight months. At that point, he had gone from stage one cancer to stage three.
The Fight for His Life
“Chris just finished five rounds of chemotherapy and has a follow-up appointment in July for further diagnostic tests,” Priller said, noting that some of his symptoms are already returning. “His medical condition has deteriorated dramatically. His teeth, his skin, so many issues that could have been prevented. Chris is in dire straights.”
Trish Priller sits with her boyfriend, Jan. 6 defendant Chris Worrell, while he goes through chemotherapy for cutaneous follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. (Courtesy of Trish Priller)
As Priller explained, Worrell now needs multiple surgeries on his mouth and teeth due to radiation treatments “and further complications due to the fact he was using a very specific type of toothpaste that he could not get while incarcerated.” The cost is estimated at about $30,000. Then there is the additional chemotherapy to treat the returning symptoms. For that, he will need at least another $50,000. There is a GiveSendGo account to raise money for Worrell’s treatment.
In the meantime, Priller said their daily lives are stressed with the constant threat of another visit from the government.
“The marshals and pretrial services can just show up any time they want and do a search,” Priller said, “and they do, and you have to let them in. They’re looking to violate you, to see what you’ve done wrong. We have parameters, we have to call in every single day. There’s a lot of rules we have to follow. We have to submit a weekly schedule and call in every Tuesday.”
She described how there was one instance where she was on the phone with the pretrial officer trying to get their schedule filed on time. Shortly after, the pretrial service officer filed an order (pdf) claiming Worrell violated the conditions of his conditions of release “because he heard keystrokes,” Priller said.
Stavrou filed a response (pdf) explaining that it was Priller typing in an effort to submit the weekly schedule on time while “on the phone simultaneously with Pre-trial services Officer Tad Parks.” Judge Royce Lamberth accepted the explanation (pdf).
“I’m being watched and monitored and I wasn’t even the one arrested,” Priller said. “So I am basically imprisoned also.”
A UK study by University College London has confirmed “small but significant” cases of the serious Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a rare neurological disorder associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19.
The researchers speculate that “the majority or all” of the 121 UK cases of GBS (pdf) in March to April 2021 were associated with first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered in January.
“A similar pattern is not seen with the other vaccines or following a second dose of any vaccine,” said lead author Prof. Michael Lunn on May 30.
The team observed that from January to October 2021, 996 GBS cases were recorded in the national database but with an unusual spike from March to April with about 140 cases per month rather than 100.
To identify whether any or all of these cases were linked to vaccination, the team linked dates of GBS onset to vaccination receipt for every individual and found that 198 GBS cases (20 percent of 966) occurred within six weeks of their first dose of COVID-19 vaccination in England; of these, 176 people had an AstraZeneca vaccination, 21 for Pfizer, and 1 for Moderna.
The researchers found no excess GBS cases associated with mRNA vaccines, but observed 5.8 excess cases of GBS per million doses of vaccine for AstraZeneca, equating to a total excess between January to July 2021 of around 98–140 cases, confirming the association between the vaccine and GBS.
GBS is a rare and serious neurological disorder that occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks its own nerves, typically resulting in numbness, weakness, pain in the limbs, and sometimes even paralysis of breathing.
The disease is commonly associated with Campylobacter infections that prompt the body to attack its own nerves.
However, GBS cases were also observed in the 1976 following administration of the swine flu vaccine as well as modern influenza and yellow fever vaccines, though none of them had rates as high as AstraZeneca.
Whilst the majority of the vaccination-associated GBS patients had recovered from symptoms of weak limbs, weak deep tendon reflexes, and monophasic sleep, one patient in the study had recurring neuropathic symptoms well after the second dose.
The patient initially developed facial paralysis on both sides and a tingling sensation in their limbs after the first dose and improved with treatment. However, two weeks after receiving their second dose, they developed increasing weakness with pain, changes in their nerves, and only partial response to the treatment.
Researchers are currently still speculating the reasons behind rises in GBS cases following the vaccine.
“It may be that a non-specific immune activation in susceptible individuals occurs, but if that were the case similar risks might apply to all vaccine types,” said Lunn.
“It is therefore logical to suggest that the simian adenovirus vector, often used to develop vaccines, including AstraZeneca’s, may account for the increased risk.”
Studies in the United States have also confirmed increased cases of GBS after receiving adenovirus vector COVID-19 vaccines, with significant cases of the disease associated with the vaccine.
According to the CDC, 1 to 2 people out of 100,000 in the United States develops GBS, however, a 2022 U.S. study found the incidence in receivers of J&J’s adenovirus vaccines to be 32.4 per 100,000 people within 3 weeks following the vaccine; well above the background rate.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca told The Epoch Times that “vaccination of any kind is a known risk factor for GBS” and “the small number of GBS cases [following the AstraZeneca vaccine] appears similar to increases previously seen in other mass vaccination campaigns.”
She wrote that reports of GBS have been very rare following vaccination and that “current estimates show that globally the vaccine has helped prevent 50 million COVID-19 cases, five million hospitalizations, and to have saved more than one million lives.
“The Emergency Medical Associates and other international bodies including the WHO, have all stated that the benefits of vaccination continue to outweigh any potential risks.”
The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) obtained documents disclosing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cultured 22 distinct human cell lines, including cells apparently extracted from parts of aborted fetuses and babies younger than four weeks.
ICAN’s lawyers sent the CDC a letter (pdf) on June 25, 2021, asking for documents that contained the word HEK.
HEK cells are immortalized cell lines likely obtained from a miscarried or aborted fetus.
“Immortalized human cell lines live outside of the body in nutrient media that, under ideal conditions, will replicate forever without death,” Dr. James Thorp, a maternal-fetal medicine expert told The Epoch Times.
“These various cell lines are used for numerous experimental purposes including the development of vaccine technology and genetic modification. The origin of these numerous human immortal cell lines is impossible to determine for certain but likely derived from abortions, miscarriages, fetal deaths, or other human sources derived from a variety of different organ systems,” Thorp said.
Recently, the CDC had to release 281 pages of related documents (pdf).
An email from 2015 with the subject “Research using Fetal Tissue” says in the unredacted part that “The list below contains all the cell lines Jason’s team has cultured,” which include 22 human cell lines.
It includes the human brain endothelium, liver, intestines, foreskin, lung, and other body parts.
Another email with the subject “Cell Lines from the last two years” shows 47 cell lines of which some are also human.
“Below are the cell lines we have produced in the last two years,” reads the email of the CDC researcher.
The main controversy with stem cell research arises in the harvesting of stem cells from human embryos that are usually conceived in a lab.
In 2009, former President Barack Obama lifted a ban that lasted for about 8 years on federal funding for most stem cell research.
In a bid to appease those concerned, Obama said: “We will never undertake this research lightly. We will support it only when it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted. We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse. And we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.”
Rev. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., a biology professor at Providence College in Rhode Island wrote in a May 2020 publication titled “Moral Guidance on Using COVID-19 Vaccines Developed with Human Fetal Cell Line”:
Though HEK293 is commonly believed to have been obtained from an aborted human fetus, I received an e-mail a few months ago from Professor Frank Graham, who established this cell line. He tells me that to the best of his knowledge, the exact origin of the HEK293 fetal cells is unclear. They could have come from either a spontaneous miscarriage or an elective abortion.
Thorp, who has seen many complications in pregnant women and fetuses since the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, believes that the manipulation of human cell lines should not be used for experimentation, on moral grounds.
“The potential harm from evil, unethical research can never be outweighed by potential benefits. We are made by God in His own image inherent in our DNA and any attempts to change this has profound implications for humanity,” Thorp said.
Some Catholic and Eastern Orthodox adherents also view the usage of HEK 293 and its derivatives for the production of vaccines and other medications as an ethical dilemma.
The Epoch Times reached out to the CDC for comment.
There is no remorse at the CDC. Far from it. The model of virus control deployed over the last 27 months is now part of normal operations. It wants it institutionalized.
The bureaucracy has now codified this into a new online tool that instructs cities and states precisely of what they are supposed to do given a certain level of community spread. The new tool doesn’t say lockdowns as such but the entire model of containment via masks and distancing is baked in, and it can be easily expanded at will.
To understand how absurd this is, consider that as of this writing, major parts of Southern Florida are supposed to be masked up, according to the map provided by the CDC, because COVID testing reveals high community spread.
Hardly anyone in Florida has worn a mask since 2020. The very notion is a joke there. However, what happens to the other states and what happens when or if political control of Florida changes to a pro-lockdown party?
Under the orange label (high), the following pertains:
Wear a mask indoors in public
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
Additional precautions may be needed for people at high risk for severe illness
Some standout points here. Masks have nowhere controlled the spread of COVID. We know this from countless examples all over the world. They have been a spectacular failure except as signals to others to feel a sense of alarm at the presence of disease. Neither have vaccinations achieved the stopping or even slowing of infection or spread. Note the new language too: “Stay up to date.” Vaccinations are headed toward the WEF ideal of subscription plans.
As for “additional precautions” we know what that means: lockdowns. Even now, the suggestions are to
Follow CDC recommendations for isolation and quarantine, including getting tested if you are exposed to COVID-19 or have symptoms of COVID-19
Implementing screening testing or other testing strategies for people who are exposed to COVID-19 in workplaces, schools, or other community settings as appropriate
Implement enhanced prevention measures in high-risk congregate settings
Consider setting-specific recommendations for prevention strategies based on local factors
We’ve seen this movie before. It’s a recipe for full government control of life.
In addition, this new tool can easily move to a next iteration by the addition of a red color: it could mean shelter in place, close the schools, don’t go to church, don’t see friends, and so on. I’ll say it again, there is no remorse, no regret, no rethinking at all. No admission of error. On the contrary, it is all part of the plan to do it over again.
In fact, a different version of the chart above, updated as of this posting, already has a code red, and it pertains to the entire country (one version measures “levels” and the other measures “transmission”).
Now, you might say that these are just recommendations, and the CDC makes such goofy recommendations all the time (cook your beef well done). The trouble is that it puts the burden to reject the recommendations on politicians at the state and local level. For that matter, there is nothing really in place that would stop a public health department anywhere in the country from implementing them on their own.
Anyone objecting is immediately on the back foott, attempting to justify the refusal to obey the CDC and thereby opening themselves up to the accusation that they are killing grandma and so on.
It truly boggles the mind that the CDC has rethought nothing given the carnage we face in the country today. They talk about “the data” and the science but pay attention to almost none of it. They forever fall back on their new doctrines and, mostly, their power.
This is about much more than lockdowns. It’s about life itself, particularly as it affects economics.
A new poll from the Wall Street Journal reveals that the percent of Americans who think the economy is poor or not so good is an incredible 83 percent. Maybe that doesn’t surprise you and gives rise to the question of what demographic constitutes the 17 percent who think things are just fine. Maybe employees at the NIH, CDC, DHS, Pfizer, and Moderna?
Ok, I take it back: too cynical. The truth is that economic prospects now are just awful. And it’s not just inflation. It’s class mobility, demoralization, goods availability, and a general sense that hope in the future isn’t what it used to be just a few years ago. That will surely have a big effect on November’s midterm elections. The winning candidates will make elaborate promises to fix the problems but how many among them will be openly critical of COVID mandates? Not many.
This matters because the connection is direct. My personal frustration is that massive failure on the part of the media, intellectuals, and average people to make the connection between the hell of the last 27 months—in the name of disease control—and these economic, cultural, educational, and social outcomes.
For some odd reason I cannot fathom, there is a general impression out there that economic life exists in some insulated machine that is somehow detached from life experience. Therefore it can be turned on and off. We turned it back on, so why aren’t things going back to normal?
Well, most all the suffering people are experiencing today traces to catastrophic policy pushed by the CDC with White House deference, thereby prompting the entire public-health machinery around the country to swing into action, closing schools, businesses, churches, and giving Congress an excuse to spending some $6T (at least) through debt finance that was quickly added to the Fed’s balance sheet via money printing. The closures interrupted supply chains and shattered economic and social functioning. The fallout is what we see all around us.
We’ve just experienced years in which it was demonstrated to the United States and the entire world how pandemic control can be deployed to utterly crush rights, freedoms, constitutional limits on states, and even everything we call civilization itself.
What the CDC pushed on the country, even the world, was without precedent. The resulting disasters are everywhere present. At minimum we should expect the CDC to cease and desist, and certainly not entrench and codify. That the latter is taking place reveals what a long struggle lies ahead.
Once again, it appears that the science of COVID-19 and its origins is the science that is conducted among small groups of insiders behind closed doors.
Newly released government emails from early February 2020 reveal that additional secret teleconferences took place among a group of Fauci-funded scientists in the early days of the pandemic.
Up to now, we knew of the Feb. 1 secret teleconference that had been convened by Fauci. We also knew that scientists at the Feb. 1 teleconference privately concluded that the virus most likely came out of the Wuhan lab. And we knew that by Feb. 4, those scientists had written a paper that dismissed the lab leak theory.
What we did not know is that the same scientists continued having secret teleconferences to discuss the virus’s origins even after they wrote their paper. At least two of those conferences were attended by Fauci himself.
The new emails were obtained by the transparency group US Right to Know, but—as is now the norm for Freedom of Information Act requests from the federal government—the emails are almost completely redacted.
Piecing together the newly released emails with other emails that were released earlier, we can now put together an updated timeline of events after the initial Feb. 1 secret teleconference.
THE DELETED WEBPAGE DETAILED A STUDY ON A “MILD, EXPERIMENTAL SMALLPOX VACCINE KNOWN AS MODIFIED VACCINIA ANKARA (MVA)” AND HOW IT IS “NEARLY AS EFFECTIVE AS THE STANDARD SMALLPOX VACCINE IN PROTECTING MONKEYS AGAINST MONKEYPOX.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted a webpage from 2004 detailing research into vaccine efficacy against the monkeypox virus which included Anthony Fauci praising the findings as “important” and referencing a potential “bioterror threat involving smallpox.”
The webpage can be accessed through an archived version of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, which reveals a press release from March 10th, 2004: “Effectiveness of Safer Smallpox Vaccine Demonstrated Against Monkeypox.”
When accessed, the link currently prompts users with the message “the page you’re looking for isn’t available.”
NIH DELETED WEBPAGE.
The unearthed webpage comes amidst an ongoing global outbreak of monkeypox cases, already causing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to recommend masks during travel.
The deleted webpage detailed a study on a “mild, experimental smallpox vaccine known as modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA)” and how it is “nearly as effective as the standard smallpox vaccine in protecting monkeys against monkeypox.” Monkeypox was the pathogen of choice for the study “because of its similarity to the smallpox virus,” explained the NIH press release.
The study was conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the NIH agency led by Fauci. This agency has previously come under scrutiny for funding bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which many public health experts and intelligence officials believe to be the source of COVID-19.
“These findings are important to the search for a replacement vaccine for people with health conditions that would prevent them from using the current smallpox vaccine,” said Fauci in response to the study, which reportedly found that an MVA injection in conjunction with a Dryvax injection yielded better coverage than Dryvax alone.
“In addition, because an initial MVA injection may help lessen the side effects experienced from Dryvax, MVA may serve as an important pre-vaccine for large-scale vaccination efforts in the event of a bioterror threat involving smallpox,” he added.
Fauci was reacting to the study “Immunogenicity of a Highly Attenuated MVA Smallpox Vaccine and Protection Against Monkeypox,” whose abstract also warns of the “potential use of smallpox as a biological weapon”:
“The potential use of smallpox as a biological weapon has led to the production and stockpiling of smallpox vaccine and the immunization of some healthcare workers.”
The study’s abstract continues, describing “another public health goal is the licensing of a safer vaccine” to treat smallpox:
As vaccines can no longer be tested for their ability to prevent smallpox, licensing will necessarily include comparative immunogenicity and protection studies in non-human primates. Here we compare the highly attenuated modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) with the licensed Dryvax vaccine in a monkey model.
The deleted study follows The National Pulse unearthing the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s recent research assembling strains of the monkeypox virus to be able to conduct PCR tests. It also comes amidst the NIAID administering a $10 million grant to fund research into additional cures for monkeypox shortly before the current outbreak began.
He promised to ‘shut down the virus.’ He failed miserably.
Resident Joe Biden celebrated another grim milestone this week as his approval rating continues to flounder. Despite pledging to “shut down the virus” during the 2020 campaign, Biden has now presided over the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans from COVID-19.
That is more than twice the number of U.S. soldiers who perished in combat during World War II.
The virus our president promised to shut down has killed approximately 1,008,712 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University, which means that Biden is responsible for almost 200,000 (or 50 percent) more COVID deaths than his predecessor, Donald Trump.
By his own logic, Biden should have resigned a long time ago.
The approximately 600,261 Americans killed on Biden’s watch is three times the number of COVID deaths he said should disqualify a president from serving in the White House. During an October 2020 debate against Trump, he argued that any leader who presided over more than 200,000 COVID deaths “should not remain as president of the United States.”
Days later, Biden delivered an emphatic message to the American people via his Twitter account. “I’m not going to shut down the economy,” he wrote on the popular social networking website. “I’m going to shut down the virus.”
This episode will premiere on June 7 at 7:30 p.m. ET.
“What we’ve learned is an unbelievable story of poor safety. In fact, I think it’s basically a biological catastrophe on our hands,” says Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and leading expert on COVID-19 treatment.
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. McCullough and author John Leake, co-authors of “The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.”
Why is much of the world’s public health apparatus fixated on mass vaccination, even now?
Is monkeypox really a threat? Or is something else going on?
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YET ANOTHER DUBIOUS FACT CHECK. BUT THIS ONE IS EVEN WEIRDER THAN THE LAST.
A PolitiFact “fact checker” who has attempting to discredit National Pulse reporting on mask mandates and recent medical journal papers has almost zero experience in real news reporting, medical reporting, COVID-19 reporting, or even national news, The National Pulse can reveal.
The information is the latest in a slew of “fact checker” stories which reveal dubiously credentialed individuals working to remove anti-Big Pharma content from the internet at the behest of big tech companies and their sponsors in the pharmaceutical industry.
Floridian liberal Gabrielle Settles appears to have begun working for Politifact in March 2021, bylining at least 70 stories for the corporate-backed censor.
Settles, however, has no experience in dealing with any of this kind of information, having performed the majority of her “fact checks” simply by copying and pasting from the Centers for Disease Control website, and even veering off into “fact checking” pictures of Christmas cards and photos of singer Rihanna.
Prior to Politifact, Settles worked at a small, St. Petersburg outfit called “The Weekly Challenger”, and prior to that, as an “Office Administrator” at “Moody Radio” and a “contributing writer” at a blog called “The Power Broker Magazine.” The sites receive almost zero web traffic.
In fact, Settles’s journalistic contributions are extremely limited. But naturally, her contributions to partisan rhetoric are not.
The Politifact “reporter” – a job which includes no actual reporting – has a history of pro-Democrat and anti-Trump tweets. Naturally, she took umbrage with The National Pulse’s story on masks and deaths, derived from two separate stories of May 16th and May 26th.
In the first, Natalie Winters reveals how Beny Spira, Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo, published an April 19th 2022 study “analyz[ing] the correlation between mask usage against morbidity and mortality rates in the 2020-2021 winter in Europe.”
The data came from 35 European countries, and concluded:
“The findings presented in this short communication suggest that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage in the six-month period that encompassed the second European wave of COVID-19…”
The study also found:
“Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences…”
But Settles found this particular science to be “False” and as a result, the National Pulse story is now being censored on social media. Settles’s source appears to be a singular professor from the corporate-backed Milken Institute for Public Health at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her name is Emily Smith.
But Smith didn’t even tell Settles that Spira’s study was incorrect. She is quoted as saying:
“I think we can just use common sense to say that when cases are rising, people are more likely to do protective things… You’re more likely to wear a mask when you go out and your city or your country might also have made recommendations or requirements to do those things.”
In other words, Smith is claiming that the mask usage and deaths is an inverse correlation, though she offers no evidence, nor science, nor refutation of the science offered. Instead, Smith suggests using “common sense” – a phrase oft-derided when used by anti-authoritarian activists at the beginning of the pandemic.
Smith, for what it is worth, is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as revealed on her university biography.
A second study reviewed by The National Pulse, though thus far unmolested by Politifact, asserts:
“The most important finding from this study is that contrary to the accepted thought that fewer people are dying because infection rates are reduced by masks, this was not the case…Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths or ∼50% more deaths compared to no mask mandates.”
The study also posited a potential reason for the disparity in risk ratio (RR) for dying from COVID-19:
“A rationale for the increased RR by mandating masks is probably that virions that enter or those coughed out in droplets are retained in the facemask tissue, and after quick evaporation of the droplets, hypercondensed droplets or pure virions (virions not inside a droplet) are re-inhaled from a very short distance during inspiration.”
Dubbed the “Foegen effect,” the theory suggests that COVID-19 “virions spread (because of their smaller size) deeper into the respiratory tract.”
Settles has also claimed that airlines are not short staffed due to vaccine mandates (false) and that Virginia schools under Governor McAuliffe were not promoting critical race theory (also false).
The National Pulse reached out to Politifact at their truthometer@politifact.com address for a correction on June 2nd 2022. As yet, no one has responded, and Settles’s factually inaccurate “fact check” remains both online, and continues to censor The National Pulse stories on Facebook.
Former Pfizer VP: ‘Massive Fraud Playing Out on a Global Scale,’ Reckless to Vaccine the Whole Population
In order to get an insider’s view, we spoke with Dr. Michael Yeadon, former chief scientific officer at Pfizer’s Global Allergy & Respiratory Research Department.
We discussed many topics, such as how, in his professional opinion, there is no safe way to combat a pandemic with a vaccine—since the necessary safety trials take longer than the length of the pandemic—that it’s reckless to attempt to vaccinate an entire population, and that if we continue down the path we’ve been traveling over the past two years, it will lead to total global control by a small group of elites.
Five Republican senators have asked National Institutes of Health (NIH) Acting Director Lawrence Tabak for a comprehensive accounting of every royalty payment by an outside source to an employee of the federal agency since 2009.
“We believe that the American taxpayer deserves to know 1) the degree to which government doctors and researchers have a financial interest in drugs and products they support, and 2) whether any relationship exists between federal grants awarded by NIH and royalty payments received by NIH personnel,” the senators told Tabak in a letter that was made public on June 1.
“Additionally, Americans deserve greater transparency in how the hundreds of millions in royalty payments NIH receives are distributed, and the degree to which NIH’s leadership—already among the highest-paid individuals in the federal bureaucracy—has benefited from this ‘hidden’ revenue stream.”
The five senators are Rand Paul of Kentucky, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Rick Scott of Florida. Tabak has been acting NIH chief since his predecessor, Dr. Francis Collins, resigned in December after leading the agency for a dozen years.
The GOP senators’ letter was prompted by revelations first reported by The Epoch Times based on information obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submitted to NIH by Open the Books, an Illinois-based nonprofit government watchdog.
“We estimate that up to $350 million in royalties from third parties were paid to NIH scientists during the fiscal years between 2010 and 2020,” Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski said in a telephone news conference on May 9.
“We draw that conclusion because, in the first five years, there has been $134 million that we have been able to quantify of top-line numbers that flowed from third-party payers—meaning pharmaceutical companies or other payers—to NIH scientists.”
The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said.
“We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” he said.
Collins received 14 payments while serving as NIH director, according to the information obtained by Open the Books. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments, and his deputy, Clifford Lane, got eight payments during the period.
Tabak conceded during a recent congressional hearing that the payments “have the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Republicans have since been vocal in demanding that NIH be more forthcoming about the royalty payments, while Democrats have been unusually quiet.
Open the Books received the data on the royalty payments only after suing in federal court, and even then, the information provided was heavily redacted so that the specific amounts of individual payments to recipients and the names of payers were concealed.
The GOP senators took note of that fact in their letter to Tabak.
“Each year, NIH awards tens of billions of dollars in the form of federal grants, and under 401.10 of the Patent and Trademark Law Amendments (Bayh–Dole) Act, federal agencies and employees may receive royalty payments for products and inventions when listed as an inventor or ‘co-inventor’ on a product’s patent,” the senators told Tabak.
“A 2020 study conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) showed that, in total, 93 NIH patents contributed to 34 FDA-approved prescription drugs, generating roughly $2 billion in royalty payments to the agency between 1991-2019. In 2004 alone, some 900 NIH scientists earned approximately $8.9 million in royalties for drugs and inventions they discovered while working for the government.”
The senators said NIH has in the past been substantially more transparent about the payments.
“In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented a policy requiring its employees to disclose these royalty payments on the consent forms for clinical trial participants; however, the agency has taken no action to disclose such payments to the public at large,” the letter states.
“In fact, even after the nonprofit organization Open the Books submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to disclose royalty payments made between 2009 and 2020, the agency only provided the names of the employees receiving the payments and the number of payments they received between 2009 and 2014; the amounts of the individual payments, the innovation in question, and the names of the third-party payers were redacted by NIH.”
Andrzejewski told The Epoch Times on May 31 that his nonprofit shouldn’t have had to take NIH to court to get the information the five senators are now demanding.
“The production of an estimated $350 million in third-party royalty payments to NIH and 1,700 of its scientists is so heavily redacted that it’s nearly impossible to follow the money. NIH is violating the spirit if not the letter of open records law,” Andrzejewski said.
“It shouldn’t take our lawsuit or congressional action to force NIH to comply with basic open government rules. We applaud the actions of the senators on the Homeland Security committee as they remind these unelected career bureaucrats that they work on behalf of the American people.”
A UK study by University College London has confirmed “small but significant” cases of the serious Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a rare neurological disorder associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19.
The researchers speculate that “the majority or all” of the 121 UK cases of GBS (pdf) in March to April 2021 were associated with first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered in January.
“A similar pattern is not seen with the other vaccines or following a second dose of any vaccine,” said lead author Prof. Michael Lunn on May 30.
The team observed that from January to October 2021, 996 GBS cases were recorded in the national database but with an unusual spike from March to April with about 140 cases per month rather than 100.
To identify whether any or all of these cases were linked to vaccination, the team linked dates of GBS onset to vaccination receipt for every individual and found that 198 GBS cases (20 percent of 966) occurred within six weeks of their first dose of COVID-19 vaccination in England; of these, 176 people had an AstraZeneca vaccination, 21 for Pfizer, and 1 for Moderna.
The researchers found no excess GBS cases associated with mRNA vaccines, but observed 5.8 excess cases of GBS per million doses of vaccine for AstraZeneca, equating to a total excess between January to July 2021 of around 98–140 cases, confirming the association between the vaccine and GBS.
GBS is a rare and serious neurological disorder that occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks its own nerves, typically resulting in numbness, weakness, pain in the limbs, and sometimes even paralysis of breathing.
The disease is commonly associated with Campylobacter infections that prompt the body to attack its own nerves.
However, GBS cases were also observed in the 1976 following administration of the swine flu vaccine as well as modern influenza and yellow fever vaccines, though none of them had rates as high as AstraZeneca.
Whilst the majority of the vaccination-associated GBS patients had recovered from symptoms of weak limbs, weak deep tendon reflexes, and monophasic sleep, one patient in the study had recurring neuropathic symptoms well after the second dose.
The patient initially developed facial paralysis on both sides and a tingling sensation in their limbs after the first dose and improved with treatment. However, two weeks after receiving their second dose, they developed increasing weakness with pain, changes in their nerves, and only partial response to the treatment.
Researchers are currently still speculating the reasons behind rises in GBS cases following the vaccine.
“It may be that a non-specific immune activation in susceptible individuals occurs, but if that were the case similar risks might apply to all vaccine types,” said Lunn.
“It is therefore logical to suggest that the simian adenovirus vector, often used to develop vaccines, including AstraZeneca’s, may account for the increased risk.”
Studies in the United States have also confirmed increased cases of GBS after receiving adenovirus vector COVID-19 vaccines, with significant cases of the disease associated with the vaccine.
According to the CDC, 1 to 2 people out of 100,000 in the United States develops GBS, however, a 2022 U.S. study found the incidence in receivers of J&J’s adenovirus vaccines to be 32.4 per 100,000 people within 3 weeks following the vaccine; well above the background rate.
A spokeswoman for AstraZeneca told The Epoch Times that “vaccination of any kind is a known risk factor for GBS” and “the small number of GBS cases [following the AstraZeneca vaccine] appears similar to increases previously seen in other mass vaccination campaigns.”
She wrote that reports of GBS have been very rare following vaccination and that “current estimates show that globally the vaccine has helped prevent 50 million COVID-19 cases, five million hospitalizations, and to have saved more than one million lives.
“The Emergency Medical Associates and other international bodies including the WHO, have all stated that the benefits of vaccination continue to outweigh any potential risks.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky warned that Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill Paxlovid can lead to a rebound in symptoms.
“If you take Paxlovid, you might get symptoms again,” Walensky told CBS News on Tuesday. “We haven’t yet seen anybody who has returned with symptoms needing to go to the hospital. So, generally, a milder course.”
Another researcher who is not affiliated with the CDC said that he has observed such a scenario.
“People who experience rebound are at risk of transmitting to other people, even though they’re outside what people accept as the usual window for being able to transmit,” Dr. Michael Charness of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boston told CNN on Tuesday.
After a patient recovers from COVID-19, the aforementioned rebound has occurred between two and eight days later, according to the CDC. The agency, however, told CBS that the benefits of taking Paxlovid outweigh the risks of COVID-19, namely among those who are at a high risk of developing severe symptoms from the virus.
A Pfizer technician handles the company’s COVID-19 pill, known as Paxlovid, in a file photograph. (Pfizer via AP)
About a week ago, the agency issued an alert to health care providers about the rebound, saying that patients who took Paxlovid either test positive for the virus after having tested negative or will experience COVID-19 symptoms.
“A brief return of symptoms may be part of the natural history of SARS-CoV-2 infection in some persons, independent of treatment with Paxlovid and regardless of vaccination status,” the federal health agency said at the time. SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
“Limited information currently available from case reports suggests that persons treated with Paxlovid who experience COVID-19 rebound have had mild illness; there are no reports of severe disease. There is currently no evidence that additional treatment is needed with Paxlovid or other anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapies in cases where COVID-19 rebound is suspected,” the CDC added.
The Epoch Times has contacted Pfizer for comment. Pfizer told CBS that it is observing a rebound rate of approximately 2 percent and is continuing to monitor patients.
“We have not seen any [COVID-19] resistance emerge to date in patients treated with Paxlovid,” a spokesperson for the company told Reuters this week.
In recent weeks, doctors have increasingly prescribed Paxlovid, which has been authorized to treat at-risk people. But some health care workers told Reuters they are putting off prescribing the medication.
“I am shying away from giving it to people who are very low- risk, and are not terribly ill, particularly people who are vaccinated and boosted,” said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, in an interview with the news agency. He will still prescribe the pill to people who have significant health conditions or are aged 75 and older.
Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.
This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.
A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.
We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”
We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.
We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.
Well, friend, the time for listening and watching from the sidelines is over.
This enemy has taken over media, educational institutions, corporate boards, professional sports, foundations, and professional institutions. They have left no corner of our lives untouched. But all hope is not lost.
We The People still have a say. We know the truth, you and I, about America and the country she is and can be. We must fight to defeat these false pretenses and predetermined narratives.
I am choosing to counter this enemy with faith, with reason, and with freedom. As Governor of the Free State of Florida, I have chosen to lead with a vision that builds America up rather than tears it down.
Together we can ensure that our children are raised to know they live in the greatest state in the nation, the greatest country in the world and that they have an opportunity to continue making them even greater.
