Why won’t they report the verified facts about this D.C. career bureaucrat’s life?
Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes for Health (NIH) and one of the leading public voices during the COVID-19 pandemic will step down from his role following a number of investigative reports into Collins and his underlings.
Appointed by President Obama in 2009, Collins issued a statement this week saying: “I fundamentally believe … that no single person should serve in the position too long, and that it’s time to bring in a new scientist to lead the NIH into the future.”
But it is unlikely Collins’s belief in a revolving door at the NIH that has prompted the move. Rather, with pressure mounting on key public figures such as his minion Anthony Fauci and arms-length brother-in-arms Peter Daszak, it is worth looking at what the media won’t be saying about Collins this week.
National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins serves on the advisory board of a conference sponsored by a Chinese military-linked genomics firm. The D.C.-based, health industry big-wig and boss to Anthony Fauci has even referred to the controversial company’s founder as a “friend”.
BGI Genomics has been flagged by U.S. intelligence officials for its robust efforts to “collect, store and exploit biometric information” on American citizens through COVID-19 test kits. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the firm has deep ties to both the Chinese Communist Party and its military.
Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institute for Health (NIH), appears to have directly contradicted his underling Dr. Anthony Fauci in a bombshell moment from an interview with Hugh Hewitt.
The revelations further implicate those who approved U.S. grants to the lab, and the EcoHealth Alliance run by the British-born Peter Dazcak – who The National Pulse first reported on back in February.
The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has also funded several studies conducted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including research focused on bat coronaviruses alongside U.S.-based research groups such as the Anthony Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance.
Various National Institutes of Health agencies – including Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – have funded over 250 studies authored by researchers at institutions controlled by China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Following a unique investigation into the origins of scientific research papers, the whopping level of collaboration with the Chinese military will further concerns in the United States that the political class has surrendered to the Chinese Communist Party. Last week it emerged that the ranking General in the U.S. Armed Forces agreed to tip off China in advance of a U.S.-led attack.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has continued to funnel millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund scientific research in conjunction with Communist China since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, including to military-controlled organizations.
Over half of the grants sent since early 2020 came from Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The National Institutes of Health, the foremost research institute under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has investigated 189 researchers for undisclosed ties to foreign countries, 93 percent of which were linked to China.
The fresh round of terminations resulted from an ongoing investigation at the taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) into the failure of grant recipients to disclose financial ties to foreign governments.
In reality, accountability in a post-COVID era is what likely shuffled Francis Collins off from his otherwise immortal coil at the top of the NIH. Not that the corporate media would ever tell you any of that.
cientists have labelled their own pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, “evil” on hidden camera footage released by Project Veritas on Monday evening. The video also reveals the scientists admitting that natural immunity rather than the vaccine is more effective against COVID-19, with one admitting: “our organization is run on COVID money now.”
Nick Karl – a scientist directly involved in the production of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine – is caught on tape admitting that natural immunity is more effective than the very vaccine he works on, and Pfizer produces.
“When somebody is naturally immune – like they got COVID – they probably have more antibodies against the virus…When you actually get the virus, you’re going to start producing antibodies against multiple pieces of the virus… So, your antibodies are probably better at that point than the [COVID] vaccination.”
– Nick Karl
He further suggests New York City is only requiring vaccine mandate cards in order to “[make] it so inconvenient for unvaccinated people to the point where they’re just like, ‘F*ck it. I’ll get it.’ You know?”
A second Pfizer official, Senior Associate Scientist, Chris Croce, corroborated Karl’s assertion about COVID immunity derivative of antibodies:
Veritas Journalist:“So, I am well-protected [with antibodies]?”
Chris Croce, Pfizer Senior Associate Scientist:“Yeah.”
Veritas Journalist:“Like as much as the vaccine?”
Croce:“Probably more.”
Veritas Journalist:“How so? Like, how much more?”
Croce:“You’re protected most likely for longer since there was a natural response.”
Croce expressed dismay with his company’s direction and moral compass:
Veritas Journalist:“So, what happened to the monoclonal antibody treatments?”
Croce:“[It got] pushed to the side.”
Veritas Journalist: “Why?”
Croce:“Money. It’s disgusting.”
…
Croce:“I still feel like I work for an evil corporation because it comes down to profits in the end. I mean, I’m there to help people, not to make millions and millions of dollars. So, I mean, that’s the moral dilemma.”
Veritas Journalist:“Isn’t it billions and billions?”
Croce:“I’m trying to be nice.”
Veritas Journalist:“No, I hear you. I hear you. I do. I mean, I’ll still give you a hard time about it.”
Croce:“Basically, our organization is run on COVID money now.”
The third Pfizer scientist, Rahul Khandke, admitted his company demands that its employees keep information from the public.
“We’re bred and taught to be like, ‘vaccine is safer than actually getting COVID.’ Honestly, we had to do so many seminars on this. You have no idea. Like, we have to sit there for hours and hours and listen to like — be like, ‘you cannot talk about this in public,’” Khandke said.
Khandke also signaled that proof of antibodies is on par with proof of vaccination.
“If you have [COVID] antibodies built up, you should be able to prove that you have those built up,” he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have blasted Democrats’ spending plans and asked for information on the “true cost” of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill in a letter sent to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Since its earliest stages, Republicans across both chambers of Congress have opposed the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, now known as the Build Back Better Act. Democrats have called the bill a “human infrastructure” package, intended to be passed alongside the bipartisan $1.2 trillion hard infrastructure bill. Both bills are part of President Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda.
To pass the bill through the Senate, Democrats are using the reconciliation process. This process, which is limited certain forms of spending and revenue bills, can pass through the upper chamber by a simple majority, avoiding the normal 60 vote threshold to end a filibuster.
Thus far, no Republicans have come out in favor of the bill.
“Democrats are in the midst of passing a partisan bill with multi-trillion dollar implications for federal spending, revenues, and deficits,” The letter, addressed to CBO Director Dr. Phillip Swagel, states. (pdf).
McConnell and Graham said that because of “the Majority’s intent to completely ignore Senate committees” as well as the “limited debate” allowed on the reconciliation bill, “it is critical that the [CBO] provide Senators and the public with information related to the fiscal consequences of the reckless changes being proposed.”
The senators also accused the House of “process[ing] legislation in a manner meant to hide the true cost to American taxpayers.”
Despite Democratic leadership’s intention to hold a vote on the bill by the end of September, continued infighting among the Democrats’ caucus forced leadership to extend a new deadline to the end of October. Though a final draft of the bill is far from ready, Democratic leaders have insisted that taxes will not increase for anyone making less than $400,000 per year.
Leaders, including the president, have been trying to navigate a path forward between progressive demands and moderate expectations. Much of this negotiating has been done behind closed-doors.
McConnell and Graham criticized this closed-door policymaking, musing that Democrats are keeping tight-lipped about the bill “in order to avoid making estimates available.”
They listed several questions for the CBO.
First, they noted that only four out of thirteen House committees had reported having received cost estimates for their reconciliation proposal, and asked Swagel when these estimates would be available for the other nine committees.
Even Democrats have noted the lack of transparency.
A proponent of the bill, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said during a hearing of the House Ways & Means Committee that she and other House Democrats had not received a great deal of information about the bill.
“I don’t know how much we’re spending, how much we’re raising, how we’re spending some of the money, how we’re raising any of the money,” Murphy said at the time. She added that without more information on the bill, she would be forced to hesitantly vote against it.
They also asked for information on the gross level of new spending from the bill as well as how much it is projected to raise the deficit. Both of these figures, however, remain very up in the air as Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) recently doubled down on their opposition to a $3.5 trillion bill.
This has left leaders scrambling to find a compromise price tag acceptable to all factions of the party. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that it was “self-evident” that the final bill would be less than $3.5 trillion.
The senators listed a slew of other questions, about specific components of the bill, asking for a response by Wednesday. At the time of publication, Swagel has not yet responded to this request.
“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” a page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website reads.
No discussion. No question. No variation. If you dig around a bit, you might find the CDC saying there are some vaccine problems, but they are repeatedly linked to the word “rare.”
In fact, we’re told by the Biden administration that you need to get the shot. Or else.
But there’s a reason we refer to doctors as “practicing” medicine. Because it’s not just about science. It’s also about the personal skill and knowledge of specific medical professionals, about variations in technical applications and about some dimensions that can only be described as an art.
That’s why, when faced with a serious medical diagnosis, prudence dictates the seeking of a second opinion.
So, without advocacy one way or another about one’s decision to take the mRNA shots, here’s what we might describe as a “second opinion” to what the CDC says: reported adverse reactions.
As of the end of September, there were 569,294 reported incidents linked to the COVID shots in just the U.S., with 2,433,730 symptoms reported in total. They are in the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and were compiled by Just the News.
These reported incidents did not occur to 569,294 people; these were the total number of incidents disclosed, meaning an individual may have had more than one complication and those problems were included in the total tabulation.
No matter how many symptoms occurred, there is the fact that, for whatever reason, 8,164 people died following vaccination, Just the News noted.
Among other adverse reactions reported to the CDC, here’s the Just the News analysis of some of the types and numbers:
Blood clots or bleeding, including in the heart and in the brain — 32,023
Mood or memory problems — 31,720
The analysis said irregularities occurring after receiving COVID vaccination “does not necessarily mean they were caused by the vaccine. The system is designed to collect adverse events that occur after vaccination to uncover any patterns of illnesses that were not captured during vaccine studies.”
Reports to the VAERS database are made not only by health care professionals — they are also made by patients themselves or their families. And they are subjective and not verified.
There is conflicting messaging on whether or not adverse effects are underreported. Some scientists believe they are; other individuals doubt that claim, given the attention and publicity connected with COVID, Just the News noted.
An estimated 56 percent of the U.S. population has received the mRNA shots: 391 million doses to 185 million people.
But tabulations of adverse reactions following COVID shots are not limited to the U.S., according to Just the News. It reported that in the U.S. and around the world there were “hundreds of thousands of reports” of symptoms of functional neurological disorder in women in their 30s.
“FND Symptoms can include limb weakness, paralysis, tremor, spasms, problems walking, speech problems, tingling, vision loss, seizures, fatigue, anxiety, chronic pain, memory symptoms, and blackouts,” the outlet said.
There were 16,858 reports of lymphadenopathy. “Earlier this month, the Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was found to be associated with an increased risk of lymphadenopathy, swelling or inflammation of lymph nodes according to a real-world case-control study from Israel.”
There were 5,273 reports of facial paralysis, including a Hong Kong report of higher risk of Bell’s Palsy correlated with CoronoVac (Sinovac Biotech) shots, a vaccine not used in the U.S.
There have been 696 reports of Guillain-Barre Syndrome paralysis. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned against the syndrome being connected to the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen shot.
The European Union has expressed similar concerns. The syndrome has a 5 percent fatality rate and the CDC says most cases have been in men over 50 years of age, according to Just the News.
There are possible links between the vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna and acute central nervous system demyelination, including multiple sclerosis, according to the Journal of Neurology.
“Demyelinating diseases damage the protective covering surrounding nerve fibers in the brain, optic nerves and spinal cord, causing neurological problems,” Just the News reported. “Ages ranged from 24 to 64 years old.
“Four patients were ultimately diagnosed with exacerbation of their stable MS. Two were diagnosed with new cases of MS. One was diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica.
“An analysis of the VAERS database shows more than 650 related reports, including MS.”
The outlet additionally reported there have been 2,810 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis heart problems, prompting a CDC investigation.
An Israeli study said the Pfizer COVID drug tripled the possibility of myocarditis and the FDA has put out a warning about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and a possible link to heart inflammation.
By June 2020, the CDC said there had been more than 1,200 cases of heart inflammation in young people taking the Pfizer and Moderna shots. Most were men under 30 and half occurred after the second dose.
But as of August, an independent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed the heart inflammations were more than five times what the CDC said, according to blogger Sharyl Attkisson.
An Israeli study showed a threefold increase in the risk of myocarditis, according to Medpage Today.
Teenage boys are six times more likely to develop heart problems from the Pfizer and Moderna shots than they are to actually get COVID, according to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph.
💉Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19, a major study has found https://t.co/vFEiNfsiNb
Also, there have been more than 32,000 reports of blood clots and disorders, Just the News said.
Despite CDC assurances of the safety of the mRNA shots, a few months ago, there had been a brief suspension of the use of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen medicine due to blood clots.
Their use was resumed in April, the CDC said, although there was a suggestion of “an increased risk of a rare adverse event called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). Most reports of this serious condition, which involves blood clots with low platelets, have been in adult women younger than 50 years old.”
The CDC said the benefits of the shot outweighed its risk, although a CDC advisory report noted three deaths due to TTS.
A JAMA editorial recommended women under 50 avoid the J&J shot, Just the News reported, adding that “many countries have restricted vaccines in people under age 65, 60 or 50 due to reports of blood clots in young people.”
All COVID vaccine providers have developed products that are linked to menstrual cycle changes, with 10,318 such reports, according to Just the News, citing a British study last month.
While the CDC has said the mRNA shots are safe for pregnant women and their babies, the Just the News analysis of the VAERS database showed over 1,800 reports of problems.
Also, there were 1,803 reports of anaphylactic reaction or shock and, according to Israeli research, 6,339 reports of increased risk of herpes infection. There were additionally 926 reports of appendicitis following the shots, Just the News reported.
And to top it all off, despite receiving the mRNA shots, people are still getting COVID, as demonstrated by results in Israel.
Of 514 people hospitalized in Israel in mid-August, 59 percent were fully vaccinated, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.
Israel in August had two high rates: Israelis were among the most vaccinated people in the world (about 78 percent), and had the highest COVID infection rate. This disconnect was seen as declining effectiveness of the mRNA shots, Becker’s Hospital Review noted.
This is why the CDC is recommending a third booster shot, despite strong reservations by U.S. health officials who say it will have little effect.
Like many medical procedures, there are risks. Watch any television ads for pharmaceuticals and they tell you stories of a wonderful new life with their drug, although the voiceovers say it still might make you sick or kill you.
And there’s risk in surgery, even minor surgery. A prominent radio station programmer died while having his foot operated on. It stemmed from an anesthetist’s error.
Again, medicine is a practice. There are a lot of unknowns and good doctors realize this.
In consultation with our physician, we make what hopefully are rational decisions about risk and benefit before we enter a medical procedure or take a specific drug.
It’s prudent. It happens all the time.
If you are a senior citizen and possessed of certain comorbidities (obesity is a major issue), it might be in your interest to receive the COVID mRNA shot to reduce symptoms. Again, it’s a weighing of risks.
What we’ve attempted to do in this commentary is the job the American government seems reluctant to do: honestly and objectively give another opinion. Without the coercion, scolding and censorship, so you can make your own decision.
That’s important — You. Make. Your. Own. Decision.
The Western Journal has published this article in the interest of shedding light on stories about the COVID-19 vaccine that are largely unreported by the establishment media. In that same spirit, according to the most recent statistics from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System, 8,164 deaths have been reported among those who received a vaccine, or 21 out of every 1,000,000. By contrast, 694,701 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported by the CDC, or 18,281 out of every 1,000,000. In addition, it must be noted that VAERS reports can be filed by anyone and are unverified by the CDC. Thus, as the agency notes, “Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.” The decision of whether to receive a COVID vaccine is a personal one, but it is important to consider context when making that decision. — Ed. note
In early August, Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. He declared that all city employees, and even some private-sector employees who worked in “high-risk settings,” must be vaccinated by Sept. 30, according to the government’s website.
Jose Manriquez, a seven-year veteran with the Denver Police Department, faced with the prospect of losing his job, opted for the vaccine.
Manriquez and his attorney, Randy Corporon, appeared on Fox & Friends on Friday where he told his story to co-host Ainsley Earhardt.
Corporon represents nine officers from the Denver Police Department who have had their first dose of the vaccine and, for various reasons, do not wish to take the second dose.
“We’ve got officers who’ve had to retire early. We’ve got Jose, 34, who’s at the beginning of his career. He had trouble getting up here, to his chair,” he said.
Manriquez, a 12-year veteran with the Army National Guard and a father of four, had his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Aug. 22.
“That week, I started developing body ache, pain in my legs,” he told Earhardt. “The next week, August 31, I tried going into work. My legs hurt a lot more.”
“Ended up getting sent home,” he continued.
“And on my way home, I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I couldn’t feel the gas pedal or the brake pedal. And pretty much had to call for help to get home. And I barely made it.”
Asked how he feels, Manriquez replied, “Uncertain.”
“I can’t be outside with my kids,” he said, fighting back tears. “We got soccer season. It’s life-changing, and the doctor says it could get worse before it gets better. And if I do get better, it’s going to be years.”
He explained. “So, I always carry my kids to bed. And they’re like, ‘Daddy, we’ll just walk to bed.’”
His lawyer shared that he’d been on the phone with Manriquez recently and he broke down. “He had fallen over putting his kids to bed, and you know, his little girls think Daddy’s broken.”
“This is a guy who had serious COVID last year and beat it,” Corporon said. “So, his body was raging with antibodies. And they gave him this jab, and now his hand was shaking like this, this morning when he came up. It’s outrageous.”
His sister, Soila Hurtado, set up a GoFundMe page for Manriquez. She wrote, “He received the mandatory vaccine on August 22, 2021 and immediately started having a bad reaction. Since receiving the vaccine he has not been able to return to work and his future is uncertain as we do not know how long his road to recovery will be.”
“As the sole income provider for his family of 6. He was very involved with all of his children’s sports and activities. After receiving his vaccine my brother has developed severe tremors, he has trouble sleeping due to the amount of pain in his legs, he can’t walk without the worry of falling due to his legs giving out and has actually fallen a number of times.”
Although many individuals tolerate the vaccine well, the growing number of people who’ve suffered adverse effects after taking it should give the government, on both federal and local levels, pause.
On Sunday, I posted about a happily married woman with two young children, aged 37, who felt that the vaccination posed far more risk to her than the virus itself would. Faced with being unable to visit her children’s classrooms, she took the vaccine and died from a vaccine-induced blood clot.
This can only be called medical tyranny. And it is being thrust on Americans against their will.
What about the medical privacy that was provided to us under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act?
People must be allowed to choose what gets injected into their bodies.
This is the most dangerous presidential administration in our nation’s history. I hope that America survives it, and I mean that sincerely.
The Western Journal has published this article in the interest of shedding light on stories about the COVID-19 vaccine that are largely unreported by the establishment media. In that same spirit, according to the most recent statistics from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System, 8,164 deaths have been reported among those who received a vaccine, or 21 out of every 1,000,000. By contrast, 694,701 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported by the CDC, or 18,281 out of every 1,000,000. In addition, it must be noted that VAERS reports can be filed by anyone and are unverified by the CDC. Thus, as the agency notes, “Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.” The decision of whether to receive a COVID vaccine is a personal one, but it is important to consider context when making that decision. — Ed. note
So, St. Anthony Fauci has come down from his mountain top with a new list of “thou-shall-nots” and the news that it is “too early” to say whether he will allow families and friends to congregate for Christmas.
It is not too early for the body politic to engage in one gigantic spasm of retroperistalsis and expel that tyrannical medical pest from the community.
After all, Dr. Fauci is the chap who tells anyone who will listen that, when it comes to vaccine mandates, “There comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the greater good of society.”
Ah, yes, “greater good of society”—as defined, it goes without saying, by A. Fauci.
It is long past time for this fomenter of hysteria to go. He has being terrorizing the American populace for decades.
Give him a padded cell, a mirror, and a TV camera and he will be happy.
Back in the 1980s, Fauci was a superspreader of the myth that an important vector for the transmission of HIV was heterosexual intercourse.
For the last couple of years, he has been terrifying the public with tales from the crypt about the virus he helped develop with American taxpayer money for “gain of function” research in a Chinese virology lab in Wuhan.
The fact that this Bela Lugosi of the medical establishment is also a publicity addict who can’t pass a television camera without primping and dispensing contradictory but depressing dicta makes him a public nuisance.
You see his baneful influence everywhere.
In our former newspaper of record, for example, The New York Times.
Deploying their signature mixture of nauseating human interest pabulum and tendentious statistics, they paid homage to the CCP virus for giving them something to write about now that Donald Trump is, for the time being, off the menu.
According to the Times, the fact that the deaths of 700,000 people in the United States have been attributed to the virus means that it is now officially more deadly than the Spanish ’flu epidemic of 1918, which killed about 675,000 people in the United States.
Remember the old saw about “lies, damned lies, and statistics”?
The Timesspecializes in that wheeze.
The CCP Virus can be serious, no doubt about it. But it represents a significant threat to a tiny part of the population, mostly the elderly, especially those with certain co-morbidities like diabetes and obesity.
The Spanish ’flu, by contrast, cut a wide swathe through the young and healthy.
The so-called Delta variant seems to be more infectious but less virulent than the original.
It has affected some younger people, much to the delight of the Times and other members of Fauci fan club.
But the Timesstory is just the Gray-Lady version of a domestic-strife story like those in the sensationalistic rags you see in the supermarket checkout line. “Betts and Andy on the Rocks: What Really Happened On Their Honeymoon.”
Now on to those numbers.
One critical distinction you won’t find mentioned in the Times cri-de-coeur is the difference between dying from the CCP virus and dying with it. Millions upon millions are infected.
It is, after all, a very contagious virus.
But not only is it the case that many who are infected experience mild or no symptoms, it is also the case that many who are infected with the virus and happen to die in fact die from other things.
Remember the chap who was in fatal motorcycle accident, spread like jam across the highway, but had his death listed as due to COVID because the goo “tested positive”?
Another set of numbers you rarely see in the reporting about COVID fatalities is the age of the people who died.
The average life expectancy for males in the United States is around 78.
If Mr. Smith, who suffers from diabetes and high-blood pressure, comes down with COVID and dies at 87, is his death due to COVID?
You see why I like to say that the great thing about COVID is that it abolished death from old age.
It also essentially abolished death from influenza.
Generally there are anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 deaths from the ’flu in this country per annum.
The CCP virus is a seasonal respiratory virus. The key to public health regarding it is the achievement of herd immunity.
Masks, lockdowns, and “social distancing” impede achievement of herd immunity.
The Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya got it exactly right when they wrote last spring that “The idea that everybody needs to be vaccinated is as scientifically baseless as the idea that nobody does. COVID vaccines are essential for older, high-risk people and their caretakers and advisable for many others. But those who’ve been infected are already immune.”
At last, the clear voice of common sense—which is also, by the way, the voice of that “science” we’re supposed to be following.
Messrs. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya go on to offer these wise observations:
“Vaccine passports are unjust and discriminatory.”
“Most of those endorsing the idea belong to the laptop class—privileged professionals who worked safely and comfortably at home during the epidemic.”
“Millions of Americans did essential jobs at their usual workplaces and became immune the hard way. Now they would be forced to risk adverse reactions from a vaccine they don’t need.”
“Passports would entice young, low-risk professionals, in the West and the developing world, to get the vaccine before older, higher-risk but less affluent members of society. Many unnecessary deaths would result.”
“The widespread use of vaccines against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, rabies and other pathogens has saved millions of lives. Vaccines are one of the most important inventions in human history—the reason that before last year many in the West had forgotten that infectious disease could pose a population wide threat.”
“Those pushing for coercive COVID vaccination threaten all this progress by undermining public trust in vaccines. In this sense, they are more dangerous than the small group of so-called anti-vaxxers have ever been.”
What a pity that the media did not elevate experts like Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya to the sacrosanct position it saved for Anthony Fauci.
We all would have been saved a great deal of irritation not to mention economic ruin and political despotism.
When I walked out of Planned Parenthood after working there for eight years and climbing the ladder within the organization, so many people on the pro-life side had endless questions for me, not just about the internal working of Planned Parenthood but how I could do the things I did, persuading women that abortion was their only option, putting together the body parts of aborted babies and then somehow sleeping at night.
Valid questions. It’s important to understand how the other side thinks, how they justify those choices and how to approach them with love and truth.
Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, a board-certified OB-GYN and abortion doctor, told the House Oversight Committee, in a hearing on the Texas abortion law last week, that “abortion saves lives. For the thousands of people I’ve cared for, abortion is a blessing.”
There is no possible scenario where abortion saves a life or is a blessing or an act of love. Zero.
Yet this is how the abortion industry justifies the killing of innocent life and even the harming of women during an abortion.
Through my ministry, And Then There Were None, almost 600 abortion workers have left the industry, and nearly every one of them went into those clinics with the intent of wanting to help women, a noble goal.
We were taught that abortion is indeed a blessing to a woman in crisis, dealing with abuse or in college. We told a woman that she needed to have an abortion so she could take care of her other kids, so she could continue working to provide for her family, so she could get her education and find her dream job. Kids would get in the way of her dreams and abortion would give her freedom.
All lies. This was the exact opposite of empowerment.
Several of our former abortion workers decided to quit their jobs after spending a lot of their time in the recovery room where women were placed after their abortions.
They all had similar stories: Women were always crying, bleeding, had blank stares, some immediately voicing their regret. They looked like completely different women than the ones who had walked into the clinic.
When you see firsthand the devastation of abortion and allow even a tiny smidgen of truth to seep into your heart, those first cracks in the lies you’ve been told start to form.
When you’re told lies everywhere you look — your job, the media, celebrities, friends, family, supervisors — it can be difficult to see the truth. And especially for people working in abortion clinics, it can seem like they have no options to get out for family, financial or other reasons.
But for those who do leave, the freedom they experience is worth it.
As much as we on the pro-life side want to snap back at people who scream at us on the sidewalk or yell in our faces at marches, we need to approach them with both love and the truth.
I didn’t leave Planned Parenthood because of the people who showed up on the sidewalk dressed like the Grim Reaper (true story). I left because God was softening my heart and because the sidewalk advocates I talked to were kind and loving. One of them even works for my ministry now.
This also means we must be bold in speaking the truth, which we have on our side, and pray for the conversion of those inside abortion clinics. Where sin abounds, God’s mercy abounds even greater.
Abortion is never acceptable. It is never health care. Killing an innocent human being is never a blessing. The death and dismemberment of an unborn human being is never an act of love.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s claim that it’s “just too soon to tell” if families can hold Christmas gatherings has come under scrutiny by a Johns Hopkins professor who accused him of failing to communicate that the COVID-19 risk is “not equally distributed.”
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, made the claim Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
However, Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins professor and public health researcher, disputed that assessment during an interview Monday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
“We’re going to be in a much better place in a couple of weeks or maybe by November at the latest,” Makary said.
“Cases are down 35 percent, and we’ve always known this delta virus is so contagious. It’s burning through that last segment of the population with no natural or vaccinated immunity,” he said. “By December, almost every adult will have had COVID or vaccination.”
Makary also noted Fauci failed to disclose the shift from the coronavirus pandemic to an endemic.
“In the language that he’s using there’s an implicit denial that we’re moving from an epidemic to an endemic phase, that is, we’ve got to learn to live with it,” he said.
The medical researcher also noted the problem with not explaining the unequal distribution of risk across America.
“We’ve got over 90 percent of seniors vaccinated. The risk is not equally distributed in the population, and that’s what they fail to communicate,” Makary said.
Dr. Fauci claims it’s too soon to tell if families can hold Christmas gatherings. Dr. @MartyMakary sounds off: “The risk is not equally distributed in the population and that’s what they fail to communicate.” pic.twitter.com/K5Er8vTRdA
This is not the first time Makary has provided a medical perspective that contrasted with the views of Fauci.
Last month, Fox News published an opinion piece in which he shared his concerns regarding President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.
Speaking about studies on natural immunity, Makary wrote, “If you recovered from a COVID infection, you have natural immunity which is 27-times more effective than vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic COVID, according to a large Israeli study.”
Another concern he shared was that mandates are not flexible with children.
“The current adult dose and short interval between doses may be too high for children,” Makary said.
“It’s always concerned me that we give are giving the same vaccine dose and short interval between doses to a thin 12-year old girl that we give to an overweight 50-year old man,” he said.
Makary concluded that the Biden phrase “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is not completely accurate.
“President Biden has rallied around the term ‘a pandemic of the unvaccinated’ but the more precise term is ‘a pandemic of the non-immune,’” he said.
Jessica Berg Wilson’s obituary described the Seattle woman as “an exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions” who “died unexpectedly on Sep. 7 from COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT).”
The obituary on Legacy.com continued: “Jessica fully embraced motherhood, sharing her passion for life with her daughters. Jessica’s motherly commitment was intense, with unwavering determination to nurture her children to be confident, humble, responsible, and to have concern and compassion for others with high morals built on Faith.”
“Jessica’s greatest passion was to be the best mother possible for Bridget and Clara. Nothing would stand in her way to be present in their lives,” it said. “During the last weeks of her life, however, the world turned dark with heavy-handed vaccine mandates. Local and state governments were determined to strip away her right to consult her wisdom and enjoy her freedom.
“She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat.
“But, slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. Her passion to be actively involved in her children’s education—which included being a Room Mom—was, once again, blocked by government mandate. Ultimately, those who closed doors and separated mothers from their children prevailed.
“It cost Jessica her life. It cost her children the loving embrace of their caring mother. And it cost her husband the sacred love of his devoted wife. It cost God’s Kingdom on earth a very special soul who was just making her love felt in the hearts of so many.”
This very sad story was made even worse by the Twitter Police.
When a Twitter user shared Wilson’s obituary on Friday, adding in the caption that she had not wanted to get vaccinated, the post was slapped with a warning label.
“This Tweet is misleading,” it said. “Find out why health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines safe for most people.”
It provided a link so users could “find out more,” adding, “This Tweet can’t be replied to, shared or liked.”
Seattle, WA — Jessica Berg Wilson, an “exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions,” passed away from COVID Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. She did not want to get vaccinated. 😥
Misleading? On the contrary, it’s very clear. A healthy young woman, who believed that the vaccine posed a greater risk to her health than contracting the virus itself, was forced to comply with the school’s vaccine requirement for visitors if she wanted to be involved in her children’s classrooms.
She took the vaccine and then died of a vaccine-induced blood clot. She was one of the unlucky ones.
The author of the tweet was not misleading readers, either. She was simply mourning the loss of a young mother who would not have gotten the vaccine (and therefore likely would not have died) had she not been forced to.
Nobody was trying to convince others not to take the vaccine or claiming that it will cause mass deaths.
I am not anti-vax. Vaccines are a potent tool in the fight against COVID. That said, these vaccines do pose a risk to some individuals. Some might have medical reasons for rejecting the vaccine, and others are highly skeptical about taking a vaccine that was developed so quickly. Not everyone needs to be vaccinated.
This is tyranny, and it’s hard to believe this is happening in America.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was reprimanded on Twitter for not following the science when he tried to push the Biden administration’s policy of forcing students to wear masks in school.
Cardona seized upon a study published on the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as evidence that wearing masks in school reduced transmission of the coronavirus.
“A Wisconsin study found that schools that required masking had a 37% lower incidence of COVID-19 than the surrounding community,” he wrote in a Twitter post last week.
A Wisconsin study found that schools that required masking had a 37% lower incidence of COVID-19 than the surrounding community. https://t.co/hGN5eX3Bau
The 2020 study, which examined 17 Wisconsin schools over three months last fall, found that in those schools in which masking, social distancing and other steps were taken to minimize the spread of the virus, the percentage of positive coronavirus cases was in fact lower than the community at large.
But Tracy Heeg, an author of the study, objected to it being misrepresented for political purposes.
Although the study showed there was apparently high mask-wearing and low incidence of virus transmission, there was nothing to show one caused the other.
Further, Heeg noted, one of the basics of the scientific method was lacking.
Secretary Cardona, I was the senior author of this study. Our study is not able to give any information about the role masks played in the observed low in-school transmission rates. We had no control group so don’t know if the rate would have been different without masks.
“Secretary Cardona, I was the senior author of this study. Our study is not able to give any information about the role masks played in the observed low in-school transmission rates. We had no control group so don’t know if the rate would have been different without masks,” she tweeted.
That led some to note that the administration that promised to follow the science might have wandered afield.
Secretary Cardona, I was the senior author of this study. Our study is not able to give any information about the role masks played in the observed low in-school transmission rates. We had no control group so don’t know if the rate would have been different without masks.
In fact, the published study said there were seven limitations on its result, which relied on surveys for its data.
For instance, the study noted that the level at which students actually wore masks might not have been all it was cracked up to be.
“First, mask use was assessed using a survey that was not validated, dependent on voluntary teacher response and subject to recall and social desirability biases,” the study reported.
“The actual mask-wearing rate might have been different because only approximately one half of teachers participated in the study. Teachers with lower masking compliance in their cohort might have been less likely to complete the survey, which limits the reliability of this measure,” the student said.
The study also noted that there was no independent verification of whether teachers and other staff actually wore masks as much as they said they did.
“Third, it was not possible to determine the specific roles that mask-wearing and other disease mitigation strategies played in the low rate of disease spread, and information on school ventilation systems was not obtained,” the study said.
@SecCardona claims WI study proves masks in schools work. Physician author of study says study proves no such thing.
Education Secretary Touts Mask Study—Gets Rebuked by Senior Author of the Study – Foundation for Economic Education https://t.co/RWBQ1Cn383
The study’s purpose, as explained on the CDC site, was to determine – at a time when many schools were closed – whether schools could reopen without spreading the virus, and not whether masks were essential.
The collusion between the U.S. deep state and Chinese military is far more entrenched than most recognize.
irologica Sinica – the scientific journal affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – has published dozens of studies authored by Chinese researchers working for the Communist regime’s People’s Liberation Army.
The academic journal counts the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s top bat coronavirus researcher Shi Zhengli – known as “bat woman” – as its Editor-in-Chief.
Nine additional researchers from the controversial lab, which many scientists and government officials believe is the source of COVID-19, serve on its editorial board.
The National Pulse now can reveal that the journal has published dozens of studies listing individuals employed by Chinese military-controlled institutions. For several years, the journal has enlisted researchers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Hospital 307, General Hospital, Third Military Medical University, and Fourth Military Medical University to even assist with its editorial and review process.
Studies published in Virologica Sinica, including those focused on COVID-19, also count Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers alongside researchers from the PLA’s General Hospital of Central and Southern Theater Command as authors.
Several studies, including those constructing “recombined” viruses, countingauthors from China’sAcademy of Military Medical Sciences have been published in the journal.
Researchers working for Wuhan-based institutes, such as Wuhan University, have seen their studies carried out in conjunction with the Wuhan General Hospital of Guangzhou Command of PLA published in Virologica Sinica.
VIROLOGICA SINICA.
Authors from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) of theSouthern, Central, and Northern Theatre Commands of the PLA are also among the authors published in Virologica Sinica. Additionally, researchers from several institutes part of a PLA-run hospital network such as the Department of Emergency at the 171stHospital of the PLA and the Department of Respiratory Medicine at the 307th Hospital of the PLA have been published in the journal.
The National Pulse has previously reported that officials working at Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have served on the journal’s editorial board.
The journal has also repeatedly published studies carrying out gain-of-function research, supporting claims that Fauci lied about his National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency’s involvement with the risky form of research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“To identify the DENV entry factors, Amara’s group carried out a gain-of-function complementary DNA(cDNA) screen for host proteins that allow the minimally susceptible cell line 293T to be infectable by DENV (Carnec et al., 2015)”
“Simultaneous gain-of-function and loss-of-function assays were performed by transfecting cells with or without related miRNA inhibitors. After 24 h, Act-D was added into the culture medium,” another study notes. An additional study references the practice, commenting “two main approaches can be undertaken in such screens: gain-of-function, in which a library of overexpressed proteins is used in order to induce or amplify restriction.”
The unearthed ties between the Wuhan Institute of Virology-controlled journal and the PLA underscore the working relationship the lab, which has received millions in funding from Anthony Fauci, retains with China’s military.
Despite his repeat denials, we’ve got the paper trail linking Anthony Fauci to Wuhan’s BSL4 lab.
New Anthony Fauci e-mails obtained by The National Pulse reveal that a lab he funded through his National Institutes of Health agency was training researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s biosafety level four facility.
Now, a new e-mail confirms a previous National Pulse report on the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party-run institute and the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL), which describes itself as “constructed under grants awarded by [Fauci’s] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).”
GROUP PHOTO FEATURING BARIC, SHI ZHENGLI, AND LE DUC.
The National Pulse can reveal a 2017 e-mail exchange between Fauci and GNL director James LeDuc confirming the existence of the lab’s partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
In brief, the e-mail shows Fauci’s funding of GNL via NIAID was doing directly towards training Chinese BSL4 staff.
Collaborations with ‘Important Leaders of China’
LeDuc sent an email [below] to Fauci on October 31st, 2017 titled “China BSL4 labs” where he reminds Fauci how they conversed “regarding collaborations with the new Chinese [biosafety level 4] labs.” Among the labs referenced by LeDuc are the “Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan BSL4).”
LeDuc notes that “the directors of each of these 3 new labs has agreed to come to Galveston”:
Tony,
In follow up to our brief discussions at the UT meeting regarding collaborations with the new Chinese BSL4 labs, the US National Academy of Sciences will be hosting a meeting here at the GNL Tuesday, 16 Jan to Thursday, 18 Jan 2018 with counterparts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan BSL4), the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (Kunming BSL4), and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Harbin BSL4). Each of these labs has been constructed and they are about to begin operations. The directors of each of these 3 new labs has agreed to come to Galveston, as has George Gao (if his schedule permits) and about 6-8 other accomplishes [sic] Chinese scientists.
The GNL Director continues, noting that the goal of the meeting is to facilitate “collaborations” and train the Chinese researchers in “practices in safety and security”:
The meeting will focus on a balance of science and operations with the goal of building collaborations and ensuring that the new labs are exposed to US best practices in safety and security. I’m wondering if you would be interested in joining us.
LeDuc concludes the email by adding that “important leaders of China” would attend the meeting:
This is not a “command performance” so no pressure is intended, but it would be a good opportunity for you to meet and interact on a personal and informal basis with these important leaders of China. We expect about 10-12 senior Chinese and a comparable number of senior US scientists from outside UTMB, plus several UTMB folks. I will be hosting a dinner at our home on Tuesday evening to facilitate informal discussions. Let me know if you’re interested and we can work to accommodate your schedule—again, no pressure. Happy to chat if you like.
LEDUC’S EMAIL.
On the same day Fauci receives the email, he forwards it to a contact – “NIAID OD AM” – while adding “let us discuss.”
FAUCI EMAIL.
The following day, Fauci informs LeDuc he is unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts, adding “thanks for the note and the invitation” and expressing no concern over the program:
Jim:
Thanks for the note and the invitation. Unfortunately, that week in January, 2018 is all tied up for me and so I regrettably will not be able to come to Galveston. Thanks for thinking of me.
Previously unearthed presentations from the Texas-based lab show its researchers training counterparts at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on how to handle the “world’s most dangerous pathogens.” American researchers funded by Fauci, such as University of North Carolina’s Dr. Ralph Baric, have visited the China-based lab as part of the program.
Baric is a proponent of gain-of-function research, calling the controversial form of virus manipulation “a crucial tool,” and was referenced by Senator Rand Paul as a partner of the Wuhan lab’s top bat coronavirus researcher Shi Zhengli while she carried out the risky form of research.
Fauci denied any involvement – via funding or personnel– from his NIAID on the research.
Antibody levels generated by two shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can undergo up to a 10-fold decrease seven months following the second vaccination, research suggests.
The drop in antibody levels will compromise the body’s ability to defend itself against COVID-19 if the individual becomes infected.
In a recent BioRxiv study published ahead of peer-review, many recipients of the vaccine displayed substantial waning of antibodies to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, or SARS-CoV-2, and its variants including Delta, Beta, and Mu.
Bali Pulendran of Stanford University and Mehul Suthar of Emory University told Reuters that the study shows “vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine induces high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the original vaccine strain, but these levels drop by nearly 10-fold by seven months.”
While the body has other defense mechanisms in place to ward off the virus, Pulendran and Suthar added that antibodies “are critically important in protecting against SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
The study focused on 46 healthy participants who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The participants’ blood was tested once after receiving the second vaccination and once again after six months.
Researchers suggested administering a third booster vaccination as a measure to improve vaccine efficacy.
Earlier reports of data from a phase one study showed that participants had a higher level of neutralization antibody titers against the CCP virus’s Delta variant after getting a booster—a third dose—versus those who just received two doses, officials said.
“The third dose elevates the neutralizing antibodies in our laboratory studies to up to 100 times higher levels [after the third dose] compared to [before],” Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, told investors in a call earlier this year.
The two-dose Pfizer vaccine was found to be 96 percent effective for the first two months following the second dose, according to a July 28 study from the companies’ scientists.
The research paper outlined a drop in efficacy to 83.7 percent after four to six months.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the most widely used in the United States. More than 226 million doses have been administered as of Sept. 30, versus 151 million Moderna shots and 15 million from Johnson & Johnson.
State lawmakers in Arkansas are attempting to take some of the teeth out of President Joe Biden’s burdensome vaccine mandate for private businesses by providing some loopholes for workers through proposed legislation.
Biden last month demanded that all companies nationwide with more than 100 employees require a COVID vaccine as a condition of employment. He threatened to use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to impose harsh fines.
While Republicans nationwide, in opposition to the mandate, attempt to find their footing to fight the unprecedented mandate for private companies, Arkansas Republicans are attempting to throw out a lifeline for those in the state who don’t want or don’t need the vaccine.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the state Republican Party, which holds majorities in both the state Senate and House, is working on bills which would exempt workers who can prove they have natural immunity following a COVID infection — ignoring the politicized Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advises against antibody testing for natural immunity.
Those willing to submit to regular COVID tests would also be able to navigate around the mandate, according to the report.
“This is what we felt we could get through to give employees some protection,” Republican state Sen. Kim Hammer said.
The Democrat-Gazette reported both chambers of the Arkansas General Assembly, and their respective public health committees, have embraced an identical bill to ease the burden for people who face losing their job if they refuse Biden’s mandate.
The legislation would offer a way for employees to opt-out, and also would make people fired for refusing a vaccine eligible for unemployment benefits — which is something the far left in the country seems largely against. That bill is one of the numerous pieces of legislation proposed in relation to the vaccine mandate.
Often in favor of government programs which pay people not to work, leftists have suddenly become opponents of unemployment benefits for people who might face hardships for refusing to be told what to put into their own bodies.
Look at these compassionate liberals:
And when someone quits or is terminated for not get a vaccine I hope this means they were fired for cause and are therefore ineligible for unemployment. They don’t deserve it.
If Arkansas Republicans get their way, people fired over an overreaching mandate won’t be out on the street. But unfortunately for Natural State residents who do face being put out over a mandate from Washington, GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson doesn’t appear to support the bills currently in committee.
The Republican said he was not in favor of lawmakers using time during the legislative session to focus on protecting state workers and their jobs.
“To use [the extended session] as a means to bootstrap yourself into a whole host of other issues doesn’t make sense to me and it doesn’t seem to fit within the constitution,” Hutchinson told the Democrat-Gazette.
The governor said he hasn’t read any of the bills, and would rather the state legislature focus on redistricting following the release of the 2020 Census. Surely, if a bill passes with overwhelming support to give Arkansas workers a reprieve from Biden’s mad power grab, Hutchinson will jump aboard.
In any event, people nationwide are reeling from a historic mandate from the White House, and in places like New York, they’re losing their jobs and being denied unemployment benefits, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported.
In Arkansas, the people with the power to oppose draconian mandates and their effect on working people are setting their noses to the grindstone.
Whenever COVID-19 infections are on the rise, calls to impose a lockdown begin. Proponents of lockdowns will invariably justify their advocacy by stating that it is what medical experts are calling for. Indeed, physicians, nurses, and virologists will usually support lockdowns as a means of reducing the spread of infections.
Governments often forget to do a cost benefit analysis in their zeal to lock things down and that involves listening to experts outside of the medical field.
Medical specialists are bound to promote whatever actions are possible to protect public health. They don’t think about the costs of lockdowns, only the potential benefits. Although their advice is critical and we should take it seriously, medical experts are only able to present part of the picture.
Economists are experts in their field as well. Many economists have been pointing out the fiscal damages being wrought through nearly two years of rolling pandemic restrictions. They are sounding the alarm as public debt becomes unsustainable and inflation risies. While we don’t want economists offering medical advice, we should be seeking their input when considering lockdowns. Rest assured, if the economy collapses it will cause very direct harm to people.
Logistics specialists are expressing concerns over world supply chain challenges. We are seeing unusual product shortages in everything from automotive computer chips to noodles for Asian restaurants. While the challenges presented by those shortages may seem trivial, they are warnings of a much larger potential problem.
The world population is nearing eight billion people. It is only through a massive, complicated, and sensitive supply-chain system that we are able to stave off mass starvation and economic breakdowns. When countries impose lockdowns, whatever products they supplied to the world are reduced or cut off. That leads to a whiplash effect which can cause all sorts of product shortages that may take months to resolve. Transportation issues have led to a fuel shortage in Great Britain. While that is manageable right now, what will happen in northern countries if fuel delivery fails in January?
We should consult with experts in sociology. What sort of impact are the lockdowns having on society at large? People have been stressed and divided. We certainly saw a lot of that in the recent federal election. How much damage is that causing to the cohesiveness of our society? How long will it take to recover?
Addictions experts have their hands full these days as we have seen a moderate opioid addiction crisis explode into a massive one. From April of 2020 when the pandemic began until March of 2021, nearly 7,000 Canadians died of opioid overdoses. That is an 88 percent increase over the same period a year before. We can’t pretend that lockdowns didn’t contribute to this. Let’s get input from addictions experts when we make decisions.
Some children are entering Grade 2 this year without ever having experienced a full school year in classrooms. What do early childhood experts have to say on how that impacts their development? We can’t turn the clock back on children. They are only that age once.
Post-secondary students are suffering as well. Online courses are a sorry substitute for many fields of learning. Our graduates are not going to be better for lockdowns.
Aside from experts on physiological health, we also have experts on mental health. We should consult them on the psychological impacts of lockdowns.
Medical experts tend follow the philosophy of “if it saves just one life, it’s worth it.” That outlook makes sense from a medical point of view but it’s unreasonable in practice.
How many fatal collisions would be avoided if we reduced all speed limits to 20 km/h?
How many lives would be saved if we had an ambulance on every street corner?
How many heart attacks would be avoided if we had a dietary consultant offering advice in every grocery store?
Why don’t we do those things? Because they would come at too much of a cost.
We have always applied a cost benefit approach with government policy. We seem to have forgotten that approach when it comes to COVID-19 lockdowns, however.
It is not being unreasonable or heartless to ask for other experts to weigh in before considering legislative moves as harsh as public lockdowns. Media and policymakers need to listen to a broad spectrum of specialists before acting. The perspective of an exhausted ICU nurse is important but so is the perspective of an economist.
Policy needs balance, and if we don’t listen to diverse opinions we may find that lockdowns are doing far more harm than good.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday denied an emergency request filed by a group of teachers to block New York City’s school COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Sotomayor, an Obama nominee who oversees emergency requests from New York, denied the teachers’ petition (pdf) without comment. She also did not refer the case to the full 9-member court for review.
The decision effectively allows the mandate to go forward.
Vinoo Varghese, an attorney for the teachers, said in an email, “We are disappointed, but the fight for our clients’ due process and those similarly situated will go on.”
The city’s vaccine mandate requires public school workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by 5 p.m. on Friday. Otherwise, they would be placed on unpaid leave until September 2022 unless they were approved for a religious or medical exemption.
The New York teachers had filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court last month, arguing that mandatory vaccinations violate their rights to due process and equal protection under the law, citing the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The teachers argued that the mandate interferes with their freedom to work in their profession and discriminates against them because other municipal workers who don’t work for schools can opt out of the vaccine by undergoing weekly COVID-19 tests.
A new poll has found that a majority of voters who chose former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election are in favor of a national divorce, while roughly four in ten voters for President Joe Biden are in favor of the same idea.
One would of course have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the cultural and political divide in the country. Have you ever seen such partisan division?
Still, when polled about the idea of separating into two distinct countries, a stunning number of Americans are in favor of splitting up, according to a new poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“Significant numbers of both Trump and Biden voters show a willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms if needed to serve their priorities,” the poll noted.
“Roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a ‘President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts,’ and roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union,” the poll added.
While the idea of states, both red and blue, seceding from the union is nothing new, UVA’s poll found that support for the idea is popular among both Republicans and Democrats nationwide.
Apparently, Republicans don’t want socialism forced down their throats. Meanwhile, Democrats can’t stand the idea of being able to think and act for themselves. That isn’t the least bit surprising.
The last 18 months or so have definitely exposed the partisan divide in the country. More than half of the people who told UVA they voted for Trump are willing to walk away from the United States and carve their own path.
Despite seeing their party in power in Washington and in control of entertainment, academia and sports, people who chose Biden in the 2020 election would be content with seeing their states seceded. Power is never enough.
UVA Center for Politics director Larry Sabato commented on the release of both the poll and its findings.
“The divide between Trump and Biden voters is deep, wide, and dangerous,” Sabato said. “The scope is unprecedented, and it will not be easily fixed.”
Voters seemed more divided when asked more specific questions, according to the poll. A vast majority of both Trump and Biden voters said they view their political opponents as dangerous.
Asked if they view the elected officials from the opposing party as a “clear and present danger to democracy,” 80 percent of Biden voters either somewhat or strongly agreed. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Trump voters answered the same way.
Asked if their counterparts “no longer believe in the ideas that make America great,” the divide was also apparent. Seventy-two percent of people who said they voted for Biden told the pollster they believe their opponents’ views are counter to what might make the country great.
Eighty-seven percent of Republicans told UVA that Biden voters hold views that can’t make the country prosper.
When paying attention to current events and conversations about politics and policy, it’s impossible to imagine a time when the country was more divided. Still, seeing so many Americans willing to call it quits and go their own way is a tragedy — considering all the country has been through across two-and-a-half centuries.
UVA’s Center for Politics polled 1,001 Trump voters and 1,011 Biden voters from July 22 to Aug. 4 and reported a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.
In their quest to prevent another SARS-like outbreak, Chinese and Western scientists pursued new viruses from bat caves in Southern China. Their efforts would lead them to a mine in Mojiang, China, where six miners had fallen ill with COVID-like symptoms.
N THEIR QUEST TO PREVENT another SARS-like outbreak, Chinese and Western scientists pursued new viruses from bat caves in Southern China. Their efforts would lead them to a mine in Mojiang, China, where six miners had fallen ill with COVID-like symptoms.
It was here that Shi Zheng-li of the Wuhan Institute of Virology found the closest known relative to COVID-19. This virus, along with thousands of other virus samples, would be brought back to several labs in Wuhan.
The Chinese labs were partially funded by Western organizations including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance. When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in Wuhan, efforts to promote a natural origins theory while dispelling any discussion of a potential lab leak were spearheaded by Fauci and involved a number of leading Western scientists.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) on Sept. 30 called on the Biden administration to blacklist Chinese biotech companies, citing U.S. national security concerns, and the Chinese regime’s ambitions to “dominate biotechnology.”
In a letter (pdf) to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the Republican lawmakers called for Shenzhen-based company Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), and others, to be added to the Treasury Department’s Non-SDN Chinese Military Industrial Complex Companies List, the Department of Commerce’s Entity List, and the Department of Defense’s list of Chinese military companies.
The pair argued that Beijing intends to use biotechnology for military purposes against U.S. interests and that BGI, which manages China’s national gene database, has a history of acting on behalf of and collaborating with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as part of the Chinese regime’s strategy of “Military-Civil Fusion.”
Beijing has for years been collecting large amounts of American health care data, using illegal methods such as cyber hacking, investments in American biotech companies, and partnerships with hospitals and universities to gain access to sensitive information.
BGI “is involved in activities contrary to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States, and it is a clear military-civil fusion contributor to China’s defense industrial base,” they wrote.
Further, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) focus on biotech extends to its potential military application, the lawmakers cautioned, citing a 2017 publication that detailed how the former head of the PLA National Defense University identified biology as one of seven “new domains of warfare,” including the possibility of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”
The pair said BGI has purchased U.S. companies and is working to “undercut the global DNA sequencing market” using state subsidies.
“BGI and at least 14 other Chinese companies perform genomic sequencing for U.S. health care patients. As mandated by Chinese law, these companies have almost certainly shared this data with the Chinese government,” they wrote. “Joint BGI-PLA research could have an application in future bioweapons—which is especially concerning because BGI’s national gene bank is presumably made available for military research.”
“The United States must not turn a blind eye to the threat posed by Chinese biotechnology companies operating at the CCP’s behest,” Cotton and Gallagher added in their letter. “Blacklisting BGI and its fellow biotech companies will help the United States counter the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to capture Americans’ most private information—their DNA.”
In February, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) said in a fact sheet (pdf) that vast amounts of genomic information (a person’s entire genetic sequence) can fuel developments in the cutting-edge field of precision medicine (or personalized medicine), allowing China to overtake the United States to become a global leader in biotech.
Such data can also be weaponized to target individuals in the country for intelligence and military operations, according to the NCSC.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
Yet more Fauci e-mails shed light on the closeness to the CCP of U.S. healthcare officials.
ew e-mails from Mr. Anthony Fauci – obtained exclusively by The National Pulse – reveal the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director congratulated epidemiologist Dr. Ian Lipkin, a key Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborator, on receiving personal awards from Chinese Communist Party dictator Xi Jinping.
Lipkin – a Columbia University Professor – received the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award from regime chief Xi in 2016 before going on to claim another award from China’s Central Government, Central Military Commission, and State Council.
The 2016 award is the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top science honor for foreign scientists, and, as quoted in a Columbia University press release, Lipkin remarked that “it solidifies my relationship with dear friends and colleagues in the Chinese Academy of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Health” – all of which are wholly-owned and operated Chinese Communist Party entities.
In 2020 he commented, “It is a great honor to receive this medal… I will cherish it as a reminder of my dear friends and colleagues in China and all we have accomplished together for the health of the Chinese people and all people around the world.”
The latter award came just days before Communist China told the world of the human-to-human transmission of the then “novel coronavirus” which came to be known as COVID-19.
As the virus spread Dr. Lipkin became one of the most frequent media talking heads on the subject. Lauded by the New York Times in 2010, Lipkin’s work in covering for his Chinese Communist friends became apparent just 6 days after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a “pandemic.”
Without much evidence at all, Lipkin and four others produced a paper on “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” wherein they speculated that “[i]t is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.”
A few months later Lipkin even thanked Fauci for his dismissal of the lab-leak theory. Today, almost 18 months later, that view is no longer credible.
Congrats!
In addition to his close links to China’s hardline Marxist regime, Lipkin has also received nearly 100 grants from Fauci’s own National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency to fund his research.
LIPKIN AT THE WUHAN INSTITUTE OF VIROLOGY.
The press release, included in the email sent from Fauci, touches on Lipkin’s long history of collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A summary of his professional experience reveals he even “consults” for the regime and has lectured and accepted grants from Chinese state-run scientific bodies, as previously revealed by The National Pulse.
FAUCI/LIPKIN EMAIL.
Fauci exclaimed “Congratulations!” before adding, “Very much deserved” in an email sent to Lipkin the day following the January 8th, 2016 press release.
The email obtained by The National Pulse follows Lipkin’s stark denial of a lab origin for COVID-19. Lipkin was quoted by outlets including CBS and USA Today as a means by which to “debunk” Dr. Redfield’s explosive claim linking the virus to a Chinese lab.
“We should be moving away from finger-pointing,” Lipkin told CBS after adding there is “no evidence to suggest that it was created in a lab.”
Lipkin has also given several interviews to state-run Chinese news outlets including China Global Television Network, where he insisted “I have so many friends in China, in universities, and in government that I can help people to talk to one another and work together.” “Renowned epidemiologist Walter Lipkin lauds China’s transparent and professional approach against coronavirus outbreak,” reads a headline from the state-run outlet Global Times.
“And you presume to tell somehow, over a hundred million Americans who have survived COVID, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high high, and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree.”
Sen. Rand Paul grilled Biden regime HHS secretary Xavier Becerra during a Congressional hearing this week, pointing out that the latter has been making sweeping and grandiose claims about unvaccinated people despite having no scientific background or medical degree.
“Are you familiar with an Israeli study that had 2.5 million patients and found that the vaccinated group was actually seven times more likely to get infected with COVID than the people who had gotten COVID naturally?” Paul asked.
Becerra responded, “Senator, I have to get back to you on that one, I’m not familiar with that study.”
“Well, you think you might wanna be if you’re gonna travel the country insulting the millions of Americans, including NBA star Jonathan Isaac, who have had COVID, recovered, look at a study with 2.5 million study and say ‘Well, you know what, it looks like my immunity is as good as the vaccine or not,’ and maybe in a free country you oughta be able to make that decision,” Paul replied. “Instead you’ve chosen to travel the country calling people like Jonathan Isaac and other, myself included, ‘flat earthers.’ We find that very insulting, it goes against the science. Are you a doctor or a medical doctor?”
Senator Rand Paul tears into HHS Sec. Xavier Becerra:
“Are you a doctor?…You ignore history & science to shame the ‘flat-earthers,’ as you call them. You should be ashamed of yourself & apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.” pic.twitter.com/yDt3hX4DsS
A visibly nervous Becerra leaned in and said, “I’ve worked over thirty years on health policy.”
“You’re not a medical doctor, do you have a science degree?” Paul continued, unfazed, later noting “And you presume to tell somehow, over a hundred million Americans who have survived COVID,, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high high, and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly, and un-American. You ignore history & science to shame the ‘flat-earthers,’ as you call them. You sir, are the one ignoring the science.”
Paul noted, “You should be ashamed of yourself & apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.”
The Biden administration has spent been soft on communist China from the very beginning.
Such examples include rescinding Trump-era executive orders that result in economic benefits to the Chinese regime, appointing pro-Beijing apparatchiks who advocate resetting relations with China, and allowing a de facto “hostage swap” for a Huawei executive awaiting extradition to the United States for financial crimes, including fraud.
Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou entered into a plea deal (a “deferred prosecution agreement”) with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sept. 24. According to the statement released from the DOJ Office of Public Affairs, Meng “has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution.” In admitting her crimes, including knowingly making false statements about Huawei’s operations in Iran (which is under U.S. trade sanctions), she agreed “not to commit other federal, state or local crimes.” If she subsequently commits any of these acts, she would be subject to apprehension and prosecution for the deferred crimes listed in the agreement.
And by the way, the U.S. extradition request to Canada that was initiated by the Trump administration was rescinded, allowing Meng to return in triumph to China in exchange for two Canadians being held there, pending trials on trumped up charges. The DOJ sees no harm and no foul.
Meanwhile, Chinese state-run media, which have been propagandizing for Meng’s release since she was arrested in Canada in December 2018, are crowing about her release and their “vindication” for several days now. On Sept. 26, the Global Times posted an article that featured a picture of Meng “wav[ing] to a cheering crowd as she step[ped] out of a charter plane at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, on Saturday.”
This giving into Beijing’s “hostage diplomacy” is just the latest in an ongoing series of the Biden administration’s giveaways to the Chinese Communists (ChiComs) that began virtually from the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency.
The precedent for future hostage exchanges with the ChiComs has now been set: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can secure future releases of Chinese citizens by arresting a few unwitting foreigners in mainland China and using them for trade bait for Chinese spies and others facing prosecution for real crimes committed in the United States.
A Chinese security guard gestures outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing on Sept. 12, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
The Biden administration has been seemingly hard at work in granting concessions to China, starting with various executive orders as well as the appointment of China-friendly apparatchiks, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, to positions from which future giveaways to China can be orchestrated.
The following items are just a few of the Biden administration’s gifts to China since January.
Cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order that canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have carried millions of gallons of Canadian oil to refineries in the United States. New regulations in that executive order were also designed to curtail domestic oil and gas production, and since then, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has increased dramatically, as shown in the chart below.
Canceling the pipeline was a direct economic gift to China because higher energy prices make heavily-subsidized green tech more economically viable, leading to increased demand for Chinese-built electric vehicle batteries and solar panels. Washington’s rejoining the Paris Agreement is also of a piece with increasing China’s future sales of green tech to the United States.
Facilitating ChiCom Involvement in the U.S. Power Grid. Buried in that same executive order that canceled the XL pipeline permit was a provision that rescinded President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System). The purpose of EO 13920 was to “ban, replace, and set new criteria on bulk-power system (BPS) electric equipment coming from a foreign country or national that poses a national security threat.” Envision a future in which Beijing can turn off—or at least disrupt—America’s lights in order to obtain geopolitical or economic advantage!
The “Xenophobia” Memorandum. On Jan. 26, Biden signed a memorandum ostensibly aimed at “combatting racism” titled, “Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.” A key provision was the direction to federal agencies aimed at “mitigating racially discriminatory language in describing the COVID-19 pandemic.” That meant terminating any U.S. government labeling of SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus”—a major propaganda coup for the CCP, which has been trying to deflect from the known origins of the virus in China since early 2020.
Arms Sales Frozen to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On Jan. 27, the Biden administration imposed a “temporary” freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As discussed in a previous Epoch Times analysis here, a long-term CCP goal is to oust the United States from the Middle East, and freezing arms sales to U.S. allies in the region plays right into the ChiComs’ strategy.
Support for the ‘One-China’ Policy. Despite Beijing’s forced absorption of Hong Kong and the increasing intimidation of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force, the Biden administration publicly announced continued support for the “one-China” policy. What would Biden do if the Chinese military invaded Taiwan?
Appointment of a Pro-China Ambassador to the United Nations. Biden appointed Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.N. ambassador. She is on record for praising the CCP’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”), which uses debt trap diplomacy to capture control of foreign ports and other transportation infrastructure. She was actually paid by the CCP to give that speech at a Confucius Institute event in 2019. Hers words will doubtless be “harsh” when warranted, but real actions aimed at confronting communist China at the U.N. will be few and far between.
Revocation of a Ban on CCP Propaganda in U.S. Universities. As reported here, the Trump-era policy was implemented to “compel primary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions to disclose all contracts and transactions with the Confucius Institute,” with noncompliant schools losing their certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Biden rescinded that policy on Jan. 26, which reopens the door for continued subversion of American colleges and universities through China’s Confucius Institutes.
Holds on WeChat and TikTok Cases. In February, the DOJ placed holds on two important cases involving Chinese tech companies TikTok and WeChat. The Trump administration had banned the apps for security reasons, including surreptitious collection of user data and “malicious intentions” by Chinese actors/bots. In June, the U.S. Department of Commerce formally rescinded a list of transactions previously prohibited with TikTok and WeChat, opening the door for CCP subversion of Americans using those apps.
A reflection of the U.S. flag is seen on the signs of the WeChat and TikTok apps on Sept. 19, 2020. (Florence Lo/Reuters)
Labeling CCP Genocide a “Cultural Norm.”In late February, Biden publicly called the failure of Xi Jinping to speak on the genocide of Uyghur Muslims part of a “different norm.” He said, “What [Xi] is doing with the Uyghurs in the western mountains of China, Taiwan and one-China policy by making it forceful, and he gets it. Culturally there are different norms in each country and their leaders are expected to follow.” One logical interpretation is that Biden provided diplomatic cover for continued CCP aggression in East Turkestan, Tibet, Southern Mongolia, Hong Kong, and even Taiwan in the future!
CCP Sympathizer Overseeing the Review of Trump-era China Policies. Melanie Hart, Biden’s China Policy Coordinator to the Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, is leading a team that is reviewing Trump’s “Clean Network” Initiative, which encouraged countries to block Huawei from 5G networks. Except that Hart took a trip to China, which was sponsored by the suspected CCP-front China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), and contributed to a report by the Center for American Progress that “urged closer financial ties and military collaboration” between both countries. So much for being “tough on China.”
The Debacle in Anchorage. On March 18 and 19, China’s Politburo member Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered a verbal beatdown to national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. As expertly summarized by Sinoinsider here, the Chinese side’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy aimed at promoting the rise of Red China across a number of topics discussed, coupled with the decline of the United States and the West in general. And this was on the world stage for all U.S. allies to observe.
Canceling the Sea-Launched Nuclear Cruise Missile. In June, the Biden administration canceled the U.S. Navy’s sea-launched nuclear cruise missile program. This was done despite the rising threat from PLAN ship-launched cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. The move nips in the bud U.S. efforts to address the Chinese regime’s nuclear and conventional missile superiority in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait.
Dropping Prosecutions of Chinese Nationals Accused of Espionage. In July, the DOJ dropped cases brought by the Trump administration “against five visiting researchers accused of hiding their ties to China’s military, prompting questions about the department’s efforts to combat Chinese national security threats,” according to The New York Times.
Not Backing Restitution for “COVID Damages” From China. In early August, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated that Biden would not back the Trump administration’s demand for “COVID reparations” from China. The greatest fear of the ChiComs is that world consensus would develop that Beijing be required to pay restitution for economic and personal damages wrought by COVID-19. It seems the current administration let China off the hook in one fell swoop.
The Gift of Afghanistan’s Lithium. This is the greatest gift that the Biden administration has given Xi Jinping so far. The ongoing U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan has left the Taliban in charge of the country. The ChiComs are already planning to exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 to $3 trillion in lithium reserves for Chinese production of batteries and other products. This is a perfect economic coup for the ChiComs as the Biden administration pushes green technologies, especially electric vehicles and EV batteries. The debacle was also a major strategic geopolitical defeat for America, demoralizing U.S. allies in the region by the abandonment of Afghan allies.
Conclusion
On issues large and small, the Biden administration is gift-wrapping policies that favor Beijing. There are many other examples in addition to the above list. The giveaways will continue, as the administration has some political appointees who have been corrupted in the past by ChiCom bribery, academic sinecures, and various awards, and who are ready, willing, and able to provide Beijing with a handsome return on their investments.
A 4-year-old girl was supposed to get her flu shot at a local Walgreens in Baltimore earlier this month, but instead accidentally received a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The mix-up, reported by The Baltimore Sun, could have had potentially dangerous implications, as children under 12 are not officially cleared to get the vaccine under Food and Drug Administration standards.
The drug giant Pfizer, which produced the vaccine the girl received, has applied to the FDA for authorization to use a less potent shot of the vaccine on children aged 5 to 11, the Sun reported, but even if that were approved, it’s still out of the girl’s age range.
In a statement, Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said the company has apologized to the family for the mistake, according to Fox News.
“Events like this are extremely rare and we take this matter very seriously,” the statement said.
“We are in touch with the patient’s family and we have apologized. Our multi-step vaccination procedure includes several safety checks to minimize the chance of human error. We’ve recently reviewed this process with our pharmacy staff in order to prevent a future occurrence.”
Victoria Olivier, the girl’s mother, told the Sun the family took steps such as calling poison control and asking for advice on social media as a precautionary measure.
Thankfully, the girl had no immediate ill effects, according to the Sun report.
According to Fox, the FDA also released a statement about the Baltimore incident, noting that the agency had not “evaluated data pertaining to the safety and effectiveness” of the COVID vaccine in children 12.
“We are glad to hear that the child is doing well and hope that she eventually received her flu vaccine,” the statement said.
“As per the vaccination provider agreement, it is mandatory for vaccination providers to report vaccine administration errors whether or not associated with an adverse event to VAERS [The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System].”
The Maryland incident comes after a similar thing happened to Savannah Courtad, a young woman in Arizona.
In an Instagram post, Courtad described going to a Walgreens earlier this month for a flu shot and getting a COVID-19 vaccination instead — a vaccination she never consented to.
Courtad does not identify the location of the Walgreens, but her Instagram biography describes her as a 19-year-old in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“She gave me the shot and as I was leaving told me to come back for my 2nd dose in 21 days,” Courtad wrote.
“Nurses can’t just go around injecting people with the wrong shot,” she continued. “I never gave consent for the COVID-19 vaccine to be injected into my body. Regardless of one’s position on this vaccine I would hope that we can all agree that having something injected into your body should be your CHOICE.”
The Olivier family and Courtad’s cases both reveal a potential procedural issue with how Walgreens is handling this chaotic crossover between flu season and the COVID-19 pandemic.
For those who are over the age of 12, the vaccine is certainly safe and effective to lessen the harm of contracting COVID-19, but that does not excuse mistakes when the patient is either too young or did not want the shot.
Although the Olivier family has said they will not file a complaint with the Maryland Board of Pharmacy, this mistake should make parents extremely cautious when they bring their small children to get their flu shot this fall.
The politicization of federal government agencies began in earnest with the Obama-Biden Administration and has picked up steam in the Biden-Harris Administration.
The latest institution to become entangled in politics is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, America’s health protection agency.
In early August, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signed an order which extended the moratorium on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. A CDC statement said the director had concluded that “evictions of tenants for failure to make rent or housing payments could be detrimental to public health control measures to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2.”
Two weeks ago, an independent CDC advisory panel voted 16-2 to recommend a Pfizer COVID-19 booster shot for all Americans aged 65 and over and for high-risk individuals with underlying conditions. This decision delivered a blow to President Joe Biden, who had hoped to see the recommendation include all frontline workers.
Last week, ABC News reported that Walensky overruled this decision “in a notable departure by adding a recommendation for a third dose for people who are considered high risk due to where they work, such as nurses and teachers — a group which the panel rejected in its recommendation. Some panelists said that without further data, they weren’t comfortable with automatically including younger people because of their jobs.”
Unbelievable: after 18 months of demanding everyone FOLLOW THE SCIENCE and scorning any questioning, Biden’s CDC Director ignores — overrules — the overwhelming recommendation of her scientists about the Pfizer booster, to align with what Biden wanted:https://t.co/msSY2RN0OC
Walensky now has our Second Amendment rights in her crosshairs. She will tackle gun violence in America, which she considers to be an epidemic.Do unelected bureaucrats have too much power in America?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The CDC director signaled her intentions during a late August interview with CNN, when she labeled gun violence a “serious public health threat.”
“Something has to be done about this,” she told CNN. “Now is the time — it’s pedal to the metal time.”
“The scope of the problem is just bigger than we’re even hearing about, and when your heart wrenches every day you turn on the news, you’re only hearing the tip of the iceberg,” Walensky said. “We haven’t spent the time, energy, and frankly the resources to understand this problem because it’s been so divided.”
On Wednesday, NPR reported that “the CDC is now hoping to get a fuller picture of the data and long-neglected details on the impact of daily gun violence. The CDC and the National Institutes of Health, for the first time in nearly a quarter-century, are funding new research on guns to help reduce firearm-related injuries, deaths, crime and suicides.”
“Among several other gun research projects, the CDC is now providing funding to 10 state health departments so they can start collecting data in near-real time on emergency room nonfatal firearm injuries. This will allow doctors and epidemiologists to potentially identify trends and craft swift interventions, as they have done to contain the coronavirus pandemic and other national health emergencies.”
The NPR article goes on to highlight several victims of gun violence to underscore the severity of the problem.
NEW – CDC implements study on “gun violence” after labeling it a “public health threat,” aiming to “craft swift interventions, as they have done to contain the coronavirus pandemic and other national health emergencies.” (NPR)
Ms. Walensky’s first two forays into politics clearly amounted to overreach, but now this unelected public official is inserting herself — and the agency she runs — into a Constitutional debate. Neither Walensky nor the CDC belongs there.
As conservatives, we support the Second Amendment. If the CDC has shown us anything during the course of the pandemic, it is that they are very extreme. They have pushed mandatory masks, mandatory vaccinations and lockdowns. It’s hard to trust anything they do or say.
It’s easy to predict what conclusions the CDC will draw at the end of their study. They will most certainly recommend some form of intervention that would infringe upon our Second Amendment rights.
The CDC should stay out of this debate.
The last eight months have shown us that the Democrats seek total control over America. Our right to bear arms has never been more essential to our freedom.
Americans will never give up their guns. The explosion in gun sales over the past several years shows that Americans are cognizant of our government’s slow drift into socialism.
History has proven what happens when citizens surrender their guns to a nefarious ruling class.
In the 1990s, Australians handed over their guns to the government.
A former director at Montana State University (MSU) allegedly called a student a “stupid fuck” and several other staffers berated the student for starting an anti-mask campaign on campus, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller.
MSU student Dylan Dean and Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) created a petition to end the university’s mask mandate on campus, garnering more than 1,100 petition signatures, according to data provided by YAL. The university’s mask mandate orders students, faculty and staff to wear a mask indoors.
The petition alleged the university waited until the last minute to implement the mandate and students did not have the opportunity to “make decisions about their schooling accordingly.”
Face masks [Shutterstock/Beton Studio]Dean allegedly tried to present the petition to MSU President Dr. Waded Cruzado, who allegedly shut him out of the office. Several staffers and even a professor also attacked Dean over the petition, emails show.
Dean had sent an email to several staffers on Sep. 15, noting the petition and asking “if you agree that the mask mandate is unnecessary at this point, please sign the petition.”
Rick Winking, who worked at the school’s Alcohol and Drug Assistance Center, sent a brief email to Dean that read “you stupid fuck.”
Winking also told Dean “there was a time when conservatives were respectable and had intellectual arguments that made sense. Now being conservative seems to mean emotionally stunted whiny little victims.”
In a subsequent email, Winking told Dean he retired on Sept. 1 and had plenty of time to “fuck with dumb shit whiners.”
Professor Seth Pincus sent Dean an email calling him “a selfish idiot who cannot even consider the potential suffering [Dean] can cause others.”
“If you behaved as a citizen concerned about others, loved thy neighbor, and believed in the golden rule, we would not need mandates,” the email continued.
YAL criticized the university for allegedly defrauding students by implementing the mask mandate.
“Students at Montana State University are right to be infuriated. Administrators have cheated them with a bait-and-switch, promising a normal school year, then imposing tyrannical mandates once they arrived on campus and their tuition checks had been cashed. President Cruzado thinks she can dodge accountability by locking doors to public buildings and siccing police on student protesters, but this will not end until she reverses these policies,” YAL senior spokesman Eric Brakey said.
Lawmakers in Arkansas advanced a bill on Sept. 29 that would allow workers to opt out of their employer’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement if they can prove that they have natural antibodies against the CCP virus or if they’re tested for the virus weekly.
Arkansas’ House and Senate Public Health committees endorsed identical versions of the legislation, according to lawmakers. The measure also requires the state to pay unemployment benefits to workers who are terminated from their jobs over the vaccine mandate
“This is what we felt we could get through to give employees some protection,” state Sen. Kim Hammer said, reported The Associated Press.
It’s not clear if Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who has broken with the Republican-led legislature in 2021 over several key issues, will sign the legislation if it’s ultimately approved by state lawmakers. Hutchinson’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
Previously, Hutchinson had criticized the vaccine mandates that were announced by President Joe Biden earlier this month, saying that they’re “counterproductive” and will “[harden] the resistance” to vaccines.
Republican lawmakers have filed numerous measures targeting vaccine mandates as the legislature reconvened this week to take up the issue of congressional redistricting. Those proposals came in response to Biden’s announcement that he would target private businesses with 100 employees or more, mandating that those employees get the COVID-19 vaccine or submit to regular testing.
Federal health officials have said that individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 should still receive the vaccine, although studies have suggested that people who have previously contracted the virus display long-lasting and robust protection against the Delta variant. A study from Israel several weeks ago suggested that those with “natural immunity” had better protection against the Delta strain compared to those who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine.
The White House hasn’t yet unveiled its plan to mandate testing or vaccinations at private businesses after Biden’s Sept. 9 announcement.
On Sept. 29, when questioned about the mandate, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there’s no firm timeline on the plan.
“We never gave an exact timeline,” she said. “So—maybe we should have been more specific at the time. Obviously, it takes some time and we want to make sure when we put these out they are clear and they provide the guidance necessary for businesses.”
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is still “working on them,” referring to the plan.
“Hopefully we’ll know more in the coming weeks,” she said.
According to OSHA’s law on an Emergency Temporary Standard to implement the vaccine requirement, the federal agency is “authorized to set emergency temporary standards that take effect immediately and are in effect until superseded by a permanent standard” and “must determine that workers are in grave danger due to exposure to toxic substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful, or to new hazards and that an emergency standard is needed to protect them.”
Martin Luther King Jr. considered this question in his powerful letter from Birmingham Jail (1963). He was responding to fellow members of the clergy who opposed segregation but rejected civil disobedience, which involved breaking the law. His central point was that laws may be just or unjust. We have a duty to obey just laws and to oppose, even defy, unjust laws. We need to recognize that both kinds exist and learn how to tell the difference.
Referring to the examples of Nazi tyranny under Hitler and the 1956 Hungarian revolution against communist tyranny, King writes,
“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.”
King gives examples—from the Bible, the martyrdom of early Christians, and the Boston Tea Party—of the refusal to submit to unjust laws.
Like the American Founders and the Declaration of Independence, King does not seek to abolish the rule of law but to appeal to it. King saw, as Thomas Jefferson did, that it was not enough to define law as whatever the sovereign power declared it to be. He saw, as did the Founders, that law so defined provides no constraint on tyrants who want to reduce it to a matter of their own will and power.
So what distinguishes a just law from an unjust one?
In addressing this question, both King and the Declaration draw on a classical tradition that perceives law as rooted in objective reality, in the way things are. It’s a tradition at least as old as Aristotle. King cites St. Augustine as stating the principle that “an unjust law is no law at all.” He cites St. Thomas Aquinas as teaching that “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”
In a similar way, the Declaration appeals to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” It bases itself on truths that it holds to be self-evident and affirms inalienable rights that are endowed by the Creator rather than conferred by the state or sovereign:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
No Truth, No Injustice
For some moderns, such appeals to truth or reality seem intrinsically intolerant, since your truth is different from my truth. We see a radical relativism pervading law, education, and media that turns out to be anything but tolerant. It’s not enough to accept that I have the right to proclaim my belief, however absurd or illogical or contrary to the very nature of the human person or species. It’s not enough that you tolerate it, you must now endorse it with all the visible enthusiasm of a Communist Party Central Committee member applauding the statements of the Dear Leader.
Relativism is the ideology of tyrants. For Stalin and Hitler, history was on their side, victory was inevitable, and anyone who questioned their version of truth was objectively an enemy of the state. “Truth” itself was a matter of the will and power of the ruler. If the outcome of their policies and edicts was not what they promised, it was not because they contradicted reality, the givenness and constraints of life. It was because enemies, within and outside the ruling party, conspired to sabotage the program.
In the United States, we see such an unconstrained vision of reality, not in the full-blooded totalitarianism of a Stalin or Hitler, but in the growing denial of reality itself. It’s a rejection of democratic processes, a refusal of argument or debate, the censoring or suppression of speech, even of plain information, in the media and on campuses. Those who bravely speak up for truth and against injustice are more likely to face hateful mobs on Twitter than Red Guards or Brownshirts in the street.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy often accompanied his most aggressive judicial activism with rhetorical flourishes about the right to make up our own reality. The rhetoric was a sign that Kennedy was going to ignore the Constitution and impose his own views in place of democratic political and legislative processes.
In the Casey abortion decision of 1992, Kennedy famously declared, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center translates: “We justices have the unbounded authority to decide which matters you yahoo citizens should be prohibited from addressing through legislation.” Kennedy’s purple prose signified in practice the inauguration of decades of legalized killing of the vulnerable and innocent on an unprecedented scale, the denial of reality and repudiation of the right to life of a whole class of human beings, the most vulnerable among us.
Transgender identity ideology appears in this light as an extreme case of truth-denying as a requirement for participation in polite society. The absurdity and incoherence of the claims being advanced as scientific by this quasi-religious pseudoscience, along with the catastrophism and zeal of adherents (you must accept my self-diagnosis or you will kill me; saying that is committing genocide) suggests a fringe cult of extremists. The numbers who identify as trans is small, even allowing for the craze among teen girls in the United States and Britain. But the rapid embrace of the ideology in left-liberal parties, professional bodies, media, education, libraries, and the bureaucratic state has been extraordinary, and this despite the irreversible damage done to young people, their bodies, and their family relationships.
Live Not by Lies
Communism and Nazism both accept a relativism that reduces “truth” to a matter of will and power, while seeking to impose their own truth on others. They are obviously tyrannical, if not totalitarian. But we see the same tendencies in ideologies and movements promoted by Western elites that deny objective truth and seek to suppress free speech, open debate, and democratic decision-making.
The tyranny of radical relativism is one of its paradoxes. It denies the very existence of objective reality while insisting on its own truth.
Must we surrender to this bullying out of fear that speaking the truth will elicit enraged Twitter mobs demanding that we be canceled, fired, refused admission to the college or job of our choice, or deplatformed from speaking engagements or denied future employment?
The witness of those who have survived the severest persecution in our times, under Nazis, communists, or Jihadi terrorists of ISIS, offers an answer. Whether the surviving victims were Jews or Christians, victims of slavery or religious persecution, they always insisted on the ultimate importance of telling and hearing the truth about what happened on the ground. The perspectives of concentration camp guards and their victims in the Holocaust were different, as were those of Christians in communist Eastern Europe and the agents of state repression who persecuted them.
To say this is not to assert that there is only one true narrative of an event, or that accusers must always be believed. The ruin of many lives and reputations by a pedophile fantasist, Carl Beech, whose false allegations led British police to conduct a sweeping historical sex abuse investigation (2014–2016), should give us pause before adopting the then fashionable mantra “believe all victims” or junking due process and the assumption of innocence. Years later, in 2019, Beech was convicted on multiple charges of perverting the course of justice and one of fraud. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. His false allegations against prominent individuals, some no longer living, led to a disastrously flawed investigation and immense damage to those Beech accused and their families, while discouraging true victims of abuse from coming forward.
Truth Matters
Justice can be perverted or denied by false allegations: by the failure to take seriously real victims (as happened notoriously in Rotherham in the UK over several decades where authorities failed to act on reports of actual sex trafficking and organized child sexual abuse); and by victims’ fear of retaliation if they speak the truth—there were an estimated 1,400 victims in Rotherham, many of whom were not believed.
The point is simply that justice depends on recognizing the real, objective nature of truth (beyond what the state or party or leaders says it is at the moment), establishing the truth of the matter, and then telling it (or at least not lying about it) even when the cost of truth-telling is high in terms of job security or, in these days of doxxing, risk to one’s family. It’s the priority of those who have witnessed such horrors as the Russian Gulag or the Nazi concentration camps. It should be ours as well. Without truth there can be no injustice, and hence no justice.
Dems promised unionized companies an additional $4,500 credit for their EVs. Coincidence or collusion? [US Patriot]
Ford Motor Co. on Tuesday became the second Detroit automaker to ask salaried employees to reveal their vaccination status against COVID-19 in a bid to comply with wider federal guidelines.
Ford said salaried employees were required to submit their vaccination status against COVID-19 by Oct. 8 but the process was voluntary for its hourly employees represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
The automaker’s move comes as the Biden administration pursues sweeping measures to increase vaccination coverage in the United States, while pushing large employers to have their workers inoculated or tested weekly.
Separately, Chief Executive Jim Farley said in a CNBC interview that the company’s leadership team was vaccinated against COVID-19 and that Ford was conducting a survey to know how many employees had been vaccinated.
“When it comes to the larger population of Ford, we want people to get vaccinated,” Farley said, adding the company would work with UAW, which had so far resisted the effort to make vaccinations compulsory.
UAW represented about 58,000 hourly employees in the United States, as per the company’s latest annual filing.
Larger rival General Motors Co. in August had asked for vaccination status of its salaried employees.
Chip Shortage
Farley, in the CNBC interview, also said the ongoing semiconductor chip shortage would probably last through the end of next year.
He said things were getting better but Ford was still unable to meet demand for its vehicles.
“We are improving our shipments to dealers now and our inventories are going very fast,” said Farley, who took over the automaker’s reins last year.
Ford’s production was hit in the second quarter due to a fire at a plant owned by automobile chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp. in March. Farley said the facility was up to speed now.
It is now Halloween season, so as parents you must be on alert for threats to your children. This year, make sure to carefully check your kids’ candy before they eat it, being especially on the lookout for vaccination needles.
The COVID-19 vaccine has not been approved for children, but some deranged individuals may try to vaccinate kids anyway by hiding needles inside the candy. If your children receive candy from anyone wearing a mask—like the paper ones, not werewolf masks—or if they have a “Hate Has No Home Here” sign in their yard, you need to be very cautious of the candy they receive.
Signs of a vaccine would be a needle sticking out of a candy bar. Also, there could be a label on it, such as “Pfizer Edible.” You may also find some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in your children’s candy; these aren’t a threat, but take a few for yourself, because checking candy is hard work.
Authorities say to be particularly suspicious if your kids trick-or-treat in Dr. Fauci’s neighborhood. He’s attracting kids to his house by giving out full-sized candy bars, but you want to check those carefully.
Watch our latest video on how to make sure your kids are absolutely terrified of COVID:
Calling the proposed Democratic budget package of progressive sugar plums “fiscal insanity,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Wednesday said he has not budged in his opposition to the mammoth spending bill.
Manchin and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have long been holdouts in the Senate and have indicated opposition to a bill that totals $3.5 trillion, a sum Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders has already said is “not enough” for what should be doled out to social programs.
This week, they were courted by President Joe Biden in an effort to get them on board, as CBS News reported. The two votes matter to Democrats because without them – and with continued united Republican opposition – the spending bill cannot pass a Senate that’s divided between the parties 50-50.
That makes Manchin’s announcement a huge roadblock to progressive plans.
Manchin explained his stand in a statement on his website.
“I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March. At some point, all of us, regardless of party must ask the simple question – how much is enough?” he wrote.
“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” he wrote.
Manchin wrote that claims that spending will not fuel increased inflation are pipe dreams.
“Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue [to] pay an unavoidable inflation tax,” he wrote.
Manchin also expressed doubts that an unprecedented deluge of taxpayer dollars will create the version of nirvana its supporters claim will take place.
“Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery,” he wrote.
Manchin noted he supports tax code changes to address fairness concerns, but that there is a limit.
“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford – not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending,” he wrote.
Manchin did not rule out further conversations about an appropriate amount of spending, but wrote that “I cannot – and will not — support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”
Manchin also hinted that the final solution may not be a one-party bill, as the $3.5 trillion package was designed to be.
“If there is one final lesson that will continue to guide me in this difficult debate ahead it is this: America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies,” he wrote. “Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation.”
Sinema is doing her negotiating directly with the WH and Schumer. She’s been at the WH for meetings 10 times since the summer. Durbin, No. 2, himself acknowledged being in the dark about her and Manchin’s demands. Sanders: “I don’t want to talk about Sinema and Manchin.” https://t.co/GvnwyQ8oYs
Progressives in the House of Representatives say they want to move forward regardless of what Manchin does.
“Progressives won’t back down on delivering paid leave, education, health care, child care, and climate action because of an arbitrary deadline,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, according to Fox Business. “We’re sticking to our deal and delivering for the people.”
Radical Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota indicated disgust with Manchin and Sinema.
“It is saddening to see them use Republican talking points. We obviously didn’t envision having Republicans as part of our party,” she said, according to The Hill.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) seemed to mock the far-left-wing of the Democrat Party, as well as a reporter’s question on Wednesday when asked about where she stood on the Democrats’ massive $3.5 trillion social spending bill.
“Sinema, a onetime school social worker and Green Party-aligned activist, vaulted through the ranks of Arizona politics by running as a zealous bipartisan willing to break with her fellow Democrats,” The New York Times reported. “She counts John McCain, the Republican senator who died in 2018, as a hero, and has found support from independent voters and moderate suburban women in a state where Maverick is practically its own party.”
Frank Thorp, a reporter with NBC News, highlighted an exchange that happened with Sinema today when she was confronted about where she stood on the multi-trillion dollar package:
Q: What do you say to progressives who are frustrated they don’t know where you are?
SINEMA: “I’m in the Senate.”
Q: There are progressives in the Senate that are also frustrated they don’t know where your are either.
SINEMA: “I’m clearly right in front of the elevator.”
Q: What do you say to progressives who are frustrated they don’t know where you are?
SINEMA: “I’m in the Senate.”
Q: There are progressives in the Senate that are also frustrated they don’t know where your are either.
SINEMA: “I’m clearly right in front of the elevator.”
Sinema’s opposition to the $3.5 trillion bill, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated could actually cost over $5 trillion, comes at a time when inflation has skyrocketed under the Biden administration.
Sinema has faced intense criticism for standing her ground against her party’s attempt to ram through the multi-trillion package.
Sinema was even threatened by the Arizona Democrat Party that they would give her a vote of “NO CONFIDENCE” if she did not give into to Democrats’ demands:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: The Arizona Democratic Party will closely watch Senator Sinema’s votes in the coming weeks and if Senator Sinema does not vote in favor of Filibuster reform to change the Senate rules in order to allow the passage of The For The People Act – voting rights bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, and other urgent legislation, for example the PRO ACT, that has already passed by the House and if she votes against the Senate Reconciliation Budget Bill, also referred to as the Human Infrastructure Package and the American Families Plan supported by President Biden and the vast majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and if she continues to delay, disrupt, or votes to gut the Reconciliation Package of its necessary funding, then the Arizona Democratic Party State Committee will go officially on record and will give Senate Sinema a vote of NO CONFIDENCE.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED – that before the next State Committee Meeting (Jan. 2022) the ADP State Committee gives the ADP Chair and the Executive Board the authority and power, if the conditions of the preceding paragraph are met, to issues a formal letter of CENSURE to Senator Sinema with the clear understanding she could potentially lose the support of the ADP in 2024.
They say when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When it comes to Vice President Kamala Harris, she can count on energetic admirers in the press who take on the task of making lemonade out of her lemons.
Take Washington Post White House reporter Cleve Wootson Jr., who accentuated the positive in a Sunday story headlined “Handed a pile of no-win issues, Harris builds a network: Gains credit with liberals focused on migration, abortion and the vote.”
One would think that being handed “volatile social issues” such as illegal immigration, abortion and voting rights may be very damaging for Harris. But no! Wootson touted that, “behind the scenes, Harris has been quietly seizing the opportunity to build a liberal national network of dedicated activists that is convinced she embraces its causes.”
Wootson found delighted leftists who appreciate the allyship of Harris. “Advocates invited to the White House, or to Harris’s ceremonial office in the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building, often express appreciation that their opinions and standing are being amplified by a political star.”
Is this reporting? Or merely advertising? Cuddly Cleve has a way with sweet talk.
The story began with Harris meeting with abortion advocate Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Women’s Health in Austin, Texas. Miller said she appreciated how Harris would “talk straight to the extreme politicians in this country,” and she meant Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
That’s fascinating. The House of Representatives just passed a bill called the “Women’s Health Protection Act” with 218 of 219 Democrats that is so extreme on untrammeled abortion that it would require states to allow abortions of an unborn baby viable outside the womb if one physician can proclaim that an abortion would protect the woman’s health. An army of Gov. Ralph Northams could make post-birth abortions happen across America.
But sure, tag the anti-abortion Republicans as the “extreme politicians in this country.”
Liberal extremism is no vice in the pursuit of the presidency. Wootson added, “If Harris has a path to the presidency, it is likely to run through an energized liberal base — not, as it did for Biden, through blocs of centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans.”
Political scientist Matthew Wilson argued that Harris doesn’t need to be broadly popular to win the presidency, but can triumph as the “champion of a base cause.”
The Washington Post story noted Harris was “dogged” by Republicans on the issue of “irregular migration.” She was hounded as the “border czar” who wouldn’t go to the border. But when she (sort of) went there in June, to El Paso, it was a triumph with her base.
Fernando Garcia of the left-wing Border Network for Human Rights, a group bearing hashtags such as “#HugsNotWalls,” told Wootson, “I made remarks in regard to not forgetting our history — this border, the U.S.-Mexico border, is the new Ellis Island. And then when she went over and had a press conference at the hangar, she said the same thing.”
Wootson concluded the story by telling readers that an audience with Harris gives activists the proverbial “seat at the table,” and then they will feel they are heard and this will make them more open to “bring about a Harris administration,” whenever Joe Biden isn’t going to be president anymore.
“She’s breaking ground, and Black women will keep fighting and keep supporting her,” said Melanie Campbell of the Black Women’s Roundtable, another leftist collective.
Harris is not exactly holding a pile of press conferences, so almost no one can name her press secretary. But keep an eye out for Wootson. He’s making a good case for himself.
The CEO of Pfizer (market cap: $240.5 billion) is Albert Bourla (2020 compensation package: $21 million). Bourla and his colleagues want your kids to start getting jabbed with his company’s COVID vaccine by Thanksgiving. Triumphant after the Biden administration last week approved Pfizer’s COVID booster shots (estimated global sales: $26 billion), the company is touting study results (preliminary and non-peer-reviewed), which purportedly show “robust” antibody response and “favorable” safety outcomes for children ages 5-11 who received a two-dose combo in clinical trials.
Now, here are some facts all moms and dads must know about Pfizer before they allow their young daughters and sons to be guinea pigs of a profit-maximizing multinational corporation.
Twenty five years ago, Pfizer sent a team to Kano, Nigeria during a meningococcal meningitis outbreak. They conducted an “open label” (unblinded) clinical trial involving 200 children, half of whom were given Pfizer’s new antibiotic Trovan and half of whom received the gold standard treatment, ceftriaxone. Watchdogs noted that Pfizer used substantially lower doses of ceftriaxone to rig the trials in favor of Trovan.
At the time of the Kano trial, Pfizer was pushing for FDA approval of their latest potential billion-dollar cash cow for pediatric use. Eleven Nigerian children died: five after receiving Pfizer’s product and six after receiving lower-than-normal doses of the older drug.
Pay close attention, parents. A Washington Post investigation reported that one 10-year-old girl suffering from meningitis was not taken off experimental Trovan and given standard, proven treatments by Pfizer’s clinical trial operators–when it was clear that her condition was deteriorating. One of her eyes froze. She lost strength, then died. A Nigerian doctor who supervised the studies for Pfizer admitted that his office had “backdated an approval letter” for the human trials, which “may have been written a year after the study had taken place.” Informed consent was undermined by language and education barriers.
One outraged African newspaper demanded that the government “tell us whether our children were used as guinea pigs and, if so, who committed such criminality and who is liable.” After years of protracted litigation with the pharmaceutical behemoth, Nigerian families reached a $75 million out-of-court settlement sealed with a confidentiality clause.
A separate whistleblower lawsuit filed by Pfizer’s former associate medical director for central research and Yale pediatric infectious disease specialist, Juan Walterspiel, alleged that the company fired him in retaliation for warning before and after the deadly Kano fiasco that the study methods were “improper and unsafe.” Walterspiel further claimed that Pfizer had bribed Nigerian officials to continue the study and cut safety corners because “stock options and bonuses were at stake.”
Pfizer tried to suppress Walterspiel’s allegations, but was forced into a settlement after Wikileaks published diplomatic cables showing that Pfizer had attempted to dig up dirt on a Nigerian prosecutor to bully him into dropping lawsuits by state and federal authorities in Africa.
A secret internal Nigerian government report, leaked years after it had been written, concluded that Pfizer violated international law by conducting an “illegal trial of an unregistered drug” and failing to inform children’s parents that the meningitis treatment was experimental. The government panel called the Trovan tragedy a “clear case of exploitation of the ignorant.”
If you think this corruption was all an anomaly, or misunderstood altriuism, or “misinformation,” I encourage you to start doing your own homework before your child’s health and life become just another cost of doing Big Pharma Business.
Search the Internet and PubMed (while you still can) for “Pfizer,” “Celebrex,” “Bextra,” “Geodon,” “Zyvox,” “Lyrica,” and “Neurontin.”
Find out more about why Pfizer paid the largest fine for health care fraud in American history ($2.3 billion) in 2009 to resolve allegations that it illegally caused false claims to be submitted to the government and paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe their products.
Learn more about the nearly 3,000 people who developed suicidal thoughts and severe psychological disorders after taking Pfizer’s smoking cessation drug, Chantix. Pfizer paid out nearly $300 million to settle those cases. Or the nearly 10,000 women who won claims of nearly $1 billion after developing breast cancer linked to Pfizer’s Prempro hormone replacement therapy.
And just remember, parents, that the pandemic profiteers who stand to gain unprecedented, multi-billion-dollar windfalls from endless vaccine boosters administered cradle to grave around the world have the most terrifying man-made immunity ever created: immunity from liability for their corner-cutting, life-endangering business model.
Parents: Protect your children at all costs from Big Pharma so your children’s lives don’t become costs of Big Pharma doing business.
Isolation & Quarantine Team Consultants (PS2) – Non-Permanent – DOH5814
APPLYSalary $3,294.00 – $4,286.00 MonthlyLocation Lewis County – Centralia, WAJob TypeFull Time – Non-PermanentDepartmentDept. of HealthJob NumberDOH5814ClosingContinuous
Update 9/20/2021 – 4:45 pm: Additional information regarding the Isolation and Quarantine facility has been included.
Important Note: As stated in Governor’s Proclamation 21-14, all employees engaging in work for the Department of Health are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on or before October 18, 2021. Proof of vaccination will be verified by the Office of Human Resources after an employment offer has been extended and accepted. See vaccine requirement timeline. Please reach out to the Office of Human Resources at HR@doh.wa.gov if you need information on a medical or religious accommodation.Apply early! Application review will be ongoing. Initial review begins September 21, 2021. This recruitment is open and continuous. The hiring authority reserves the right to make a hiring decision and/or to close the recruitment at any time. The mission of the Department of Health (DOH) is to protect and improve the health of people in Washington. The division of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) ensures the agency and its local health, tribal, and medical partners are better prepared to respond to and recover from public health emergencies, major disasters, and terrorist activities that affect the health of the people of Washington State.
The Isolation and Quarantine (I&Q) Section works to decompress hospitals by supporting local and state isolation and quarantine, Alternate Care Facility (ACF), and patient transport (EMS) by partnering with local governments (Tribes, Counties, Cities) and communities, state agencies, and other entities in the event of an emergency.
People who test positive for COVID-19 or who are exposed to someone who tests positive are asked to isolate or quarantine (I & Q) away from other people for 10 to 14 days in order to reduce risk of transmitting the virus to others. Most people are able to isolate or quarantine in their own homes. In Washington State, providing for I & Q is the responsibility of local jurisdictions.
The state Isolation and Quarantine facility was created for individuals who are not Washington residents but are traveling in our state and test positive for COVID-19 or who have been exposed to someone who tests positive and do not have a residence or other location in which to spend their 10-14 day isolation or quarantine period.
Our state facility operates from within a motel in Lewis County. Our team provide a number of different services for our guests. Team members provide transportation to and from the facility in vans that have been altered to separate air flow to protect the driver. There is a nurse on staff who checks guest vitals multiple times per day to ensure that guests whose condition worsens get timely transport to a medical facility for care. Another team member will accompany the nurse on their rounds and take notes for the nurse. Team members provide for all aspects of the guest’s stay to include providing laundry services, delivering hygiene products, delivering ready-made foods or microwaveable foods to the guests. Team members also answer phones, check inventory and keep track of supplies needed to safely operate the facility. Team members receive training in fit and use of personal protection equipment (PPE). In addition, team members may be asked to provide technical assistance to local health jurisdictions or tribal nations on facility operation and performance.
Learn more about Isolation and Quarantine for COVID-19 Under the direction of the Team Lead, these Program Specialist 2 (PS 2) positions are responsible for participating in program planning and evaluation of health service delivery products and identifying needs for personnel, supplies, and activities to support community and state response activities. These positions implement policies and procedures that guide the work of the team. This recruitment will be used to fill three (3) non-permanent full-time Program Specialist 2 positions located within the Division of Emergency Preparedness & Response. These Program Specialist 2 positions are anticipated to last twelve (12) months from date of hire. The duty station for this position is in Centralia, WA at our State Isolation and Quarantine Facility. The facility is staffed 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. Staff may work any or all of the three shifts and may work overtime as needed to ensure adequate staffing of the facility.
About the Department of Health The vision of the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is equity and optimal health for all. Our mission is to work with others to protect and improve the health of all people in Washington state.
Our Values Good organizations know what they do and how they do it. Great organizations also understand why they do it. Our values are:
Human-centered: We see others as people who matter like we do and take into account their needs, challenges, contributions, and objectives.
Equity: We are committed to fairness and justice to ensure access to services, programs, opportunities, and information for all.
Collaboration: We seek partnership and collaboration to maximize our collective impact. We cannot achieve our vision alone.
Seven Generations: Inspired by Native American culture, we seek wisdom from those who came before us to ensure our current work protects those who will come after us.
Excellence: We strive to demonstrate best practices, high performance, and compelling value in our work every day.
Benefits of Working for DOH Washington is America’s Top State, according to U.S. News (2021), and provides one of the most competitive benefits packages in the nation.
We also offer:
Ahealthy life/work balance by offering flexible schedules and telework options for many positions.
Growth and development opportunities.
A wellness program that offers education, access to healthy food, and fitness classes.
Opportunities to serve your community through meaningful work.
A commitment to diversity and inclusion fosters an inclusive environment that encourages all employees to bring their authentic selves to work.
An Infant at Work Program based on the long-term health values of breastfeeding newborns and infant-parent bonding.
A modernized workplace.
Duties Include
Maintaining the readiness of the facility and equipment which includes ensuring contractors have cleaned the facility adequately. Staff may also be responsible for making beds, doing laundry, and restocking supplies.
Providing direct services to guests of the facility to include check-in, purchasing groceries and supplies for the site and guests, distributing microwavable/readymade meals and or sandwich fix and other resources, and ensuring all guests receive excellent customer service.
Assisting with inventory of resources: tracking PPE, food, and hygiene supplies. Notifying leadership of the need to order more supplies.
Assisting nurses on performing rounds by taking notes.
Maintaining facility cleanliness and processing guest laundry.
Providing guest transport to and from the facility.
Prepping the facility to receive guests, ensuring rooms are stocked and have been properly cleaned.
Providing outreach, education, and training to internal and external stakeholders.
What we’re looking for Our ideal candidate has a driving passion for the work, brings humility to their job and interactions, and understands how their actions affect others. They see the needs and objectives of others and take them into account while achieving their objectives, and they adapt their approach and expectations accordingly. Our ideal candidate is outward even when confronted with others that are not open or collaborative. They demonstrate resilience to model outward behaviors even when stressed or tired.
Required Qualifications
Option 1: Three (3) or more years of demonstrated experience working in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or a closely related field.
OR
Option 2: An Associate’s degree or higher in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or closely related field; AND one (1) or more years of experience working in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or closely related field.
OR
Option 3: A Bachelor’s Degree or higher in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or related field.
Desired Qualifications
Demonstrated experience dealing with institutional and jurisdictional problems and making independent decisions, as needed.
Knowledge of and experience with working in Emergency Operations Centers and under an ICS structure during actual emergencies, disasters and/or functional/full-scale exercises.
Community health experience.
Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certification.
Experience as a Home Care Aide.
Application Process Intrigued? Click “Apply” to submit your detailed application profile along with the following:
A cover letter, describing how you meet the qualifications and why you are interested in this position.
A current resume.
Three (3) or more professional references, to be included in your profile. Please include at least one supervisor, peer, and (if you have supervised staff) someone you have supervised or led.
Important Note: Do not attach documents that contain a photo or private information (social security number, year of birth, transcripts, etc.) or documents that are password protected. These documents will not be reviewed and may cause errors within your application when downloaded.
Applicants wishing to claim Veterans Preference should attach a copy of their DD-214 (Member 4 copy), NGB 22, or signed verification of service letter from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to their application. Please remove or cover any personally identifiable data such as social security numbers and year of birth.
The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is an equal opportunity employer. DOH strives to create a working environment that is inclusive and respectful. We prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, political affiliation, genetics, or disability.
This is a position covered by a bargaining unit for which the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) is the exclusive representative.
Conditions of Employment/Working Conditions With or without an accommodation, I am willing and able to:
Under the Governor’s Proclamation (21-14), agency employees are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on or before October 18, 2021. Proof of vaccination will be verified by the Office of Human Resources after an employment offer has been extended and accepted. Please reach out to the Office of Human Resources at HR@doh.wa.gov if you need information on a medical or religious accommodation.
Legally operate a state owned vehicle in a variety of weather conditions.
Work Sunday – Saturday (days off will vary).
Work weekends and shift work to include days, evenings, and night shift.
Occasionally work more than 40 hours per week and/or to adjust normally scheduled hours, which may include evening and weekends.
Travel as needed to transport guests to and from the facility.
Drive in heavy traffic, on interstate, highways, and within major metropolitan areas anywhere in Western Washington.
Work in a climate controlled I & Q facility office setting.
Work remaining stationary for extended periods of time, with repetitive motions.
Move and/or transport objects weighing up to 40 pounds.
Participate in emergency response activities and when the Agency Activation Center is activated.
Fit tested on N95 masks and wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at all times while in the facility.
The duty station for this position is in Centralia, WA at our State Isolation and Quarantine Facility. The facility is staffed 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. Staff may work any or all of the three shifts and may work overtime as needed to ensure adequate staffing of the facility.
If you have questions, need alternative formats or other assistance please contact Recruitment@doh.wa.gov, or TDD Relay at 1-800-833-6384 or 7-1-1. Technical support is provided by NEOGOV, 855-524-5627 (can’t log in, password or email issues, error messages).
This recruitment may be used to fill other positions of the same job classification across the agency. Once all the position(s) from the recruitment are filled, the recruitment may only be used to fill additional open positions for the next sixty (60) days.
Only applicants who follow the directions and complete the Application Process in-full will have their responses reviewed for consideration.
House Democrats blocked a measure on Wednesday by Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks that would have required a negative COVID-19 test before migrants are released from Customs and Border Protection custody.
“Today, I offered my REACT Act on the House floor, which would require DHS to give a COVID test to everyone crossing our border illegally,” Meeks tweeted.
“The majority chose to block this commonsense bill that would ensure the health and safety of border patrol and border communities,” she added.
Today, I offered my REACT Act on the House floor, which would require DHS to give a COVID test to everyone crossing our border illegally.
The majority chose to block this commonsense bill that would ensure the health and safety of border patrol and border communities. #IA02pic.twitter.com/Qwbc2ZjH04
More than 12,000 mostly Haitian migrants were released into the U.S. last week. No negative COVID-19 test was required before release.
FLOOR ALERT: @HouseDemocrats blocked @HouseGOP requests to consider @RepMMM‘s commonsense bill that simply requires illegal immigrants are tested for COVID-19 before their release into the U.S., unlike the 12,000 Haitian migrants admitted by @POTUS last week. pic.twitter.com/mj4r9LmXWH
In both July and August, more than 200,000 illegal immigrants crossed the southern border. No COVID-19 tests were required unless symptoms were shown.
Miller-Meeks first proposed the REACT Act in March (Requiring Every Alien Receive a COVID-19 Test). “This legislation would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test all migrants illegally crossing our border for COVID-19 who DHS plans to release into our communities,” according to a news release by the congresswoman.
“This week, I traveled to El Paso, Texas, to meet with CBP agents and officers. I saw firsthand the crisis they are facing, and I believe it is our job in Congress to address it and assist them. Approximately 50% of agents have tested positive for COVID-19, and very few migrants are being tested,” Miller-Meeks said in March.
“My REACT Act would require that every migrant released from CBP or ICE custody is tested and receives a negative test. Border security and immigration is not an issue that only affects border states, it affects every community across the country. By ensuring that individuals entering the country are negative for COVID-19, we can help keep our communities safe and healthy,” she added. https://www.youtube.com/embed/gC9IQzeidDA?feature=oembed
The number of COVID-19 cases has reportedly also spiked in illegal immigrant detention centers, according to information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Should illegal immigrants be required to take a COVID-19 test?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The data, first cited by The New York Times in July, revealed more than 7,500 coronavirus cases were reported from April to July. During the same time, the number of people held reportedly rose from 14,000 to more than 26,000.
According to the data, the number of positive cases since April account “for more than 40 percent of all cases reported in ICE facilities since the pandemic began, according to a New York Times analysis of ICE data.”
Part of the new surge is related to increased testing. “Paige Hughes, an ICE spokeswoman, said that all new detainees were tested for the coronavirus and are held in quarantine for 14 days on arrival,” according to the report.
In addition, a very low percentage of illegal immigrants who enter the country are already vaccinated.
The low vaccination rate, combined with a lack of social distancing protocols and crowded locations, has provided many opportunities for the spread of the coronavirus.
$3.5 trillion spending bill hits American tobacco users and those trying to quit
The Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget proposal relies on a $100 billion tax hike that disproportionately targets the poor, lines the pockets of organized crime, and increases inequality.
The plan doubles the federal tax on cigarettes, which would break President Joe Biden’s promise to raise taxes only on those earning more than $400,000. Households with an income of $35,000 or less smoke at three times the rate of households with incomes of more than $100,000. Richard Marianos, a 27-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives who worked on gang violence, said a tobacco tax increase will punish vulnerable communities.
“You’re punishing lower-income people, which the administration promised it wouldn’t do,” Marianos told the Washington Free Beacon. “You’re punishing the police departments that want to push towards reform. You’re punishing the states or organizations that truly have the tobacco harm reduction strategy to keep it out of the hands of kids and criminals. You cannot have a healthy community that is not safe.”
A tobacco tax hike would also put a dent in state economies that rely on tobacco production. Democratic Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, for example, told Biden last week that he opposes the proposed tax increases, which he said would cost the state $50 million in revenue.
The tax plan establishes the first-ever federal tax on vapor products, which have been consistently cited by medical experts as a safer smoking option than cigarettes. The proposal aims to raise $100 billion in government revenue by raising the tax rate on all tobacco and nicotine products to equal that of traditional cigarettes. It would increase taxes by 2,000 percent on chewing tobacco and 1,600 percent on pipe tobacco and snuff. Ulrik Boesen, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, said the Democratic proposal sacrifices low-income individuals’ and the overall public’s health for the sake of budget concerns.
“People of lower income are still consuming tobacco—it’s obviously not a financial decision—so I don’t think taxes are a good final solution to end cigarette smoking,” Boesen told the Free Beacon. “If you really want to get at the issue here, which is smoking cigarettes, you should be encouraging people to switch to less harmful products.”
A pack-a-day smoker who makes $35,000 would go from spending 4 percent to spending 5 percent of his income on cigarettes under the proposed tax plan, according to Boesen. This tax rate would be worse in the majority of states that set tobacco taxes on cumulative price of a product after federal taxes. Boesen noted that the plan may fail to reach its revenue goals in the long run as more consumers turn to the black market. More than half of cigarettes in New York City are smuggled, according to a study this year from the Tax Foundation in response to tax hikes on cigarettes.
Marianos said cigarettes have become the “new face of organized crime.” Local gangs have cigarettes imported from organized crime groups overseas then sell them on the streets. Gangs that prefer to do business on their own buy cigarettes in low tax areas then sell them in high tax areas for profit. Marianos said this could put local corner stores out of business, which rely heavily on tobacco sales—leaving no option for low-income smokers but gangs.
“When you can’t afford cigarettes, where do you go? You go to the black market. You go to the crooks,” he told the Free Beacon.
The nation’s largest tobacco companies oppose the tax plan, citing concerns with the equal tax rate on all tobacco and nicotine products. Philip Morris International, for example, has spent billions of dollars to develop iQOS, a smoking alternative that allows users to heat up, rather than burn, tobacco. The FDA in recent years approved iQOS as a reduced risk product because of its lower chemical levels, but the product could find itself facing the same tax hikes as the cigarettes it seeks to replace.
“Tax policy is a powerful tool for incentivizing consumer behavior and can help make innovations more accessible to adults who smoke across income levels,” Philip Morris spokesman Corey Henry told the Free Beacon. “We encourage governments to utilize this tool to accelerate switching to smoke-free products that are a better choice for adults who would otherwise continue smoking.”
Tobacco companies have increasingly poured money into products that are less harmful. RJ Reynolds owns Snus, a smoke-free form of dip that has been heralded for its relative safety compared with cigarettes. RJ Reynolds spokeswoman Kaelan Hollon said lawmakers could do more harm than good by making FDA-approved reduced risk products less affordable.
“Taxation should be based on the relative risk of products so that potentially less harmful products can compete more effectively with cigarettes, encouraging adult smokers uninterested in quitting to consider and choose lower-risk options,” Hollon told the Free Beacon.
Boesen and Marianos agreed that lower taxes on vapor products are in the best interest of public health. Marianos said the most effective and safe way to stop smoking is through education, which helps people make choices for themselves as opposed to financial pressure.
“Give them a choice, educate them, but don’t create a prohibition or increase taxes so they have to go to other means,” Marianos told the Free Beacon.
The COVID-19 vaccine should not be mandated for children since it does not “necessarily benefit” them like the vaccines required for school and child care, according to former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.
“Those vaccines that are mandated for children, even if you believe they should be mandated, are for diseases that are highly dangerous to children and highly communicable to other children, who therefore have a high danger from that virus,” Atlas said in an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
“That is not the case with this disease. Children do not have a high risk from this disease. Children do not necessarily benefit themselves from the vaccination of this,” he added.
Atlas, a senior fellow for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, said that kids whose immune system is extremely compromised should consider getting vaccinated, but to require healthy children to receive the COVID-19 vaccines would violate the Declaration of Helsinki, a set of ethical principles developed by the World Medical Association to guide physicians and scientists conducting experiments involving humans.
“In fact, the forced vaccines, particularly for children, violate several of the codes outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki from 1964,” Atlas said. “And I think, when you start having a society that violates some of the most basic codes of ethics, I think we’re in trouble.”
Pfizer said that it had submitted preliminary data of its COVID-19 vaccine trial for children aged 5 to 11 to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Tuesday. This comes only two days after the vaccine manufacturer’s Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told ABC’s “This Week” that the company will soon request authorization of its vaccine.
A five-dose vial of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is held in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, said that the data on the 2,268 children aged 5 to 11, who were given a 10-microgram dose of a two-dose regime, showed that the vaccine was safe and triggered an antibody response similar to that observed in those aged 16 to 25 from a previous trial, who had received 30-microgram doses. But whether the vaccine was effective in preventing disease in kids is still unknown as the companies did not release this data in their press release last week.
Pfizer’s vaccine is the only one granted emergency use in adolescents aged 12 to 15 and approved for people 16 and older.
Although kids are at extremely low risk from COVID-19 and do not significantly spread the disease, there is still a push to get them inoculated. One of the reasons for the push is that it could help protect society, which is a big concern for Atlas.
“Are we a society, a civilization, where we are using our children, even if they did spread, as shields? We’re going to inject our children with an experimental drug that they don’t have a significant benefit from, to shield ourselves,” Atlas said.
He added: “I will never use my children as shields to somehow protect me. That’s really just a heinous violation of all moral principles in my view.”
Opponents of vaccinating children say that the vaccine uses “experimental technology” and lacks long-term safety data. Pfizer states in its press releases that the vaccine may cause adverse events including heart inflammation and other “serious and unexpected side effects” that have not been reported yet, since “the possible side effects of the vaccine are still being studied in clinical trials.”
The vaccines have shown that they do not protect fully vaccinated people from getting infected or transmitting COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, after several months.
Students line up before classes start on the first day of the school year, in Montreal on Aug. 31, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 544 children aged 0 to 18 had died from confirmed or presumed COVID-19 between Jan. 4, 2020 and Sept. 18, 2021, out of a total of 672,020 deaths from all ages.
However, comprehensive studies from the United Kingdom that are still waiting to be peer-reviewed, found that the overall risk of dying or getting severely ill from COVID-19 was extremely low in children. The studies also found that COVID-19 caused 25 deaths in kids younger than 18 between March 2020 and February 2021.
Federal health authorities are likely to authorize the vaccine for children soon. The FDA said that it was “prepared to complete its review as quickly as possible, likely in a matter of weeks rather than months” and will “carefully, thoroughly, and independently examine the data to evaluate benefits and risks.”
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the health agency will urgently review the data for children once they’ve been reviewed by the FDA.
“As soon as they get submitted to the FDA, I know the FDA is urgently planning to review these data, it will go from the FDA to the CDC, and we will review it with similar urgency,” Walensky told Good Morning America on Monday.
Pfizer said that it will submit a formal request for emergency use of its vaccine for children to the FDA “in the coming weeks,” including to other regulatory authorities around the world.
Some medical experts are also questioning the need to inoculate children without long-term safety data.
“Why would an EUA [emergency use authorization] for C19 vax for 5-11 yo be given, w/o any efficacy and long-term safety studies? Why is it OK to accept efficacy based on seroconversion, when Ab [antibody] status for naturally immune are not accepted?” Dr. Mahesh Shenai, a neurosurgeon, asked on Twitter.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, professor of psychiatry at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine replied: “Exactly. And we have not just antibody (or even T-cell) lab data for natural immunity, but also robust clinical evidence of protection against reinfection, hospitalization, and death. Vaccines for 5-11 yo receive approval without this yet NI [natural immunity] is ignored with this data?”
Natural immunity from people who have recovered from COVID-19 continues to not be recognized by the federal government and businesses mandating vaccines and passports in the United States.
Atlas said that Americans should have the choice to decide whether they want to be vaccinated or not.
The CDC says that more than 183 million Americans are fully vaccinated as of Sept. 28.
Mary Gordon-Judge and Michelle Orfanos, registered nurses from Massachusetts, felt they were “discarded like trash” as hospitals in the state announced plans to discipline employees who would not comply with their vaccine requirements.
The nurses said their colleagues could easily get an exemption from flu shots in past years, but now only “a percentage of them” were able to be exempted from COVID-19 vaccines.
“Either you get this vaccine, or you don’t have a job, and that’s not right,” Orfanos said.
The two were among those who rallied in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. Thousands of people filled the street with signs like “my body, my choice,” “no mandates, yes to freedom” and “freedom is the only mandate,” voicing their opposition to vaccine and mask mandates issued by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.
In an executive order issued last month, Baker has required 45,000 state employees and contractors to be vaccinated by Oct. 17. Otherwise, they risk discipline and termination. The order points out that the state is the largest employer in Massachusetts, and argues that the mandate is the best way to protect the health of both workers and residents.
Last week, the Massachusetts State Police Union sued over the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. After a Superior Court judge denied their bid for an injunction on the policy, the union announced that dozens of the troopers have submitted their resignation paperwork, and some of them plan to return to other departments “offering reasonable alternatives such as mask-wearing and regular testing.”
Meanwhile, many local governments, hospitals, and other organizations also issued their own vaccine mandates, which were regarded by the protesters as “modern-day segregation.”
Jeff Kuhner, a well-known radio host, spoke at the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)
“How this is not a form of modern-day apartheid, except this time they are discriminating and persecuting us, not based on the color of our skin, but based on our vaccination status,” said Jeff Kuhner, a well-known radio host, and keynote speaker at the Sunday rally.
According to the Boston Broadside, organizer of the rally, the energized crowd included nurses, firefighters, police officers, first responders, workers, teachers, small business owners, veterans, and parents, who are “the backbone of America.”
The rally started with the national anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, and a prayer for the 13 U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan.
Other speakers included Jim Lyons, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, and Geoff Diehl, a Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts.
Geoff Diehl, a Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts, spoke at the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)Jim Lyons, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, spoke at the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)
Citing speeches of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan, Lyons emphasized the need to protect liberty and restrict the power of the “big government.”
“Freedom matters. And what they’re doing to us is hijacking our freedom,” he said.
Donnie Palmer, a public school teacher, attended the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)
Donnie Palmer, a public school teacher who presented at the rally, believed that being forced to get vaccines and wear masks infringes on his freedom.
“We want to be freed. We don’t want to be governed by a tyrannical government. We don’t want communism. We don’t want socialism. We want Americanism, freedom,” he said.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) has introduced legislation to allow students to change schools if mask mandates or critical race theory curriculum are implemented.
Bishop introduced the Masks Off Act and the No Corrupt Racist Training (No CRT) Act. The measures would allow parents to demand federal education dollars be redirected to a private school, homeschool, or other education expenses if a school enacts the mask and race theory policies.
“Federal education dollars should follow America’s students, not the system,” Bishop said in a statement. “This should be true in all cases, but especially if a school is forcing masks on children or teaching divisive Critical Race Theory. If such mandates or indoctrinating curricula are in place, then families should be able to do what is best for their own kids and have the freedom to pursue alternative education options.”
The Masks Off Act would allow students in school districts with mask mandates to be eligible for “opportunity grants” to seek other education options. The No CRT Act would provide the grants to students who attend schools promoting critical race theory. The federal government would redirect 10 percent of appropriated funding from Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Bishop’s office said the amount of the grants would be based on annual income.
Critical race theory is centered around the idea that race is a social construct used to oppress people of color. It was developed by legal scholars in the late 1970s and 1980s and concludes racism in America is systemic. The theory gained new notoriety in response to the 1619 Project, a New York Times multimedia piece that connects slavery to capitalism.
Critics say critical race theory employs heavy use of the Marxist “struggle” ideology and tactic that advocates for the destruction of history, traditions, and culture of a society.
The Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly approved a bill Sept. 1 that would have banned some critical race theory concepts from being taught in public schools. It was later vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper.
North Carolina students and staff are not currently required to wear masks, but it is recommended under the state’s public health guidance. Cooper has allowed local school leaders to dictate protocols in their schools.
The number of children homeschooled in North Carolina jumped nearly 21 percent during the pandemic, a recent North Carolina Department of Administration report shows.
According to a John Locke Foundation and Civitas poll released from January, a majority of North Carolinians support school choice. The survey results showed 82 percent of 950 bipartisan voters believed parents should have the ability to select the school their child attends. Critics argue private schools promote religious agendas. Others say opportunity scholarships absorb funds that should be used for traditional schools.
“These bills will reallocate a small percentage of federal K-12 dollars to give families in need greater educational freedom and opportunity,” the American Federation for Children said.
According to the most-recent data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, 6,132 COVID-19 cases were reported among school-aged children the week of Sept. 12.
The agency’s dashboard shows 21,005—or 6 percent—of the 350,086 North Carolinians who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine are between 12 years old and 17 years old. The cohort accounts for 8 percent of the state’s total population.
Tucked deep into the massive $3.5 trillion spending bill that progressive Democrats hope to ram through Congress is a new plan to put what one writer calls “crippling” fines on businesses that fail to enforce vaccine mandates to the extent the Biden administration wants.
The spending proposal before Congress has the support of a majority of House Democrats, but has so far not won over enough Senate Democrats to allow for passage there, even under a procedural gimmick that would allow the bill to pass with all Republicans opposed.
Although most of the bill is focused on doling out dollars to social programs, on Saturday, a provision was added in a version of the bill that cleared the Budget Committee and went to the House floor, according to Forbes.
The bill now features, on page 168 of its more than 2,400 pages, a change in the schedule of “crippling” fines for employers who are adjudged to have put employees at risk jacks up financial penalties by up to 10 times the level in current law, Forbes’ Adam Andrzejewski wrote.
Instead of fines of up to $7,000 for a serious infraction, an employer could be hit with a fine of up to $70,000.
What the Occupational Health and Safety Administration concludes is a willful or repeated violation could now cost $700,000, up from $70,000.
Over the summer, OSHA issued an “emergency temporary standard” that classified COVID-19 as a workplace hazard for the health care sector, setting the stage for a similar ruling in all workplaces.
Some, like Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, have already called for pushback against Biden’s rules.
Andrzejewski, a Forbes senior contributor, explained the bottom line.
“If the legislation is enacted, OSHA could levy draconian fines to enforce Biden’s vaccine mandate, a move that could rapidly bankrupt non-compliant companies,” he wrote.
‘The crippling change described on page 168 of the Democrats’ bill isn’t a typo or a clerical error. It was inserted by design and, likely, with the hope that no one would notice before Democrats ram the bill through Congress,” he wrote.
“If this OSHA change becomes law, the Biden administration will force American businesses to choose between vaccinating their employees, testing them weekly for Covid-19, or going bankrupt under crippling OSHA fines.”https://t.co/BFA8sf3bm5
“If enacted, it could bankrupt a whole host of companies that do not believe they should have to comply with the Biden administration’s mandate or harbor the cost of intrusive, weekly tests.”
He said if that provision becomes law, “the Biden administration may force American businesses to choose between vaccinating their employees, testing them weekly for Covid-19, or going bankrupt under crippling OSHA fines.”
YouTube is removing the channels of prominent anti-vaccine activists as part of its new policies to ban videos that claim approved vaccines are “ineffective or dangerous,” according to a new report.
“As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous,” the Post reported.
“The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox,” it added.
YouTube and other social media platforms banned “misinformation” related to COVID-19 during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. The YouTube ban now extends to other vaccines, seeking to remove content that would increase vaccine hesitancy.
According to Axios, YouTube vice president of global trust and safety Matt Halprin said the video platform would allow personal testimony, such as parents describing their children’s experiences with vaccines, but there would be restrictions.
“If the speaker then goes on to generalize and make calls for all parents not to vaccinate or makes broad claims about vaccines not being safe or effective, that would be removed,” Halprin told Axios.Should Big Tech censor vaccine information?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“In the weeks and months that followed the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine misinformation policy, we observed content and realized that there appeared to be an interaction between general vaccine hesitancy that was being promoted on the platform, and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation,” Halprin said. “We felt like we need to address both.”
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter initially banned certain videos that criticized the coronavirus vaccines in 2020 and YouTube pulled more than 130,000 videos with what it considered misinformation, according to the Post.
Wednesday’s report comes as vaccine requirements are causing widespread controversies across the nation. In the National Basketball Association, for instance, a debate continues regarding whether to impose a league-wide vaccine mandate.
Although league officials reportedly hope to ensure every member of the league receives a COVID vaccine, a strong coalition of NBA players — including many high-profile stars — are opposing any such mandatory requirements.
Among the stars leading the charge are Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards, Andrew Wiggins of the Golden State Warriors, Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic and, most notably, Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets.
According to Rolling Stone, many more professional athletes voiced their opinions during a recent annual players’ union summer meeting. The meeting was held to assess the upcoming season’s agenda. High on the list of items to be discussed was a “proposed mandate from the league office that 100 percent of players get vaccinated against COVID-19.”
For numerous players, the idea prompted one simple answer: “Non-starter.”
In addition, dozens of Massachusetts state troopers submitted their resignations to protest Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s coronavirus vaccine mandate.
Michael Cherven is the president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts, a union that represents 1,800 members of the state police.
On Friday, his union issued a news release expressing disappointment after a judge denied the union’s request to delay the vaccine mandate until it can negotiate for reasonable accommodations, such as a weekly testing option or wearing a mask on the job.
“To date, dozens of troopers have already submitted their resignation paperwork, some of whom plan to return to other departments offering reasonable alternatives such as mask wearing and regular testing,” Cherven said.
“The State Police are already critically short-staffed and acknowledged this by the unprecedented moves which took troopers from specialty units that investigate homicides, terrorism, computer crimes, arsons, gangs, narcotics, and human trafficking, and returned them to uniformed patrol,” he wrote.
WASHINGTON–A group of Republican lawmakers threw their support behind doctors who advocate for the right to use ivermectin, an inexpensive antiparasitic drug, for treating COVID-19.
Ivermectin is the latest drug caught in controversy after demand surged dramatically in August. Physician and pharmacist groups, including the American Medical Association “strongly oppose” the prescribing of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients. Federal health agencies also issued warnings recently to prevent the use of the drug, stating that “adverse effects associated with ivermectin misuse and overdose are increasing.”
Critical care physician Pierre Kory, however, describes correctly administered ivermectin as “a gift” in the fight against COVID-19.
“I know ivermectin works. I’ve been using it to treat patients for 10 months now,” Kory told The Epoch Times.
During the pandemic, Kory led intensive care units in several hotspots, including New York City. He is one of the founding members of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which “strongly recommends” the use of ivermectin in both the prevention and treatment of the virus.
Kory briefed more than 20 members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Sept. 27 about the efficacy of the drug.
During the briefing, Kory claimed that ivermectin has helped reduce COVID-19 deaths by 88 percent with early treatment and by about 75 percent in cases of hospitalization, based on data from Mexico City and Misiones, a province in Argentina where a large number of patients were treated with ivermectin.
Kory also said COVID cases significantly dropped in Uttar Pradesh, which was the first state in India to introduce large-scale use of ivermectin during the peak of the delta surge in the country.
Dr. Pierre Kory (C) speaks to members of the House Freedom Caucus about the efficacy of ivermectin against COVID-19 at the Conservative Partnership Institute in Washington on Sept. 27, 2021. (Emel Akan/The Epoch Times)
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who joined the briefing, criticized the efforts to quash access to the drug as a treatment for COVID-19. Johnson has been a vocal advocate for COVID-19 treatments beyond vaccines, including ivermectin. A possible explanation for the resistance “has to do with money,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The vaccine has been worth billions to these companies. Is that what’s driving this? I would like to think that’s not the case,” he said. “How many lives could have been saved had our federal health agencies robustly explored all these generic drugs?”
Ivermectin is an FDA-approved antiparasitic drug that has been used safely for more than three decades in the treatment of certain worm infections. The two doctors who developed ivermectin received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 “for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world.”
While ivermectin was not developed to treat viruses, an increasing number of doctors around the world believe in the efficacy of the drug against the COVID-19.
Over 88,000 ivermectin prescriptions were reported in the United States in the second week of August, which is 24 times higher than the pre-pandemic level, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published an article warning against use of the drug, stating that many have been taking the one intended for animals.
“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” the agency posted on Twitter on Aug. 21.
Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), a member of the Freedom Caucus and one of the supporters of allowing people the right to try ivermectin, criticized federal agencies and the media for smearing the drug as “horse treatment.”
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Gohmert called the efforts to suppress the use of ivermectin as “dishonesty,” which is preventing people from having access to an FDA-approved drug that is inexpensive and widely available. He likened these efforts to the disinformation tactics used for decades by the tobacco industry to dismiss the health risks of smoking.
“It goes beyond being wrong. It gets virtually to being criminal,” Gohmert said.
The FDA warned that it has not yet approved ivermectin “for use in preventing or treating COVID-19.” The agency said that the “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective” against the virus, adding that the clinical trials are ongoing.
According to Kory, FDA approval for ivermectin use to treat COVID-19 is not required for off-label prescriptions. Off-label use refers to using an approved drug to treat a different type of disease that the drug is not approved to treat. Nearly 20 percent of all prescriptions written in the United States are off-label.
There are now threats from medical boards to take away licenses from doctors who prescribe ivermectin, Kory said.
“I cannot describe the harm, and the tragedy, and the actual humanitarian crisis that this is causing,” he said.
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are formally demanding that President Joe Biden end the “stonewalling” of the investigation of the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID-19 has now claimed the lives of nearly 700,000 Americans since its emergence in Wuhan, China, in 2019, while the Chinese government remains uncooperative and deceptive about the virus’s origins,” the 10 Republicans wrote in a letter to Biden, which was dated Friday.
They called the intelligence community’s handling of its investigation into COVID-19’s origins “appalling.”
“The Committee has reviewed the resulting IC report and received a briefing from Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) personnel. Based on the IC’s appalling lack of transparency and the ODNI staff’s hostile response to simple questions, we have little confidence in the DNI’s report,” the letter stated.
In a Twitter post Tuesday, GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a member of the committee, put it bluntly:
“Why is the Biden Administration stonewalling the investigation into COVID origins?” she wrote.
“The American people deserve ANSWERS – not more lies!” the congresswoman added.
Why is the Biden Administration stonewalling the investigation into COVID origins?
The letter also addressed the Biden administration’s ongoing “stonewalling” of the investigation.
“Outside doctors and scientists who were consulted for their technical analyses of COVID’s potential origins are not clandestine sources or spies,” the letter said.
“They are consultants and there is no basis for stonewalling the Committee about their identities. Without this information, we cannot find the IC’s report remotely credible,” it added.
The letter concluded with a call to immediately disclose a list of the outside doctors and scientists involved in the investigation.
Following the initial release of the investigation’s results, Stefanik addressed the issue in a Fox News interview as well as in a commentary piece with Virginia Republican Rep. Rob Wittman that was published by Fox.
“The world deserves to know the truth,” the GOP House members wrote.
“Right now, it is nearly impossible to have all the facts because the Chinese Communist Party has blocked critical information and failed to cooperate with the global community. It leaves all of us asking: ‘What is China hiding?’” they added.
They called on the president to take action on the report.
“It is time for President Biden to move past empty threats and commit to decisive action necessary to uncover the pandemic’s origins,” they wrote.
“We are urging him to lend his support to our bill. Until then, China will continue to keep the world in the dark, even as time to discover the truth begins to run out.”
I cannot resist the setup, so…Karma is a b!tch- and so were you (and now you’ve Croaked!)! [US Patriot]
ORLANDO, FLORIDA — A 67-year-old former Notre Dame professor is dead, in what is fast-becoming a pattern of quick deaths after “booster” shots.
Mrs. Karen Croake Heisler received her first dose of Pfizer experimental mRNA on January 13, according to her Twitter account. Her age allowed her to be one of the first to receive the injections in December and January. It’s unclear when she received the second injection. But Mrs. Heisler declared on April 9 that she and her husband suffered only sore arms after their second injections.
Mrs. Heisler was a passionate, hardcore supporter of anything related to masks and COVID-19 mandates. She also displayed consistent animosity towards those who refuse to receive mRNA and viral vector DNA injections. She called non-vaxxed people “selfish” and ordered them to stay home “until you come to your senses.”
Ms. Heisler loved masks so much that she even made her dog wear them.
For reasons unknown, Mrs. Heisler received a third Pfizer mRNA injection on September 7.
Her health apparently deteriorated very quickly thereafter. Mrs. Heisler tweeted from Orlando Regional Medical Center on September 14. She was there to see a cardiologist. Mrs. Heisler tweeted three times that day, with all of them blaming the “unvaccinated” for her deteriorating health. She went out swinging, telling everyone to “get the damn vaccine” and “damn the unvaccinated.”
Mrs. Heisler was well-respected by the Notre Dame community. She worked in the university’s Film, Television and Theater (FTT) department from 1993 until she retired in 2018.
Mrs. Heisler authored the book Fighting Irish: Legends, Lists and Lore in 2006. The FTT Television Studies Award is named after Mrs. Heisler and given to one graduating FTT student annually for outstanding academic performance.
Mrs. Heisler is survived by her husband and two sons.
Two dubious lists for Karen Croake Heisler
An advisory panel spoke today at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to debate who should receive third Pfizer mRNA injections and when. They recommended that only senior citizens and “those at high risk from the virus” receive third injections. A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel rejected the Biden Administration’s wish to inject everyone with third Pfizer shots last week. The bureaucratic tug-of-war will continue for weeks. Meanwhile many vaxxed people are receiving third injections without FDA approval.
We’ve covered three stories thus far about people receiving third Pfizer mRNA injections. Michael Mitchell received a Pfizer injection after already receiving two Sinovac injections. He died six days later. James Cooper Sawyer died eight days after his third Pfizer mRNA injection. Now Mrs. Heisler is dead 12 days after her third Pfizer injection.
These three individuals were ages 65, 77 and 67, respectively. The average time it took for them to die after the third injection was about nine days. Yet the aforementioned CDC panel is recommending third injections for all seniors. Note that mainstream media are also pushing for Johnson & Johnson “booster shots” after the company touted its own studies on its own product. The original product was marketed as “one-and-done.”
If you love your parents and grandparents, you will not allow them to get viral vector DNA and mRNA injections. You most certainly will not allow them to receive the third, guaranteed-lethal injection. Stay vigilant and protect your friends and loved ones. S/O to commenter “dddd” for the news lead.
Witch hunts carried out by frightened mobs never end well
An experiment without controls teaches us nothing. God bless the unvaccinated pioneers! [US Patriot]
Society loves a scapegoat. It’s comforting to be part of a majority that can point at a minority to blame for their ills.
The scapegoats that we are ostracizing today are those who are choosing not to get vaccinated.
As an exhausted population deals with the fourth wave of COVID-19, they want to see a way out. They want to blame somebody for this prolonged state of living in fear of infection and rolling lockdowns. They just want it all to end and they have decided to point their collective, judgmental fingers at the unvaccinated.
Witch hunts carried out by frightened mobs never end well. We could be driving some people to extremes.
For those who feel that vaccination is an essential component to breaking free from the pandemic, it is frustrating to watch vaccine uptake stalling. In most regions, vaccination rates seem to pause at around the 80 percent rate.
Governments initially began trying the carrot method in order to encourage vaccine participation. We saw everything from lotteries to gift cards offered as enticements for getting the jab. The carrot method had little success. Spurred on by an increasingly hysteric population, governments are now moving on to using the stick.
There are a number of reasons why people choose not to get vaccinated. Many are within an apathetic group who simply never got around to it. With access to nightclubs and sporting events being limited, I suspect that many of them will suddenly find the time and motivation to get the jab.
There are a number of people who are truly just vaccine-hesitant. They are concerned about side effects and want to see more data before injecting something into their bodies. These people can be convinced to take part in vaccination over time if they are approached with reason and respect. We aren’t seeing much of either of those traits from increasingly shrill vaccination advocates, though.
Shaming and threatening the hesitant will only make them dig their heels in. Vaccine advocates need to temper their approach or they will achieve the opposite effect of what they want to see.
The final, and likely smallest group of unvaccinated people are the true “anti-vaxxers.” These are people who are convinced that vaccines are going to harm or possibly kill them. They will never willingly submit to being vaccinated, or allow their children to be vaccinated.
Try to put yourself into the shoes of somebody who views vaccines as a toxin. If you believed that a vaccine would kill you or change your DNA, would anything ever convince you to put it in your body? Of course not.
We need to accept and make accommodations for the reality that a sizable segment of the population will never be vaccinated. Whether it’s through rapid testing schemes, separate schools, or segregated workplaces, we can’t let these people get cut off from all aspects of society.
If even only six percent of the population is deeply opposed to vaccination, that makes up millions of people. Many of these people work in the health-care system by the way, and drumming them out of employment won’t ease the burden on hospitals.
Right now, those who are terrified of vaccinations are feeling pretty cornered. They are losing their jobs, their friends, and their ability to travel. They are being pushed into a miserable existence where they may end up virtually locked within their homes for the foreseeable future.
I can’t think of a better recipe for taking somebody who has challenges with mental stability and pushing them into actions that may harm themselves or others.
This feeling of fearful helplessness has now been exacerbated with the end of the federal election. Many people hoped that a strong electoral showing from Maxime Bernier’s PPC would protect them from coerced vaccination. The heightened tension was evident at PPC rallies and in some protests. Those people have now lost hope of protection through the electoral system and feel that they have no voice within government.
There are few people more dangerous than those who feel that they have nothing to lose and nowhere to go.
We can’t stop encouraging vaccination for fear of triggering an extremist. We can, however, work to change our tone and approach with those who are choosing not to get vaccinated. We are creating a caste of dejected, desperate people. We may not understand their point of view but we have to try to sympathize with it.
If we keep blaming, shaming, and marginalizing this minority, I fear that we may push somebody over the edge. The next act of aggression may be something much worse than a frustrated fool tossing a handful of gravel at the prime minister.
Career politician Joe Biden is an epic failure as U.S. president who has made the world a more dangerous place, as evidenced by the numerous domestic and international crises he has unleashed so far in his tenure.
That’s the somber assessment of Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, who enumerated eight major ways Biden has damaged the United States.
“Among America’s most important allies, there is no longer any trust that President Biden can be relied on as a serious partner,” Stewart wrote in a grim piece published Sunday by The Hill.
“Among America’s most competitive rivals, there is no longer any belief that President Biden can protect our interests. And among the American people, there is no longer any faith that President Biden can defend our most fundamental ideals.”
The 14-year Air Force veteran said Biden has emboldened America’s enemies, betrayed our allies and sold out the American people.
This multi-pronged collapse is a direct result of the 78-year-old Democrat’s toxic policies, which have done the following, according to Stewart:
Energized the Taliban and the terrorist group known ISIS-K.
Emboldened foreign adversaries to take advantage of Biden’s weakness.
Empowered communist China to begin assault drills near Taiwan.
Enabled Russia to ramp up cyberattacks against the U.S.
Obliterated American energy independence.
Ignited soaring inflation, hurting consumers and the economy.
Blamed fellow Americans for the ongoing COVID crisis.
Because of Biden’s botched troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Stewart wrote, “the Taliban and ISIS-K are unnecessarily emboldened, enriched and energized.”
He continued: “Right now, they are arresting, torturing and killing Afghans who fought alongside American troops for years. The Biden administration has responded by calling these terrorists a ‘strategic partner.’”Should Biden be impeached for failing America?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The congressman wrote that Biden’s Afghanistan debacle set in motion a dangerous cascade of other threats around the world.
“In the immediate wake of the disastrous withdrawal, China began performing assault drills near Taiwan,” Stewart noted. “Every indication is that China will only accelerate its efforts to reclaim the country.”
Stewart also pointed out that Russia increased its cyberattacks on the U.S. “the moment Biden stepped into office.”
“And how did President Biden respond? He cleared the way for a Russian pipeline that will boost our rival’s economy and enhance their ability to manipulate our partners in Western Europe,” Stewart wrote. “This is the type of decision-making that is hamstringing our own interests, both abroad and here at home.”
In contrast, Biden “began his term by going to war against American energy,” Stewart wrote. “He sabotaged the Keystone pipeline, canceled domestic oil and gas leases, rolled back restrictions on Iranian oil sales and more.
“Then, when the price of energy began to rise, as it inevitably would, he even went to our foreign competitors and asked them to increase their production to help cover his mistakes. These decisions destroyed American jobs and empowered our enemies,” Stewart added.
Biden’s reckless economic policies have also ignited “levels of inflation that we haven’t seen in decades,” Stewart wrote.
“The costs of housing, fuel, food and just about every other necessity in your life are all on the rise. This is effectively an additional tax on every American.”
As if that weren’t enough, Biden’s vaccine mandates and oppressive coronavirus restrictions have simply further divided the country.
“He inherited a ready-to-go vaccine program and an economy that was primed to take off,” Stewart wrote. “Still, he has lost the confidence of the American people with arbitrary, baseless, inconsistent guidance.”
The congressman pointed out that shortly before being installed in the White House, Biden insisted that he would not mandate vaccines.
“Now, he’s blaming his fellow Americans and political opponents for the surge of COVID-19 this summer and ordering them to be vaccinated or risk losing their jobs,” Stewart wrote. “President Biden has come a long way from his pledges to unify the country and defeat COVID-19.”
The disastrous past year confirms that Biden is simply not fit for office. He is failing America, damaging her alliances and empowering her enemies. And when the world’s most powerful country is damaged, the world becomes a more dangerous place.
Can the United States endure three more years of this chaos and devastation?
The suggestion that anyone simply weigh the risks of getting the COVID-19 vaccine in light of the potential for adverse reactions is one of the worst infractions you can commit in the eyes of the establishment media’s pandemic cult.
Just ask rapper Nicki Minaj.
The fact remains that adverse reactions can happen and while Minaj caused a category 5 media meltdown when she shared that she was hesitant to get the jab due to an incident she’d reportedly heard of involving her cousin’s friend, when public figures have adverse reactions themselves, there’s very little coverage.
Such is the case with French tennis player Jeremy Chardy, who just bowed out of his 2021 season over what he said was a reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine, which he now says he regrets receiving.
“Since I had my vaccine (between the Olympics and the US Open), I have had a problem, I’ve had a series of struggles. Suddenly, I cannot train, I cannot play,” the 34-year-old player told French news agency AFP last week.
Chardy, who once ranked 25 in the ATP Tour and has beaten a few tennis greats like U.S. Open Champion Daniil Medvedev, said that he began experiencing violent pains all over his body whenever he began to train.
Yikes.
“Now I have been to see two doctors, I have done some tests so I know what I have and the most important thing is to take care of myself,” the elite athlete explained.
So now, Chardy has been forced to end his season early and drop out of the ATP Tour.
“At the moment, my season is stopped and I don’t know when I’ll start again,” he said, according to Tennis World. “So now I regret having taken the vaccine, but I couldn’t have known.”
While the Tour does not require vaccination to compete, a separate Tennis World article explained Chardy had decided to go ahead with it for the “common good for humanity.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he explained. “The problem is that we have no hindsight on the vaccine. There are people who had similar [side-effects], but the durations [of the issues] were really different.”
This is exactly the sort of thing that has the ATP’s number 3 player, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, hesitant about getting the vaccine himself.
“The COVID-19 vaccine has not been tested enough because it is new and has some side effects. I know some people who’ve had them. I’m not against it, I just see no reason for someone in my age group to be vaccinated [yet],” Tsitsipas reportedly said last month.
“For us young people I think it’s good to pass the virus because we’ll build immunity. I don’t see it as something bad. As I said, it isn’t obligatory, everyone has freedom to decide for themselves what’s right & what’s not,” he stated.
Imagine that — everyone has the freedom to decide for themselves what’s right and what’s not. That’s sort of the whole point that Nicki Manaj was making when she committed the thought crime of publicly stating she was a bit hesitant, and the point that concerned millions of Americans whose jaws dropped when President Joe Biden issued his vaccine requirement for businesses last month.
The media is near-unanimous in its ostracization of vaccine hesitancy and the vaccine-hesitant — CNN’s Don Lemon has openly called for Minaj and Tsitsipas’ American counterparts to be shunned and shamed for opting to skip the jab so far (and of course, there was MCNBC host Joy Reid’s tantrum over Minaj’s statements).
Such one-sided coverage of the vaccine may be excused as being for the sake of public health in the midst of a pandemic — but it is flat-out dishonest and has the potential to threaten public health by obscuring and manipulating the appearance of the vaccine’s supposedly unquestionable safety.
If we hadn’t long ago given up the idea that we could expect simple journalistic integrity from our media, we would be able to expect us to simply give us both sides of the story.
Tell us about the public figures who are hesitant or experience adverse effects as well as the members of the scientific community and public health officials who have substantial and well-supported arguments as to why we should get the jab.
How hard is that?
Very, apparently. And it’s this resistance to simply reporting the facts as they come that likely still has so many Americans still, despite all the propaganda, belittlement and shame, still so very hesitant to get the vaccine.
The Western Journal has published this article in the interest of shedding light on stories about the COVID-19 vaccine that are largely unreported by the establishment media. In that same spirit, according to the most recent statistics from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System, 8,164 deaths have been reported among those who received a vaccine, or 21 out of every 1,000,000. By contrast, 680,688 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported by the CDC, or 17,913 out of every 1,000,000. In addition, it must be noted that VAERS reports can be filed by anyone and are unverified by the CDC. Thus, as the agency notes, “Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.” The decision of whether to receive a COVID vaccine is a personal one, but it is important to consider context when making that decision. — Ed. note
Fauci and Daszak continue their CCP collaborator road show.
nthony Fauci recently spoke to a conference sponsored by Wuhan lab collaborators, EcoHealth Alliance, The National Pulse can reveal.
Despite a preponderance of evidence of EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak’s role in the cover-up of COVID-19’s origins, Fauci addressed the event which also featured Daszak as a speaker.
The National Pulse can also reveal that the Fauci-led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) sponsored the September 2021 event alongside other federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
SPONSORS.
A longtime recipient of grants from Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency, Daszak controversially used the federal funds to pursue collaborative research on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak, who has hosted Fauci as a featured guest at several EcoHealth Alliance events, also spearheaded the fraudulent narrative that COVID-19 developed in a wet market in his roles on the Lancet COVID-19 committee and World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 origins investigation team.
Daszak was later recused from the Lancet task force due to his conflicts of interests exposed by The National Pulse.
Despite EcoHealth’s Chinese Communist Party collaboration and subsequent cover-up, Fauci appeared at a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) forum, “Toward a Post-Pandemic World,” alongside him. The event occurred September 21st through 24th, concluding one day before Daszak’s entire Lancet COVID task force was disbanded due to conflicts of interest.
A conference agenda seen by The National Pulse reveals that Daszak delivered the event’s welcome and closing addresses.
Similarly, on the final day of the event, Fauci delivered a pre-recorded “visionary statement” on “Pandemic Preparedness: The Biomedical Research Approach.”
AGENDA.
Despite Daszak’s repeated lies about COVID-19, the event seeks to mitigate the “impact of dis- and misinformation” in an effort to “maintain public trust and optimize adherence”;
“The impact of dis- and misinformation and how it can be managed to maintain public trust and optimize adherence to health behavioral guidance in a time of crisis.”
The September event was the complement to a forum convened in March 2021 by NASEM’S Forum on Microbial Threats, where Daszak serves as the Chair.
Sources from within the WHO state that they believe time is of the essence if we are to have any chance of proving the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
Sources from within the World Health Organization state that they believe time is of the essence if the world is to have any chance of getting to the bottom of the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
The WHO is putting together a team of 20 experts together with the stated goal of figuring out the origins of the pandemic. There are concerns that time is running out for an investigation like this, or that it could already be too late.
According to Fox News, a WHO spokesperson said that the team will need “data and access in the country where the first reports were identified,” which is China.
“China still holds all the cards, the WHO lacks power and it’s inconceivable to me that a new committee will be able to negotiate access to China…This is building a beautiful committee with nowhere to go,” Lawrence Gostin, the Director of Faculty for Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global and Health Law, said.
“China is highly incentivized and capable of denying us this information,” Kitchen said. “They’re incentivized to deny us this information because no matter what it is – whether it was a wet market or a biological facility as its origin – it’s embarrassing to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Biden administration has consistently trusted the World Health Organization and their efforts to investigate the origins of the virus. “The President believes there needs to be an independent investigation, one that’s run by the international community. It’s an international pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in May.
“He believes the Chinese need to do more to put forward data, to be more transparent. And in the second phase of this effort, he’s certainly hopeful that will be the case, and he believes that every theory should be explored through that process but that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions before that data and that information is made available.”
President Trump had pulled out of the World Health Organization in the spring of 2020 after the emergence of the virus, and what his administration believed to be excessive deference by the WHO to Chinese interests.
It was in February 2020 that Biden said “…were I president now, I would not be taking China’s word for it,” saying that he “would insist that China allow our scientists in to make a hard determination of how it started, where it’s from, how far along it is.”
Brandon Schadt, Johnson & Johnson Regional Business Lead: “It’s a kid, you just don’t do that, you know? Not something that’s so unknown in terms of repercussions down the road, you know?”
Schadt: “Kids shouldn’t get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine.”
Schadt: “It’s a kid, it’s a f*cking kid, you know? They shouldn’t have to get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine, you know?”
Schadt: “J&J is like stepping in the best smelling pile of sh*t you could step in.”
Justin Durrant, Johnson & Johnson Scientist: “Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though.”
Durrant: “It wouldn’t make that much of a difference” if children are unvaccinated for COVID.
Durrant: “Inconvenience [the unvaccinated] to the point where it’s like, ‘I might as well just f*cking do it [and take the COVID vaccine],’ you know what I’m saying?”
Durrant: “It’s almost like — you’re almost like a second-grade citizen if you’re not vaccinated…you can’t do anything that a normal citizen can do.”
Durrant: “If you can’t work, I feel like that’s punishment enough…Only way people really act and comply is if it affects their pockets, like if you’re working for a big company and you’re going to lose your job, best believe you’ll be the first one in line [to take the COVID vaccine]…That’s what we’re doing.”
[NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Sept. 27, 2021] Project Veritas released the third video of its COVID vaccine investigative series today exposing two Johnson & Johnson [J&J] officials, who argue children do not need to take the COVID vaccine in part because of the potential long-term side effects.
One of the exposed J&J employees, a scientist by the name of Justin Durrant, laughs about inconveniencing unvaccinated adults if they refuse to comply with mandates being imposed upon them:
Justin Durrant, Johnson & Johnson Scientist:“Inconvenience [the unvaccinated] to the point where it’s like, ‘I might as well just f*cking do it [and take the COVID vaccine],’ you know what I’m saying? Like ‘I can’t go out of state,’ I can’t – ‘my grandma’s in Canada and I can’t visit her,’ you know what I’m saying? You can’t go to France unless you’re vaccinated — you know you’ve just got to keep doing things like that where you’re almost like a second-grade citizen if you’re not vaccinated, but I know that’s awful.”
Veritas Journalist:“You’re almost what?”
Durrant:“Like a second-grade citizen, like you can’t do anything that a normal citizen can do.”
Veritas Journalist:“A second graded citizen?”
Durrant: “Yeah like top grade, like the ones that get it, and the ones that just like — then you can’t do sh*t.”
…
Veritas Journalist:“So then how do we punish [the unvaccinated]?”
Durrant:“I mean if you can’t work, I feel like that’s punishment enough.”
Veritas Journalist:“People what?”
Durrant:“Only way people really act and comply is if it affects their pockets, like if you’re working for a big company and you’re going to lose your job, best believe you’ll be the first one in line [to take the COVID vaccine].”
Veritas Journalist:“Right, so if you’re working for a big company and you’re about to lose your job, you’ll be the first one in line?”
Durrant:“Yeah.”
Veritas Journalist:“That’s so true. That’s smart, that’s what we need to do.”
Durrant:“That’s what we’re doing.”
Durrant said he does not recommend taking his own company’s vaccine. He asked the Veritas journalist to keep that information private.
“Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though,” he said.
Both Durrant and Brandon Schadt, J&J’s Regional Business Lead, said that applying the COVID vaccine on children would not move the needle in the battle against the pandemic.
“It wouldn’t make that much of a difference” if children are unvaccinated for COVID, Durrant said.
“It’s a kid, you just don’t do that, you know? Not something that’s so unknown in terms of repercussions down the road, you know?” Schadt said.
“It’s a kid, it’s a f*cking kid, you know? They shouldn’t have to get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine, you know?”
Schadt compared J&J’s COVID vaccine efficacy to the other pharmaceutical companies.
“J&J is like stepping in the best smelling pile of sh*t you could step in,” he said.
More footage exposing Big Pharma will be released by Project Veritas imminently. To receive these upcoming videos directly into your email inbox, click here.
About Project Veritas
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations. Donate now to support our mission.
Woke millionaire Kyrie Irving and other NBA players are stupid conspiracy theorists who literally want all of your family members to die. Rolling Stonereports there is significant opposition among NBA players to the league’s proposal to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, considered by many to be a “non-starter.”
Irving, whose Instagram feed is filled with homages to Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, has urged Americans to “do your own research”—not as it relates to the COVID-19 vaccine, but rather as to whether the Earth is round or flat. His views on the vaccine, however, can be extrapolated with a high degree of confidence.
For example, Irving has started liking Instagram posts from conspiracy theorists claiming that “secret societies” are using the vaccines to fulfill “a plan of Satan” by implanting black people with microchips connected to a master computer. Similar conspiracies have reportedly spread throughout the NBA.
Irving is a vice president on the executive committee of the NBA players’ union, which held its annual meeting last month to discuss vaccine mandates and other issues ahead of the upcoming season. According to the NBA’s most recent health and safety guidelines, the anti-vaccine players were successful in forcing the league to accept nearly all of their demands.
The league and the players’ union are still negotiating a number of contentious issues, such as “prohibitions on accessing indoor bars, clubs, and lounges.” NBA superstar LeBron James, who has repeatedly refused to discuss his vaccination status, violated the league’s health and safety protocols (but was not punished) earlier this year by attending an indoor tequila party with Drake and other celebs.
Weeks prior to the party, James’s former teammate Dennis Schröder told a German media outlet that “LeBron and I” were the only players for the Los Angeles Lakers yet to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. James has insisted that believing in science (or not) is “a private thing,” despite vowing to use his platform to speak out on “everything that’s going on around this country and around the world,” except for China.
Irving has also refused to comment on his vaccination status, but all evidence suggests he is not. His aunt, Tyki Irving, told Rolling Stone: “There are so many other players outside of him who are opting out, I would like to think they would make a way.”
The NBA may have caved to its anti-vaxx players, but some state and local governments have sought to impose their own vaccine requirements. New York City, where Irving plays for the Brooklyn Nets, will require athletes to show proof of at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose in order to play indoors.
On Monday, the Nets hosted a media day at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Irving, who would have had to present proof of vaccination to attend, wasn’t there. In a virtual interview, he once again refused to discuss his vaccination status. “I like to keep that stuff private,” Irving said. “I’m not able to present there today, but that doesn’t mean that I’m putting any limits on the future of me being able to join the team.”
It remains unknown why Irving, who took a two-week leave of absence to protest the riot at the U.S. Capitol, wants his fellow Americans to die as a result of his reckless behavior. For whatever reason, sanctimonious white liberals were significantly less vocal, if not completely silent, in response to the Rolling Stone report.
Kimberly Jenkins, a critical care nurse at Banner Health Center in Phoenix, Arizona, knows she could be out of a job soon—unless she complies with her employer’s COVID-19 vaccine program by Nov 1.
That’s just not going to happen, said Jenkins, who is pinning her hopes on a religious exemption to the shot.
“If it’s denied, I won’t be working for Banner any more,” she told The Epoch Times.
Dressed in hospital scrubs, Jenkins and several other nurses in hospital garb stood outside Arizona’s Senate Building on Sept. 24 to protest against the mandatory vaccines.
“I don’t care how I get a paycheck [but] I have to take a step back for my own mental health,” said Jenkins, holding a sign with a drawing of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
“It Appears To Be Mutating Into A Dictatorship,” the sign’s caption read.
Across the street from the Arizona Capitol, more than 1,000 people had gathered at a medical freedom rally sponsored by more than a dozen anti-COVID-19 vaccine organizations.
Among the sponsors were the Arizona Coalition for Medical Freedom, America’s Frontline Doctors, America’s Healthcare Workers for Medical Freedom, the Patriot Party of Arizona, and Arizona for Medical Freedom.
Jenkins, 41, shrugged when asked what she will do for work if and when she gets fired from her job. “Other organizations are hiring in Arizona. The biggest problem is staff, and having to deal with the fact that we will lose a lot of nurses” over the vaccine mandates, Jenkins said.
“So, you now have new graduates working in high-security areas [in place of seasoned nurses]. We don’t have the staff to train new nurses.”
Since the Biden Administration announced vaccine mandates for federal employees and companies with 100 employees or more, health-care facilities across the country have suffered losses.
Earlier this month, Novant Health Inc. announced 375 staffers had been suspended for their noncompliance with the company’s COVID-19 program.
Meanwhile, Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, New York, this month shut down its maternity ward when dozens of employees chose to quit their jobs rather than take the injection.
And at Indiana University Health, 125 staffers resigned this month after they refused to get vaccinated.
While Jenkins said she isn’t sure how many nursing jobs are on the chopping block at her facility, “it’s enough to make a huge dent to do proper care.”
She said the standard of care in ICUs is three skilled nurses per patient. Now, it’s common to see two nurses for every critical care patient, she said.
“I don’t like it when science is ignored,” said another unvaccinated nurse at the Sep. 24 rally, who works at Common Spirit Health in Phoenix. “I’ve seen adverse [side effects] happen to co-workers of mine,” after they received the vaccine.
“The vaccine was completely rushed through. It was being rushed through even when we were in a pandemic state,” she told The Epoch Times.
The irony, she said, is that during the pandemic in 2020 “we were heroes. Now, we’re zeroes.” Regardless, she said, “I’m not quitting. I’m not worried about their timeline.”
Another registered nurse at the rally who also works at Common Spirit Health told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, “I wouldn’t say I’m fearful [about losing my job]. I would say it’s wrong what they’re doing.”
For a guy with the support of billionaires, millionaires, China, Mainstream Media, and Social Media, his numbers are WAY worse than Trump ever [US Patriot]
President Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit a new record low at just 40 percent, according to a poll released on Monday by Rasmussen Reports.
The poll of likely U.S. voters also revealed 58 percent of likely voters disapprove of the president’s job performance.
Among those, 50 percent selected “Strongly Disapproved.”
In contrast, only 21 percent selected “Strongly Approve.”
The current approval rating places him below former President Donald Trump, who was at 43 percent approval at this point in his presidency, according to Rasmussen.
The daily poll has followed Biden’s approval rating since his first day in office.
He ranked as high as 55 percent approval on May 26. Since then, his approval has dropped by 15 percent.
According to a Rasmussen Reports Twitter post Monday, the majority of Americans oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill, his plan to raise the debt ceiling and his pandemic restrictions.
Coming Up Today:@JoeBiden daily presidential job approval % is – now at a new record low.
– Majority Oppose $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill – Majority Against Raising Debt Ceiling – Majority Now Believe Pandemic A Trojan Horse For Permanent Socialism pic.twitter.com/XB2r7zFGQF
The Democratic spending bill will be a central focus this week as Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeks a House vote on Thursday. The California Democrat has claimed to have the votes to pass the bill, but some House members remain uncertain.
Biden’s recently announced vaccine mandates for federal workers and companies with 100 employees or more has also led to widespread frustration with many Americans. Several states have opposed the measure through letters and across social media.
Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem have both vowed to sue the Biden administration over the issue.
Daily tracking results for the daily poll are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis, according to Rasmussen Reports.
The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.
A poll from Fox News last week showed Biden’s approval rating with independent voters had experienced a strong drop. Since January, his approval rating plummeted 24 points.
WATCH: Joe Biden’s approval rating collapses 24 points among independent voters. pic.twitter.com/a8YxNMmyQJ
Dozens of Massachusetts state troopers have submitted their resignations ahead of a deadline to comply with the state’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
“Many of these troopers are going to be returning to their previous municipal police departments within the state that allow for regular testing and masks,” State Police Association of Massachusetts President Michael Cherven said in a statement. “To date, dozens of troopers have already submitted their resignation paperwork.
“Throughout COVID, we have been on the front lines protecting the citizens of Massachusetts and beyond,” he said. “Simply put, all we are asking for are the same basic accommodations that countless other departments have provided to their first responders, and to treat a COVID-related illness as a line of duty injury.”
The action comes as a Massachusetts Superior Court judge rejected the union’s request to delay the vaccine mandate, which goes into effect on Oct. 17. Exemptions are granted, under an order issued by the governor’s office, to those seeking religious or medical exemptions to the vaccine.
“We are disappointed in the judge’s ruling; however, we respect her decision,” Cherven said. “It is unfortunate that [Gov. Charlie Baker] and his team have chosen to mandate one of the most stringent vaccine mandates in the country with no reasonable alternatives.”
The State Police Association of Massachusetts recently filed a lawsuit saying the Oct. 17 deadline would cause troopers “irreparable harm” and sought more time to “negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment.” They also had sought to have troopers who are not vaccinated instead submit to regular COVID-19 testing and wearing a mask on the job.
But the judge, Suffolk County Superior Court Associate Justice Jackie Cowin, said that delaying the vaccine mandate wouldn’t serve the public’s interest.
“The public interest is, unquestionably, best served by stopping the spread of the virus, in order to protect people from becoming ill, ensure adequate supply of medical services, and curtail the emergence of new, deadlier variants of the virus,” according to her ruling.
At the federal level, the Biden administration earlier this month issued an order mandating that all federal workers and contractors, including law enforcement personnel, get a COVID-19 vaccine. Earlier, the federal government stipulated that federal employees and contractors who didn’t get the shot would have to instead wear masks, socially distance, and undergo routine testing.
A few dozen federal employees, including U.S. Secret Service members, have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration over the mandate. Some argued that a prior COVID-19 infection should preclude them from receiving the vaccine, while others said that mandatory vaccines would violate their religious freedom.
Gov. Baker’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Was the first superspreader COVID-19 event at a military athletic tournament that took place two months before the first reported cases of the virus? And was it part of a Chinese bioweapons experiment?
That’s the allegation being made by Wei Jingsheng, a former Chinese Communist Party insider who defected to the United States in the 1990s. Jinhsheng said he heard about Beijing carrying out an “unusual exercise” during the October 2019 7th CISM Military World Games in Wuhan.
“I thought the Chinese government would take this opportunity to spread the virus during the Military Games, as many foreigners would show up there,” Wei told a documentarian from Sky News, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
“[I knew] of the possibility of the Chinese government using some strange weapons, including biological weapons, because I knew they were doing experiments of that sort.”
The allegation, made during the documentary “What Really Happened In Wuhan,” would seem wild if they didn’t come from one of China’s most well-known dissidents, a man who has many connections in the country which jailed him for much of his adult life for what they deemed “counter-revolutionary activities.”
The claim was also backed up by Miles Yu, former principal China adviser to the U.S. State Department. Yu told Sky News that American, French and German athletes got sick at the games with COVID-like symptoms, but were never tested.
And then there was State Department COVID-19 investigator David Asher, who said the virus could have been circulating in the United States well before it was originally thought to be.
“We see some indications in our own data … that there was COVID circulating in the United States as early as early December, possibly earlier than that,” Asher said.
Wei also said he approached the Trump administration with this information in November of 2019, but was rebuffed.
“The long-time democracy campaigner, who has served time in prison for ‘counter-revolutionary activities’, said he made the approach as whispers of a ‘new SARS virus’ began circulating on WeChat and other Chinese social media platforms,” the Daily Mail reported.
“I felt they were not as concerned as I was, so I tried my best to provide more detail and information,” Wei said.
“They may not believe that a government of a country would do something like [cover up a virus], so I kept repeating myself in an effort … to persuade them.”
According to News.com.au, Wei wouldn’t name the Trump administration official he talked to, but said they were high-ranking.
“I’m not sure if this politician wants me to talk about him right here,” he said.
“But I want to say he is a high enough politician, high enough to be able to reach the President of the United States.”
The October date would be well before investigators believe the disease started spreading in December of 2019. It wasn’t until Dec. 31, 2019, that China acknowledged a cluster of cases in Wuhan. Furthermore, the nation denied it was contagious until late January.
Are any of Wei’s allegations true? Sure, they may seem out there — but the problem is that China has invited scrutiny of this sort through its handling of COVID-19.
Beijing punished early whistleblowers who warned about the disease, lied to the world about the gravity of the situation until it was too late and continues to thwart any real investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
Thanks to that, it’s likely we’ll never get a straight answer regarding when the disease originated from China itself. Thus, when one of its exiled dissidents makes this kind of accusation regarding a disease that’s killed millions of people, we don’t have to reflexively believe it. But we do have to listen.
Once upon a time, not that long ago, we had something called reporters in the United States. Millennials and Gen-Z’ers may not believe this, but there were actually people employed by newspapers and television stations who would gather the news and then report on it without any overt political spin or coordinated narrative. Reporters have now largely vanished from the mainstream media landscape in favor of journalists, making it even more important to share episodes like “Why Does the IC Assessment Ignore Established Facts On COVID-19 Origins?” with people who still think outlets like CNN and the big three networks are just reporting the facts. Hans Mahncke and Jeff Carlson of “Truth Over News” are the real deal when it comes to reporting, and their continued coverage of the hunt to find the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
To be sure, our federal government doesn’t seem to be nearly as interested in where and how COVID-19 originated as Mahncke and Carlson. Having already done an episode on the two separate labs in Wuhan that could easily have been the source of the initial outbreak, they now turn their attention to the Intelligence Community assessment of COVID-19’s origins—at least the declassified portions. This is, of course, the report President Joe Biden ordered be compiled when his administration could no longer pretend an accidental lab leak wasn’t just as plausible an origin to the pandemic, if not more so, than the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus jumped from animals to humans. This assessment dropped at the tail end of our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and has received almost nothing in the way of media coverage. There have been plenty of print stories done, largely boiling down to the Intelligence Community thinking we’ll never know where it started, but televised coverage is almost nonexistent.
That’s what makes this episode important, as Mahncke and Carlson not only highlight various parts of the assessment, but give an analysis of how truthful or potentially misleading the assessment is. As Mahncke states at the outset of the episode, the IC assessment says a lot about the Biden administration’s desire to let China off the hook for unleashing the pandemic on the world, whether they intended to or not. Much of what they review seems to fall under the umbrella of plausible deniability while relying on the reader’s willful suspension of disbelief. Given how readily most of our government officials are to make a big show about vowing to get to the bottom of something, only to do little more than shake their fists and gnash their teeth, it seems unlikely that much more will come out of the Intelligence Community, which currently seems light on intelligence.
To illustrate this point, Carlson and Mahncke start out reviewing the very first paragraph of the “Key Takeaways” of the assessment, which in just a few sentences manages to be accurate, plausible, and misleading. The important thing to note is that what they consider misleading has to do with whether the virus was genetically engineered, as this term is used in the vaguest sense with no concrete definition. As Mahncke explains, Dr. Fauci has been hard to pin down, to say the least, on what he thinks qualifies genetic engineering. It’s a neat trick he’s used to try to claim the National Institute of Health never funded gain of function research (they did) and his dodginess surrounding genetic engineering gives the IC an out when making their assessment. Mahncke is not nearly so forgiving, pointing out the Wuhan Institute of Virology was genetically modifying bat viruses, and had been for more than a decade. He also explains the concept of conducting serial passage experiments, a process that is meant to alter the genes of a pathogen at an artificially increased rate of speed. This is the gain of function research Fauci insisted isn’t gain of function research, where scientists force a virus to go through multiple mutations that would typically take decades in a much shorter amount of time. Not calling this genetic engineering is the height of splitting hairs and doesn’t pass muster with Mahncke. The last sentence of the assessment’s opening paragraph claims that China had no foreknowledge of the virus before the outbreak, which Mahncke rates as poorly worded and mixed in its honesty. This claim hardly seems probable once Mahncke dismantles it with cold hard facts of information we do know—information that precedes the outbreak by a dozen years.
Carlson attacks the next portion of the assessment and the agencies’ agreement that it is as likely that the virus has natural origins as it is that it had manmade origins. Here the assessment is again splitting hairs, as Carlson points out that if exposure occurred due to contact with an infected animal, it hardly matters whether that contact happened accidentally inside a lab with poor safety controls in place or outside in a wet market. Either way, it could be considered a natural exposure because the infection came from an animal, rather than breaking a vial of the virus and inhaling it. It is yet another misleading statement meant to make it sound like the IC really did try to find the origins of this, even though they don’t seem to have tried very hard or put much logical thought into the matter. Carlson also has the receipts for their decision to call out this claim as intentionally non-specific.
Why Does the IC Assessment Ignore Established Facts On COVID-19 Origins? | Truth Over News [Full Episode]
Carlson moves onto the bullet points of the “Key Takeaways” and quickly blows up the idea that it’s most likely the SARS-CoV-2 virus had natural origins, dismissing the claim as illogical and inaccurate. He presents documented evidence contradicting the IC’s reasoning and their seeming desire to continue providing cover for China, in addition to highlighting that we’ve still not found the “missing link” animal that allowed COVID-19 to jump to humans if it did have a purely natural origin completely unrelated to any lab experiments. He reminds the viewer of the SARS outbreak in 2003, nearly 20 years ago, when we were able to determine the originating animal in just a couple of months. Why, with all the medical advances that have taken place since then, are we still unable to find not only the “bridge” animal but figure out exactly how this virus evolved to bind more perfectly to human cells than any animal cell we’ve tested, including the presumptive pangolin progenitor? It also has such a higher kill rate than other SARS viruses we’ve encountered that it seems even more unlikely to have developed without any human intervention.
Mahncke tackles more of the bullet points, assessing the claim that the virus probably escaped a laboratory after an accidental infection as accurate, even if only one IC agency found that to be the most likely origin. It’s astounding to anyone capable of deductive reasoning to think that just one agency came to this conclusion, but it’s fairly evident under our current administration that China must be protected from blame at all costs, even if it requires ignoring the documented safety hazards and risky nature of working with bat viruses at both labs operating in Wuhan. Even more unbelievable is that three additional IC agencies think both a lab leak and natural origins are equally possible. It is again a sign that when it comes to COVID-19, our Intelligence Community appears to have strapped on its dunce cap.
The final claim of the “Key Takeaways” is that there’s just no way to find out more about COVID’s origins and is assessed by Carlson and Mahncke as both inaccurate and misdirection. There are plenty of other scientists to ask questions about what they know, particularly in the West, including Anthony Fauci. Surely Fauci would be willing to turn over any and all information they have on the virus, wouldn’t he? At the same time, it’s ridiculous at this point to expect China to give any more information than they already have on just how this pandemic started, and it shouldn’t be necessary given how many independent researchers have been able to dig up information on their own.
This episode is crucial to view and share as we move ever closer to two years since this virus first appeared, particularly with the number of governments continuing to exploit the pandemic to wrestle freedom from their citizenry. The number of Americans who still believe the government has their best interests at heart when it comes to fighting COVID is truly frightening. Maybe if some of them watch this episode of “Truth Over Facts,” they’ll realize our current administration appears to care more about protecting China than protecting us.
I seem to have been fortunate enough to stumble upon the latest vaccine shaming “copy and paste” post some people have decided to share on social media. If you’re vaccinated, good for you. If you’re not vaccinated, good for you. I honestly don’t care what you do with your body because the only person I have any control over is myself.
That being said, I’m honestly tired of staying silent while everybody else, including Joe Biden, go off on their tangents.
You’re vaccinated, and you don’t know what’s in it? You don’t know what’s in hot dogs or treatments for cancer, AIDS, MS, etc.? You don’t know what’s in Tylenol and Ibuprofen and tattoo ink and shampoo and your food? Well, the great thing about living in the information technology age is a lot of that information is available right at your fingertips, presuming of course it hasn’t been censored. We live in a time where we have the ability to know a lot of things that we didn’t know before. There may be a lot of things you don’t know right now, but you have the ability and opportunity to educate yourself. If you decide not to take the time, that’s your business. But that also makes you incredibly lazy and ignorant.
Life is short. And it passes quickly and can change on a dime. I believe all of us still have a lot of things we want to do in this life and experiences we want to share. Places we want to go. People we want to see.
If you seriously think the answer is shaming people who HAVE done their research into getting injected with something that isn’t even a vaccine is going to allow you to get your life back, you’re wrong.
The problem is, we’ve been putting our lives on hold for almost 19 months now. We’ve listened to the science. We kept our kids home from school for a year. We shut down businesses, some forever. We closed our churches, our parks, our gyms, our hiking trails, our beaches, pretty much everything. Obesity of U.S. children increased among 5- through 11-year-olds from 36.2 percent to 45.7 percent. Where’s the outcry over that? How about the excess consumption of processed sugars like high-fructose corn syrup? Where’s your passport for being allowed to be a parent or a human being for that matter? Maybe it’s time for you to remedy that for your fellow man.
And yet some still keep believing the next hurdle you jump over will get you back to your normal lives. But the goalposts keeps moving!
Guess what? You can’t comply your way back to freedom. This will never end if we keep submitting to the latest and greatest “scientific suggestion” that’s being forced on us. Label me a conspiracy theorist? I don’t care. The stats are in my favor as I’m currently at about 50-0 as far as how things are going down. If anything, I identify as a walking spoiler alert.
Personally, I’m appalled and offended that certain people in certain occupations are having to choose between getting injected with an experimental gene therapy (yes, that’s what your “vaccine” is, read the FDA “approval”), or lose their jobs, livelihoods and ability to support their families. It’s abhorrent to think in order to have a place in society, we’d have to inject ourselves with this and show proof to anyone and everyone. I’m sure the Germans in the 1930s allowed fear and division to make them think what was being done to the Jews was fair and justified as well. It’s taken almost 90 years for history to repeat itself. The Nuremberg Code is still in effect and these people enforcing these mandates are in violation of it.
Are these hospitals seriously going to fire nurses and doctors for NOT getting a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic? That’ll be a sight to see. It may resemble our exit from Afghanistan! These medical professionals worked through COVID for 18 months on the frontlines and were last year’s heroes and are now deemed expendable because they don’t want to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine. How about teachers? Are we going to shut down schools again? Parents will LOVE that. Or maybe we should eliminate the teaching certification so any random person can teach our kids? In Oregon you no longer need to show proficiency in reading and math. Will that become the new standard?
I advise you all to read The Thirty Tyrants. There is a ton of corruption in this world and in our government. Our Founding Fathers NEVER meant for our representatives to make lifelong careers in Washington, DC. Some of these younger representatives show promise but if they’re there too long, it’s only a matter of time before their soul and morals obtain a price tag and they’ll be bought and sold to the Devil himself.
How is it okay for these politicians to mandate how we live our lives and lock us down and torment our kids while they go out to expensive dinners indoors unmasked nor socially distanced at The French Laundry? How is it okay to have a 60th birthday party with 600 guests when my father’s funeral was limited to 10 people? How is it acceptable to enforce mask mandates and no social gatherings and be caught at a backyard BBQ doing exactly what was mandated NOT to do? How is it acceptable to say we can’t travel while politicians are off vacationing abroad? How is it okay to close hair salons and most of us went without getting a haircut for a year when you parade maskless inside a salon you had opened especially for you?
I also advise you all to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Turn off the news, the television and the radio. FOLLOW THE MONEY. There’s a medicine that costs 12 cents that could eradicate this virus but instead the $300 billion option is being forced on us. Stop shaming people for the decisions that they make. Stop buying in to this ridiculous rhetoric. This won’t end until we say it ends. People all over the world are starting uprisings because they have had ENOUGH.
I’ve been affected by loss from COVID. I’m not denying the reality or severity of the virus. But Fauci is not my God. Bill Gates’ software and computers get viruses all the time! What is he doing working on and funding vaccines? Ultimately, the only person who knows how many days I have left on this earth is Jesus Christ, and that’s who I’m choosing to put my faith in. Not Fauci, not Pfizer, not Moderna, or whomever else is trying to dictate how I live my life. I do not consent. I will not comply.
For those doctors and nurses who have blatantly stated they won’t treat people who aren’t vaccinated, for the nurse who posted on social media recently that they’ll mess with your ventilator if you’re not vaccinated, I’m sorry, didn’t you all take an OATH when you became licensed? It’s your duty to do your job no matter what state or condition a person is in. Those lives lost are on YOUR hands, not the unvaccinated. And for those people who say the unvaccinated deserve to die? You’re no better than the dictators and tyrants. And even with your vaccine you can still get and spread the virus so YOU also should have to submit to regular tests.
I woke up about 18 months ago. Waking up is painful and disillusioning. But honestly, walking around awake in a world that’s still asleep is more painful and creates a righteous anger inside of you. I pray every day that darkness comes to light, that the truth comes out, and most importantly that those who have committed these crimes against humanity be held accountable.
Newly leaked documents obtained by private research group DRASTIC “completely contradict” claims made by both China and American immunologist Dr. Anthony S. Fauci about the reality of gain-of-function research being done inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology that may have caused the coronavirus pandemic, according to a former State Department COVID-19 investigator.
On “The Story“, host Martha MacCallum reported the documents released by DRASTIC revealed a plan to create a coronavirus – in this case SARS-CoV-2 – that would be more infections to and transmissible via humans. The virus would then be released in batcaves where researchers would test the flying mammals with vaccines to see if they could cure the virus.
The Chinese researchers planned to inject the “super-charged” virus into “humanized mice” to see what the effect on them would be.
Dr. David Asher, the ex-State Department official, told Fox News the biggest takeaway from the new documents is that there is a “smoking gun that explains the specific features of the [virus] sequence that are so peculiar.”
“The most genetically unusual piece of the puzzle and the sequence is a ‘furin cleavage site’, which allows the virus to spread from bats to humans, and among humans in a highly pathogenic way,” he said.
“The fact that the Wuhan Institute – with EcoHealth Alliance as their US partner – were applying for funding to do gain of function research, explicitly to endow a bat-borne Coronavirus related to SARS with a furin cleavage site so it could essentially kill humans.”
EcoHealth alliance, a New York-based NGO, is run by Dr. Peter Daszak, whom Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently discussed on his program.
Carlson previously reported on Daszak’s group’s funding of bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, with the help of the taxpayer funding the federal government directed to EcoHealth Alliance.
“We learned that the guy directly tied to bat virus experiments in the lab in Wuhan was the same guy telling the entire world that there was no possibility this virus could have come from the Wuhan lab. Conflict of interest, anyone? It’s absurd,” Carlson said of Daszak in June, noting that the doctor organized a letter published in The Lancet that downplayed the possibility the virus could’ve come from the Chinese lab.
On Thursday, Asher told Fox News he is relieved that in the end, DARPA, the Pentagon’s research & development arm, turned down direct funding to the coronavirus project in the Wuhan lab on account of “weapons of mass destruction concerns.”
According to Asher, DARPA also felt concerned the research was “pure gain of function – which contradicts Fauci.”
“It looks like the Chinese got into a global viral project, which works with this EcoHealth Alliance, and used China’s own funding to conduct the research into advancing the pathogenecity of COVID. Now we have all of the pieces genetically that account for Covid-19 being manufactured in that lab in Wuhan, the Wuhan institute by the bat lady (Dr. Shi Zhengli),” Asher said.
“All the lies that the Chinese had put out — and all the lies and the cover-up at the NIH and others have been complicit in have now been defeated,” he said, as the Bethesda, Maryland federal institute is the umbrella organization of Fauci’s NIAID.
Fox News on Wednesday ran a scroll listing the many controversies plaguing the Biden administration during its eighth month, and the moment really put things into context.
We’re n deep trouble.
Not that we didn’t already know our country has descended into complete chaos. That much has been obvious for some time. It’s everywhere you go, actually.
Grocery stores, gas stations, airports and the passable portions of the country’s southern border are all reminders of how terrible President Joe Biden has been for America.
Walk by a TV, though, and the larger picture comes into focus.
That was especially true on Fox News when “America Reports” anchors Shannon Bream and John Roberts rolled out a list of the ongoing crises, tragedies and other disasters plaguing the country and its inept leadership.
“It’s been eight whole months, but it looks like the honeymoon is over,” Bream said while Fox viewers were reminded of the many failings of the Biden administration.
A graphic displaying “current controversies” scrolled upward as the pair commented on the 18 different issues the network had keyed in on. Bream declared that not even the “mainstream media can ignore” all the trouble.
Those troubles include reports that thousands of Haitian migrants who have been camped out along the border in Texas are being released into the country. That occurred after the White House assured that no such thing would happen.
Roberts then noted that Biden was “getting called out for not calling out China by name at the United Nations” when he addressed the global body this past week and managed to make no mention of the world’s largest human rights abuser.
Fox’s scrolling Biden crisis graphic reminded viewers that while they face being treated as second-class citizens if they’re not vaccinated against the coronavirus, no such mandates exist for people who are literally breaking the law by being in the country.
It also pointed out Biden’s mixed messaging about COVID-19 booster shots, which are now not being recommended for the general population by the Food and Drug Administration. Biden sure stopped talking about that subject quickly.
The adults are back in charge, right?
The current administration has managed to anger France, the country’s oldest ally, while also moving to leave the Israeli people vulnerable to attacks from Hamas terrorists.
In case anyone had forgotten that the U.S. military surrendered full control of Afghanistan to the Taliban last month, Fox’s crisis meter reminded them.
That’s all going on, and we can expect, any day now, a capitulation to Iran over nuclear weapons. It feels like a matter of time before pallets of cash start landing in Tehran.
There was also present on Fox’s list the fact that not one single person in the White House or the president’s Cabinet has claimed responsibility for a drone strike in Kabul that killed seven children. There has also been no accountability over the fact that the Pentagon left American citizens behind in Afghanistan as troops were ordered out.
Labor shortages, rising prices on basic commodities and high gas prices are all still with us as domestic issues to remind everyone just how bad the Democratic Party’s ideas are.
The opening segment from Bream and Roberts on Wednesday served as a sobering reminder of just how much trouble this country is in. Simultaneously, it somehow also failed to capture the magnitude of the situation.
The good news: There are just under three and a half years left of this madness — if we’re lucky.
Last names like Walton, Mars, Koch and Hermes are only part of the list of the world’s richest families
Right now, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bernard Arnault dominate the ranking of the world’s great billionaires. However, if we talk about entire families, the list changes completely. As reported by Bloomberg, the combined fortune of the 25 richest families of the world increased 22 percent last year and the new list is led by the Waltons, owners of Walmart, the largest retail chain more globally.
The agency, which specializes in monitoring the great fortunes of the planet, estimates that the Walton family has a fortune of $238.2 billion. This equates to the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries like Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Paraguay, together.
Entrepreneur Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962 and today his descendants hold 48 percent of the shares of the retail and wholesale giant. The chain has more than 10,500 stores around the world, which generate revenues estimated at $559 billion a year.
The Bloomberg ranking includes a total of 25 families, whose combined wealth is estimated at about $1.7 trillion. Since August 2020, these families together have added $312 billion to their fortunes, up 22 percent from the previous year.
These are the richest families in the world:
1. The Walton family, owner of the Walmart, Sam’s Club, Bodega Aurrera, and Superama stores, among others. Fortune: $238.2 billion.
2. The Mars family, owners of the Mars food manufacturer that includes brands such as Milky Way, M & M’s, Skittles, Snickers, Royal Canin, Whiskas, and Pedigree. Fortune: $141.9 billion.
3. Koch family, owners of the American petrochemical company Koch Industries. Fortune: $124.4 billion.
4. Hermes family, owners of the French fashion house Hermes, specialized in luxury clothing, accessories, and watches. Fortune: $111.6 billion.
5. Al Saud family, the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Fortune: $100 billion.
6. Ambani family, owners of the Indian oil refining and production holding company Reliance Industries. Fortune: $93.7 billion.
7. Wertheimer family, owns the French fashion house Chanel. Fortune: $61.8 billion.
8. Johnson family, owner of the U.S. asset management company Fidelity Investments. Fortune: $61.2 billion.
9. Thomson family, owners of the Thomson Reuters media company. Fortune: $61.1 billion.
10. Boehringer family, owners of the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. Fortune: $59.2 billion.
The Lauder family, of luxury cosmetics firm Estée Lauder, debuted on the list at No. 13 with $49.3 billion.
The Quant family, which owns the carmaker BMW, ranked 16th with $42.3 billion, while the Pritzkers, owners of the Hyatt hotel chain, came in at 23rd with a net worth of $35.3 billion.
The list is completed with the Ferrero chocolate family ($33.8 billion) and the Johnsons, owners of the giant of products for the home SC Johnson.
Despite trying to distance themselves from one another, Fauci and Daszak have been colluding for years.
espite Anthony Fauci’s attempts to distance his agency from EcoHealth Alliance, the Peter Daszak-led group collaborating on coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, The National Pulse can reveal that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director has been published in the controversial organization’s scientific journal.
Fauci authored an article for Volume 10 the EcoHealth Journal, whose Editor-in-Chief is Daszak, in March 2013. Of the 18 stories included in the issue, Fauci’s article was selected as the “cover story,” as the piece’s accompanying artwork was featured on the front page of the magazine.
The article was published roughly one year before Fauci’s NIAID inaugurated the controversial “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” grant, which ultimately led to U.S. taxpayer dollars funding collaborative research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“The two-century-old American emergence of dengue is an interesting starting point for considering determinants of emerging infectious diseases that occur today,” the article begins its overview of the viral disease.
The article stresses that the virus entered and spread throughout America via travelers from the Caribbean islands: “As early as the eighteenth century, dengue was being spread by human travel and was being introduced into new locales such as Philadelphia by the importation of both mosquitoes and infected crews and passengers arriving from Caribbean islands.”
The piece reiterates that American epidemics can often trace their roots to other countries:
“Dengue and yellow fever usually began in residential areas close to the docks, only occurred in the summer months, were repeatedly associated with concomitant Caribbean island epidemics, and such epidemics seem to have been most pronounced in places, like Philadelphia, where fresh water was scarce and expensive, leading to on premise storage of potable water, an ideal environment for Aedes oviposition (egg-depositing).”
Fauci’s featured publication in the EcoHealth journal undercuts his repeated claims that the NIAID didn’t support the group’s research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In addition to top Wuhan lab personnel describing Daszak as a “longtime collaborator,” The National Pulse has also uncovered Fauci’s repeated attendance at events hosted by EcoHealth such as “Zika virus: A Pandemic in Progress.”
Fauci and Daszak were also co-panelists at a 2017 Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference where Daszak admitted that NIAID funded his “work on coronaviruses in China.”
The United States has been subverted by people who believe in the failed ideologies of communism, socialism, and Marxism. America’s experiment in self-governance—with State power constrained by well-crafted limits of our constitution—is under direct threat from people who want to “deconstruct” our nation and replace it with a collectivist system of governance.
Many of the 1960s-era adherents to collectivist ideas have infiltrated our government, churches, and a multitude of other institutions, meaning these destructive philosophies have penetrated deep within our country and will be difficult to root out. Many of these radicals are also embedded within the education system, indoctrinating American children.
These people are America’s enemies. But, trying to counter subversive efforts without a full understanding of your enemy is a fool’s errand. I recently interviewed The Epoch Times’ Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative journalist and an expert on communism, socialism, and Marxism, to determine how America might reorient itself toward mounting an effective defense against the proliferation of these destructive ideas.
One of the least effective ways to discuss communism, socialism, and Marxism is arguing against the economic outcomes and human suffering that inevitably follows adoption of these systems.
“Your average socialist doesn’t care that it doesn’t work economically. Your average socialist doesn’t care that it’s going to uproot the family system and destroy family order,” Philipp said. “They believe that their end goals are so righteous, that killing a few people along the way is worth it for the sake of accomplishing what they hope to create.”
Frequently cited in arguments against collectivist systems are the hundreds of millions of people killed by leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Kim Il Sung, and Mao Zedong. But, “real socialists and communists don’t even bat an eye to it,” Philipp said.
While he believes the numbers of people murdered by communists should be part of this conversation, he also thinks that in order to persuade people against these philosophies, opponents of collectivism must address the roots of these ideas.
Religion and Natural Order
Karl Marx stood in strong opposition to religion. Though he had been a Christian in his youth, the timeless question that turned him away (and that he used to recruit people into a socialist mindset and the communal communist order) was essentially: If God is righteous, and if everything is created by God, then why does evil exist?
“If God created all things, and evil exists, then he must have created evil. That was the theory,” Philipp said. “And then they believe, well, if he created evil, then he must not be totally good. And therefore, he must not be the true, perfect image.”
For millennia, this has been a part of theological and philosophical debates, with religious scholars arguing that evil is not God’s creation, but the absence of God. Evil exists because man has free will, so people can choose to do good or evil. But, according to Philipp, what communists and utopians have sought to do is essentially try to eliminate evil from the world, as they see it.
Certain questions naturally follow: How do you prevent people from doing bad things? How do you prevent greed? How do you prevent people from doing things you don’t want them to do?
“You have to destroy the natural order. And, so they looked to create systems that could dictate to a very specific degree all elements of free will, that was one side of it,” he said. “That was always the downfall of utopians.”
Communists believe in the destruction of all previous institutions, including religious institutions. They believe in rebelling against God, whom they see as imperfect. Therefore, communism cannot coexist with the church. Communist ideology suggests that in order to perfect society, “you need to remove God from human morality, you need to remove God from human art, you need to remove God from architecture, and from our family structures, and from the way we shape our lives,” Philipp mentioned.
Dialectical Materialism
One of the pre-existing ideas that was brought into Marxism was that of the “negation of the negation,” which basically means that through the destruction of an existing institution, a more highly evolved system will emerge. For example, the chicken is born through the negation of the egg, the plant is born through the negation of the seed, a higher institution can be born through the negation of an existing institution. This would mean that by destroying institutions, a higher state of human evolution can be induced.
So, they must challenge the church, challenge tradition, challenge belief, create antithesis—the opposite of what is. “Marxism did the same thing under what they call ‘dialectical materialism,’” Philipp said, which is where you intentionally create inversion. You identify important cultural systems of that society and create the antithesis of that.
“So, you promote divorce, you promote feminism, you need to find ways to break up the family,” he said. “You need to look at the ways of doing it, and then develop social movements to argue against whatever the existing institution is.”
“If you want to destroy religion, you need to promote atheism,” he said. “Want to destroy the family, you need to promote feminism, promote divorce, promote the taking away of children by the government.”
The Way Forward
We don’t need to look too closely to see the ways in which communists, socialists, and Marxists have infiltrated the United States and other countries. Communists infiltrated American churches in the early 20th century. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has penetrated American schools. They have seized influence in U.S. companies and within our government.
Notably, their presence is visible in the authoritarian policies born from the pandemic response: the capricious, autocratic mandates; the brutal repression of people marching in the streets demanding the government’s boot off of their necks and a return to normalcy; actions by members of groups such as the United Nations and World Economic Forum who decry a return to normalcy, while pushing a global centralization of power.
For freedom-loving individuals, once you understand the goals of communists, socialists, and Marxists, you cannot cede any ground to them. There’s absolutely no capitulating, no negotiating, no meeting halfway.
“Every time they make a moral argument, and you say, ‘Okay, I want to be reasonable here, I’ll concede half the ground to you,’ society loses half its morals, society loses half its beliefs,” Philipp said. “Every time they do this, and they continue doing it, they force people to acknowledge it. And every time they do this, every time people give ground, they give up half their values.”
All supporters of individual liberty, freedom, and human rights must unite to confront the destructive forces attempting to take over. Americans must use all non-violent means available to deliver an immense repudiation of authoritarian systems of governance.
The battle isn’t unwinnable. There are only a few thousand politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate executives. There are more than 333 million American citizens. Who really holds the power in this country?
If government schools enforce Draconian mandates or teach lessons that indoctrinate your kids with communism, socialism, or Marxism, send your kids to private school or homeschool. If businesses enforce unconstitutional mandates, you stop spending your money there—put them out of business. If airlines enforce authoritarian policies or mandates, then stop flying with them. If your place of employment is caving to authoritarianism, you team up with like-minded employees and say no.
“You do not give an inch, you don’t sacrifice even a single morsel of your system of values, you don’t give in even a drop, you don’t play their games, you don’t talk within the boundaries of their arguments,” Philipp said. “You don’t even engage with them, in terms of giving any ground on anything. If they want to call you names for it, so be it. If they want to attack you, so be it. You do not sacrifice an inch.”
Part 1 of the 3-part series ‘World Summit on Forced Organ Harvesting’
New details are emerging about the billion-dollar forced organ harvesting industry in China that has resulted in as many as a million deaths, or more, of unwilling “donors.”
The World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, held between Sept. 17 and Sept. 26, brings together academics, lawyers, and politicians from around the world to discuss overwhelming evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) transplant abuse, mostly against prisoners of conscience.
But the CCP is not the only perpetrator, according to summit participants. Political, academic, and media silence in the West amounts to complicity for reasons of commerce. The CCP’s goal of eroding international norms of consent in order to maximize its profit from this industry must be stopped, participants argued, by more forcefully speaking out and legislating against the abuse, including through individualized sanctions against those CCP members who are most responsible, as well as an end to the international training of transplant surgeons from China.
‘Medical Genocide’
As many as 1 million or more have fallen prey to forced organ harvesting, in what could be considered “medical genocide,” according to organizers of the World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting. The killings meet the U.N. Genocide Convention definition of genocide, which includes attempts to eradicate not only races, but religions, when there is state-level intent to do so.
“The mass killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs serves a dual purpose for the [Chinese Communist] Party,” according to David Matas, an international human rights lawyer from Canada. “The killings eliminate what the Party sees as its political enemies.”
David Matas presents a new report on mass organ harvesting in China at the National Press Club in Washington on June 22, 2016. (Lisa Fan/Epoch Times)
Carlos Iglesias Jimenez, an international human rights lawyer from Spain, agreed. He said, “The CCP’s aim is to eradicate, to physically eliminate people because of their spiritual beliefs—these prisoners of conscience such as Christians, Tibetans, Buddhists and especially the millions of Falun Gong practitioners. The priority objective is their elimination, their eradication, and this logically has the connotations of a crime of genocide.”
According to Theresa Chu, a lawyer with the Taiwan Falun Gong Attorney Group, “forced organ harvesting is not only used to carry out the cleansing and genocide of Falun Gong practitioners and ethnic minority groups, such as Uyghurs, but also implicated in massive economic profits from organ transplantation, transnational organ sale, transplant tourism, and organ brokerage.”
The cause of forced organ harvesting in China has a pecuniary root, as it has likely produced billions of dollars of revenue for China’s hospitals, and hundreds of millions in taxes for use by Beijing. Lord Hunt called the practice “commercialized murder.” It is mass murder carried out on an industrial scale, with the involvement of China’s military. A close read of the evidence of forced organ harvesting in China sounds a lot like genocide, given that it is focused against a particular religion that the state seeks to eradicate.
Dr. Declan Lyons at Trinity College explained that “organ transplantation is … estimated to be a billion dollar business per annum in China and up to 60,000 to 100,000 transplants occur on an annual basis in the People’s Republic [of China].”
China’s organ transplant customers are global. Dr. Huang Shi-wei, from Taiwan, explained that “over the past 20 years, over 4,000 Taiwanese went to China for liver or kidney transplants. Besides Taiwan, people from South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and even Western countries flocked to China to receive transplant surgeries after 2000.”
Dr. Weldon Gilcrease, director of Oncology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, said that “this kind of egregious, and mass crime has never really been at the hand, so largely, of the medical community in history.”
Huang stated that from 2000 to 2006, China’s military maintained the country’s organ banks, which hold data about organ “donors.” After evidence was first published in 2006 that Falun Gong practitioners were being targeted for forced organ removal, the CCP started to more effectively hide the practice. That year, David Matas and David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian parliament, published their book “Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China.”
According to Chu, a woman named Annie helped reveal the existence of forced organ harvesting in China that singles out Falun Gong practitioners. “Annie, the ex-wife of a Chinese physician harvesting corneas from living Falun Gong detainees” exposed the crime and caused a global uproar, Chu said.
Transplants provide the primary source of income for some hospitals in China, according to Huang, with one in Beijing registering an increase in transplantation revenues from $4.5 million in 2006, to $30 million in 2010. He claimed that after 2007, Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were added to Falun Gong as victims of forced organ harvesting.
Falun Gong, Uyghurs Targeted
Dr. R. Scalettar, former chair of the American Medical Association, noted at the summit that the World Medical Association has taken a stand against forced organ harvesting, including against Uyghurs, who the United States and the United Kingdom have recognized as the victims of genocide. “The WMA in 2020 issued a declaration to prevent and battle transplant related crimes,” he said. “Previous resolutions condemned the many reports of continued violations of these ethical standards by the PRC with imprisoned members of Uyghurs and the Falun Gong.”
An international coalition of five nonprofit groups—Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) in the United States, CAP Freedom of Conscience in France, the Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants, the Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants in South Korea, and the Transplant Tourism Research Association in Japan—organized the event.
The founder of DAFOH and host of the summit, Dr. Torsten Trey, alleged on Sept. 15 that Beijing’s goal with organ harvesting exceeds the bounds of China’s borders. It is to erode international norms requiring the consent of organ donors, he told Epoch TV. Such an erosion would advantage China’s organ transplant industry, which depends upon a massive and ready supply of organs from living prisoners of conscience. “So China is highly interested in tearing down this system of [Western medical ethics] to basically make forced organ harvesting the common standard in transplant medicine,” Trey said.
DAFOH was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2019, received the Mother Theresa Social Justice Award.
Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) hold an event at the University of Arizona in Phoenix, Arizona, on April 19, 2019. (Lucy Fan/Epoch Times)
In 2019, the London tribunal on forced organ harvesting in China heard evidence that the practice is widespread and state-sanctioned. Falun Gong practitioners, who the Chinese regime seeks to eradicate as a religion, are imprisoned and made the main source of organs, as recognized by many at the World Summit.
A key component of the Falun Gong religion is truthfulness, which makes them easy targets for Chinese authorities, who simply knock on their doors and ask for admissions of guilt on the spot, according to a Falun Gong source.
Falun Gong practitioners also avoid substances, such as alcohol and tobacco, that could harm their organs, making them optimal targets of unethical transplant surgeons.
In 1999, there were as many as 100 million Falun Gong followers in China, according to its state media. They were seen as a threat to the state because they exceeded the number of CCP members at the time, and organized demonstrations against misrepresentation in China’s state media. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the persecution began in earnest after an April 25, 1999 mobilization. “From all reports, more than 10,000 practitioners, most of them middle-aged, lined up in an orderly column around two sides of Zhongnanhai, the compound in the heart of Beijing where China’s leaders live and work.”
While the U.S. government and establishment media has paid extensive attention to China’s genocide against the Uyghurs, less attention is being given to a similar genocide against Falun Gong. This is arguably due to three reasons. First, Falun Gong is seen by some scholars as a relatively new religion, which therefore is less known, and gets less sympathy, from members of the public. Second, the Uyghur genocide targets the more established Muslim religion. And third, CCP authorities have made a concerted propaganda push to label the Falun Gong with the derogatory term of “cult.”
Dr. Andre Gattolin, a senator from France, is co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). He explained to the summit that the CCP tactic of smearing Falun Gong as a “cult” was effective at chilling debate in France about forced organ transplants. “[T]he fact that the victims of these forced removals are most often followers of religious minorities such as Falun Gong, presented by the Chinese government as a cult, always provokes distrust within our population, where a sometimes rather intolerant conception of secularism has prevailed for more than a century,” he said. “The accusation of sectarianism sounds like an anathema and often leads to a dismissal without appeal. This is the case even though the Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuse has already pointed out several times that Falun Gong does not fall into this category.”
The Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuse is a French government agency charged with analyzing cults and protecting their victims.
“Beijing has played a master stroke of propaganda in order to cover Falun Gong with an image of being unacceptable and therefore indefensible,” said Gattolin.
The CCP has likewise tried to tar Uyghurs as anathema, labeling their legitimate protest activities as “terrorism,” even though the CCP themselves are the terrorists, according to an authoritative reading of U.S. law. American human rights lawyer Terri Marsh and University of Chicago academic Teng Biao make this argument forcefully in a 2020 article in the Journal of Political Risk, which includes a discussion of forced organ harvesting as one kind of terrorism committed by the CCP.
U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) noted that the CCP is the “principal perpetrator of forced organ harvesting.” As the lead Republican on the Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Chabot said he closely monitors “Beijing’s efforts to remake the world in the image of the Chinese Communist Party.” Given the CCP’s brutal repression of Uyghurs and Tibetans, Chabot said, “It should come as no surprise, then, that the PRC under communist leadership is engaged in one of the most barbaric practices in human history—forced organ harvesting—to bring health and wealth to the CCP and its cronies.” He said that “in the face of this barbaric persecution, the number of Falun Gong practitioners has dwindled, and I’m afraid the CCP’s next source of organs may be the Uyghurs.”
As identified by Dr. Trey, a danger for the West is that the CCP could become so powerful that it is able to export its lack of medical ethics globally.
Chabot added: “A world that conforms to the values of the CCP is one in which those who don’t tow the Party line can be put in a concentration camp or have their organs harvested. That’s a vision for a world that nobody wants to live in. And that’s the vision of the world that we are all fighting against.”
Dehumanization, which forced organ harvesting executes in an almost literal fashion, is an integral part of the CCP’s terror campaign and genocide against Falun Gong.
One does not need to be an international lawyer to realize that the brutal suppression of Falun Gong that began in 1999 meets the U.N. definition of genocide. And the rise in transplant tourism to China in the early 2000s corresponds to the start of the genocide against Falun Gong. The two are connected. Forced organ harvesting against Falun Gong is a medical and profit-driven means of genocide.
These are the kinds of numbers that could add up to trouble for President Joe Biden’s Democrats.
A Morning Consult poll released Wednesday shows the president’s approval rating has dropped among the party’s most loyal voting bloc.
And, as usual, Biden has only himself to blame.
The poll found Biden’s disapproval rating among black voters had risen to 24 percent since his Sept. 9 announcement that any business with more than 100 workers would have to require employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or impose weekly COVID-19 tests.
For Biden’s slavish supporters in the establishment media, it was a way to telegraph strength in the face of the continuing pandemic — and signal very clearly to Americans still resisting the vaccine that his “patience is wearing thin.”
It turns out his support among black voters is wearing thin, too.
According to Morning Consult, “the president’s net approval rating — the share who approve of his job performance minus the share who disapprove — has fallen 12 percentage points among Black voters, driven by a 17-point drop among unvaccinated Black voters.”
Polling was conducted from Sept. 6 to Sept. 8, before the vaccine mandate, and from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20 among more than 1,000 black voters. The margin of error was 3 points among those who reported being vaccinated and 4 percent among those who reported not being vaccinated.
Of course, Biden has healthy support among traditionally Democratic black voters. He still has a 71 percent approval rating among them, according to Morning Consult.
But the poll has to be worrisome for Biden’s party looking ahead to 2022. As Morning Consult put it, the results provide “a stark warning sign for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterms.”
“While Black voters, who helped push Biden over the top against President Donald Trump in key states last year, are unlikely to abandon the Democratic Party en masse to back Republicans on the ballot next year, low turnout from the group could have dire consequences for Democrats in Congress, who already face an early enthusiasm gap,” Morning Consult noted.
Black Americans have the lowest vaccination rate of any American ethnic group, according to Morning Consult.
Fifty-three percent of blacks have gotten the shots, compared to 66 percent of whites and 61 percent of Hispanics. A group Morning Consult characterized as “other,” presumably mostly Asians, leads with a reported vaccination rate of 72 percent.
(Other sources, such as Bloomberg, show different vaccination numbers by race, but the overall trend holds: The black population is trailing.)
A variety of reasons have been offered for the lower vaccination rate among blacks — from the longstanding distrust of the medical establishment (see the Tuskegee experiments) to the questionable claim by rapper Nicki Minaj that the vaccine made her cousin’s friend impotent.
Obviously, some explanations have more validity than others, but there’s no denying Biden’s heavy-handed approach to vaccine skepticism is hurting his chances with an electorate he and his party rely on.
It’s no secret that Biden’s floundering presidential campaign was revived in the Democratic primary in South Carolina, where an endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn, a leader of the country’s black political establishment, powered Biden to a blowout victory in February 2020 and essentially won him the party’s nomination.
If Biden and, by extension, his party are losing support among black voters, it could wreak havoc on Democratic campaigns in the 2022 midterms.
Democrats have a majority in the House by a handful of votes; that could easily change if swing districts go red next year.
With the Senate tied and Democrats controlling it by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, it would only take a net loss of one seat for Democrats to forfeit the chamber — and doom the progressive agenda (if West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin hasn’t done that already).
The plight of Democrats has certainly not been helped by an incident in New York City this week, where three black women were arrested following a melee at a restaurant that started after members of the women’s party could not show proof of vaccination.
The fracas led to a Black Lives Matter group demonstrating against vaccine mandates.
"Cancel Carmen" Chant as BLM marches through and confronts UWS restaurant Carmines accusing them of lying about what happened in a viral video
WATCH: New Carmine's fight footage shows moments leading up to altercation at UWS restaurant
In short, for Biden and the de facto totalitarians who make up his party’s leadership and radical left wing, a serious hemorrhaging of black voters means serious trouble.
Biden spent his presidential campaign alienating conservative Americans, and he’s spent recent months alienating our allies abroad.
His disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan infuriated the U.K. government, and his ham-handed handling of a submarine deal with Australia led France — France! — to recall its ambassador from Washington for the first time in the two countries’ long shared history.
Of course, a year is an eternity in politics.
But Biden and his gang have done nothing over the past nine months to indicate they’ve learned anything, or care to learn anything, from the administration’s dismal record of failure — from the southern border to Afghanistan to the stalled economy.
If Biden continues to alienate his party’s most dependable voting bloc, election night next November could be a nightmare for Democrats.
More than two-thirds of fully vaccinated prisoners contracted COVID-19 during an outbreak inside a Texas prison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a study.
The agency said that 129 out of 185 fully vaccinated prisoners caught the CCP virus, according to data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the CDC in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Tuesday. Separately, of 42 unvaccinated prisoners, 93 percent caught the virus during the outbreak in the undisclosed prison.
One unvaccinated person died, while four people needed hospital treatment in the outbreak, the data said. Three out of the four who were not vaccinated were hospitalized, the agency said.
The CDC data showed that seven unvaccinated and 21 fully vaccinated prisoners had previously contacted a documented case of COVID-19. Some studies have shown that individuals who previously contracted the CCP virus develop long-lasting and robust protection against the Delta variant.
Based on the new data, the CDC said that vaccinating most of the U.S. population should remain a priority.
And the agency said that “even with high vaccination rates, maintaining multicomponent prevention strategies,” such as “testing and masking for all persons and prompt medical isolation and quarantine for incarcerated persons remains critical to limiting [CCP virus] transmission in congregate settings where physical distancing is challenging.”
“Although attack rates, hospitalizations, and deaths were higher among unvaccinated than among vaccinated persons, duration of positive serial test results was similar for both groups. Infectious virus was cultured from vaccinated and unvaccinated infected persons,” the CDC also wrote.
Most prisoners in the facility were white males and had received Pfizer’s two-dose mRNA vaccine at least four months beforehand, the data showed.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced a sweeping plan that would mandate workers at companies with 100 or more employees to either submit to weekly COVID-19 testing or get vaccinated. The plan also mandates vaccinations for healthcare workers at Medicaid- or Medicare-funded facilities, as well as mandatory vaccines for federal contractors and federal employees.
Biden’s plan also entailed offering booster shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine by Sept. 20, although those plans hit a snag last week when the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory panel recommended against providing Pfizer’s booster to the general population. Instead, the panel voted to recommend booster doses for individuals aged 65 and older.
Some scientists in the FDA advisory committee meeting last week expressed concern about possible side effects from the boosters on younger Americans.
Taylor Lee, FDA Economist: “Go to the unvaccinated and blow it [COVID vaccine] into them. Blow dart it into them.”
Lee: “Census goes door-to-door if you don’t respond. So, we have the infrastructure to do it [forced COVID vaccinations]. I mean, it’ll cost a ton of money. But I think, at that point, I think there needs to be a registry of people who aren’t vaccinated. Although that’s sounding very [much like Nazi] Germany.”
Lee: “Nazi Germany…I mean, think about it like the Jewish Star [for unvaccinated Americans].”
Lee: “I’m gonna go door-to-door and stab everyone [with the COVID vaccine], ‘Oh, it’s just your booster shot! There you go!’”
Lee: “So, if you put every anti-vaxxer, like sheep, into like Texas and you closed off Texas from the rest of the world, and you go, ‘Okay, you be you in Texas until we deal with this [pandemic].’”
Lee: “All of the wealthy white people are getting vaccinated because they’re educated.”
Lee: “There are political appointees [at the FDA] that are generally scientific advisors or are appointed by the president or the commission…They’re being paid based on if the other people are staying in power.”
Lee: “Unfortunately, everyone ends up playing politics, but I don’t think that the career scientists are — I think that it’s the people that they’re unfortunately having to report to because these political appointees are being put in place and that’s part of like — the Senate confirms the people to then just pick their people.”
[WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sept. 22, 2021] Project Veritas released the second video of its COVID vaccine investigative series today exposing U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] economist, Taylor Lee, who was recorded calling for forced COVID vaccinations and a registry for all unvaccinated Americans.
Lee said that U.S. Government policy could emulate Nazi Germany when it comes to the COVID vaccine.
“Census goes door-to-door if you don’t respond. So, we have the infrastructure to do it [forced COVID vaccinations]. I mean, it’ll cost a ton of money. But I think, at that point, I think there needs to be a registry of people who aren’t vaccinated. Although that’s sounding very [much like Nazi] Germany,” Lee said.
“Nazi Germany…I mean, think about it like the Jewish Star [for unvaccinated Americans],” he said.
“So, if you put every anti-vaxxer, like sheep, into like Texas and you closed off Texas from the rest of the world, and you go, ‘Okay, you be you in Texas until we deal with this [pandemic].’”
Lee said that due to a large portion of the African American community being hesitant to take the COVID vaccine, the solution would be to “blow dart” on them:
Taylor Lee, FDA Economist: “I think that a lot of the time — so there’s also this issue of — I remember reading about how with COVID [vaccine] trials, they were having an issue recruiting African American people. It was because of a different medication the government tried to do that was specifically designed to kill African Americans.”
Veritas Journalist: “Oh, so like a mistrust thing.”
Lee: “Yeah.”
Veritas Journalist: “But this thing [COVID vaccine] is safe, though.”
Lee: “We know that now, but like again, I think there is still this big mistrust and like it’s deep-rooted.”
Veritas Journalist: “Yeah. Can’t blame them [African Americans].”
Lee: “I can’t. But at the same time, like, blow dart. That’s where we’re going.”
Lee affirmed that “wealthy white people” are more likely to get the COVID vaccine because they are “educated,” and added that he would be willing to force COVID vaccines upon Americans himself if needed.
“I’m gonna go door-to-door and stab everyone [with the COVID vaccine], ‘Oh, it’s just your booster shot! There you go!’”
Lee also said that FDA officials can often be political appointees rather than actual scientific experts.
“There are political appointees [at the FDA] that are generally scientific advisors or are appointed by the president or the commission…They’re being paid based on if the other people are staying in power,” he said.
“Unfortunately, everyone ends up playing politics, but I don’t think that the career scientists are — I think that it’s the people that they’re unfortunately having to report to because these political appointees are being put in place and that’s part of like — the Senate confirms the people to then just pick their people.”
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations. Donate now to support our mission.
President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday came out against efforts to prevent dishonorable discharges for U.S. troops who refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Office of Management and Budget said in a policy statement it “strongly opposes” an amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that bars any discharge but honorable for service members.
The provision “would detract from readiness and limit a commander’s options for enforcing good order and discipline when a Service member fails to obey a lawful order to receive a vaccination,” the office said, adding that commanders “must have the ability to give orders and take appropriate disciplinary measures” in order to have “a uniformed force to fight with discipline.”
The amendment received support from members of both parties during a markup of the act on Sept. 1. It was authored by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), a military veteran and a doctor.
At the time, Green said he understood the need for a vaccine mandate but noted that no longitudinal data is yet available for the COVID-19 vaccines, adding that service members who decide not to get vaccinated and are ultimately discharged should receive an honorable discharge.
“I am dismayed and concerned that the Biden administration is trying to remove my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that prevents anything but an honorable discharge for servicemembers who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine,” Green told The Epoch Times in an email.
“This was a bipartisan amendment—not one Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee opposed it. Nothing is more telling of the current political climate than the Biden administration refusing to respect the rights of our military that every House Democrat on the Committee voted for,” he added.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last month ordered U.S. troops to get Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine shortly after it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The order was backed by Biden, who has imposed mandates on all government workers and has ordered a mandate on the private sector.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington about the end of the war in Afghanistan on Sept. 1, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)
Service members who aren’t approved for a religious or medical exemption and still do not get vaccinated will face discipline, the Pentagon has said.
“Our commanders have a range of tools available to them short of using the Uniform Code of Military Justice to again try to get men and women in the department to make the right decision here,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters in one briefing.
The Biden administration also said it opposes another amendment, which would exempt troops who demonstrate they have recovered from COVID-19 from the mandate.
The protection afforded by recovery is known as natural immunity, and some scientists argue those who have it should not have to get vaccinated.
That amendment “would create a new and overly broad exemption from the vaccination requirement for previous infection that would undermine the effectiveness of the requirement,” the Office of Budget and Management said.
If the provisions don’t stay in the NDAA, they could be passed separately. Four senators on Tuesday introduced a bill that would prevent dishonorable discharges for troops who don’t get a COVID-19 vaccine.
It may seem too convenient to be true, but this event actually happened in 2017. The full video follows the article.
Speaking at the 2017 Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference on a panel alongside Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak admitted his controversial “work on coronaviruses in China” was carried out with “funding through” Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency.
The unearthed conference follows Fauci’s repeated attempts to distance his agency from the controversial New York-based non-profit, which, as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant registry shows, used the money to collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The National Pulse has previously uncovered footage of Daszak describing the viruses he manipulated as part of his “longtime” collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party-run lab as “killers.”
The 2017 event, the “Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems” conference hosted by the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), took place in Washington, D.C. In its description of the conference, CUGH notes that the conference supports its vision for a “world without borders”:
“CUGH believes in a world without borders, because the desire for health and well-being is universal and doesn’t change based on race, ethnicity, national, socioeconomic status, sexual identity, or geographic location.”
The conference’s unearthed agenda reveals the attendance of EcoHealth President Peter Daszak, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, and Principal Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Anne Schuchat. The three individuals participated in a panel – “Future of Infectious Disease Pandemics: From Ebola to Zika, and Beyond” – where they discussed pandemic preparedness.
“Although much is known about how to detect and respond to existing infections, more research is needed to predict the likelihood of their emergence and spread, and to improve the precision and timeliness of public health responsiveness,” notes the panel description.
CONFERENCE AGENDA.
During Daszak’s presentation, given with an accompanying slideshow, he states his coronavirus work in China was carried out with “funding” from Fauci’s NIAID along with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) program:
“Working with the USAID EPT PREDICT Program and funding through NIAID to work on coronaviruses in China, we were able to test out this idea of predicting what the next emerging diseases might be. So we’ve all heard of SARS. We know that SARS is carried by civets. Well, actually, the host of SARS-like viruses, the viruses that the SARS coronavirus emerged from are bats.”
– Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, 2017
“We worked in China to go out and do surveillance in other bat species and say how many other SARS-like viruses are there. Is there something even close to SARS? And sure enough, there was,” he adds.
“We’re now doing surveillance of the people and we’ve found using NIAID funding that actually there is potential of spillover into those peoples,” he reiterates while outlining the global increase of human-animal interaction.
“Even the international grants, the bulk of those funds go through U.S. organizations like ours before we send any abroad,” Daszak answers in response to a question about federal funding posed by Cornell Medicine’s Oliver Fein, who asserts “the worst virus that we presently have is the Trump administration.”
DASZAK DELIVERS HIS ADMISSION.
During the panel, Schuchat, a CDC official, also praises the Chinese Communist Party’s response to China’s first SARS outbreak:
“A key lesson was that cover-ups are not worth it. You may recall the Minister of Health and the Mayor of Beijing were both removed during the SARS epidemic and that being transparent and open with your situation is a lot better.”
– Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, Anne Schuchat
“Beijing did an incredible job of responding once the political level let them respond. They took over the healthcare system,” she adds.
Another panel at the event – “The Global Virome Project: A First Step Toward Ending the Pandemic Era” – featured Daszak and the Chief Scientific Officer of Metabiota, a pandemic tracking and response firm whose lead financial backer was a Hunter Biden-led investment group.
Biden served as Managing Director of Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), which led the company’s first round of funding worth $30 million.
The panel summary predicts that “over the coming century we will witness spillover from a pool of more than 1,000,000 “unknown” viruses into human populations”:
“The frequency of pandemics is increasing, driven by surging populations, environmental change and globalized trade and travel. Disease outbreaks illustrate that we are ill-prepared to mitigate the impact of a novel virus or prevent its emergence. Only a small proportion of viral threats have been identified. Over the coming century we will witness spillover from a pool of more than 1,000,000 “unknown” viruses into human populations. A global initiative to identify and characterize every significant viral threat circulating in the world is achievable over the next ten years – a critical and essential step towards ending the pandemic era.”
FAUCI.
Both Daszak and Fauci have repeatedly lied about the type of research occurring at the Chinese Communist Party-run lab, as a host of Fauci’s emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal the facility was carrying out “gain-of-function” research and deleted articles reveal the lab worked with live bats despite Daszak stating otherwise.
Daszak, who failed to disclose his extensive ties to the Wuhan lab and the Chinese Communist Party, was recused from the Lancet medical journal’s COVID-19 commission yet still appears on mainstream news networks.
The state of Texas is looking to challenge President Joe Biden’s recently announced COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private businesses by arguing that it is unconstitutional, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Friday.
Paxton’s remarks come after Biden on Sept. 9 said businesses would have to impose COVID-19 vaccination requirements or face fines of up to $13,600 per violation.
White House officials have said the order will be implemented through an emergency temporary standard, or ETS, issued by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The agency has said it is still developing the rule.
The rule “will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work,” an OSHA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
In an interview with EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program, Paxton, a Republican, said that he agrees with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s description of the rule as a “power grab” and an “assault on private businesses.” He said he believes that Biden is overstepping his authority with the new vaccination rule.
“The reality is, the president of the United States cannot just make up laws, that’s outside of his purview, outside of his constitutional role. The executive branch implements laws … that’s their job,” said Paxton.
“That’s not the way the constitution works, so we are pretty sure what he’s doing will be unconstitutional, if it is what he said when he made the statement,” he added. “So obviously, that would be for our first line of attack, just to say, look, you didn’t have the authority to do this.”
Many have raised concerns that OSHA’s effectiveness is undermined by its shortage of inspectors and resources. While OSHA is empowered to fine employers up to $13,600 per violation of the new rule, it is spread too thin to catch some violators.
Currently, OSHA has an estimated 800 safety and compliance inspectors to cover the more than 100,000 private-sector companies affected by the new rule.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has insisted that Biden’s new rule is on strong legal footing, citing a 1970 law that authorizes ETS.
“The law basically requires the Department of Labor take action when it finds grave risk to workers. And certainly, a pandemic that killed more than 600,000 people qualifies as ‘grave risk to workers,’” she said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House on Sept. 09, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Epoch Times also reached out to the White House for further comment.
Paxton told The Epoch Times that Biden is not granted these types of powers under the Constitution, insinuating that his conduct is in line with what could be observed under “dictatorships.”
“It’s not just this issue. We allow any president to do this, then we are moving away from the people having a government that they control as opposed to having more of a kingship like England had or like some of these dictatorships have,” he said.
“That’s the direction that Joe Biden seems to be comfortable with, and I don’t think that’s the direction that our founders intended.”
On Wednesday, Biden is set to meet with executives from Walgreens, The Walt Disney Company, and Microsoft to discuss the mandate.
It comes as two major U.S. retail industry groups, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, and the National Retail Federation, on Tuesday asked the Biden administration for at least 90 days before imposing the new rules “to allow retailers and other employers to create the systems necessary.”
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has said that the OSHA rule is expected “in a matter of weeks.”
“The president can’t just overrule individual liberties and constitutional rights … those rights are not from him. Those rights are from God, they’re inalienable, they’re given to us by our Creator, they cannot be taken away by any government,” Paxton said.
He added, “If we don’t stop this now, we will end up with a tyrannical government, much like the rest of the world has, we will not have the government that we were set up with a couple 100 years ago by some very wise founders.”
Texas Gov. Abbott said this month that the state is “already working to halt this power grab.”
Top American health officials are ignoring or downplaying so-called natural immunity, or the protection people enjoy after recovering from COVID-19, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Epoch Times.
Science the senator has reviewed, including a real-world study from Israel, indicates that natural immunity is at similar levels as or even better than vaccination. But U.S. health authorities continue urging everybody, regardless of prior infection, to get a COVID-19 jab.
“We’re ignoring natural immunity, even though the Israeli study now shows it’s 27 times more effective,” Johnson said.
That makes sense because natural immunity “recognizes the entire virus” while the vaccine was designed to prevent infection from the original form of the virus, he added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and top health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, have said immunity post-infection exists but is not as strong as vaccination. They have downplayed or dismissed studies like the one from Israel.
Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said earlier this month he did not have a “firm answer” on why people who recover from COVID-19 should get a shot.
“It is true they do have protection,” he added on CNN on Sunday. But he argued that data does not yet show how durable the protection is and whether it’s affected by different variants of the CCP virus.
“I’m not denying at all that people who get infected and recover have a considerable degree of immunity. We also know—and I think we should not let this pass without saying it—that when you get infected and recover, A, you get a good degree of immunity, but, B, when you get vaccinated, you dramatically increase that protection, which is something that’s really quite good,” he said.
Asked for what informed that assertion, NIAID pointed The Epoch Times in an email to an opinion piece from June that was funded by the institute, an NPR article, Twitter posts by Scripps Research Translational Institute founder Eric Topol, and a Google search for “hybrid immunity,” a term that refers to somebody who recovered from COVID-19 and has received a vaccine.
The CDC has promoted a similar view. Director Rochelle Walensky last month cited a small Kentucky study that researchers said showed people who were vaccinated had more protection than the previously infected and that natural immunity plus vaccines were best.
But others, including some researchers, have questioned the push. Among the concerns: the focus should be on vaccinating people who don’t have natural immunity and remain unvaccinated, including people in other countries.
(Courtesy of Sen. Johnson)
One of Johnson’s main concerns is the huge jump in reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a passive database run jointly by the CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Between Jan. 1, 1996, and June 30, 2021, the number of adverse events reported following administration of flu vaccines totaled 171,732. In the nine months leading up to June 30, there were over 701,000 such reports for COVID-19 vaccines.
The number of reported deaths post-COVID vaccination, meanwhile, totaled 14,925 as of Sept. 10. Reports of death following every other vaccine were 9,001.
People who have suffered side effects following vaccination “feel abandoned by the drug companies, federal health agencies, and the medical community,” Johnson wrote in a letter this year to Walensky, FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.
Federal officials have said there’s no proven link between any of the deaths and a COVID-19 vaccine. They have added some side effect warnings to the labels of vaccines after investigating adverse event reports, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, but are still recommending virtually everybody get a jab.
The CDC still utilizes data from VAERS to evaluate vaccines but also draws from active surveillance systems. It cited data from the reporting system in April when lifting a recommended pause on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. Officials with the agency and the FDA regularly use the data in presentations to their respective vaccine advisory committees.
The CDC and FDA did not respond to requests for comment.
Johnson has received little information from the agencies on questions regarding natural immunity, VAERS, and other pandemic-related topics, including early treatment for COVID-19.
The pattern is one of a lack of transparency, the senator told The Epoch Times. He also denounced what he sees as health agencies not focusing enough on treatment.
Few treatments are officially sanctioned for COVID-19 some 16 months after the start of the pandemic, and one of the main ones is being rationed because there’s apparently not enough to go around.
“Had our federal health agencies devoted sufficient effort and research to help develop effective early treatment, thousands of lives could have been saved,” Johnson wrote in a recent letter.
Doctors, that the senator has spoken to, say treatments that have proven successful include vitamin C, vitamin D, and hydroxychloroquine. He plans to send a letter, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), on behalf of a group of doctors, to regulators asking for emergency use authorization for budesonide, which has shown signs of working against COVID-19.
“We’re going to always need early treatment. We’ll always need it,” Johnson said.
Two and a half weeks ago, fans across the country flooded college football stadiums for the first time in almost two years. In many ways, it felt like America was returning to normal again.
The trend continued this week as college football teams completed their third week of the season. One of the biggest games this past weekend pitted Florida against top-ranked Alabama, and 90,000 fans gathered to witness what turned out to be a nail-biting win for the Crimson Tide.
Scenes like that one give any college football fan like myself goosebumps. But for some COVID-obsessed health professionals, they invoke unnecessary fear.
Take, for example, newfound celebrity Dr. Anthony Fauci. When he was asked about college football fans finally going back to normal, he discouraged it.
“I don’t think it’s smart,” Fauci said on Sept. 7, according to Mediaite. “Outdoors is always better than indoors, but even when you have such a congregate setting of people close together – you should be vaccinated.”
Deadspin author Julie DiCaro called a heartwarming tradition from Iowa fans of waiving to the Children’s Hospital behind the stadium “terrifying,” presumably because of her fear about potential virus spread.
According to a new study by the Daily Caller, the fearmongering from Fauci and the left has once again proven to be unnecessary.
The Caller reported that in the first full weekend of college football (Sept. 3-5), the biggest crowd gathered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Over 109,000 fans turned out to watch the Wolverines’ season-opening victory over the Western Michigan Broncos.
The game was played on Sept. 4, at which time the seven-day average for new COVID 19 cases in Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor, was 81. On Sept. 20, the seven-day average was 80 cases.
Since most people who contract COVID-19 test positive within two weeks of being exposed, the numbers would likely have shown a spike if the Michigan game was some sort of superspreader event. Instead, the seven-day average stayed almost exactly the same.
In addition, Washtenaw County Health Department public information officer Susan Ringler-Cerniglia told the Caller the department received just one report of a non-student testing positive for the virus in connection to the game.
While it’s not clear how many students were at the game, it’s fair to assume the majority of attendees were not current Michigan students. Out of tens of thousands of fans, one reported case is a pretty small percentage.
Lest you believe this is just a one-off, the Caller examined multiple other locations where big crowds gathered for college football games during week one.
In Blacksburg, Virginia, over 65,000 fans witnessed the Virginia Tech Hokies’ upset win over the North Carolina Tar Heels on Sept. 3. Growth rate of cases in Montgomery Country, Virginia, has slowed since then, the Caller reported.
“New River Health District Epidemiologist Jason Deese indicated there was no significant change in cases in the area related to attending football games,” Virginia Department of Health public information officer Robert Parker said.
It doesn’t stop there, either. Cities across the country including Knoxville, Tennessee; Tallahassee, Florida; and Austin, Texas, all saw case numbers drop or remain the same despite each hosting crowds of 68,000 or more.
The study confirms what most people watching the science already knew: Outdoor transmission of COVID-19 is extremely rare. Fans are back in a big way across American sports, and Fauci can hardly stand to see his grip on the country slowly slide away.
It was a mistake. Done in error. A bit of data went astray at a server bank in Utah and — wouldn’t you know it? — GOP Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey found herself locked out of her Facebook page. And after she spoke out about President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, too!
Of all the rotten luck.
According to AL.com, the online home of the Birmingham News and affiliated publications, the governor’s campaign page was unpublished from Facebook Sept. 14 but was restored after her campaign appealed the suspension. Ivey said her campaign “fought back and won.”
“Evidently, they’re upset that I said I’m standing in the way of President Biden to protect Alabamians from this outrageous overreach by the federal government,” Ivey said.
Facebook banned my campaign page this morning. We fought back and won. Evidently, they’re upset that I said I’m standing in the way of President Biden to protect Alabamians from this outrageous overreach by the federal government. (1/2)
“If big tech thinks they can silence us and that I won’t fight back, then honey, they haven’t met me. They have another thing coming,” she continued.
“I’m not backing down. I never will. We’re fighting Washington. We’ll fight big tech, too.”
If big tech thinks they can silence us and that I won’t fight back, then honey, they haven’t met me. They have another thing coming. I’m not backing down. I never will. We’re fighting Washington. We’ll fight big tech too. — KI (2/2) #alpolitics
In an emailed statement to The Hill, Facebook acknowledged that the governor’s campaign page was “mistakenly restricted for less than an hour.”
“When we learned of our mistake, the page was quickly restored,” said a spokesperson from Facebook said.
The suspension came days after Ivey had used her social media to hit back at the president’s vaccine mandate, according to an earlier AL.com report.
In particular, Ivey targeted part of Biden’s speech where he said, “if these governors won’t help, I will use my power as president to get them out of the way.”
As The Associated Press noted, this came during a portion of the speech dealing with states that have battled teachers’ unions on statewide mask mandates in classrooms; Alabama leaves that decision up to individual school districts.
“You bet I’m standing in the way. And if he thinks he’s going to move me out of the way, he’s got another thing coming. I’m standing as strong as a bull for Alabama against this outrageous Washington overreach. Bring it on,” Ivey said.
You bet I’m standing in the way. And if he thinks he’s going to move me out of the way, he’s got another thing coming. I’m standing as strong as a bull for Alabama against this outrageous Washington overreach. Bring it on. — KI #alpoliticshttps://t.co/sFT8cfgdjt
“I encourage Alabamians to take the vaccine — have been since the beginning, but we’re never going to mandate it. And we certainly aren’t going to allow Washington, D.C. and this president to tell Alabama what to do. Here in AL, we don’t put up with that nonsense.”
She’d also described the mandates as “outrageous” and “overreaching,” saying they would “no doubt be challenged in the courts.”
And it’s just a coincidence that their page was “mistakenly” taken down by the social media giant. Facebook insisted the content on her page played no role in the temporary unpublishing.
The Associated Press reported that it was flagged as an imposter account, instead.
Ivey’s campaign called this a “nonsense excuse,” citing the fact they had been told the page was being unpublished because of “harassment and bullying.”
Gov. Ivey apparently doesn’t remember this is always a mistake. Whenever a social media platform or some other organ of big tech bans a conservative who’s recently said something inconvenient, it’s a big misunderstanding. Something went screwy with the doohickey. A piece of data made a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Don’t worry about it.
Surely big tech has given you every reason to trust them, right?
Bowing to the threat of legal action against it, one Alabama hospital has rescinded its requirement that all staff be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
UAB Hospital in Birmingham said it will wait to learn how the federal vaccine mandates announced by President Joe Biden play out before imposing any requirement, according to WBRC-TV.
Last week, the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty said the hospital was violating state law, according to Al.com.
The letter said the state’s ban on vaccine passports means government entities cannot require anyone to disclose vaccine information.
“As the Supreme Court of Alabama has recognized, UAB Hospital is a state-run hospital,” the letter said.
“Consequently, UAB Hospital may not require its employees to disclose whether they have been vaccinated or not. Likewise, the Alabama Attorney General has examined the law and concluded that ‘no government, school, or business in Alabama may demand that a constituent, or customer, respectively, be vaccinated for COVID-19 or show proof of his or her vaccination for COVID-19,’” the letter said.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also questioned the legality of the Biden administration mandate, saying he had received complaints about privacy violations, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.
“The Attorney General’s Office has received complaints from healthcare employees who believe their COVID-19 immunization status was obtained by their employers through the ImmPRINT registry for the purpose of verifying compliance with the employer’s immunization requirement,” Marshall said, referring to a statewide immunization database.
“In several of those cases, a shared employer specifically acknowledged accessing the state immunization database for this purpose. This privacy violation is unlawful,” he said.
Marshall said other health care providers should also take note and not be asking employees about their immunization status.
He has said that when the vaccine mandate takes place, Alabama will file a lawsuit against it, according to Al.com.
“The vaccine mandate is unprecedented in its audacity and unlawful in its application,” Marshall said. “The Biden administration knows this full well. The State of Alabama will not allow such an authoritarian power grab to go unchecked.”
Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, said voluntary efforts have produced vaccination rates of 50 percent to 80 percent depending upon the facility.
“It’s not a small issue if we have unvaccinated employees,” Williamson said. “Hospitals have successfully navigated the waters of getting people vaccinated and for the most part, they have been able to do it without mandates.”
The UAB Hospital in Birmingham issued a statement explaining why a mandate imposed one month was scrapped the next.
“The UAB Health System’s policy requiring COVID vaccines for its workers was implemented in August prior to the announcement of forthcoming federal directives,” it said.
“President Biden issued an executive order Sept. 9 indicating that federal rules and regulations will be issued in the coming weeks that will require COVID vaccines for workers at health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid dollars.
“Because UAB Health System must follow federal law, UAB Health System will remove its vaccine policy at this time. UAB Health System will wait for the detailed federal guidance to develop a replacement vaccine policy in order to ensure full compliance with federal law.”
The statement noted that a voluntary incentive that rewards employees who get vaccinated with $400 remains in place.
Surgeon Joseph Sakran said Trump could use politics to compromise vaccine’s approval process
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe employed a left-wing doctor who questioned the efficacy of the vaccine during the Trump presidency to portray his GOP opponent as anti-science.
In an ad released Friday, McAuliffe trotted out trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran to argue Youngkin “won’t listen to doctors and scientists.” While the ad presents Sakran as an unbiased expert who merely cites “the science,” Sakran himself sowed doubt about the vaccine during its development and has a long history as a liberal activist and donor.
Sakran in May 2020 questioned a Moderna announcement that touted “promising vaccine results,” suggesting that the company only did so to manipulate its stock price.
“Moderna announced promising vaccine results…..and the executives then sell 30 million in stocks,” Sakran wrote. “Something smells funny!” Months later, he contended that the Trump administration could use “political pressure” to “circumvent” health experts and create “an expedited vaccine making healthy people sick.”
Prominent liberals echoed Sakran’s rhetoric at the time. MSNBC host Joy Reid, for example, asked in September if “anyone at all” will “ever fully trust the CDC again” as “Trumpist nonsense has infected everything.”
“And who on God’s earth would trust a vaccine approved by the FDA?” Reid added. She has since claimed “anybody rational was hesitant” to take the vaccine because “Donald Trump was out there controlling the CDC and controlling the FDA and manipulating them and making them put out falsehoods.” Reid now regularly criticizes those who express vaccine hesitancy.
Sakran, meanwhile, called the vaccine “promising” just weeks after he warned that Trump could use politics to compromise its approval process—and just days after Biden won the November election. In December, he praised the Food and Drug Administration for recommending authorization of the Pfizer vaccine and declared himself “ready to get vaccinated.”
Sakran told the Washington Free Beacon he has “always been clear that vaccines work and ha[s] always encouraged their use” but declined to answer questions about his vaccine rhetoric during the Trump presidency. McAuliffe did not return a request for comment.
In his McAuliffe campaign ad, Sakran also made questionable claims to criticize Youngkin’s positions on coronavirus-related measures. Sakran, for example, said Youngkin “is against requiring masks in schools, even though the science has made clear that’s how we prevent outbreaks in schools.”
That science, however, is far from clear. Many American allies in Europe have exempted children from wearing masks in schools, and the World Health Organization advises against requiring masks for children ages 5 and under.
“Scientists have an obligation to strive for honesty,” hematologist and oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in September. “And on the question of whether kids should wear masks in schools—particularly preschools and elementary schools—here is what I conclude: The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”
McAuliffe’s embrace of Sakran could also undermine the Democrat’s position as a supporter of Israel. Sakran, a self-identified “Palestinian American,” has referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state and condemned former president Donald Trump’s “reckless” decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As governor, McAuliffe notably denounced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement but has since welcomed an endorsement from an activist group that staunchly defends the anti-Israel campaign. Sakran did not respond to a request for comment about his past Israel rhetoric.
Sakran has long supported liberal causes and politicians. He created “Doctors for Hillary” in 2016 and gave nearly $7,000 to support failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He went on to launch gun control advocacy groups that caught the attention of Democratic officials—Sakran attended the 2019 State of the Union address with Rep. Mike Thompson (D., Calif.). In addition to his Clinton contributions, Sakran has donated nearly $9,000 to Democrats since 2016, including a $2,800 offering to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
With Election Day quickly approaching, McAuliffe leads Youngkin by just 3 points, according to a September Washington Postpoll. The pair will square off at the polls on Nov. 2.
A Scottsdale, Arizona, woman is livid after being injected with a COVID-19 vaccine at a California pharmacy without her knowledge or consent, thinking she was being given a flu shot.
Savannah Courtad said the mix-up happened on Sept. 14 at a Walgreens pharmacy in Fresno, California, and that it has left her feeling confused and violated.
“A few days ago I went to Walgreens for a flu shot. I arrived a bit early and filled out the necessary paperwork, signing for the flu shot,” Courtad wrote on Instagram. “As I was being given the shot the nurse said nothing to me other than asking me which arm I would like it in. She gave me the shot and as I was leaving told me to come back for my 2nd dose in 21 days.”
Courtad said she literally “stopped in my tracks and asked, ‘I’m going to need a second dose?’” The nurse then assured her that she would, and Courtad continued to walk out of the pharmacy.
“That’s when I looked down at the card she gave me. It said COVID-19 vaccine. I quickly rushed to the counter (my boyfriend and his mom came with me),” Courtad wrote.
Courtad said the woman at the counter reassured her that she had in fact received the flu shot and that she probably had been given the wrong vaccine card.
“She talked to the nurse that gave me the shot and confirmed that no the card was not wrong. I was given the COVID-19 vaccine instead,” Courtad wrote. “They proceeded to say ‘sorry we are super busy,’ ‘things like this happen sometimes,’ and kept repeating ‘we all make mistakes.’
“I appreciate the fact that they at least apologized, but this is more than just a ‘little’ mistake!
“Nurses can’t just go around injecting people with the wrong shot. I never gave consent for the COVID-19 vaccine to be injected into my body. Regardless of one’s position on this vaccine I would hope that we can all agree that having something injected into your body should be your CHOICE. I feel like my rights have been violated.”
Courtad couldn’t be reached for comment, although she pleaded on social media: “Please share this story to help me prevent this from happening to others!”
Walgreens didn’t return an email and a phone call requesting comment.
Courtad told The Gateway Pundit that she plans to file a lawsuit against Walgreens.
“That’s absolutely a legal issue,” and a “guaranteed win,” said Ohio attorney Jeff Renz, a vocal opponent of COVID-19 vaccines and mandates, who described Walgreens’ error as “absolutely unacceptable.”
“It’s an egregious violation of her body. Now she’s got to live with whatever [chemicals] they put into her for the rest of her life,” Renz told The Epoch Times.
“How is it a mistake if they gave you the vaccine card? If you can’t get the prescription right, I don’t know why I’d want them [as a pharmacist].”
Courtad’s social media post received more than 174 comments sympathetic to her ordeal.
Babybluecrayon wrote, “I am devastated that this happened to you. That seems like a slap in the face to you for them to give you the wrong thing, like I appreciate them apologizing, but it’s not an easy mistake to forgive. That’s your health that they could’ve potentially messed up. Nevertheless, I’m glad you’re telling your story. Would love to hear a follow-up story if you decide to do something more about this.”
Sondrapower33 advised Courtad to “lawyer up!”
“This is malpractice and you might be damaged without fully knowing yet. And get on a detox asap,” the comment reads.
Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for Arizona governor, wrote on Twitter: “Spoke to an Arizona woman who went to get a flu shot at a large pharmacy chain. They gave her the Covid jab instead. They apologized for the ‘mix-up.’ She’s devastated. She didn’t want the Covid shot. If you are getting a flu shot double-check the vial BEFORE you get jabbed.”
In April, a Walgreens pharmacy in North Carolina reported that it had given some people a saline shot instead of a COVID-19 vaccine in error.
Also in April, a California woman was mistakenly injected with the Moderna vaccine as her second dose, even though her first dose was the Pfizer vaccine.
Dr. Maria Gonzales, ER Doctor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “All this is bullshit. Now, [a patient] probably [has] myocarditis due to the [COVID] vaccine. But now, they [government] are not going to blame the vaccine.”
Dr. Gonzales: “They [government] are not reporting [adverse COVID vaccine side effects]…They want to shove it under the mat.”
Deanna Paris, Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “It’s a shame they [government] are not treating people [with COVID] like they’re supposed to, like they should. I think they want people to die.”
Jodi O’Malley, Insider and Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: The COVID vaccine is “not doing what it’s purpose was.”
O’Malley: “I’ve seen dozens of people come in with adverse reactions.”
O’Malley: “If we [government] are not gathering [COVID vaccine] data and reporting it, then how are we going to say that this is safe and approved for use?”
O’Malley: I’m not afraid of blowing the whistle “because my faith lies in God and not man…You know, like what kind of person would I be if I knew all of this — this is evil at the highest level. You have the FDA, you have the CDC, that are both supposed to be protecting us, but they are under the government, and everything that we’ve done so far is unscientific.”
O’Malley: “At the end of the day, it’s about your health, and you can never get that back — and about your freedom, and about living in a peaceful society, and I’m like, ‘no.’ No. This is the hill that I will die on.”
[PHOENIX – Sept. 20, 2021] Project Veritas released the first video of its COVID vaccine investigative series today featuring an interview with U.S. Health and Human Services [HHS] insider, Jodi O’Malley, who works as a Registered Nurse at the local Indian Medical Center.
O’Malley told Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe about what has been going on at her federal government facility. She recorded her HHS colleagues discussing their concerns about the new COVID vaccine to corroborate her assertions:
Dr. Maria Gonzales, ER Doctor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “The problem in here is that they are not doing the studies. People that had [COVID] and the people that have been vaccinated — they’re not doing any antibody testing.”
Jodi O’Malley, Insider and Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “Nope.”
Dr. Gonzales: “Everybody is quiet with that. Why?”
O’Malley: “Now, you got this guy in Room Four who got his second dose of the [COVID] vaccine on Tuesday and has been short of breath. Okay? Now his BNP is elevated. D diver elevated, ALT, all his liver enzymes are elevated. His PTPTINR is elevated.”
Dr. Gonzales: “He’s probably got myocarditis!”
O’Malley: “Yes!”
Dr. Gonzales: “All this is bullshit. Now probably myocarditis due to the vaccine.”
O’Malley: “Right.”
Dr. Gonzales: “But now, they [government] are not going to blame the vaccine.”
O’Malley: “Well and you know what — but he has an obligation to report that doesn’t he? It happened right — what is it — sixty days after if you see anything?”
Dr. Gonzales: “They have got to.”
O’Malley: “But how many are reporting?”
Dr. Gonzales: “They are not reporting.”
O’Malley: “Right!”
Dr. Gonzales: “Because they want to shove it under the mat.”
O’Malley explained this conversation in detail during her interview with O’Keefe:
James O’Keefe, Project Veritas founder:“In this instance with Dr. Gonzales, what patient was she referring to? Without saying the name.”
Jodi O’Malley, Insider and Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:“She was referring to a thirty-something-year-old patient that had congestive heart failure.”
O’Keefe: “Congestive heart failure? In that particular patient’s case, it was not reported?”
O’Malley: “No.”
O’Keefe: “Were there other instances that they didn’t report? Or just this one?”
O’Malley: “Yeah, many.”
O’Keefe: “How many did you see?”
O’Malley: “Oh, I’ve seen dozens of people come in with adverse reactions [to the COVID vaccine].”
O’Malley: “So, what the responsibility on everyone is — is to gather that data and report it. If we’re not gathering [COVID vaccine] data and reporting it, then how are we going to say that this is safe and approved for use?”
The whistleblower also recorded Dr. Gonzales’ disagreement with another HHS doctor pertaining to the research and reporting behind the COVID vaccine:
Jodi O’Malley, Insider and Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “So how come after 18 months, we haven’t had any research? Isn’t that fishy to you?”
Dr. Maria Gonzales, ER Doctor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “It does — it is fishy.”
O’Malley: “It’s super fishy.”
Dr. Dale McGee, ER Doctor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “It’s not that it hasn’t been done. It hasn’t been published, that’s why.”
Dr. Gonzales: “It hasn’t probably been done because the government doesn’t want to show that the darn [COVID] vaccine is full of sh*t.”
O’Malley spoke to Deanna Paris, who works as a Registered Nurse at the same federal government facility, to compare what they both have witnessed regarding COVID vaccine adverse effects:
Deanna Paris, Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “It’s a shame they [government] are not treating people [with COVID] like they’re supposed to, like they should. I think they want people to die.”
Jodi O’Malley, Insider and Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “How many have you seen that have gotten vaccinated here?”
Paris: “That got sick from the side effects? A lot.”
O’Malley: “A lot!”
Paris: “Have you seen it too?”
O’Malley: “Yeah, and I’m like, who’s writing the VAERS reports?”
Paris: “Nobody because it takes over a half hour to write the damn thing.”
The insider told O’Keefe what led her to blow the whistle on the federal government.
“What prompted me to do this was when I was House Supervisor one night, and one of my coworkers had taken the [COVID] vaccine two weeks ago, and she didn’t want to. She went throughout this entire pandemic working in the intensive care unit, which pretty much was a COVID unit,” O’Malley said.
“She didn’t want to take [the COVID vaccine] because of her religious beliefs and she was coerced into taking it. It’s like nobody — nobody should have to decide between their livelihood, being ‘a part of the team in the hospital,’ or take the [COVID] vaccine.”
O’Malley said it is more important to shine a light on corruption than to fear retaliation from the powers that be:
James O’Keefe, Project Veritas founder: “What would you say to people who are in a position where they can do something?”
Jodi O’Malley, Insider and Registered Nurse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “I say that we have to do something. Right now, what is plaguing this country is the spirit of fear.”
O’Keefe: “Are you afraid?”
O’Malley: “It’s my career, you know? It’s how I help people. But am I afraid? I wouldn’t necessarily say I am afraid because my faith lies in God and not man. So, I have two older kids that are on their own, and I have a twelve-year-old at home that I care for on my own, but you know, what kind of person would I be if I knew all of this — this is evil. This is evil at the highest level. You have the FDA, you have the CDC, that are both supposed to be protecting us, but they are under the government, and everything that we’ve done so far is unscientific.”
O’Keefe: “Are you afraid they’re going to retaliate against you?”
O’Malley: “Yeah. I’m a federal employee. What other federal employees do you see coming out?”
O’Keefe: “But you put your faith in God.”
O’Malley: “Amen. At the end of the day, it’s about your health, and you can never get that back — and about your freedom, and about living in a peaceful society, and I’m like, ‘no.’ No. This is the hill that I will die on.”
Project Veritas encourages more brave whistleblowers like O’Malley to come forward with information on the COVID vaccine by emailing VeritasTips@protonmail.com.
More videos exposing government health agencies and pharmaceutical companies will be released by Project Veritas imminently. To receive these upcoming videos directly into your email inbox, click here.
About Project Veritas
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations. Donate now to support our mission.
The Intercept’s recent FOIA results added abundant documentation of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s funding, using U.S. tax dollars, for dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab—funding that Fauci had denied in testimony to Sen. Rand Paul; funding, indeed, that I had tried to share with the public on Twitter in early June, the day before Twitter deplatformed me permanently.
The Intercept’s FOIA trove adds important detail to existing documentation of that NIH-funded gain-of-function research and its potential links to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Natalie Winters of The National Pulse has been out front with this story before The Intercept confirmed it separately.
So was I. Indeed, my own deplatforming from Twitter followed my having pinned private detective Brian O’Shea’s (disclosure, my husband’s) reading of Dr. Ralph Baric’s full CV, which linked this North Carolina researcher to gain-of-function work funded by Fauci’s agency. Twitter has yet to tell me exactly why I was kicked off its platform and blocked from sharing this well-sourced information with my 145,000 followers.
Twitter went so far as to deplatform me and then slander me across the globe: news reports mis-stated—via a Twitter spokesperson—that I’d been deplatformed for “vaccine misinformation.”
The First Amendment in the United States means that the government cannot outright censor critics or opponents; but the private sector—in this case Big Tech—is clearly aligned to do the dirty work of the administration.
I was accused of “Madness” (The New Republic), of having “always struggled with the truth,” of being an “anti-vaxxer.” Matt Gertz of Media Matters and CNN charged me with “pushing increasingly bonkers conspiracy theories”; he did so on Twitter, a platform on which I am no longer able to respond.
It seems my real crime may have been asking questions that other reporters have failed to ask, and in sharing information that undermines Fauci’s claims to Congress.
This very public silencing of a critic of pandemic-related “lockdowns” and of a debunker of Fauci’s denials of having ever funded gain-of-function research was no doubt meant to chill other critics. I received countless emails from other reporters and influencers stating that they supported me, but were scared to say so publicly, lest they be deplatformed as well.
Millions in Funding
Baric’s CV details millions of dollars in funding from the NIH and NIAID, including funds for a “gain-of-function” study. Baric’s research, according to Vanity Fair, could be described as “gain-of-function” research. Indeed, Baric sat on a “gain-of-function” research committee.
This CV is troublesome to the Biden administration, current patron of Big Tech, and beneficiary of its current wave of censorship, because it creates links between this research and Fauci, who has become this administration’s brand centerpiece and key re-election strategy talking point.
But Baric’s CV shows evidence to the contrary. His research on coronaviruses in bats—finding that “synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious”—and research on the transmissibility of coronaviruses to other species, including bats, mice, and humans, goes back many years. (You can see “McRoy, W. and Baric, RS. 2004. Mechanisms of coronavirus cross species transmission” on p. 14. “Becker, M.M., Graham, R.L., Donaldson, E.F., Rockx, B., Sims, A.C., Sheahan, T., Pickles, R., Corti, D., Johnston, R.E., Baric, R.S. and Denison, M.R. 2008. A synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice” on p. 17. “Rockx, B., Corti, D., Donaldson, E., Sheahan T., Stadler K., Lanzavecchia A., and Baric, R.S. 2008. Structural Basis for Potent Cross-Neutralizing Human Monoclonal Antibody Protection Against Lethal Human and Zoonotic SARSCoV Challenge” on p. 17.)
The CV of Baric’s lab assistant E F Donaldson even more clearly details work done with Baric to, as Donaldson puts it, “resurrect bat coronaviruses to determine the cross species transmission” and “I am currently employed as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, working in the lab of Dr. Ralph Baric. I am funded by the NIAID to conduct a study looking at the viruses in bats and studying how viruses cross the species barrier to emerge into new populations. In addition, I am working with Dr. Baric to resurrect bat coronaviruses to determine the cross species transmission potential of a variety of novel coronaviruses identified in bats.” The work detailed here took place when Dr Fauci was the NIAID director.
E F Donaldson also received hundreds of thousands of U.S. tax dollars in NIH/NIAID funding to study bat coronaviruses’ cross-species’ infectiousness, in a bat roost with “seven to twelve” different species, located, alarmingly enough, right here at home—in Maryland: “Donaldson 9/12/09 – 8/31/11 NIH/NIAID $301,000 10% FTE Metagenomic Analysis of the virome of Eastern North American Bats. The major goals of this project are to define the virome of seven to ten different bat species that cohabitate in one roost in Maryland to determine the viral population of each and define the role of orthologous receptors to viral cross-species transmission.” That’s on p. 4.
E F Donaldon’s CV also notes a 2011-16 request to the NIH for $1.85 million in funding for SARS-related bat coronavirus cross-species infectiousness research: “Donaldson 07/01/11 – 06/30/16 NIH $1,850,000 25% FTE Cross species emergence of coronaviruses from bats. This work builds upon our ARRA grant, which allowed us to discover a novel Coronavirus in bats that is closely related to a human pathogen, human Coronavirus 229E. The major goals of the proposal are to characterize the coronaviruses found in bat species in the northeastern United States, by sequencing several bat fecal samples to determine the complete genomic sequences, isolate and/or synthetically resurrect these coronaviruses using in silico biology, and assess the ability of these viruses to emerge into the human host.”
That newsworthy grant, to see if bat coronaviruses could emerge “into the human host,” is on p. 5.
Dr. Fauci had stated flatly to Sen Paul, on national television, that he had not funded “gain-of-function” research in the Wuhan lab. But Baric himself described his research as “gain of function,” in a workshop linked to the NIH, called—wait for it—“Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain of Function Research.”
“Dr. Ralph Baric, University of North Carolina […] explained that GoF [Gain of Function] experiments for CoV research encompass a very diverse set of experiments that are critical to the development of broad-based vaccines and therapeutics.”
Censorship and Liberty
The video I posted of Baric’s CV detailing Fauci’s funding of Baric’s gain of function research, had received 74,000 views when I was permanently suspended from Twitter.
It’s very serious that such a newsworthy and important piece of reporting—Baric’s CV—got erased from our social media universe and that I was publicly ridiculed as a punishment for attempting to open this discourse to the public.
Republicans have been pressing for investigations of the origins of the coronavirus. Without Baric’s CV, Americans do not have all the relevant information.
How is it that Twitter (and Youtube, which also froze my account, although it later restored it) went as far as heavy-handed, outright censorship of my findings? There is nothing in my sharing of this information that presents misinformation as their spokesperson apparently reported to the press as the reason for banning me. The social media companies have yet to tell me that what I posted that was inaccurate.
Sadly, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook are now closely allied to the DNC and the Biden administration, which is one reason it is important to further unredact what Mark Zuckerberg had to say to Fauci via email, correspondence that belongs in the public domain given its content is of great public interest, and Fauci is a public servant.
I’m a lifelong Democrat and I voted for President Biden, but in the wave of deplatforming of conservative voices after the inauguration, I saw the danger to our system of this unholy alliance.
I don’t care much about personal attacks. I won’t be bullied or silenced. But I do care that American citizens deserve a free press and open debate, and that they risk losing it due to censorship by Big Tech.
We deserve every bit of information that could allow for a better understanding of the gain of function research that may have been related to the virus that has debilitated world economies and affected millions, as does the rest of the world. Big Tech, with its compromised platforms, should have no say in whether such information survives a committee of millennials deciding, in an airy workspace, on what may or may not be read by other free peoples around the world.
Without a free press our country could not have been born. And if we allow random personal smears and Big Tech censorship of important news stories to derail our governance and to keep our people ill-informed, our state of liberty cannot survive.
Fresh off of renewed questions about a grant given to a health organization that worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the National Institutes of Health is in the spotlight for giving grants to a man charged with illegally supplying high-tech medical equipment to Iran.
According to a Justice Department news release, Dr. Mohammad Faghihi was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to commit money laundering, unlawful exports of goods to Iran, smuggling goods out of and into the U.S., wire fraud and making false statements.
Faghihi, a former associate professor at the University of Miami who was born in Iran, was charged in a Miami federal court alongside his wife and sister.
The three operated a company called Express Gene, which, for four years ending in November of 2020, “received numerous wire transfers from accounts in Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, totaling almost $3.5 million,” the news release said.
“Those third-country international wires [are] indicative of money laundering designed to conceal that payment originated in Iran,” the federal complaint said, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
The Department of Justice alleged in the news release that “some of the money received was used by Express Gene and its principals to purchase genetic sequencing equipment from U.S. manufacturers and ship them to Iran without a license from the Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to export the machines, despite sanctions on Iran.”
The Miami Herald reported that prosecutors told a judge that one of Express Gene’s clients was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian military branch that’s also designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.
The IRGC allegedly bought several genetic testing machines from Faghihi’s business.
According to the Herald, prosecutors said they caught up with Faghihi just as it seemed he was about to flee.
“He was literally about to board a plane on Monday when he was arrested,” prosecutor Michael Thakur told the court on Wednesday.
Faghihi was also accused of falsely obtaining grants from the NIH. The agency required him to disclose the international wire transfers he received, which he allegedly failed to do. The Herald reported Faghihi was the chief investigator on those grants.
According to the news release, the federal government’s case against Faghihi began after he arrived at Miami International Airport from Iran on Feb. 20. Upon his arrival, Customs and Border Protection officers inspected his luggage and questioned him.
“According to the charging documents, during his inspection by CBP officers, Faghihi made false statements, including that he did not practice his profession in Iran or conduct any type of research in Iran,” the news release read.
“In fact, according to the affidavit, Faghihi was the director of a laboratory within Shiraz University of Medical Science in Iran bearing his name: ‘Dr. Faghihi’s Medical Genetic Center.’”
The charging documents also stated that Faghihi told a professor with an Iranian number on the WhatsApp messaging service that he’d managed to purchase two genetic sequencing devices in the U.S. and had installed them at the university, according to the Free Beacon.
The documents said IP numbers from the genetic sequencing devices confirmed they were at the research university, which is government-run — leading to questions about whether Faghihi has connections with the Iranian regime.
While those questions likely won’t be addressed until the case gets further down the line, another red flag like this is the last thing the NIH needs after documents revealed grants to a U.S. health organization conducting research that’s now at the center of the lab leak hypothesis.
Documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act seem to indicate the NIH funded so-called gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses conducted with the Wuhan Institute of Virology by a group called EcoHealth Alliance.
Of the $3.1 million provided to EcoHealth Alliance in federal grants, $599,000 went to researching bat coronaviruses that could potentially infect humans. This included changing the viruses to make them more infectious to humans — the very definition of gain-of-function research.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s coronavirus czar, is the head of one of the NIH’s divisions, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. Testifying to Congress in May, he said the NIH and NIAID “categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Lying to Congress is, of course, a crime.
It’s unclear whether Fauci knew about the research being done by EcoHealth Alliance. However, the fact that the NIH was funding that kind of potentially dangerous research — with our chief geopolitical adversary at a lab where biosecurity questions had been raised — isn’t a good sign.
Now, the NIH finds itself linked to a man who allegedly smuggled scientific equipment to another geopolitical adversary, Iran.
It’s unclear whether the agency knew (or, indeed, could have known) anything about the crimes Faghihi is charged with. However, the association with him couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The man denounced as “Not Fit to be WHO Leader” by one Japanese publication appears to be a shoo-in for the job again.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who in 2017 was elected to a five-year term as the World Health Organization’s director general, has no opponents for the position so far, Reuters reported Friday, citing sources it did not name.
Ghebreyesus not only famously stirred antagonisms across America after former President Donald Trump lambasted him for being too soft on China in regard to COVID-19, his home nation of Ethiopia is so angry at him that it might not even nominate him.
The deadline for nominations is this week.
“Tedros is for sure a candidate,” said one of the unnamed sources Reuters cited.
Does the Biden administration have what it takes to reform WHO and eliminate China’s dominance over the group? https://t.co/aPBW4TbIyA
But he is from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, which is facing a massive humanitarian crisis due to starvation.
The region also is in the midst of a civil war against the government that would nominate Ghebreyesus.
Ethiopian Gen. Berhanu Jula has said Ghebreyesus is aligned with the rebels and has tried to get them guns, a claim Ghebreyesus denies.
If Ethiopia does not nominate Ghebreyesus, someone else will.
“Kenya will support his re-nomination,” Macharia Kamau, principal secretary in Kenya’s foreign ministry, told Reuters. “I think there will be a group of countries” supporting him.
One commentator said the United States should have been grooming someone to replace Ghebreyesus.
My latest in @ForeignPolicy on the WHO director general race. “We’ll never know for sure, but it’s safe to say that many people might still be alive had Tedros acted more forcefully against the virus instead of working so hard to please Beijing.” https://t.co/7ZWnpqLpCX
China is a part but Tedros should be held responsible for crimes against humanity. It’s not his first rodeo. He helps China however. But let’s take it back to 2006, 2009 and 2011https://t.co/dkZ3tIhLQR
“It’s a glaring failure of the Biden administration not to have prepared an alternative,” Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote in an Op-Ed on in Foreign Policy.
“But if Washington focuses its energies, it may yet prevent Tedros’ reelection—and with it, a victory for the broken status quo that harms both U.S. interests and global public health.
“Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Tedros has been pandering to Beijing and helping it cover up its failures,” Ruggiero wrote.
How to protect yourself and your kids from the harmful effects of technology
Every generation worries about the upcoming youth, but does the age of smartphones and digital addiction pose a more serious threat than ever before? In an episode of NTD’s “The Nation Speaks,” host Cindy Drukier interviews teacher and author Jeremy Adams, as well as psychologist Hilarie Cash, to answer this question.
It has only been 14 years since we’ve had computers in our pockets that are available every moment of our lives. In his book “Hallowed Out: A Warning about America’s Next Generation,” Jeremy Adams, a civics teacher of 24 years, brings awareness to what he is seeing in the classroom and how he believes the younger generation is negatively affected by technology.
Adams says when you work in the classroom, you get to know kids and you notice if there are troubling trends. He believes the most disturbing thing about kids today is the value system they are embracing. The way they look at their country, the way they spend their time, and the values they hold are not helping them live purposeful and meaningful lives. In fact, they are hindering them.
Being a civics teacher, Adams says he worries about the American experiment.
“America is not like other countries. We can’t have a single lost generation that doesn’t understand what it means to be an American and what those values are and how you perpetuate the American experiment,” he says.
He is worried about the values that have emerged in young people over the past 10 years. These include the extent to which young Americans live their lives completely untethered to adult values, influences, or role models.
Adams says that although it doesn’t matter to him whether the youth are religious or not, he is bothered that young people don’t seem to know anything about religion.
Other troubling trends are that the younger generation is extremely unpatriotic, they don’t have the desire for relationships, marriage, or family, and they are radically individualistic.
He says that when you think about the things that make life enchanting and grand, you think of friendships, love, learning, and going out and seeing and doing things. Yet today’s youth are lonely and isolated.
Adams stresses how unhappy this generation is, citing rising suicide rates.
“It is shocking,” he says.
He was worried about these things prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now these problems have been amplified and accelerated.
Kids today don’t go out and socialize, they don’t have meals with their parents, and they often spend 9 to 10 hours a day on their phone.
Adams says kids post-COVID-19 are zombies in the classroom and don’t know how to engage in academic and social environments.
Adams believes the reason for much of this falls on the adult generation. He says that we have given young people freedom but haven’t stepped forward and given them the values, knowledge, or insight needed to use that freedom well. If adults give youth the freedom to do whatever they want, we have to also teach them that freedom allows them to commit to what is important and meaningful. When we fail to do that, we are left with a generation that sees freedom as tantamount to indulgence or licentiousness, and doesn’t connect it to important things.
Being a parent, spouse, teacher, or person of faith, is hard. It may be the hardest thing a person does, but it will also likely be the most meaningful. Youth today often aren’t able to make the connection between struggle and purpose.
Acknowledging that high expectations usually come from adults, Adams points out that the parent generation, in our zeal to be compassionate and empathetic, have actually let our youth down. Being kind is a good thing, but it should help students feel secure so they can achieve good things.
Now in schools, teachers are also friends, counselors, and often act as parents to their students.
Teachers today need to understand that compassion and empathy should serve youth in a way that prepares them to show up, study, work hard, and have success. Adams says many teachers think they’re being compassionate by giving students a diploma without making them learn anything.
Any form of success requires diligence, knowledge, and skill. Robbing young people of what they need to stand tall in the world and achieve what they want in their lives is not kind.
Thankfully, Adams does believe there is still time to turn the situation around. He says we all want to do better. Young people know they are addicted to their phones and need to live life more. The adults know better and know they need to do things like insist on family time, church, and community. He says parents and teachers need to start “adulting” again, which means putting ourselves in the physical, intellectual, and moral spaces of young people. Awareness is the key to breaking the phone addiction, because once we are aware, we can intervene.
Teacher Warns of Troubled Next Generation; Tackling Digital Addiction | The Nation Speaks [Full Episode]Play Video
To learn more about how bad the digital addiction in our youth is and what can be done about it, Drukier interviews psychologist Hilarie Cash, co-founder of reSTART: Internet Addiction Recovery Program.
Cash, who has been seeing addicted patients for over 25 years, says the addiction problem has been growing steadily as technology has entered everyone’s lives. The software is designed to be addictive, and kids are now exposed to technology from early ages, which affects their development.
Cash says there are tell-tale signs if there is an addiction problem. One of the disorders is called “Gaming Disorder,” which often happens to people who become addicted to video games. It can be recognized when gaming begins to take over a person’s life: they no longer have control over how much they use it, they lose interest in other things, and they continue with their behavior despite negative consequences.
Cash says that grades going down, not getting enough sleep or exercise, not having many friends or offline activities, or fighting with family about technology-use rules, are all indicators that there is a problem.
Cash says technology affects brain development in young children. Today, many parents are handing devices to their babies, which has never been the case in past generations. This impacts social development substantially, because a person doesn’t develop good social skills unless they are actually interacting socially with other people.
Cash also explains the attachment issues that result from being exposed to too much technology. A child needs to be attached to their caregivers, but if the caregivers are on their devices too much, or putting the kids on devices to keep them distracted, this affects the attachment a child develops with their caregiver, which in turn affects mental health later on down the road.
She says that from ages 13 to 20, many have intimacy disorders, not having the skills and confidence to initiate, develop, and maintain emotionally intimate relationships.
Sexuality is also impacted because there is a blending of activities online, with many users looking at pornography, gambling, gaming, and social media all at the same time.
On top of this, there are physical problems, such as sleep deprivation, inadequate exercise, and poor diet.
In regards to social development, there is a lack of skill in communication, as well as attention problems.
Technology gives us immediate gratification, which negatively affects academic work by not having the ability to stay focused, persevere to get projects done, and look forward to getting a good grade.
So what can we do? Cash says there are apps that help at least monitor phone use, and these can be helpful if a person is actually motivated to make changes.
She recommends that parents don’t give smartphones to their children before high school. The software parents can put on phones to monitor kids is easy for smart kids to get around. She says to make sure kids don’t have smartphones until they have developed a well-rounded life and can sustain that once they get a smartphone.
Cash also says it is wise to have boundaries around phone and screen time, such as checking your phone at certain times and otherwise leaving it off, and making sure times at home are intentional and not surrounded by screen time and devices. Make sure kids are getting time outdoors, exercising, doing their chores, having down time, and in-person social time.
Cash says the key is to focus on giving your kids the proper rules and guidance so they can live a well-rounded life.
Should children be required to wear masks at school? A review of the costs and benefits, including some of the latest science, does not add much to the case for mandating school masks.
First, some basics.
The risk of death from COVID-19 among schoolchildren is very, very low.
How Low?
A Nature study estimating the COVID-19 infection fatality rate (IFR), or proportion of those infected who die, found IFRs of just 0.001 percent in children aged 5–9, and IFRs well below 0.01 percent in all those aged 19 and under.
That’s less than one in 10,000 among teenagers and less than one in 100,000 in 5- to 9-year-old children.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which has advocated masking children aged 2 and up, found that only 460 children had died of COVID-19 between late May 2020 and Sept. 9, 2021 across 45 states, New York City, Guam, and Puerto Rico—0.08 percent of the total number of deaths they counted.
Looking again across multiple states, the AAP found that COVID-19 cases among children have surged in recent weeks, growing by 10 percent from 4,797,683 to 5,292,837 between Aug. 26 and Sept. 9—a trend that could be related to the start of in-person schooling.
Yet the AAP’s own data shows children are just 0.9 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations, a rate on par with previous weeks, and down from reported hospitalization rates of 3.8 percent in mid-2020.
With all that in mind, what are the benefits of masking children?
According to the AAP, those benefits include the “protection of unvaccinated students from COVID-19,” as well as “reduc[ed] transmission.”
Yet as described above, COVID-19’s risks for schoolchildren have been, and remain, extremely low.
What’s more, vaccines have been made widely available or are even mandated among teachers, who belong to age groups more vulnerable to COVID-19 than children—and despite efforts to restrict access to ivermectin, individuals may still be able to obtain the drug, identified as an “essential medicine” by the World Health Organization, as well as other potential therapeutics.
Like the AAP, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now recommends universal masking in schools, a change from its previous stance that vaccinated students and teachers do not have to wear masks. (Neither the AAP nor the CDC mention natural immunity in their school masking guidance).
They, too, point to transmission as a justification for universal indoor masking, citing the highly transmissible Delta variant.
Concerns about transmission come down to two questions: First, how much is widespread COVID-19 transmission driven by children in school, and second, how well do masks and mask mandates limit transmission?
While some scientists have provided evidence that children might play a significant role in community spread, researchers generally agree that children, and especially young children, are not the primary drivers of it.
An observational study in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that children up to the age of 9 attending school were not major contributors to COVID-19 spread, though the study’s findings on teenagers were more equivocal.
A 2020 meta-analysis, or analysis of multiple studies, on COVID-19 susceptibility among young children and adolescents concluded susceptibility was lower in those groups than in adults and offered “weak evidence” that they play a lesser role in population-level transmission.
More recently, a 2021 meta-analysis on COVID-19 transmission clusters concluded that children infected in school “are unlikely to spread SARS-CoV-2 to their cohabiting family members.”
This would be in line with the hypothesized trade-off between transmission and virulence, which suggests that pathogens evolve in the direction of spreading farther while also becoming less damaging to their hosts.
The effectiveness of masks, and mask mandates, in schools is also a matter of dispute, with mask mandates for students apparently lacking clear support.
In his July 30 executive order against mask mandates in Florida schools, Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that “forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification,” citing a 2021 preprint that found no correlation between mask mandates and COVID-19 case rates among students and faculty across schools in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts.
Yet the authors of that study stressed that their research was limited to just three states, meaning their conclusions may not apply elsewhere. They also emphasized that the masking variation they identified in Florida schools could make their findings “even less generalizable to all U.S. students.”
A 2020 report by the CDC itself on elementary schools in Georgia noted that “COVID-19 incidence was 37% lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks.”
Crucially, however, the CDC found that mask mandates for students did not have a statistically significant impact on COVID-19 incidence.
Here too, the study’s authors noted some limitations to their work; notably, their findings were based on self-reporting, and investigators did not directly examine whether people were using masks.
What About Masks More Generally?
An early randomized controlled trial of 4,862 adult participants from Denmark did not find that surgical masks reduced COVID-19 infection, although the authors noted that some results were “inconclusive.”
On Sept. 1, however, researchers released a working paper detailing a cluster-randomized trial of mask promotion across communities in rural Bangladesh, which involved 600 villages and more than 300,000 individuals, that appeared to support masking.
After surveying “all reachable participants” and testing blood from symptomatic individuals, the researchers linked mask promotion to a slight reduction in symptomatic COVID-19 infections.
Yet similar to the Danish study, the Bangladesh study was explicitly intended to examine mask-wearing among those “who appear to be 18 years or older”—not the young children or adolescents to whom school mask mandates apply.
What, then, are the potential costs of requiring children to be masked at school?
An obvious one is cleanliness.
“We were almost all taught as children that disposable tissues are good because handkerchiefs are unhygienic and disgusting,” wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty in an article for National Review Online. “But for young children, toddlers in particular, the cotton-jersey masks that they most often wear in schools are just that, a handkerchief pulled over their mouth and nose constantly. They often are disgusting at the end of a day of use.”
Unsurprisingly, children’s masks may be a breeding ground for bacteria and other microorganisms, some of them potentially dangerous.
One recent analysis from the University of Florida revealed that most masks worn by children in 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat were contaminated with parasites, fungi, and bacteria, including a virus known to cause a fatal systemic disease in deer and cattle.
Masks, particularly disposable masks, are also harmful to the environment. With billions of single-use masks being thrown out every day, researchers believe that discarded masks and respirators are adding to plastic pollution—a problem to which school mask mandates can only contribute.
Masking and other interventions may also have knock-on effects related to the frequency of other respiratory diseases.
The recent, out-of-season spike in pediatric hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has been tied to the COVID-19 response, with infants and young children who would have otherwise been exposed to RSV at an earlier age now falling ill from it.
Masking may also have significant psychological and developmental effects on children.
A 2004 article on masking in a pediatric hospital, authored long before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the scientific debate on masking, expanded on some of the psychological hazards for children.
“Imagine the impact of a hospital filled with “faceless” people on a young child. Who is smiling? Who is frowning? How do I recognize my doctor? How does my nurse recognize me? Why is everyone so scared of me and my germs?…”
“When wearing masks, goggles and/or face shields, non-verbal communication is impaired. Subtle facial cues are absent or can be misread and lip-reading is impossible.”
More recently, in a roundtable with Governor DeSantis and other scientists, Stanford professor Dr. Jay Battacharya argued that masking children is both medically unnecessary and “developmentally inappropriate.”
“I mean, how do you teach a child to read with a face mask on Zoom? I think children develop by watching other people,” Battacharya said.
The controversy over the developmental impact of masking children has even impacted the AAP.
In August, Internet users unearthed an AAP webpage emphasizing the developmental importance of face time between parents and babies that had apparently been removed from the organization’s website, along with other AAP webpages describing how babies and young children learn through looking at faces.
The AAP responded by explaining that the web pages disappeared as a result of website migration, telling Just the News that “some content areas, including Early Brain and Child Development, are still being organized before they go live on the new platform.”
Finally, the practice of mandating masks could be argued to compromise individual and parental autonomy.
Advocacy groups such as Utah Parents United have spoken out against school mask mandates, saying that they undermine parental rights and are unnecessary for such a low-risk group, particularly given the availability of vaccines to adult teachers and staff.
With all that we know so far, how can we answer these parents?
If the benefits of mask mandates do not outweigh the costs, it’s hard to find fault with opposition, or at least skepticism—especially for young schoolchildren, who are at the lowest risk of serious illness and death, and who may be most vulnerable to the uncertain and understudied costs of universal masking and other stringent measures.
President Joe Biden is on vacation again this weekend as the crises his administration has created consume a troubled country which he apparently needs a few days to forget about while at the beach.
NBC News chief White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell shared images on Twitter Friday of Biden landing in Delaware to bask in the sun before the lunch plates had even been washed on the east coast.
President Biden has taken Marine One to a landing zone at Rehoboth Beach where he will spend the weekend at his Delaware beach house. pic.twitter.com/sfwrbVk0rj
Peculiarly, there were no stories headlining Biden’s getaway on the Associated Press home page. That’s odd, because on Dec. 25 last year, the AP printed this: “President Donald Trump spent his Christmas golfing in Florida as a government shutdown looms and COVID relief hangs in the balance.”
Of course, Trump was a Republican president, and few people in the decrepit establishment media view Christmas as anything special. That being noted, it was major news when Trump went home for Christmas.
The AP added in its holiday hit piece, “Trump tweeted that he planned to make ‘a short speech to service members from all over the world’ by video conference Friday to celebrate the holiday…”
Remember what it was like before Big Tech goons colluded with leftists Democrats to censor sitting presidents and other people en masse? Remember when we had a president who was capable of addressing people?
Trump was more present while golfing than Biden is while addressing the country — which is rarely.
Biden was gone from the White House earlier this year when border communities across the southeast were first inundated with COVID-positive illegal immigrants.
The president was also missing in action at Camp David last month as his administration’s decisions in Afghanistan resulted in a humanitarian crisis.
Thirteen U.S. service members were soon after killed by a suicide bomber as Biden’s military leadership surrendered to the Taliban, put troops in a defensive position and gave away weapons and equipment to terrorists as he assumedly still wanted to disarm the American people.
This weekend, as the country is again consumed by a crisis, Biden will be on the beach in Delaware at his Rehoboth Beach resort. The country has entered a full-blown moral crisis and we have no one to lead us through it.
We already don’t know for sure who is really running the White House when Biden is there. We know he definitely won’t be calling the shots until Monday.
Perhaps Gen. Mark Milley, an accused traitor who during the final months and days of Trump’s presidency allegedly betrayed the country’s civilian leader and phoned China, will have his feet up on the Resolute desk all weekend reading Marx as Biden wanders around a beach while avoiding questions about the seven innocent children military leaders like Milley killed last month in Kabul by a drone strike.
Milley inexplicably is still employed, even after he botched Afghanistan, reportedly betrayed his commander-in-chief and called killing foreign kids “righteous.”
A report last week from The New York Times which claimed that a U.S. military drone killed an innocent Afghan aide worker and his family was confirmed by the Pentagon. That confirmation came on Friday. Isn’t that convenient?
Nobody will be around to answer for that all weekend, or for the fact that France, our oldest ally, is walking away from us.
Biden will also have his toes in the sand as an estimated 10,000 reportedly mostly Haitian migrants sleep under a bridge in south Texas. Do you think that campout will be labeled a COVID super spreader? Don’t count on it. The Haitians didn’t vote for Trump.
Biden isn’t concerned, about any of this. He won’t have to answer for the Taliban’s butchers decapitating children as they seek to cleanse Afghanistan of all former American support. He can also avoid any talk of still-rising inflation and totally avoid the fact the country is hopelessly divided along ideological lines and missing its identity.
Remember when he promised to unite us all and then told private companies that they have to tell their employees what they must put into their bodies? He probably doesn’t, either.
The country right now seems like one giant powder keg. The only question for the White House seems to be, who’s tapping the keg in Rehoboth Beach?
With advisers like Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Mark Milley, former President Donald Trump hardly needed enemies — at least, if Bob Woodward and Robert Costa are to be believed.
Woodward and Costa’s new book “Peril,” about the events surrounding the 2020 election and unprecedented instability encompassing it, isn’t even out yet and the allegations contained therein have led to calls for Milley’s resignation.
In one excerpt from the book, Milley is alleged to have talked to the Chinese twice to assure them the United States wouldn’t launch an attack — and if they did, he would give Beijing a heads-up. Milley also reportedly told senior officers that if there was any move toward a nuclear launch, while a president could give the order, he needed to be consulted.
That whole series of episodes, if true, skirts with treason when you consider he would be warning an enemy of an attack. Perhaps more crucially, it undermined the bedrock principle of civilian leadership of the military, one of the principles that separates us from an authoritarian state.
When it came to domestic threats, however, Woodward and Costa say Milley was considerably less concerned — so much less that he called the George Floyd riots “penny packet protests.”
According to an excerpt from the book obtained by Fox News, Milley pooh-poohed White House fears that the riots were insurrectionary and “burning America down” during the summer months last year.
“Mr. President, they are not burning it down,” Milley reportedly said. “They used spray paint, Mr. President, that’s not an insurrection.”
According to the book, the conversation took place near the end of May. The date isn’t given, but the protests had spread well beyond Minneapolis by May 27, according to a timeline of events from The New York Times. That’s just two days after Floyd’s death.
A May 30 timeline from Fox News mentions protests or riots in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix and St. Louis, among many others.
“More than a dozen cities instituted curfews and thousands were arrested, while thousands of National Guard members were deployed in at least 15 states,” Fox News noted.
“When Milley spoke to Trump, however, he reportedly cited data at that time that said there had only been two cities with major protests, while elsewhere it was 20-300 protesters.”
According to Woodward and Costa, Milley then pointed to a portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln and said the protests and riots couldn’t be compared to the attack on Fort Sumter which started the Civil War in 1861.
“We’re a country of 330 million people. You’ve got these penny packet protests,” Milley said, adding that it couldn’t be compared to the riots which engulfed the country in 1968, according to the book.
Milley also reportedly blamed systematic racism for the protests and said anger had “pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality.”
Milley was, if nothing else, a bad prognosticator.
The George Floyd riots would go on to cost America up to $2 billion in insurance claims, according to estimates obtained by Axios in September of last year. That would likely make them the most costly riots of all time, surpassing the Los Angeles riot of 1992; that cost $775 million in insurance claims at the time, which would be $1.42 billion in 2020 dollars.
The three most costly riots of 1968, meanwhile, barely topped $300 million in damage when adjusted for 2020 dollars.
More importantly, the George Floyd riots would rend our national fabric more than any domestic event in recent memory. It would enable the worst elements in the Black Lives Matter and antifa movements.
The protests — and the so-called anti-racist movement they supercharged — also became an avenue for expressing explicitly anti-American sentiments. How many times, for example, did we witness scenes like this?
Those weren’t the riots that Milley was worried about, though. According to the book, he was more concerned with the Capitol incursion, which the book alleges he perceived as being “indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than ‘treason.’”
The book goes on to say Milley was afraid Trump wanted a “Reichstag moment” — referring to the Reichstag fire, a relatively minor incident in 1933 which Adolf Hitler used as an excuse to consolidate power in Nazi Germany — and that the attack was “so unimagined and savage, could be a dress rehearsal for something larger” for Trump supporters.
It’s not that Milley was the only man expressing these overheated sentiments about the Capitol incursion — but if these reports are true, at some point during the past year, Milley became one of America’s wokest generals, if not the wokest. There’s a clear throughline from his remarks about the George Floyd riots to his testimony before Congress defending his inclusion of critical race theory in military education, and it’s one that doesn’t bode well for the future.
Everything in the report comes with a huge asterisk, of course, given Bob Woodward’s history of problematic investigative journalism. If true, however, it’s more evidence Milley needs to resign posthaste.
Calling the George Floyd riots nothing more than graffiti artists and “penny packet protests” doesn’t rise to the level of treason, but it’s more evidence that this isn’t the man who should be one of the president’s top military advisers.
The White House and federal health officials are standing by the decision to announce the plans for COVID-19 booster shots for many Americans back in August ahead of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) approval for the extra doses.
The announcement issued by eight top government doctors on Aug. 18 notes clear evidence the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness decreases over time and reveals a plan to roll out booster shots in response. The Biden administration then laid out plans to begin giving booster shots to more Americans starting Sept. 20.
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met Friday morning to discuss whether booster doses will be recommended. It voted 16–3 against providing the booster for most people, but recommended it for those over 65 years old and those at high risk. The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will hold a two-day meeting next week to make its recommendation.
The decision to make the announcement in August has raised questions of whether the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put undue pressure on the regulatory agencies to approve boosters by making the potential need for a third dose public.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Friday the announcement was made for two reasons: transparency and planning.
“If we saw a signal that indicated to us that protection was starting to wane and that additional shots might be required, that we would be transparent and open to the public about that,” said Vivek, adding, “You want to roll out booster shots to the population. You can’t flip a switch and make that happen overnight. There’s important planning that needs to take place.”
The White House also backed the August announcement this week when press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters: “Our objective is to be prepared should all of this process move forward. It’s always been pending the approval of the ACIP and the FDA.”
The recent resignation of top vaccine officials within the FDA seems to suggest stark disagreement within the regulatory agency on the plan to roll out booster shots. Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, announced late last month their plans to leave the FDA in October and November.
The two were co-authors on a paper released this week in the scientific journal The Lancet saying that booster shots may only be appropriate for certain at-risk populations.
The article reads, “although the benefits of primary COVID-19 vaccination clearly outweigh the risks, there could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects … If unnecessary boosting causes significant adverse reactions, there could be implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, widespread boosting should be undertaken only if there is clear evidence that it is appropriate.”
Officials say there is plenty of supply of boosters should they be approved.
The federal government’s sudden rationing of monoclonal antibody treatments, which keep Americans who get COVID-19 out of hospitals, is hitting Alabama hard, with some sites already running out of or projected to run out of supply soon.
The antibodies are highly successful at stemming the effects of COVID-19 when given to patients soon after they contract the disease, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. But a huge jump in demand in recent weeks has left what some officials have described as a national shortage, triggering the federal government to intervene and start doling out what’s left.
Stringfellow and Regional Medical Center in Anniston didn’t have any of the antibodies left on Wednesday, according to Dr. Almena Free, vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer. Other facilities in Jefferson and Huntsville counties are struggling to source enough of the treatment, Dr. David Thrasher, a pulmonary critical care physician in Montgomery, said a day later.
“Some entities are very low on product and some project running out of product over the weekend,” Dr. Karen Landers, a health officer with the Alabama Department of Public Health, told The Epoch Times in an email on Friday.
The shortage is hitting at a critical time. Intensive care unit capacity is “beyond full,” Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s health officer, told reporters in a Sept. 16 virtual briefing. That means there are more people in the state that require critical care than there are beds to take care of them.
COVID-19 isn’t entirely to blame, as many patients don’t have the disease. But the monoclonal antibody (mAb) shortage will likely contribute to the issue. Some 70 percent of patients who get the treatment soon after their diagnosis don’t need hospital care, according to clinical studies and experts like Thrasher.
“We were originally told [by the federal government] we were only going to get 70 percent of our allocation. That means 30 percent of people are not being treated, and some of them will die,” the doctor said.
“That is not acceptable. … This is not right, what the federal government’s doing,” he added.
The federal government has dominated the supply of monoclonal antibody treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly. Under the model in place until early this month, hospitals and other facilities could order directly from the Biden administration, which would send doses straight to the healthcare centers. States didn’t have to worry about costs, because the administration paid. The new model has the government ration the doses, deciding how much to give each state. The change comes as, according to experts, supply dwindles and new production isn’t enough to meet the booming need.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services have defended the change, saying it provides for a more “equitable” distribution.
A Regeneron monoclonal antibody infusion bag is seen during a news conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, on Aug. 19, 2021. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
“Our role as the government overseeing the entire country is to be equitable in how we distribute. We’re not going to give a greater percentage to Florida over Oklahoma,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
“Transitioning to a state/territory-coordinated distribution system gives health departments maximum flexibility to get mAbs where they are needed most,” an HHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.
Several options are in play for states that are facing a shortage. They can draw on existing supply, taking doses from sites that have plenty and sending them to others that don’t. Or they can reach out to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a United Kingdom-based company that hasn’t sold any of its product to the U.S. government.
Florida is the only state that has started the process of sourcing directly from GSK, according to health officials across the United States. Health officers in some states, such as Mississippi and Arkansas, said they had enough supply and didn’t project being affected by the distribution model switch. Others, like Texas and Alabama, are but aren’t pursuing the direct sourcing method.
Some suggested getting antibodies from GSK would prove too expensive.
“At this time we have not had any requests for it and it is quite costly,” a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health told The Epoch Times via email.
One course of treatment costs $2,100, a GSK spokesperson told The Epoch Times. That’s the same price per dose in Regeneron’s latest two contracts with the federal government. Eli Lilly’s is about the same.
The federal government has locked up hundreds of thousands of doses of the Regeneron and Eli Lilly medicines, and GSK’s is the only other monoclonal antibody treatment authorized for use at this time in the United States. U.S. drug regulators rejected an application for emergency use authorization for a fourth drug earlier this month.
Michigan and Alabama officials told The Epoch Times that hospitals and other providers can order directly from GSK if they wish. In the meantime, the states, like many others, are scrambling to try to redistribute supply to make sure there’s enough at each facility.
A government watchdog group is calling on New York’s public pension fund to divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, in response to the ice cream company’s decision to boycott Israel.
The National Legal and Policy Center asked New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a Thursday letter to “effect the immediate divestiture” of the state pension fund’s $73 million holdings in Unilever, arguing that the company has not taken sufficient steps to oppose anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
The letter comes after Arizona and New Jersey announced they would pull investments from Unilever, and as Florida and Illinois have said they are looking at taking similar action. DiNapoli said in July that Ben & Jerry’s boycott decision would make New York reconsider its investments with Unilever in the future.
“Unilever’s position that it is opposed to anti-Semitism is belied by the actions and associations of Anuradha Mittal, the chair of Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors,” wrote NLPC chairman Peter Flaherty in the Sept. 16 letter. “Mittal is the architect of the ice cream company’s policy of ending sales in Israeli ‘occupied territories.’ Reportedly, Mittal also proposed a boycott of all of Israel. Her Twitter account has many anti-Israel tweets and contain specific endorsements of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.”
Flaherty also noted that Mittal is a trustee of Ben & Jerry’s nonprofit arm, which issued $170,000 in grants to an unrelated nonprofit that Mittal also controls called the Oakland Institute. The arrangement could violate IRS rules against self-dealing, according to the NLPC, which filed a complaint with the IRS about the financial activities last month.
Mittal’s Oakland Institute has published defenses of Hezbollah and Hamas, the Washington Free Beaconreported in July.
In one article published by the Oakland Institute, former Green Party Senate candidate Todd Chretien argued that progressives should support Hezbollah during the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006.
“You do not have to agree with all of Hezbollah’s ideas to support their resistance to Israel,” Chretien wrote. “Condemning ‘both sides’ in the Middle East is just like condemning ‘both sides’ in the American Civil War. During the Civil War, with all its complications, one side fought for slavery and the other fought for emancipation. Today in the Middle East, one side fights to rob and pillage, the other seeks self-determination and dignity.”
The institute also directed a Ben & Jerry’s foundation grant to an organization called the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, which the European Union barred from receiving public funding last year for refusing to sign an anti-terror clause.
“If Unilever were truly opposed to anti-Semitism, it would have already severed its relationship with Mittal,” wrote Flaherty. “Moreover, Unilever’s anti-Israel bias is underscored by the fact that it has announced no intention to end ice cream sales in China, where it is a leading foreign brand.”
The New York comptroller’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office said that more than half of those who are seeking monoclonal antibody treatment in the south of Florida are “fully vaccinated” individuals amid supply issues.
“More than half the patients getting the monoclonal antibody treatment in south Florida are fully vaccinated,” DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw wrote in response to a comment on Twitter that suggested that only unvaccinated people are the reason why there is a significant demand for monoclonal antibodies.
Florida, she wrote hours earlier, “is above average in vaccination rate” and that “more than half of the patients in south Florida getting monoclonal antibody treatment are vaccinated and have breakthrough infections. Vaccinated or unvaccinated -Denying treatment to Covid patients is wrong.”
Monoclonal antibodies are engineered immune system proteins that boost an immune response against an infection.
Earlier this week, the White House and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced plans to control the U.S. monoclonal antibody supply due to distribution issues. According to HHS’s website in a Sept. 13 update, the agency “will determine the weekly amount of mAb products each state and territory receives based on COVID-19 case burden and [monoclonal antibody treatment] utilization.”
A spokesperson for HHS told CNN that Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana are using 70 percent of the supply of the drug.
“Given this reality, we must work to ensure our supply of these life-saving therapies remains available for all states and territories, not just some,” the HHS spokesperson said, adding that a new system “will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country … providing states and territories with consistent, fairly-distributed supply over the coming weeks.”
Before the change, states and hospitals could purchase the antibodies on their own without going through the federal government.
“More than 50 percent of the monoclonal antibodies that had been used in Florida were going to be reduced,” DeSantis said on Thursday, adding that “there’s going to be a huge disruption, and patients are going to suffer as a result of this.”
On Thursday, DeSantis’s office said the state would deal directly with GlaxoSmithKline, a maker of monoclonal antibody infusion treatments.
“The Biden administration and their allies in media have claimed that Florida is using too much monoclonal treatment because of a low vaccination rate,” Pushaw told The Epoch Times on Thursday, “and Biden has lashed out at Governor DeSantis for opposing the tyrannical federal vaccine mandate.”
My career has taken me around the world, including the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to support our troops. These travels have helped me appreciate how fortunate I am to have been born in America—home of the free because of the brave.
On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, people across our nation gathered in remembrance of the lives lost and the heroes who selflessly gave their lives to save others. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington, D.C., and saw the hole in the Pentagon. Later, I traveled to New York City and saw the massive hole where the Twin Towers once stood. Those are images I will never forget.
In 2002, I was recruited into government service to lead necessary change and transformation in the intelligence community (IC), including better integrating our imagery and signals intelligence enterprises—America’s eyes and ears. I was sworn in as a senior executive in defense intelligence and was a civilian peer to general and flag officers. After the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was established, I was sworn in as the first IC deputy chief information officer at ODNI. In that role, I worked across the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. IC and regularly met with the leadership of both the IC and the Department of Defense.
Through my 25 years of service in the national security community and study of history, I have become aware of the techniques, tactics, and procedures that our enemies use. Though the Cold War ended 30 years ago, our nation is still in a war that has been brewing for decades—a war for America’s soul.
Nikita Khrushchev, who ran the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, openly predicted the destruction of the United States and said that it would happen in the way that every society eventually collapses. He said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.” Khrushchev was talking about an entire system of Marxist indoctrination and takeover that they had refined and executed in country after country during the 20th century.
Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, and high-level Russian propagandist, escaped to the West in 1970. He warned America about the KGB tactics used to subvert a nation that he witnessed firsthand in the Soviet Union. This is a planned process of altering the way people think for a particular purpose, which is to affect a regime change. It’s effectively the brainwashing of society—a slow, methodical transformation. Those who conduct this ideological subversion are very patient to employ the tactics over decades.
Ideological subversion has four stages and follows the Hegelian dialectic, a tactic long exploited by Marxists and Fascists to control people.
Stage 1: Demoralization. This is the destruction of faith in the government and society. Believing that society is broken, systems are failing, and patriotism is evil are three key beliefs that are promoted to create guilt. This leads to the acceptance of radical new ideas because the current structure is believed to be harmful. Traditional Judeo-Christian morality, classical education, and American patriotism are discarded.
Stage 2: Destabilization. With the decision-making ability of Americans negatively affected through demoralization, the next step takes a foothold—destabilization of the nation’s foundations. Destabilization causes citizens to believe the worst of what they hear about their nation and form of government. Supporters of traditional values and foundational structures in the nation are ostracized and even demonized.
Stage 3: Crisis. The altered values of Americans cut to the root of the current systems. Upheaval presents opportunities for change. Once a society is destabilized, it begins to collapse into chaos. At this point, citizens want the government to provide stability. We saw this recently as a demoralized and destabilized society responded with fear and panic when a “pandemic” faced our nation. Americans are willingly trading civil rights and freedoms for authoritarianism and overreach that they believe will keep them safe. Messaging in all of this is key. The mainstream media and their tell-a-vision programming play a key role in framing the prescribed narrative as truth.
Stage 4: Normalization. The “new normal” is a term we have heard constantly lately, and it’s an accurate description of what the normalization stage is all about. When the government and societal structures have changed to restrict liberty, citizens are told the radical transformation is “the way it has to be.” Ironically, it’s described as normal when it’s not normal at all. Normalization creates a new baseline for what a nation will accept, value, and promote. The cycle is complete.
These steps are repeated over and over, bringing a greater result with each cycle until there’s a controlled collapse. America could be on the verge of collapse right now unless we collectively wake up to reality and take a stand to stop tyranny.
The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding people’s thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead them to a predetermined solution. The enemies of America are using this tactic to create fear, turn citizen against citizen, and divide our nation. A house divided cannot stand. If people do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes their perceptions of the world, then they do not know how they are helping to implement the agenda, which ultimately is to advance humanity into a dictatorship—whether by the fascists, the communists, or the globalists and their New World Order. We must step outside the dialectic so that we can be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
The most important thing about America is liberty. America is what has stood between power-hungry people and their goals of world domination. The true enemies of America are trying to convince us that we are each other’s enemies and that big government and control of the lives of the many by a few is the solution to cure what ails us. We must all recognize that they are weaponizing the crisis and this narrative is a lie. Government bureaucrats are now labeling anyone who thinks they have overstepped their constitutional bounds as enemies of the state—“patriot terrorists.” What liberty-loving people are now combating is pure evil.
All it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. As we reflect back on Sept. 11, 2001, one thing that stands out about that time following the terrorist attacks is that we forgot the things that divide us. We united as Americans. There’s no better example than what we saw in New York City. We were united together in support of one another fighting a common enemy.
So many have sacrificed so much to secure our liberty and preserve it for future generations. Many of us have lost a loved one on a foreign battlefield or from a service-connected illness after they returned, or in the line of duty here at home. How do we honor their sacrifice and that of so many others in our nation’s 245-year history? We stand and fight to uphold liberty and our unalienable rights enshrined in America’s founding documents. If liberty is to be lost, it won’t be on our watch.
A federal judge has rejected the Biden administration’s attempt to shelve the Texas anti-abortion “heartbeat” law that took effect Sept. 1.
The law has the effect of making it illegal to have abortions in Texas after about the sixth week of pregnancy — when the heartbeat of a baby can be detected. The law, which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to take effect, allows citizens to bring complaints, in effect making them whistleblowers on behalf of the unborn.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice made an emergency court filing demanding the law be blocked.
“The State of Texas adopted S.B. 81 to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights,” the filing said, adding that “Texas has banned abortions months before viability — at a time before many women even know they are pregnant.”
“When other States have enacted laws abridging reproductive rights to the extent that S.B. 8 does, courts have enjoined enforcement of the laws before they could take effect. In an effort to avoid that result, Texas devised an unprecedented scheme that seeks to deny women and providers the ability to challenge S.B. 8 in federal court,” the filing said.
“Consistent with the Court’s previous Order, (Dkt. 12), that set a hearing on the United States’ Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order or Preliminary Injunction, (Dkt. 8), this case presents complex, important questions of law that merit a full opportunity for the parties to present their positions to the Court. Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED that the United States’ Opposed Motion for Expedited Briefing Schedule, (Dkt. 13), is DENIED,” the judge wrote.
Pitman, who was nominated to the bench by then-President Barack Obama in 2014, had earlier agreed that before he would rule on the federal motion to block the Texas law, he would hear arguments from both sides, setting a deadline of Oct. 1 for paperwork to be filed, according to Newsweek.
The Department of Justice did not want to wait that long and filed the request for action immediately, which Pitman rejected.
Since the law took effect, Texas abortion clinics have canceled appointments for abortions, according to The Texas Tribune.
“For all the bluster about Roe v. Wade being a matter of women’s rights, note how quickly clinics abandoned the clients they claim to champion once their profits were actually at stake,” wrote Roger Severino, senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, in an Op-Ed for Newsweek on Thursday.
“So naturally, Planned Parenthood and other abortionists have asked their friends in the Biden administration to try again to block the law on their behalf so the cash can start flowing again,” he wrote.
Severino said that the Department of Justice was way off base legally when it suggested that the law made citizens into some form of legalized vigilantes.
“Giving citizens the power to sue and recover damages from lawbreakers doesn’t entitle them to carry some sort of Texas deputy badge. It doesn’t turn them into Dog the Bounty Hunter either,” he wrote. “Like other whistleblower laws, the Heartbeat Act merely incentivizes them to uncover and prove serious wrongdoing. And there are few wrongs more terrible than intentionally stopping an innocent child’s heart.
“Instead of waiting to see if a Texas citizen will bring an enforcement action with enough proof of a violation, DOJ seeks to enjoin every person in the state from filing a suit against any abortion clinic at the front end, no matter how egregious or blatant the violation.
“In the name of defending an invented constitutional right to abortion, Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to suspend an actual right found in the Constitution — the due process of law.”
As the Texas legal fight plays out, other states are watching.
Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller said Georgia might consider a similar law next year, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Biden administration will limit shipments of a life-saving COVID-19 treatment to the red states where it’s needed most — while President Joe Biden complains their governors are playing politics with the pandemic.
In the face of rising demand for monoclonal antibodies, a proven treatment for the virus that prevents serious illness, the Department of Health and Human Services has seized control of its distribution, creating a government bottleneck that will likely delay treatment for sick patients.
According to The Washington Post, HHS will have complete authority to decide where the medication will go beginning this week, including 1.4 million doses the federal government recently purchased for $2.9 billion.
“HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis,” an anonymous HHS official said, according to the Post.
“State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much,” he said. “This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country, providing states and territories with consistent, fairly distributed supply over the coming weeks.”
Previously, individual states, health care facilities and doctors were able to order the treatment directly from Regeneron and Eli Lilly, which were given emergency authorization to manufacture it.
Patients could opt for an outpatient infusion of the drug or a series of injections administered within seven to 10 days of the onset of symptoms.
The medication had been underutilized but has become more widespread. Seven states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas — are now using 70 percent of the supply.
Biden mentioned two of those states on Thursday in a tweet accusing them of “playing politics.”
“Republican governors in states like Texas and Florida are doing everything they can to undermine the public health requirements that keep people safe. They’re playing politics with the lives of their citizens, especially children. I refuse to give in to it,” Biden said, even as his administration is set to potentially deny those states the amount of medication they require.
In a speech just last week, Biden promised to “increase the average pace of shipment across the country of free monoclonal antibody treatments by another 50 percent.”
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked on Thursday why the administration seemed to be reversing itself, she also blamed Texas and Florida.
“We are increasing our distribution this month by 50 percent,” she claimed. “In early August, we were distributing an average of 100,000 doses per week. Now we’re shipping an average of 150,000 doses per week.”
“But over the last month, given the rise in cases due to the Delta variant and the lower number of vaccination rates in some of these states — like Florida, like Texas — just seven states are making up 70 percent of the orders,” Psaki added.
When a reporter pointed out that there wasn’t a lack of supply, Psaki asserted that “our role, as the government overseeing the entire country, is to be equitable in how we distribute.
“We’re not going to give a greater percentage to Florida over Oklahoma,” she said, even though that would make sense given the higher COVID-19 rates in the Sunshine State.
Some, like political commentator Christina Pushaw, have seen right through this rhetoric and are calling the move what it is — another tool to divide.
“There’s no national shortage of monoclonal antibody treatment, so there is no reason Florida AND Oklahoma can’t get enough for ALL their patients,” she tweeted Friday. “Unless the reason is to turn Americans against each other.”
Biden’s @PressSec said Florida shouldn’t take treatment Oklahoma needs.
There’s no national shortage of monoclonal antibody treatment, so there is no reason Florida AND Oklahoma can’t get enough for ALL their patients.
Unless the reason is to turn Americans against each other.
It’s almost as if the Biden administration wants to withhold monoclonal antibodies from Southern states that have refused to fall in line — and that hasn’t escaped Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ notice.
“I will fight like hell to overcome Biden’s cruel decision to drastically reduce lifesaving monoclonal antibody treatments for Floridians,” the Republican tweeted. “We’ve seen steep reductions in hospital admissions due to early treatment efforts. It’s wrong to penalize Florida for his partisan bitterness.”
I will fight like hell to overcome Biden’s cruel decision to drastically reduce lifesaving monoclonal antibody treatments for Floridians. We’ve seen steep reductions in hospital admissions due to early treatment efforts. It’s wrong to penalize Florida for his partisan bitterness. pic.twitter.com/24APj0r50K
In a video he shared on Friday, DeSantis explained the logistical obstacles now facing providers and patients.
“What the HHS and the Biden administration is now doing is they’re saying that all of the reduced amount [of monoclonal antibodies] will go to the state, and we’re responsible not only for sourcing our sites, which we’re happy to do, but any infusion center, any provider, any hospital will have to come through the state.
“And to just spring this on us starting next week, we’re going to have to do that? There’s going to be a huge disruption and patients are going to suffer as a result of this,” DeSantis warned.
But Biden is out for his pound of flesh, and he doesn’t care how many people get seriously sick with COVID-19 and possibly die — it’s worth it if he gets to take a swipe at DeSantis and other Republicans.
Last week’s address to the nation was dripping with disdain as the president warned those who haven’t been vaccinated that his “patience is wearing thin.”
But Biden has finally peeled off the thin veneer of concern for public health to show that he simply can’t stand those who don’t follow orders and have the temerity to disagree with his highly politicized solutions to the pandemic.
Now his administration has codified that hatred into a policy that could very well cost lives.
Leftists have routinely gone after red states with low vaccination rates, publishing hit pieces on the unvaccinated peasants while turning a blind eye to Democratic elites attending a potential superspreader event in a blue state.
The only saving grace is that Republican governors like DeSantis and Greg Abbott of Texas are pushing back against the tyrant in the White House while swatting down his minions in the federal government and the establishment media.
It’s difficult to deny that Democrats have been playing politics with the pandemic all along, but at least it has been a useful way to separate the political wheat from the chaff — and that’s a valuable thing with midterm elections just around the corner.
The global obsession with the coronavirus — and only the coronavirus — has cost countless lives over the last 18 months. One mother is lashing out at the U.K. health system after her daughter died of cancer after being refused an in-person doctor’s appointment for months.
According to her family, Jessica Brady might still be alive today if only doctors had seen her face-to-face last year.
But Jessica didn’t have COVID-19, so she was left to languish at home, according to reports and one online petition. She died at the age of 27 after doctors failed to spot her tumor in virtual appointments.
Now, her family is speaking out.
“Our precious daughter, Jessica, died on the 20th December 2020. She was 27 years old,” wrote Jessica’s mother, Andrea Brady, in an online petition aimed at Britain’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sajid Javid.
“She had been ill for 6 months, but the spring/summer lockdown meant face to face consultations with her GP were restricted and numerous antibiotics were prescribed, even in the absence of a physical examination. Jessica was told for months she was suffering from Long Covid despite two negative coronavirus tests.”
Andrea Brady went on to plead for changes to the way cancer screenings and treatment are handled for young people, citing the tragic manner in which her daughter allegedly fell through the cracks.
The Daily Mail reported that Jessica’s liver cancer went unnoticed despite worsening symptoms and fatigue and even concerning test results. By the time she got an in-person visit with a private doctor, the disease had spread to her lungs, bones and spine, and it was too late.
“She was finally diagnosed with cancer on the 26th November,” her grieving mother wrote. “Her dependency upon oxygen from this date meant she did not leave the hospital or ever return home.”
Jessica died weeks later.
“We are obviously devastated. Our world has been shattered.”
The Mail reported that Andrea Brady had a chance to share her daughter’s story with British lawmakers this week.
“I think the most important thing is we feel and Jess felt that no one listened, no one took it seriously and more than anything, she needed a permitted face-to-face appointment really early on, with people making notes,” Andrea Brady told the country’s Health and Social Care Committee.
“And also, during all that time, she wasn’t seen by one designated doctor. Four different doctors spoke to Jess and prescribed her medication. And we think that was really key.”
“No one person was looking at the whole picture and putting the pieces of the jigsaw together. That didn’t happen until two days before Jess received her diagnosis, when I think there was an element of panic.”
Andrea Brady concluded that her daughter’s cancer probably wouldn’t have spread so aggressively had she been given a chance to see a doctor sooner.
According to the Mail, Javid said more will be done to prevent deaths like Jessica’s.
“I think everyone can understand why during the height of the pandemic that GPs couldn’t provide access in the normal way,” Javid said.
“But we are way past that now, life is starting to return almost back to completely normal and as that is happening it should be happening in our GP surgeries too, and more GPs should be offering face-to-face access. We intend to do a lot more about it.”
Perhaps doctors in the U.K. will remember Jessica’s case during the next surge of COVID-19. Just maybe, doctors in this country will remove their coronavirus blinders as well.
The rest of us would do well to remember that, just as people have died of COVID-19 throughout the last year and a half, so too have many died of cancer, preventable diseases, suicide and drug overdoses.
A group of Republican senators on Thursday again demanded that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provide answers to reports that vital COVID-19 data was deleted from a key government database at the request of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official.
In a follow-up letter (pdf) to NIH Director Francis Collins, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Roger Marshall of Kansas, called on the federal medical research agency to answer questions that they say may shed light on data relating to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and NIH’s COVID-19 data retention policies.
The lawmakers in their initial letter in June cited a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article that reported that Chinese researchers “directed” the NIH “to delete gene sequences of early COVID-19 cases from a key scientific database,” called the NIH Sequence Read Archive.
The WSJ article reported that the deleted data includes COVID-19 genomic sequences from viral samples collected in Wuhan in January and February 2020 from hospital patients. The first cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, were reported in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
At the time, the senators asked Collins to provide a list of explanations focused on the CCP deletion requests, identifying who at NIH has authority to delete such data, the characteristics of the Wuhan samples, and numerous related issues.
On Sept. 8, Collins said, in a reply to the senators, that a review was underway to determine “whether appropriate steps were taken to assess this withdrawal request.”
“[O]n June 28, 2021, we wrote to you requesting answers to seven questions pertaining to the NIH’s role and responsibility with respect to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) relating to COVID-19 data,” the Republican senators wrote in their letter on Thursday.
The NIH’s Sept. 8 response “failed to fully and completely answer all seven questions and failed to provide the requested records,” they wrote.
“As we have made clear to you, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to engage in oversight of the executive branch and the executive branch has an obligation to Congress and the American people to substantively respond,” the senators continued.
They said that they are reposing the unanswered questions from their June letter, adding that if the NIH is unable to respond to each question and provide the requested records, the agency must explain why that is the case.
The Republican senators are also requesting the results of an independent probe conducted within the NIH over the issue, and that the agency reveal how many researchers and other personnel linked to the CCP have requested that data be deleted from the NIH Sequence Read Archive in the past five years.
“With more than 650,000 American lives lost and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to support the American people, businesses, and the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public deserves to know what their government knows about the origins of this global illness and the research data that it possesses,” a statement from Grassley’s office said.
The Epoch Times has contacted the NIH for comment.
PUNTA GORDA, Fla.—More than 90,000 people in Florida have now received monoclonal antibody treatments across 25 state-sponsored sites. However, a disruption in services is looming due to the Biden administration giving control of distribution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Florida’s supply will be cut in half, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Sept. 16.
The governor said he was surprised at the HHS’s “abrupt and sudden” announcement that it would be taking control of distribution. He said this took him by surprise because a week prior, on Sept. 9, the Biden administration said they were increasing monoclonal antibody distribution by 50 percent.
Now the HHS, as of Sept. 13, “seized control” of the treatments, the governor said, adding that earlier in the week he received official word that Florida’s shipments of the monoclonals would be reduced by 50 percent.
Before, providers and infusion centers, as well as the state of Florida, would simply call AmerisourceBergen, a third-party affiliate of Regeneron, which makes the monoclonal antibodies treatment, and request whatever amount was needed. DeSantis said this new method will make it “doubly difficult” for hospitals and other providers because they will now have to go through the state to get their treatments.
“They sprung this on us,” DeSantis said at the Sept. 16 press conference. “They pulled the rug out from under us.”
The new ordering process, DeSantis said, would be a disruption for in-patient services, and he worries that patients will needlessly suffer. But he vowed that the state would “overcome any obstacles that HHS and the Biden administration put on them.”
“We will fight like hell to get these patients the treatment they need,” he said. “We have a responsibility to be there for them, and that’s what we are going to do.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the opening of a monoclonal antibody site in Pembroke Pines, Fla., on Aug. 18, 2021. (Marta Lavandier/AP Photo)
HHS two weeks ago stealthily changed its website and began making it more difficult for states like Florida, which has used the monoclonal antibodies treatments as a way to reduce hospital admissions from COVID-19. A Texas doctor sounded the alarm that HHS was taking over the distribution of the monoclonals, as was reported by The Epoch Times on Sept. 8. The system was changed on Sept. 13 from direct ordering to an allocation model.
“I’m very concerned about the Biden administration,” DeSantis said at the press conference, adding that the new ordering protocol will result in a “huge disruption to services.”
An HHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the transition to a model that was in place from November 2020 to February “gives health departments maximum flexibility to get mAbs where they are needed most.”
“HHS will now determine the weekly amount of mAb products each state and territory receives based on criteria applied equally across all jurisdictions. This criteria includes COVID-19 case burden and mAb utilization. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify which sites in their respective jurisdictions receive product as well as the amount each site receives,” the spokesperson said.
DeSantis said he is being proactive and has been in communication with GlaxoSmithKline, another maker of monoclonal antibodies treatment. He said he was looking into expanding beyond Regeneron and contracting with another supplier in order to make up for any shortage that could occur under the new HHS distribution plan.
He said the results of the monoclonal antibodies are positive and that there have been 24 consecutive days in the decline of the COVID hospital census statewide.
The governor said he’s pleased with the trends that are occurring and credits the vaccine and the monoclonals for the reduction in hospitalization rates. Florida hospital admission rates have decreased by 50 percent.
A man enters a Regeneron Clinic at a monoclonal antibody treatment site in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Aug. 19, 2021. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
However, Sen. Marco Rubio took to Twitter and blasted the Biden administration for the new policy. Rubio thinks the cut in monoclonal antibodies to Florida is because the state is not “handling vaccines and not forcing people to do it.”
“This is ridiculous. This is outrageous,” Rubio said in a video on Twitter. “People see it for what it is. These people are completely out of control. This stuff needs to stop. These people are bordering on tyranny.”
On Sept. 16, Christina Pushaw, press secretary for DeSantis, said that Florida clinics and private providers have been ordering about 72,000 doses of monoclonal antibody treatment per week; about 36,000 doses are required weekly to supply the 25 state-sponsored sites.
The HHS website calculated that, nationally, a little over 158,500 doses were available this week. HHS reports that nearly 31,000 are allocated to Florida.
Rubio said he thinks the Biden administration is creating a shortage for the purposes of rationing the drug.
“There is not a shortage,” Rubio said on Twitter. “But they’ve decided they’re going to start rationing it.”
The Biden administration is tightening its grip on the distribution of coronavirus monoclonal antibody treatments to states after a slew of predominately Republican-led states in the South have started requesting larger amounts of the treatment to battle rising coronavirus cases.
“Federal health officials plan to allocate specific amounts to each state under the new approach, in an effort to more evenly distribute the 150,000 doses that the government makes available each week,” Politico reported. “The approach is likely to cut into shipments to GOP-led states in the Southeast that have made the pricey antibody drug a central part of their pandemic strategy, while simultaneously spurning mask mandates and other restrictions.”
The news comes after Biden, who has launched political attacks against top Republican governors, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has struggled to contain the pandemic, which was one of the issues that he ran on in 2020.
“Still, until recently, the administration had shipped the antibody treatments to states on an as-needed basis — with top health officials in early August going as far as encouraging those battling the Delta surge to seek even more supply,” the report added. “But demand from a handful of southern states has exploded since then, state and federal officials said, raising concerns they were consuming a disproportionate amount of the national supply. Seven states — Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama — accounted for 70 percent of all orders in early September.”
The report said that the large uptick in the use of the treatments prompted their decision to take more control over-allocating the treatments to different states.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that he was “very, very concerned” with Democrat President Joe Biden’s decision to restrict the distribution of monoclonal antibodies to states amid a surge in demand by states in the South.
“Just last week on September 9th, President Joe Biden said that his administration would be increasing shipments of monoclonal antibodies in September by 50%, and yet on September 13th, HHS announced that it was seizing control of the monoclonal antibody supply and that it would control distribution, and then on September 14th, the announcement was more than 50% of the monoclonal antibodies that had been used in Florida were going to be reduced,” DeSantis said. “So this is a dramatic reduction, and I’d say it’s doubly problematic because what Shane Strum and folks in Tampa General and these other hospital systems that have been doing this, they’re not getting it from the state.”
“What the HHS and the Biden administration is now doing is they’re saying that all of the reduced amount will go to the state, and we’re responsible not only for sourcing our sites, which we’re happy to do, but any infusion center, any provider, any hospital will have to come through the state, and to just spring this on us starting next week, we’re going to have to do that,” DeSantis continued. “There’s going to be a huge disruption and patients are going to suffer as a result of this.”
DeSantis said that he is going to “work like hell to make sure” that Florida “can overcome the obstacles that HHS and the Biden administration” are imposing on the state, adding that the treatment has saved lives in the state.
“To just kind of pull the rug out from anyone a week after the president himself said they were going to be increasing the distributions by 50%, it’s very, very problematic,” DeSantis said. “What I am doing though, is we’re going to try to cover the bases.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was grilled during Thursday’s press briefing about the administration restricting the distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments to states after several predominately Republican-led states in the South increased the amount usage of the treatments in their states.
A reporter asked Psaki about why states like Florida are reportedly seeing a significant cut in the number of treatments that they are receiving.
“That’s not accurate,” Psaki claimed. “First of all, we are increasing our distribution this month by 50%. In early August, we were distributing an average of 100,000 doses per week, now we’re shipping an average of 150,000 doses per week.”
Psaki then said that the treatments are used after a person becomes infected and said that the way to save more lives was to get more people vaccinated, even though vaccinated people can still sometimes become infected with the coronavirus.
Psaki then said that the administration does not have an unlimited supply of the antibody treatments and that the administration is focused on making the distribution of the treatments “equitable.”
“We’re not going to give a greater percentage to Florida over Oklahoma,” Psaki added.
WATCH:
REPORTER: “Why is the Biden administration cutting” antibody treatments in Florida?@PressSec: “That is not accurate… Our supply is not unlimited and we believe it should be equitable… We’re not going to give a greater percentage to Florida over Oklahoma.” pic.twitter.com/K8P41ZTnRc
“Federal health officials plan to allocate specific amounts to each state under the new approach, in an effort to more evenly distribute the 150,000 doses that the government makes available each week,” Politico reported. “The approach is likely to cut into shipments to GOP-led states in the Southeast that have made the pricey antibody drug a central part of their pandemic strategy, while simultaneously spurning mask mandates and other restrictions.”
Biden demonized Republican Governors Greg Abbott (TX) and Ron DeSantis (FL) during a press conference earlier in the day, claiming that they were undermining “the life-saving requirements” that his administration is pushing, calling it “the worst kind of politics.”
A spokesperson for HHS said in a statement:
HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much. This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country — providing states and territories with consistent, fairly distributed supply over the coming weeks.
Donald Trump Jr. responded to the news by saying that Biden was restricting the treatments as a form of punishment against his political rivals.
“Americans will die because of Biden’s despicable decision to punish his political enemies in red states by restricting their ability to secure life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments for all that need them,” Trump tweeted. “Their blood is directly on Joe’s hands.”
“Antibody treatments aren’t a substitute for vaccines but they have prevented thousands of hospitalizations including in breakthrough cases,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) added on Twitter. “Now in a move that reeks of partisan payback against states like Florida, the Biden administration is rationing these treatments.”
“We were happy to see that Biden’s COVID plan announced last week included a 50% increase in monoclonal antibody deliveries to states this month,” DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw told The Daily Wire in a statement. “So it’s surprising and deeply disappointing that the Biden Admin would break this promise just a week later and cut MAB allocation to Florida, so they aren’t even providing half of the doses of life-saving treatment that COVID patients in Florida will need. But Governor DeSantis is committed to ensuring that everyone who needs the treatment will be able to get it, even if we can’t count on the Biden Administration.”
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
Similar mandates for other state-regulated facilities
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday announced that state-regulated childcare centers across the state must mandate masks for children aged 2 and above, as well as staff and all visitors.
A similar measure was announced in May this year by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The pushback against the mask mandate, which also applied to those as young as 2 years old, was so vocal that New York state rescinded the order just days later.
The new mask mandate for childcare facilities across New York state is effective immediately, Hochul said.
“Starting today, we’re going to require masks in childcare and daycare centers, because if you’re watching the national news, the scariest announcements coming out every single morning are the number of children now contracting COVID,” the governor said.
She added: “We don’t have a vaccine available for 5 to 11-year-olds. I am very anxious to get this approved. And as soon as it is, we’ll be working with parents and pediatricians and schools to make sure that the children are vaccinated, but we’re not hearing that that will occur for a number of months yet.”
Similar mask mandates will apply for state-run congregate facilities, mental health facilities, and substance abuse facilities, Hochul said.
Hochul previously announced on Aug. 24—just after taking her ceremonial oath of office—that there would be universal mask mandates in schools, and that she was seeking to ultimately impose checks to ensure that all school staff are vaccinated or get weekly COVID-19 testing.
On Wednesday, Hochul urged all New Yorkers over 12 years of age to get vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
She previously allocated $65 million in state funding to local governments to distribute and administer booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine when they become available.
She said on Wednesday that local health agencies have identified over 200 vaccination sites to administer booster shots, with more to come.
She said, in anticipation of booster shots: “I just want the message to go out, be aware of when you had your last shot. Eight months later, start talking about going to see your doctor, a pharmacist, or take advantage of one of our … mass vaccination sites. We’ll make sure all the information gets out.”
While Pfizer and Moderna are pushing for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, staff at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are yet to take a stance, citing a lack of verified data.
In a 23-page document (pdf) published to the agency’s website on Wednesday, FDA staff noted that the expected benefits of booster vaccinations depend entirely on the impact they have on “reducing disease relative to the primary series.”
The documents serve as a brief for the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which is meeting on Sept. 17 to review Pfizer’s request to apply for a third “booster” dose of the vaccine in individuals aged 16 years and older.
“If the primary series of COMIRNATY [Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine] is still effective in preventing important COVID-19-related outcomes, then the benefit of booster vaccination is likely to be more limited than if effectiveness following the primary series has waned substantially,” FDA staff wrote.
“Factors supporting licensure of a booster dose should consider the effectiveness of primary vaccination with COMIRNATY over time and against circulating variants, the effectiveness (and its duration) of booster vaccination in preventing important COVID-19-related outcomes in individuals who have already received a primary vaccination series, the dynamics of the pandemic in the United States, and the risks of booster vaccination in the general population or in certain subpopulations,” staff continued.
The FDA staff declined to take a stance on whether or not to back booster shots, noting that regulators have not yet independently verified all the available data.
“There are many potentially relevant studies, but FDA has not independently reviewed or verified the underlying data or their conclusions,” staff wrote, noting that “some of these studies, including data from the vaccination program in Israel, will be summarized during the September 17, 2021 VRBPAC meeting.”
The staff noted that some observational studies have suggested a declining efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine over time against symptomatic infection or against the Delta variant, while others have not.
A vial of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is seen in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
“However, overall, data indicate that currently US-licensed or authorized COVID-19 vaccines still afford protection against severe COVID-19 disease and death in the United States,” they wrote.
FDA staff also noted that while observational studies can enable understanding of real-world effectiveness, there are a “number of known and unknown biases that can affect their reliability” that can in turn make some studies more reliable than others.
Most importantly, data need to show that the benefit of a booster dose is weighed against any potential risk, and staff noted that it is currently not clear if those who receive a booster dose would have an increased risk of adverse reactions, such as myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) or pericarditis (inflammation of the outer lining of the heart).
Since April 2021, increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported in the United States following vaccination from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, most notably among adolescents and young adults, according to the CDC.
“Furthermore, US-based studies of post-authorization effectiveness of BNT162b2 [the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine] may most accurately represent vaccine effectiveness in the US population,” they added.
In a separate 53-page document (pdf) published on Wednesday, Pfizer stated that data from an ongoing, randomized, placebo-controlled study showed that a booster shot six months after the second dose of the vaccine showed it restored high levels of protection against COVID-19 outcomes by 95 percent.
President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing to begin distributing booster shots widely by Sept. 20 if both the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree.
However, a recent study from several top scientists at the World Health Organization and FDA found that the general population doesn’t need a booster dose. Katabella RobertsFollowKatabella Roberts is a reporter currently based in Turkey. She covers news and business for The Epoch Times, focusing primarily on the United States.
The FDA shopped from a menu of aborted fetus organs to insert into lab mice as part of taxpayer-funded experiments, according to government records—a practice that watchdogs said may violate federal law.
From 2012 to 2018, Advanced Bioscience Resources, a nonprofit fetal tissue supplier, charged the FDA $340 per aborted fetus liver and $515 per intact skull. The FDA originally redacted these price listings, but a judge later unsealed the documents containing them, which were made public Tuesday by Judicial Watch. Federal law Bans any institution from profiting off the sale of aborted fetuses. Meredith Di Liberto, the lead attorney in the lawsuit to obtain the government records, said the unredacted documents reveal a clear line of business between the FDA and a leading fetal tissue provider.
“I don’t know how you get around that not being a violation of federal law,” Di Liberto told the Washington Free Beacon. “Why are they charging per organ? What work is involved that requires you to charge a separate cost for a thymus and a liver?”
Neither the FDA nor ABR responded to a request for comment.
The FDA study established human immune systems in mice with aborted fetus organs to test the effectiveness of pre-approved drugs. Scientists made specific requests to the supplier to keep the harvested organs “fresh” and “shipped on wet ice.” Abortion providers often charge fetal tissue providers the labor cost for harvesting the organs from an aborted fetus, but David Prentice, a professor of molecular genetics at the Catholic University of America, said the listed prices of fetal organs revealed in the contract are “ludicrous.”
“Basically you’re trafficking baby body parts using our taxpayer funds, and it’s being done at our federal agencies,” Prentice told the Free Beacon. “I think it’s an open question if they’re making a profit off of this tissue, and that obviously borders on the illegal.”
The DOJ began an investigation into ABR in 2017 after undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress showed Planned Parenthood employees negotiating prices and methods of harvesting organs from aborted fetuses. The DOJ declined to comment on the investigation.
Two California medical companies were ordered to permanently close all business operations in a $7.8 million settlement in 2017 after a local district attorney found they were “viewing body parts as a commodity and illegally selling fetal tissues for valuable consideration.” David Daleiden, the founder of the Center for Medical Progress, said ABR should be shut down too for similar illegal behavior revealed in its contracts with the FDA.
“The federal court has found probable cause that ABR illegally trafficked baby body parts based on the records publicly available—it’s time for these cases to be filed now and for the human trafficking of aborted infants to stop,” Daleiden told the Free Beacon.
The Trump administration ended the FDA’s partnership with ABR in 2018. The administration stopped government scientists from conducting experiments on fetal organs and established an ethics committee to review all funding requests for fetal research. The Biden administration reestablished this research and dissolved the ethics committee in April, which Prentice said leaves reason to believe the FDA and other federal agencies have resumed purchasing fetal organs.
“It’s sad for science that the Biden administration did away with the ethical review—it moved science backward,” Prentice told the Free Beacon. “People’s eyes need to be opened and stomachs need to be churned to know this is going on and demand that it’s stopped. It’s antiquated science and medieval research.”
The National Institutes of Health gave at least $2.7 million in taxpayer money to the University of Pittsburgh to establish a “Pipeline” for fetal research that sought out minority babies. Another study funded by the NIH at the university took the scalps of aborted fetuses and grew them on rats.
Judicial Watch submitted the original FOIA request to the FDA in 2018. Di Liberto said the documents obtained Tuesday is the final information they were seeking after a series of lawsuits over three years. She said the continual refusal from the FDA to provide the requested information despite the termination of the ABR partnership leads her to believe this may not be the only instance of shady fetal organ purchases.
“If you’re the government and you don’t have a relationship with this organization, why are you redacting information unless you are covering up your own role in it? Maybe the problem is that it’s still going on—just not with this contractor,” Di Liberto told the Free Beacon.
Demand has increased 20-fold in recent weeks, expert says
Some states are set to receive fewer doses of monoclonal antibody treatments after the Biden administration switched the distribution system this week.
Demand for monoclonal antibodies, used to treat non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients, has shot up in recent weeks, leading to what some officials have described as a shortage.
The Biden administration tipped off states in early September that it was limiting distribution of the treatment before abruptly switching on Sept. 13 from letting sites directly order the doses to putting the federal government in charge of allocation to states, which can then choose where to send them.
Some state officials say they weren’t notified of the change until late Sept. 13, and that pending orders with AmerisourceBergen, the primary distributor in the old model, were being closed out.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) alerted Texas health officials “that the national supply has considerably decreased and states should expect lower amounts of therapeutics available for shipment in the coming weeks,” Douglas Loveday, press officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“The amount available to distribute is expected to be disproportionately small compared to the amounts needed.”
Other states have also been told they won’t get as many doses as they were getting before. Among them are southern states grappling with the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the nation.
Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s top medical officer, said HHS recently called to “let us know that Alabama and some other states are going to be on an allocation.”
“We don’t think providers are going to be able to order as much as they would like,” he said during a briefing late last week. Up until the change, “there was really sort of no limit to what could be ordered.”
HHS and the federal COVID-19 response team didn’t respond to requests for comment.
HHS said in an update on Sept. 13 that the higher number of COVID-19 cases in the United States in recent weeks has “caused a substantial surge in the utilization of monoclonal antibody (mAb) drugs,” especially in parts of the country with low vaccination rates.
Federal officials informed state health officials that there’s been a 20-fold increase in demand for monoclonal antibodies in just the past few weeks, James Blumenstock, chief of health security at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told The Epoch Times.
“Clearly that’s outstripping the current supply even with the supply increase this month; that increase is not sufficient to meet the current demand,” he said.
The timeline for when supplies will increase enough to meet the jump in demand isn’t clear. The new process will help ensure consistent availability for the drugs in all parts of the nation, according to HHS, which is basing its weekly shipments on reports of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations and inventory data.
Monoclonal antibody treatments from two companies, Regeneron and Eli Lilly, are purchased by the federal government and distributed across the nation. Patients get them for free. The treatment received emergency use authorization from drug regulators earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical trials show that they reduced hospitalization or death by as much as 70 percent.
Dr. Aldo Calvo, medical director of family medicine at Broward Health, shows a Regeneron monoclonal antibody infusion bag during a news conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, on Aug. 19, 2021. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
It takes several weeks or months to produce a batch of Regeneron’s drug, REGEN-COV, a spokesman for the New York-based company told The Epoch Times in an email. Regeneron says demand has grown since earlier this year but that it’s ready to deliver new doses quickly because it “remained proactive” and has the drug in various stages of the manufacturing process.
An Eli Lilly spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the Indiana-based company “continues to work with governments globally to help address the therapeutic needs of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Another monoclonal antibody treatment, from GlaxoSmithKline, isn’t being distributed through the federal government. A spokesperson for the company, which is headquartered in the United Kingdom, told The Epoch Times in an email that there are no supply or access issues for its medicine.
The United States has purchased or committed to purchasing nearly 3 million doses of REGEN-COV, including 1.4 million doses on Sept. 14. Most of the doses cost taxpayers $2,100 each, according to the Regeneron spokesman. Eli Lilly’s treatment requires two drugs, etesevimab and bamlanivimab. The company just reached an agreement to provide 388,000 additional doses of etesevimab to the U.S. government for nearly $1,000 each, building on earlier contracts to supply nearly 1 million vials of one drug or the other.
More than 2.1 million monoclonal antibody doses were shipped to more than 8,000 sites across the nation as of early September, John Redd, chief medical officer for HHS emergency preparedness and response office, told state officials in a recent call.
Redd said that HHS hadn’t returned to the allocation model that was used between November 2020 and February. A few days later, the model was switched.
Biden’s administration said last week in a fresh COVID-19 response plan that it would increase shipments of monoclonal antibodies to states by 50 percent in September—something critics are pointing to in questioning the change.
“It is regrettable that the Biden administration would play politics with people’s lives during a pandemic, by withholding a life-saving treatment and providing mixed messages to Americans,” Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told The Epoch Times via email.
“Today, I pressed President Biden’s team to explain the sudden rationing of these life-saving treatments—without any warning—after the administration urged us to promote them. It is yet another example of confusing and conflicting guidance coming from the federal government,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan wrote on social media.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) office told The Epoch Times in an email that it’s looking into the matter to see how it can be of assistance.
Florida hasn’t yet seen its supply drop, and some other states said they don’t expect the distribution model change to affect them.
“We do not have any concerns about monoclonal supply at this point of time in Arkansas based on current usage patterns,” Danyelle McNeill, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Health, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Some governors, including DeSantis, have heavily promoted monoclonal antibodies, which have a high efficacy rate against cases of COVID-19 that don’t require hospital care and are sometimes used following exposure to a COVID-19 patient.
For now, officials are encouraging people to continue seeking out the antibody treatments. Some experts say the drop in supply should prompt people who haven’t received a COVID-19 vaccine to get one.
“The public health message is, while everyone is doing their absolute best to treat and care for individuals who get sick from COVID, the best effort is to avoid that scenario in the first place, and therefore get vaccinated,” Blumenstock said.
![Face masks [Shutterstock/Beton Studio]](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/face-masks-scaled.jpg)
Katabella RobertsFollowKatabella Roberts is a reporter currently based in Turkey. She covers news and business for The Epoch Times, focusing primarily on the United States.
