Since receiving Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, Bonnie Eisenberg experienced relapse of her breast cancer 8 years after being in remission.

The 73-year-old was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in 2012. After successful treatment, she had been in remission since 2014.

Ever since then, her doctor has measured tumor marker levels in her body to monitor for relapse.

Tumor markers are usually proteins that indicate possible tumor or cancer growth. High levels of tumor markers may indicate cancer but it is not definitive.

There are many markers that can be tested, but the one that her doctor particularly focused on was the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a tumor marker common to cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, prostate, ovary, lung, thyroid, and liver.

Since 2014, Eisenberg dutifully took monthly CEA tests along with others. The tests continuously returned with numbers in the normal range, which her doctor said was from 0 to 4.0 ng/mL.

Eisenberg’s average CEA results had been at 0.4 ng/mL, indicating her cancer was under control.

“Everything’s been going fine,” Eisenberg told The Epoch Times, “I was one of his best patients. He never worried about me.”

However, that changed after she got vaccinated. She received her first Moderna shot in January 2021 and experienced various common adverse effects including fever, shakes, “you name it, I had it,” she said.

That month, her CEA test rose to 3.7 ng/mL.

However, since it was still within the normal range, both Eisenberg and her doctor were not concerned.

After all, tumor cells are not limited to cancer patients. It is a known fact that everyone can have cancerous cells; what matters is whether the immune system can keep the cancer in check.

Eisenberg took her second shot in February 2021 and again suffered the same adverse effects.

Her CEA numbers jumped to 5.2 ng/mL that month.

This took her out of the normal range. Yet because Eisenberg has been such a stable patient, and because her result was so close to the normal range, both she and her doctor dismissed the results.

“Maybe I should have been a little more on the doctor. Since I was so good. We weren’t really that concerned about it.”

Boosters became available in October 2021. Eisenberg was not happy to take it given her previous adverse reactions, but she and her husband took it anyway. She experienced the same terrible adverse reactions.

In October 2021 and December 2021, she had CEA tests taken.

On Dec. 13, 2021 at 8 o’clock in morning, she received a call from her doctor. He was very concerned.

“When you’re getting a phone call that early in the morning, something’s wrong. He says to me: ‘Bonnie, we have to scan you.’ What’s the matter? [I asked]. My mark was up to 17.6 [ng/mL]—I was in trouble.”

Eisenberg was immediately sent for a CAT scan, as well as MRI and PET scans.

On the PET scans, it showed that her previously dormant breast cancer has “metastasized,” meaning that it has spread to locations outside the breast.

“When he hit me with this, even now … it’s just a very hard thing to accept. It’s just something that should have never taken place.”

“[The cancer] went to all my bones … it didn’t go to any of my body organs, but it was over every bone you could think of. On the PET scan I lit up like a Christmas tree.”

A metastasizing breast cancer would automatically put her in stage 4, the worst stage for cancers.

Eisenberg is convinced that the vaccine is responsible for her cancer recurrence. The increase in CEA levels correlated well with her vaccine timeline, and she is adamant that she will not get any more vaccinations, fearing that she will really die from it.

In the same month (December 2021), Eisenberg started targeted therapy. The main medication she takes for her cancer costs about $14,000 a month “but I just have a little copayment coverage for it.”

She also has a hormone blocker as well as a monthly injection of denosumab ($3,000 each) to prevent bone fractures. Luckily, her insurance covers the cost of denosumab.

Eisenberg has responded very well to her drugs, and her cancer is back in remission now.

Since she started treatment again, her CEA numbers dropped from 4.7 in January 2022 to below 1 ng/mL in June 2022. Her numbers are just like how she was before vaccination.

The bright spots representing cancer cells are also gone on her new PET scans.

Nonetheless, things have not returned to normal; the drug side effects Eisenberg complains of are likely to accompany her for the rest of her life.

“I have to be on [medication] for the rest of my life. I can’t stop it … he [the doctor] can lower the milligrams and stuff like that … but you always have to be watched. What I have is not going away.”

Her breast cancer medication reduces white blood cell counts, significantly weakening her immune system and puts her at risk of infections. This new worry hangs on Eisenberg’s mind, and in crowded places, she feels compelled to put on a face mask.

The drug also causes her hair to thin, and as a “hair girl,” Eisenberg is bothered by the reality that she can no longer straighten her hair.

The denosumab injections can also cause loss of bone mass leading to eventual breakdown. Eisenberg is glad to have greater intervals introduced between each injection and possible reduced dosages for her medications.

Given her stage 4 relapse, Eisenberg is considered fortunate to be back in remission.

Eisenberg shared her experience with other women also in remission who have not been recommended to do monthly tests, or women who responded very poorly to potent breast cancer treatments.

She hopes that her story will be able to help others so that the same does not happen to them.

“Whatever erupted inside me from the shot, something happened because they don’t even know what it does to the immune system … [the doctors, people at Moderna] don’t even know; there’s no answers. Nobody has any answers. I don’t care who you talk to. You’re not gonna get an answer. They don’t know.”

“There’s possibly other girls like me now. They don’t even know what’s happening inside them because if they’re not tested properly, they’re not going to know.”

In the history of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a total of 93 breast cancer cases have been reported as an adverse effect of a vaccine, of which 77 of the cases are reported after COVID-19 vaccines.

What Current Research Shows Us

The current research suggests the COVID shots altered the innate immune system, which is likely to alter the adaptive immune system.

Within the body, we have the innate immune cells that are quick-acting, inflammatory, and target all foreign molecules the same way.

Some of these innate immune cells will eventually activate adaptive immune cells, called the T and B cells. These cells begin to work a few days after infection and require activation from innate immune cells to function properly. These T and B cells target infections and cancers through specific and varied pathways. They create an immune memory afterwards so that the immune system will be able to act faster the next time.

Innate Immune System Alterations: Interferons

Interferons (IFN) are antiviral proteins.  There are three major types: type I, II, and III, categorized based on the receptors each IFN binds to.

One of the most important IFN is type 1 IFN; it acts globally, targeting many tissues and organs to protect from infections, autoimmune diseases, as well as cancers.

Studies show that they are particularly important in the early response to infection and cancer.

“Impaired type I IFN signaling is linked to many disease risks, most notably cancer, as type 1 IFN signaling suppresses proliferation of both viruses and cancer cells by arresting the cell cycle,” the authors, led by Dr. Stephanie Seneff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote.

IFN-alpha and IFN-beta are type 1 IFNs; these molecules alert other cells of a virus or cancer, and also stop infected and cancerous cells from proliferating, causing diseased cells to die.

However, research on spike protein and mRNA vaccines suggests that IFN-alpha action may be impaired when exposed to spike protein.

A study that exposed human cells to spike protein DNA to induce the cell to produce spike protein found that the cell shipped out the spike protein with two forms of microRNAs (miRNAs) that inhibited molecules that activated IFN-alpha/beta.

miRNA are short strands of RNA molecules that bind to the DNA in cells and can therefore regulate cell activity. These two miRNA inhibited an essential protein that activates the IFN-alpha/beta pathway. This implies that vaccinated individuals will have a reduced IFN-alpha/beta response and poorer immune clearance.

Seneff said that the reduced symptoms in the vaccinated are likely because of this reduced pathway, since the initial symptoms of COVID-19 are caused by actions of the interferon action. This is why many vaccinated individuals are getting infected with rebound symptoms.

“[The vaccinated] don’t get the symptoms … don’t feel as sick, but actually, you’re spreading the disease like crazy because you’re not fighting it off.”

This also means that the virus will stick around in vaccinated individuals for longer, and if the disease is not cleared after a long period of time, it can cause severe disease down the line.

This hypothesis also concordant with hospitalization and mortality rates in New South Wales, an Australian state where over 95 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, with many people receiving one or two boosters.

Hospitalitization rates and mortality rates are significantly higher in the boosted and fully vaccinated cohort, with lower rates in the unvaccinated and patients that have only received one dose.

Reduced T-Cell Response

T-cells and B-cells are adaptive immune cells, meaning that they engage in specific and targeted attacks rather than attacking all foreign invaders the same way, which is what innate immune cells do.

Both cell types are very powerful, but both need to be activated first through innate immune system pathways to develop strong, specified attacks.

Killer T-cells engage in close combat with diseased and cancerous cells by punching holes into them whereas B plasma cells work long-range, releasing antibodies into fluids in the body to surround and neutralize toxins, bacteria, and viruses. B-cells also play a role in cancer, though their function and importance are not well understood.

T-cells have been extensively studied for the important role they play in cancer by killing cancer cells directly. The activity of T-cells have often been used to predict disease outcomes in cancer patients.

However, recent studies have shown that innate immune function has been altered in those injected with the COVID shots. A preprint study found receptors that activate T-cell action, including TLR7/8 (toll like receptors 7 and 8), are reduced in vaccinated individuals.

Further, a Chinese study of people who have been vaccinated with the spike protein-inducing COVID-19 shots found that gene activity for what proteins and pathways are turned on and off have changed across most immune cells.

This raises questions about our traditional understanding of the innate immune cell to T-cell activation pathway and whether vaccinated individuals will have an immune system that responds similarly to how it was before vaccination.

The study found T-cell activity was reduced as well as an increased inflammatory response in the immediate weeks following vaccination, which, in the long-term, puts people at risk for cancer.

“These data suggested that after vaccination, at least by day 28, other than generation of neutralizing antibodies, people’s immune systems, including those of lymphocytes (T-cells, B-cells, natural killer cells) and monocytes (innate immune cells), were perhaps in a more vulnerable state,” the authors wrote.

These findings overlap with pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole’s observations at his medical laboratory, Cole Diagnostics.

Related Coverage

Dr. Ryan Cole: Alarming Cancer Trend Suggests COVID-19 Vaccines Alter Natural Immune Response

Cole told Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders that after vaccinations started rolling out in the older population, he noticed the reappearance of Molluscum contagiosum, a parapoxvirus that most people get in childhood and is kept in check by the immune system from the teenage years onward.

Though the uptick is unusual, as Cole saw more cases he grew concerned that the vaccines may be driving a form of “immune dysregulation,” meaning a possible breakdown to established immune controls. Since these viruses are normally kept in check by T-cells, which also keep cancers in check, a loss of immune memory against viruses could be a sign of loss of control in cancers.

“About a month or two later, all of a sudden there are certain types of cancers that I commonly see in the laboratory, after 500,000 patients … I started seeing endometrial cancers go up and there’s certain type … Melanomas, I started seeing thicker and earlier as well.”

Since then he has shared his findings in other lectures and found that other doctors and nurses around the world have made similar observations of increased rates of cancer cases.

An analysis by The Expose on VAERS data also indicated an uptick of cancer after COVID-19 vaccines by 143,233 percent.

Developing Cancer After Vaccination

In addition to cancers relapsing, there are also cases of sudden cancer development in previously cancer-free people after vaccination.

Cheryl Rolf shared her late husband John Rolf’s experience with a sudden onset of esophageal cancer within a month or two after vaccination.

“He was vaccinated with the first vaccine March 1st of 2021, and then the second vaccine on March 29th,” Cheryl Rolf, his wife told The Epoch Times during a phone call.

A few days after his second vaccination, John, who had always been healthy, started to cough, and soon he would sporadically choke on his food, and “that gradually increased in frequency over time.”

In August, John’s doctor sent him for a scan, showing suspicious growth at the base of the esophagus, and by late August, John was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer.

“The oncologist said he marked [John] curative,” Rolf said. “He planned for him [John] to fully recover from this.”

Esophageal cancer is a rarer form of cancer that predominantly affects men aged 45 to 70. Smoking, long-term heavy consumption of alcohol, bile reflux, nerve problems in the esophagus, and obesity are all risks of esophageal cancer.

Considering John’s age of 68 years at the time, he was at risk. However, he had no medical or family history of cancer. He also did not have stomach reflux, nor did he smoke, and only drank alcohol occasionally. He was not obese.

In early September, John started his chemo and radiotherapy and it was a particularly tortuous experience for him.

John’s trouble with swallowing soon worsened, coupled with nausea and an altered sense of taste from chemo, he soon “seemed to have given up trying to eat or drink.”

“[John] was supposed to be taking more food and fluids in—he was getting some in—but he was also spitting up an awful lot of yellow phlegm … he couldn’t just drink things like you and I do. He gets to take a sip and try to get it down.”

Dehydration and weight loss meant that he also needed hydration once every three days.

John finished his treatment regimen in mid-October 2021 and doctors planned for him to make a physical recovery from the therapy, gain his strength back, and then remove his tumor through surgery.

However, on Oct. 25, three days after he received his last hydrofusion, John passed away in his sleep.

“I got up and he said ‘I want to sleep some more’ and he didn’t get up. I went and looked [later] and he had passed away.”

Rolf called 911 and moved John onto his back and gave compressions until the paramedics came, but John was gone.

“It was a horrific experience.”

Fourteen cases of esophageal cancers have been reported to VAERS in total for all vaccines, of which one included metastatic cancer (stage 4). Eleven esophageal cancer cases were reported as an adverse event of COVID-19 vaccine, including the single stage 4 cancer case.

Multiple Myeloma After mRNA Vaccination

Stanley Pruszynski also shared his wife’s sudden development of multiple myeloma after two doses of the COVID-19 Moderna vaccine.

Multiple myeloma is a “cancer in the blood … there’s no cure for it because you can’t cure blood cancer,” Pruszynski said.

It affects immune cells, making patients particularly at risk of dying from infections.

The majority of multiple myeloma patients in remission relapses in a few years, and most will later succumb to complications of the disease, particularly infections.

Pruszynski’s wife, Bonnie, then 69 years old, has been very healthy throughout her life. She was adopted into her family, therefore it is unknown if her family has a medical history of cancers, but she had no medical history of previous cancers.

Pruszynski said that Bonnie was very fit. The two would go on walks of five miles a day, and usually it would be him who would want to take a break.

However, two weeks after her second Moderna dose in February, Bonnie developed flu symptoms with constant coughing and night sweats and would get little sleep.

These symptoms persisted and medication did little to improve her condition. She began to feel weak and would ask for breaks on walks before Pruszynski did. She was often scared, she would fall and need to hold onto the walls when navigating their apartment.

In April, Bonnie fell and was taken to the emergency room.

On admission, her hemoglobin level was so low that she was given a blood transfusion.

“They [doctors] tried running some blood tests; the blood wasn’t separating properly to do the testing … well, it turns out that it was because of her hemoglobin levels,” Pruszynski said.

In June, Bonnie was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and started chemotherapy. She started stem cell therapy in December 2021 and spent Christmas in the hospital.

Stem cell therapy is a dangerous yet ambitious therapy to reset the immune system.

First, stem cells will be harvested from the body and stored. The other white blood cells in the body will then be wiped out, often using chemo and radiotherapy. Once the immune system is obliterated, the stem cells will be transferred back into the body to restart the immune system anew.

Bonnie’s fatigue improved and her cancer went into remission, but she still feels weak. The two now walk a quarter of a mile a day, compared to the five miles they used to.

Bonnie now works remotely with reduced hours. Pruszynski estimates that her salary is likely halved.

Pruszynski said that Bonnie has had high blood protein levels for many years. This condition can be a precursor to diseases and often comes with symptoms, though Bonnie was not affected.

Pruszynski therefore suspects that the vaccine, particularly the spike protein it generates, which is known to be toxic, may have triggered something in Bonnie’s immune system leading to blood cancer.

“They give her an estimate of maybe five to 10 years, maybe less. They don’t really know. They don’t have a clue but eventually it will kill her.”

There are a total of 89 multiple myeloma cases reported to VAERS, including plasma multiple myeloma, recurrent myeloma, and recurrent plasma multiple myeloma for all vaccines, and 65 of the cases were reported for COVID-19 vaccines.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Cases of the polio virus are re-emerging across the world, including in the U.S., and appear to be attributed to strains of the virus resulting from vaccination.

In July, A 20-year-old man residing in New York was diagnosed with polio, resulting in paralysis in his legs. While mainstream media outlets covered the story, journalists and commentators exploited the incident, blaming it on an individual’s decision to not receive a polio vaccine.

As Dr. Leana Wen, a notorious advocate for face masks and placing restrictions on people who opted out of receiving a COVID-19 jab, wrote in The Washington Post:

“Because of low vaccination rates, polio is back and appears to be spreading in at least one part of the country. Other vaccine-preventable diseases will also reemerge unless we take urgent steps to reverse this tragic trend. In July, an unvaccinated 20-year-old man residing in Rockland County, N.Y., was diagnosed with polio, which resulted in paralysis in his legs.”

Similarly, NBC News ran a story alleging the case was directly linked to low vaccination rates titled: “Polio Vaccination Rate For 2-year-olds is as Low as 37% in Parts of N.Y. County Where Paralysis Case Was Found.”

“Polio has been circulating for months in New York City area and poses an ongoing risk to the unvaccinated, CDC says,” reads the headline of another CNBC story.

The New York man, however, was actually infected with a type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus, a result of an oral polio vaccine, according to the New York State Department of Health.

The vaccine responsible for crippling the individual is what’s known as a “live-attenuated vaccine,” which in contrast to inactivated vaccines, retains the ability to become more deadly and infectious if mutates while replicating. The virus can then be shed into the environment, enabling it to infect vulnerable individuals.

Despite the re-emergence of polio being triggered by a vaccine, health officials and mainstream media outlets have continued to push vaccination as the solution to a potential outbreak.

“‘Silent’ spread of polio in New York drives CDC to consider additional vaccinations for some people,” claimed CNN.

In other words, the re-emergent case of polio being used by journalists and public health agencies to push vaccination is actually a direct result of an individual receiving a polio vaccine.

Dr. Robert Malone on Aug. 19 sued the Washington Post, alleging statements in an article about him were defamatory.

The Jan. 24 article says Malone offered “misinformation” when he said during a speech that the COVID-19 vaccines “are not working” against the Omicron virus variant.

As proof, the paper linked to studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from January that found a booster shot on top of a primary series was protecting well against severe disease. The studies were published in the agency’s quasi-journal, which has a stated goal of being aligned with the agency’s messaging. The centers have repeatedly promoted COVID-19 vaccination during the pandemic.

Later in the speech, Malone said that the vaccines “do not prevent Omicron infection, viral replication, or spread to others.” That quote was not included in the Post’s article.

“I said nothing about disease and death at that point in time,” Malone told The Epoch Times, accusing the Post of taking a “selective misquote” and using the CDC study to contest an assertion he never made.

The Post did not respond to a request for comment while an automatic message from the article’s author, Timothy Bella, said he’s on parental leave until December. Bella provided no evidence in the article that the vaccines were protecting against Omicron infection.

An interview request from Bella to Malone before the article was written, reviewed by The Epoch Times, shows Bella telling Malone that “I have respect for you and your body of work” and that he hoped to “shadow you” during Malone’s time in Washington, where the doctor delivered the speech at a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Ten Statements

Ten of the statements in the article were defamatory, including the statement that Malone’s claims have been “discredited;” that Malone during the speech “repeated the falsehoods that have garnered him legions of followers;” and that Malone’s claims are “not only wrong, but also dangerous,” according to the 19-page suit, filed in federal court in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“The qualities WaPo disparaged—Dr. Malone’s honesty, veracity, integrity, competence, judgment, morals and ethics as a licensed medical doctor and scientist—are peculiarly valuable to Dr. Malone and are absolutely necessary in the practice and profession of any medical doctor and scientist. WaPo ascribes to Dr. Malone conduct, characteristics and conditions, including fraud, disinformation, misinformation, deception and dishonesty, that would adversely affect his fitness to be a medical professional and to conduct the business of a medical doctor,” the suit states.

“Dr. Malone’s statements concerning COVID-19 and the purported ‘vaccines’ were 100% factually accurate. He has never committed fraud on [sic] engaged in any medical disinformation or misinformation. Further, the so-called ‘vaccines’ do not work, as is abundantly clear from both the scientific and anecdotal evidence to date,” it also says.

Malone previously served the Post with a written notice threatening legal action if it did not retract and/or correct the allegedly defamatory statements, but it refused to make any retractions or corrections, according to the filing.

Malone has also threatened to sue other media outlets, including the New York Times, but decided to start with the Post because the case “is really straightforward,” he said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

So drag queens are OK but when you refuse a vaccine that does not work you get cut. [US Patriot]

Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett is on the brink of court martial for decisions made in opposition to what she considers an “unlawful order” to take a COVID-19 vaccination shot.

Immediately following the secretary of defense’s order to vaccinate against COVID-19 on Aug. 24, 2021, Arnett sought religious exemption—which was denied the following month. Having submitted her appeal against the decision in November, it was denied in January 2022. This began an administrative separation process from the Marine Corps, prompting Arnett to declare she “cannot consent to it.”

The 24-year-old Lance Corporal held firm in her beliefs, telling The Epoch Times that “if your mandate is illegal, then your separation orders are illegal.” In April 2022, Arnett received a letter from her command, giving her 30 days to leave Japan and report to California’s Camp Pendleton to be processed for separation. The Marine Corps does not separate individuals from duty stations overseas or outside the continental United States.

Thus, Arnett continues to refuse to board a plane, explaining that “[the order] to get on the plane [is] inextricably linked to the vaccine mandate.” If the “unlawful order” of the vaccine mandate were not in place, she would have chosen to serve longer, aspiring to become a drill instructor. Instead, her decision to seek religious accommodation and subsequent refusal to leave Japan for separation from the Marine Corps has had consequences that may lead to a court martial.

Arnett was charged under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for disobeying a direct order. She was also charged under Article 87 for deliberately failing to board an aircraft to the United States.

Because Arnett has less than six years of service, under military regulations, the Marine Corps does not have to give her an administrative separation board to decide whether to retain or separate her from service. After her religious accommodation appeal was denied, she was accused of misconduct and commission of a serious offense for not getting the COVID-19 vaccination shot, Arnett said. She was told that she would be administratively separated within 30 days.

Arnett’s court martial trial is set to begin on Aug. 23, only one month shy of the expiration of her current enlistment and her ability to leave the Marine Corps under normal terms. It is her intention to remain in Japan until Sept. 18, which would fulfill the four-year contract she made with the Marine Corps.

Arnett is hopeful the vaccine mandates will be defeated in the courts sooner than later, saying, “God willing, I would like to remain in the Marine Corps.” She recognizes that she has chosen a difficult path, admitting that her decisions have left her feeling alienated. “I’ve basically been exiled from my squadron,” she said, adding that there seems to be an “unspoken rule” that she does not interact with other service members. She described the experience as “very isolating.”

Leadership Lacking

The Epoch Times also spoke to Lt. Col. Madison Whitaker (a pseudonym) who has served nearly 18 years in the Marine Corps. Whitaker spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. His orders to battalion command were recently canceled for refusing to get the jab. With equal disappointment, he is aggrieved by the lack of approval for religious accommodation as well as the military’s refusal to recognize service members’ natural immunity to the coronavirus.

“What’s missing from the entire equation,” Whitaker said, “is that leadership is not willing to sit down and have a kneecap-to-kneecap adult conversation with the Marines in their units.” Before “sidelining” nearly all exemption requests for religious accommodation or otherwise. He believes Marine Corps leadership should be meeting with those under their command.

He explained that no one in his chain of command sat him down to hear his side of the story. “There has never been an effort to do anything like that,” he said.

Whitaker said that there are no Food and Drug Administration-approved (FDA) vaccines available to service members, so he doesn’t understand the rush to force vaccinations on personnel.

The marine, along with a group of service members, argues that the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate cannot compel service members to receive vaccines issued under Emergency Use Authorized (EUA), but only vaccines that have full FDA approval and are labeled as such. Currently, only EUA vaccines are available for service members to take, according to a whistleblower report sent to Congressmembers on Aug. 15.

The Pentagon, however, has issued a policy (pdf) saying the FDA-approved Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are interchangeable, citing FDA guidance. The legality of this policy is contested by service members resisting the vaccine mandate.

Many of the officers tasked with enforcing the vaccine mandate “don’t want to be seen as bucking the system,” Whitaker said. “They don’t want to risk their reputation, their retirement, or the things that they have worked toward over the course of their careers.” What’s more, he is convinced that “the highest levels of the DoD” have been instructed to not give any religious waivers except to service members who were already exiting the service.

As of Aug. 3, the Marine Corps has approved (pdf) 11 religious exemptions, 545 administrative or medical exemptions, and has separated 3,299 people.

Punishing Marines for their decision to object to the vaccine for religious reasons, or because there are only EUA drugs available, is “contrary to how we’re brought up as Marines and what is expected of us whenever we get an order that is suspect.” Thousands contend that forcing service members to take an experimental vaccine is unlawful, Whitaker noted.

“In the case of Lance Corporal Arnett, this is her first tour and she’s being sidelined,” Whitaker pointed out. “For those like Arnett who have probably wanted to join for a long time,” he said, “this has just completely diminished the trust between the leadership and those that are going through this or would have to go through this.”

Defending Their Rights

Regardless of the outcome, Arnett hopes her experience “empowers other service members to challenge unlawful orders.” Every citizen, in general, she said “should have the gall to challenge unlawful orders.”

Whitaker agreed, stating, “There’s this misconception out there that whenever you join the military, you take an oath that relinquishes your rights.” But this is not true. “We don’t lose any of the rights espoused in the Bill of Rights or anywhere in the Constitution,” he explained.

“While it may sound idealistic, I’m fighting for my First Amendment rights, and my free exercise of religion,” Whitaker said, “it’s really that simple.” According to the Marine Corps officer, “service members are not wards of the state just because they raise their right hand. They still retain their rights.”

Whitaker finds it “even more egregious” that what he has sworn to do for the country—”support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic—is the very thing thousands are being punished for.”

Truth be told, he said, “we have significant religious persecution of service members going on within the DoD for a pharmaceutical product that no one needs, many of these service members don’t want, and that is not safe, nor is it effective.”

“If we don’t defend our First Amendment rights, then we won’t have any rights in this country,” Whitaker said.

Both Arnett and Whitaker emphasized that their views do not reflect those of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. Marine Corps.

Neither the DoD nor the Marine Corps replied to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House COVID-19 czar Ashish Jha on Tuesday admitted that the six-foot social distancing rule that was implemented in early 2020 isn’t actually effective.

Over the past several years, “a lot of time” was spent “talking about six feet of distance, 15 minutes of being together. We realize that’s actually not the right way to think about this,” he said during a White House briefing on COVID-19.

“That’s not the most accurate way to think about this,” Jha said, adding that it is about “the quality of air you’re breathing around you.”

In a crowded indoor area with poor ventilation, people can “get infected” with COVID-19 “in minutes,” Jha said, adding that being outdoors you can be “outside for long periods of time” and not get infected.

Jha made those comments in regards to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) having relaxed guidelines around COVID-19. That included dropping the six-foot social distancing rule.

The agency last week rescinded a number of rules and made key updates to its recommendations, now stating that unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals should essentially be treated the same, while explicitly saying that those with a prior infection have protection against severe illness.

Starting in early 2020, federal health agencies issued a recommendation that people keep at least six feet of distance away from one another. Health departments, businesses, corporations, and schools across the United States then adopted the rule, leading to restrictions such as capacity limits and lockdowns.

‘Nobody Knows’

A former administration for the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, revealed in late 2021 that the six-foot rule was made up.

“Nobody knows where it came from,” Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member, told CBS News. “Most people assume that the six feet of distance, the recommendation for keeping six feet apart, comes out of some old studies related to flu, where droplets don’t travel more than six feet.”

The CDC, he said, initially recommended a 10-foot rule, and the six-foot rule was a compromise between the federal health agency and Trump administration officials.

“So the compromise was around six feet. Now imagine if that detail had leaked out. Everyone would have said, ‘This is the White House politically interfering with the CDC’s judgment.’ The CDC said 10 feet, it should be 10 feet, but 10 feet was no more right than six feet and ultimately became three feet,” Gottlieb remarked.

The CDC also said in its update that it’s no longer recommending unvaccinated people to quarantine after exposure. Unvaccinated people who have been in close contact with an infected person aren’t advised to go through a five-day quarantine period if they haven’t tested positive or shown symptoms, according to the revised guidelines.

Regardless of vaccination status, according to the CDC, “you should isolate from others when you have COVID-19” or are “sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results.” Previously, the CDC said fully vaccinated people who were exposed could skip the quarantine period.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

John Bridgeland worked on Obama White House council, cheered Biden victory

On the campaign trail, Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) touts the endorsement of a man named John Bridgeland as evidence of his cross-party appeal.

There are just a few details the congressman leaves out, at least when he’s trying to win over voters in his increasingly red state: Bridgeland worked in the Obama administration, celebrated Joe Biden’s election, and cofounded a nonprofit dedicated to remaking policing.

The founder of “Republicans for Tim Ryan,” Bridgeland has worked on left-wing policy initiatives for years. Former president Barack Obama in 2010 appointed Bridgeland to the White House Council for Community Solutions. Bridgeland also cofounded a firm, COVID Collaborative, that works with the Biden administration on vaccine messaging. In December 2020, Bridgeland wrote an op-ed for the website of Maria Shriver, a Democratic activist and member of the Kennedy family, about how he was “so encouraged” by Biden’s win.

Democrats touting endorsements from nominal Republicans who routinely attack the Republican Party is a familiar strategy. Lawmakers who have been rubber stamps for Biden’s agenda, such as Ryan, are hoping that voters forget their records. Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), who is running in a competitive race this cycle, recently released a list of endorsements from Republicans, several of whom work for the the Lincoln Project, an activist group dedicated to electing Democrats but helmed by individuals who once considered themselves Republicans. 

Bridgeland’s endorsement comes as Ryan seeks to separate himself from the president. Biden’s approval rating is 23 points underwater in Ohio—a state that former president Donald Trump won twice. When Biden traveled to Ohio for a speech last month, Ryan scheduled campaign stops hundreds of miles away.

Ryan shared Bridgeland’s endorsement on Twitter and wrote he was “proud” to have Bridgeland on his “team.”

“Republicans for Ryan is a platform for Republicans to sign up to help Tim Ryan. I am a registered Republican and vote in Republican primaries and in general elections,” Bridgeland told the Free Beacon. “I believe in limited, effective government, … civil society and the nonprofit and private sectors, and respecting both individual rights and responsibilities.”

Bridgeland worked from the mid-1990s to 2003 as a senior official in then-representative Rob Portman’s (R., Ohio) office and in former president George W. Bush’s administration. In an op-ed for a local Ohio newspaper, Bridgeland wrote that he supports Ryan’s “love of our democracy” and “many of his policies.”

Bridgeland attacked Ryan’s Republican Senate challenger, J.D. Vance, as “lacking the energy of the U.S. senator he is trying to replace—Rob Portman.” Portman endorsed Vance immediately after Vance in May won the Republican nomination.

Bridgeland’s endorsement of Ryan was leaked to Politico days prior as part of a story about the Ryan campaign’s strategy of appealing to Republican voters. That story also featured Bridgeland speaking favorably about Ryan and how Ryan could make inroads with Republican voters in Ohio. Missing from Politico‘s story was any mention of Bridgeland’s work since he left the Bush administration in 2003.

Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.

Other than Bridgeland, no appointees with experience in Republican politics were appointed to Obama’s White House community solutions council. There, Bridgeland worked alongside the likes of Laurene Powell Jobs and Jon Bon Jovi to provide advice to the president on “innovative community solutions and civic participation by all Americans.”

Bridgeland later cofounded ACT NOW, a nonprofit that works “to reimagine ‘public safety’ … and eliminate the root causes of systemic racism.” ACT NOW’s staff includes Ray C. Kelly, who in 2018 received an award from George Soros’s Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

According to internal voter data obtained by the Free Beacon, Bridgeland voted in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. A June column he wrote for the Cincinnati Enquirer called for new gun control measures. The column also touted his work with a group called the People’s Filibuster for Gun Safety. That group, according to its website, partners with left-wing nonprofits such as the Anti-Defamation League and March for Our Lives to pass gun-control legislation.

Bridgeland’s cheerleading for Biden appears out of step with Republican voters. Following Biden’s State of the Union address in March, Bridgeland celebrated the speech as passionate and “articulating values and ideas that transcend our divisions.” A Reuters poll released Aug. 9 found 86 percent of self-identified Republicans disapprove of Biden.

Ryan will face Vance in November. There is little high-quality polling of the race available, although most political analysts believe Vance is the favorite. Portman’s seat has been held by a Republican since 1999.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A NEW STUDY REVEALS JUST HOW DAMAGING THE POLICY WAS.

COVID-19 lockdowns could be responsible for claiming 20 times more lives than they were advertised to save, according to a new analysis published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The paper, which bases its conclusions on a comprehensive review of other relevant, lockdown-focused literature, was authored by researchers at the Jerusalem College of Technology.

“In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth,” summarized the article, titled “Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?”

“The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past,” argue the researchers.

The team proceeds to quantify the estimated number of lives lost due to the COVID-19 mitigation measure, which drew strong support from Democrats and public health officials including Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Mike Pence:

The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save.

The paper also exposes how governments and international health organizations’ embrace of lockdowns was at odds with their stance on the public health policy prior to COVID-19.

“It should be mentioned that the same conclusions—no clear benefit of lockdowns in case of pandemic—were made by national and international bodies before COVID-19 emerged. Namely, several governments prepared detailed plans of response to influenza- like pandemics years ago—see the programs of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2007) and the Israeli Ministry of Health (2007),”

MUST READ: STUDY: Closing Bars, Restaurants Did NOT Suppress COVID-19.

Researchers singled out the World Health Organization (WHO), which published a comprehensive 91-page preparedness plan in October of 2019 that explicitly mentioned that:

• social distancing measures “can be highly disruptive” and should be carefully weighted;
• travel-related measures are “unlikely to be successful”; “border closures may be
considered only by small island nations in severe pandemics”;
• and contact tracing and quarantine of exposed individuals are not recommended in any
circumstances.

The paper doesn’t argue that lockdowns were merely ineffective; however, adding that they actually claimed the lives of the people public health officials claimed to be protecting.

“The lockdown policies had a direct side effect of increasing mortality. Hospitals in Europe and USA were prepared to manage pretty small groups of highly contagious patients, while unprepared for a much more probable challenge—large-scale contagion. As a result, public health care facilities and nursing homes often became vehicles of contamination themselves—to a large extent because of the lockdown-based emergency policy implementation,” explained the paper, citing New York as an example.

“While our understanding of viral transmission mechanisms leads to the assumption that lockdowns may be an effective pandemic management tool, this assumption cannot be supported by the evidence-based analysis of the present COVID-19 pandemic, as well as of the 1918–1920 H1N1 influenza type-A pandemic (the Spanish Flu) and numerous less-severe pandemics in the past,” concludes the paper.

The findings follow the publication of other studies finding sizable drawbacks to lockdowns and other popular COVID-19 mitigation measures such as mask mandates.

The U.S. Army is expected to fall nearly 40,000 troops short of its recruiting goals over the next two years. Fiscal year 2022 is expected to miss the mark by 10,000 troops, while the number in fiscal year 2023 could reach 28,000. These figures mean that this year is on track to be the Army’s worst recruiting year in almost 50 years.

The Army plans to circumvent the problem by offering $1 billion for its recruiting program and placing more emphasis on the use of its reserve units.

The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Army Recruiting Command for comment, and Maj. Charles Spears of the Combined Arms Center replied to various inquiries about the state of recruiting. Spears offered several reasons for the Army’s recruiting challenges in the years ahead.

First, he said, “only 23 percent of American youth are qualified to serve without a waiver, [noting that] obesity, addiction, medical, and behavioral health are the top disqualifiers for service.”

The Army is also competing with corporate America, he said, adding that “social media’s virtual public square shapes the values and perceptions of American youth, which is increasingly unfamiliar with the benefits of Army service.”

According to Spears, the American population is “increasingly disconnected” from serving in the Army and military service, Spears said. “Oftentimes, influencers [like parents, teachers, and coaches] do not recommend military service.” He also added that “the share of youth who have seriously considered military service is at a historic low of nine percent.”

Finally, Spears said, “the COVID-19 pandemic severely limited the ability of recruiters to interact with prospects in person, [and] also exacerbated academic and physical fitness challenges, limiting the pool of qualified applicants.” As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, there has been a nine percent decrease in Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores as well as increased applicate obesity.

In addition to these factors, servicemembers have expressed other concerns that they say have contributed to the recruitment crisis.

Army Boots on the Ground

The Epoch Times spoke to an active-duty Army soldier with over 15 years of service on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. He is gravely alarmed about the Army falling short on recruitment numbers.

“In the past,” he said, “the Army targeted a specific demographic of people based on their values, [and these recruits] were patriots and loved America.” In today’s general population, he doesn’t see the same interest in patriotism. “Much of the country doesn’t love America like it use to,” he said. “And with a military no longer upholding the values, the oaths, or the creeds it once did, what kind of new recruits should we expect [to join the Army]?” he asked.

“From a macro perspective, we had a significant breach of trust in the last election.” By oath, he said, the military swears to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But the U.S. military has said nothing about the previous election, according to the soldier. “I’m not saying there is a final answer, but as defenders of the Constitution, they owed open and transparent conversation to the force and to the American people,” he said.

Instead, he said, “they happily encourage mandated vaccines, back the transgender issue, and speak out in opposition to the Supreme Court of the United States in regard to Roe v. Wade—all of which are very political.”

In his opinion, “we now have a Department of Defense [DoD] that has taken various political positions that are very much opposed to the heart of America.”

All the while, he said, the size of battalions is shrinking. “Some are less than two-thirds of where they need to be,” he said. And many of those who remain are not “usable deployables.”

He said, “Much of America is missing the fact that the Army is intentionally kicking people out in a precarious way that it knows is unnecessary, because the data shows that it’s unnecessary.” He is under the impression that “our military is intentionally being weakened.”

Rather than watching the military “decay,” he said, “military leadership needs to take action for the good of the America people.” But he’s not convinced this will happen, because “for the most part, the higher-ups are cowards and they lack the personal courage to take the actions needed to put an end to this sad state of affairs.”

As recruiting woes mount and solutions appear scant for the U.S. Army, service members of the nation’s other military branches are equally concerned.

Mishap for the Marines

Maj. Paul Lewis (a pseudonym), a recognized subject matter expert on personnel retention matters within the Marine Corps who previously sounded the alarm on personnel end-strength issues within the DoD, spoke to The Epoch Times once again.

According to Lewis, military readiness has been impacted in the past few years by “a toxic combination of poor leadership and the politicization of the military.” He said there has been “a steady reduction in readiness due primarily to reckless policies that have eroded the trust of the rank and file service-members.

“It really came to light in the wake of COVID when service members began to see that senior leaders chose to put politics ahead of military readiness,” he said. “Senior officers and senior civilian executives have run the military into the ground in the name of career stability and progression instead of keeping faith with Marines and their families.”

Potential recruits are not signing up to serve in the Marine Corps as they have in previous years, and Lewis attributes this to “a rejection of the bureaucratic leadership.” For American citizens to choose to serve in the “all-volunteer force,” he states, “they want to be able to trust that their leadership has their best interest at heart, and that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.”

According to Lewis, this erosion of trust can be “manifested in the military loss in Afghanistan as well as how COVID vaccine mandates have been enforced in a draconian and illegal manner,” and this according to him has led to “a complete loss of trust and confidence in the leadership.”

In the years ahead, he said, these issues will have an impact on the national security of the United States. “Within the national security apparatus,” Lewis said, “we need a certain number of troops to man the line, this is known as statutory end-strength and is set by Congress, [because] we have defense obligations all over the world with partners and allies.”

“A small gap in readiness, losing 100 or 200 recruits or unplanned departures from the service might be acceptable,” Lewis admitted. “But when you get into the numbers of 40,000 or more in a single year, it’s no longer just a minor blip on how we deploy our military, but it is an unmitigated disaster,” he said. “It will affect every decision made on how we are going to meet our obligations and ultimately we will be increasingly relying on less troops to do the same job.”

In light of losses associated with the mandated vaccine, Lewis said it has become apparent to him that “our leadership is willing to sacrifice military service members, forcing them out the door in the name of financial reprioritization.” He said, “American people need to be aware that the military is using these personnel cost savings to commit additional resources to yet another round of equipment modernization that is lining the defense industries pocket.

“But all the while, they’re losing the individuals qualified to operate these systems,” he said. “For example, you cannot fly an F-35 with a student pilot; you need an experienced pilot with years of operational flight time.

“When the cards are down and we need to face our adversaries, we need experienced warfighters using this equipment,” said Lewis. “Unfortunately, the defense lobby has just about every congressional office enthralled with the idea of higher defense spending with their companies rather than investing in its people.”

According to Lewis, “the American soldier is the country’s most valuable resource, [but] our leadership and our decisionmakers have devalued their people” who serve in the military. “This is sadly exemplified in the dead Marines on the deck in Afghanistan because of poor politically driven leadership.”

If members of the nation’s military were valued, he said, “these same people should be raising legitimate concerns about vaccine efficacy, but they are failing the American people once again.”

Lewis contends that “generational damage” is being done and the core of rank-and-file service members whose families have traditionally served will no longer choose to do so in the future because of the utter betrayal they are facing from their own leaders.

“It’s reckless, like a child playing with fire,” said Lewis. “Do the math: it is impossible to have an all-volunteer force if you don’t have volunteers.” Moving forward, he questions whether the U.S. military will be able to continue to “meet the expectations of the American people and keep the homeland safe.”

Air Force Mission Ignored

A master sergeant currently serving in the Air Force has been a recruiter for nearly a decade. As the military vaccine mandate began to be enforced, he was “alienated from the service” for refusing to take the shot. “Many in the Air Force have stood up for freedoms our entire career, but when our freedom is on the line, who’s going to stand up for us?” he asked. He has witnessed junior airmen break down in tears over being coerced and threatened into taking the vaccine.

Air Force Recruiting Service is facing its lowest recruiting numbers since 1999 according to senior leadership’s public statements, he said. “While we lose decades of experience to mandates and poor leadership decisions,” he said, “we will be forced to ease standards just to continue the mission.” He further added, “I see firsthand in recruiting that the sentiment towards joining the military has been negatively impacted over the last year.”

What’s more, he said, “there is an imbalanced focus on diversity over performance when deciding the fate of an airman’s career. We’re focusing on the wrong things instead of the mission, which is protecting and serving the nation,” he said. “Wokeism combined with bad policies are destroying the military and if we don’t course correct soon, it could cause irreparable harm, in my opinion.”

Navy is Getting Weaker

A Navy lieutenant said, “the DoD has forgotten the first rule of holes—and that’s when you get into one, you stop digging.” According to the recruiter, “the Navy has probably alienated the majority of its recruiting base that you could have always counted on historically.”

Mandatory vaccines are an issue, he said. But “social experimentation” within the Department of Defense is also a problem. For example, in the digital signature of Rear Admiral Alexis T. Walker, he said, “he has his own little personal font with a rainbow hue for his pronouns.” Walker is the commander of Navy Recruiting Command.

The Clinton administration’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was once “a hot button for the military,” he said. “But fast forward nearly 30 years, and transgenders have been normalized.”

To that end, he said, “The fact that you would set a double standard in terms of military readiness where you would claim an unvaccinated service member isn’t ready, but somebody in the middle of a life-changing transition that’s on hormones is ready and is not a threat to readiness, bothers me.”

By his estimation, senior leadership of the military has “bought into a big lie that somehow the population at large wants a military which reflects the population diversity of the country.” He disagreed, stating that “the public simply wants to know that they have a military that’s capable and lethal, and could successfully defend this nation on a moment’s notice.”

Apart from “a few niche areas, like the special warfare communities, military readiness is questionable at best,” he said. “We’ve gone too far into the weeds politically, which has resulted in a weaker, political military force.”

Coast Guard Gone Woke, Too

Continuing to actively serve in the Coast Guard, a “Coastie” with recent experience as a recruiter is very disturbed that he could be “throwing years of dedicated service down the drain” for refusing to take the vaccine. It’s clear that he’s not the only one impacted, as he said, the Coast Guard will fall far short of making recruiting mission this year. While he said it is hard to pinpoint exactly why, the vaccine mandate is a large part of the issue. “There’s definitely been some young folk who said they’re not going to join because they don’t want to get the COVID vaccine,” he explained.

In addition, he said, “The woke culture has bugged some people.” In one example of wokeness infiltrating the Coast Guard, he said, “When writing awards or performance reviews, I can’t even identify myself as a he, [adding that] I can only identify myself by my name, rank, or by they.” He finds it strange that he cannot assume his own gender. Taking diversity and inclusion to this extreme, alongside the vaccine mandate, has hurt retention in his opinion.

The Coast Guardsman strongly believes that “medical and fitness standards that were once non-negotiable are all on the table right now.” When asked about the reason, he goes on to say, “It seems like the average teenager these days has a much higher likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants, asthma inhalers, or attention deficit medications, all of which used to be a hard stop for someone trying to join.”

“But if recruiters can’t make mission and mission execution suffers, eventually something has to give,” he said. “The question that bothers me is how much does race and gender now play into the likelihood of those medical waivers being granted?”

Each anonymous interviewee emphasized that their views do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy, or Coast Guard. The Epoch Times also reached out to the recruiting headquarters for the Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, and Navy for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 guidance is the agency acknowledging it was wrong in the past to downplay natural immunity and promote unprecedented policies like asymptomatic testing, a California epidemiologist says.

The new guidance, released on Aug. 11, rescinds and alters a number of key recommendations, including treating unvaccinated and vaccinated people differently for many purposes, explicitly stating that people with previous infection have protection against severe illness, and removing six-foot social distancing advice.

“The CDC is admitting it was wrong here, although they won’t put it in those words,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

“What they’ll say is that, well, ‘the population is more immunized now, has more natural immunity now, and now is the time—the science has changed.’”

But a large percentage of the U.S. population has had natural immunity, or protection from prior infection, Bhattacharya noted, while over 80 percent of the elderly population had protection from severe disease from COVID-19 vaccines, previous infection, or both, since 2021.

“This is two years too late, but it’s a good step,” Bhattacharya added.

CDC Statement

The CDC, which did not respond to a request for comment, portrayed the change as streamlining previous guidance, with the adjustments stemming from more people being vaccinated and more COVID-19 treatments available.

“We’re in a stronger place today as a nation, with more tools—like vaccination, boosters, and treatments—to protect ourselves, and our communities, from severe illness from COVID-19,” Greta Massetti, the CDC author of the new guidance, said in a statement. “We also have a better understanding of how to protect people from being exposed to the virus, like wearing high-quality masks, testing, and improved ventilation. This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”

Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general during the Trump administration, echoed the line of thinking.

“The fact that @CDCgov is changing guidance shouldn’t be taken as proof that they were necessarily ‘wrong,’ on a particular issue. The virus has changed, our tools and immunity have changed, and our knowledge has changed. So too must our guidance. That’s how science works,” Adams wrote on Twitter.

Vaccination numbers have fallen off in recent months, with little change among adults and little update among children, even after the vaccines were authorized and recommended for kids as young as 6 months old.

No new treatments have been authorized since December 2021, and a number of the treatments have been shown as less effective against newer strains of the virus that causes COVID-19, as have the vaccines and, in some cases, natural immunity.

Nearly half of the 20 papers and briefs cited by the CDC in support of the adjusted guidance were published in 2020 or 2021, while a number of others were released in early 2022.

No Mandates Rescinded Yet

Among the most significant changes in the guidance: a rollback of recommendations for asymptomatic testing for individuals exposed to COVID-19, loosening guidance related to tracing contacts of COVID-19 cases, and ending quarantine recommendations for people exposed to a positive case.

Some rules are stricter for high-risk settings such as nursing homes.

Masking is also recommended for 10 days for people who were exposed to COVID-19, including when a person is at home around others.

Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, a document that called for focused protection on the elderly and fewer restrictions on others, said that the guidance is closely aligned with the principles outlined in the declaration.

Based on the new guidance, the CDC should immediately rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for foreign travelers entering The United States, a policy imposed in November 2021, the professor added.

The CDC’s webpage describing the mandate says that the agency “is reviewing this page to align with updated guidance.” The U.S. government has not adjusted or rescinded any of its vaccine mandates since the guidance was changed.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its COVID-19 guidance on Aug. 11, stating that the United States should move away from quarantines and social distancing and focus on treating severe disease caused by the virus.

New guidelines from the federal agency no longer recommend staying at least six feet away from other people to reduce exposure. The six-foot social distancing recommendation had been intact since early 2020, although some public health officials have raised questions about whether the measure is actually effective.

In another major change, the agency stated that it’s no longer recommending unvaccinated people to quarantine after exposure. Unvaccinated people who have been in close contact with an infected person aren’t advised to go through a five-day quarantine period if they haven’t tested positive or shown symptoms, according to the revised guidelines.

“CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild, and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection,” the CDC stated.

Regardless of vaccination status, according to the CDC, “you should isolate from others when you have COVID-19” or are “sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results.” Previously, the CDC said fully vaccinated people who were exposed could skip the quarantine period.

“The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,” Greta Massetti, a senior epidemiologist with the CDC, told media outlets on on Aug. 11. “High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection and the many available tools to protect the general population and protect people at higher risk allow us to focus on protecting people from serious illness from COVID.”

Testing to screen for COVID-19 won’t be recommended by the CDC in most places for individuals who don’t have COVID-19 symptoms, according to the new guidelines. Contact tracing should be relegated to hospitals and high-risk situations, such as nursing homes, the agency stated, while it placed less emphasis on screening for COVID-19 other than places such as prisons and nursing homes.

The CDC is now recommending that people “wear a high-quality mask for 10 days and get tested on day five” after exposure to the virus regardless of vaccination or prior infection. If one is sick, they should stay away from individuals such as elderly people or those who are also likely to develop severe symptoms from the virus

“When considering whether and where to implement screening testing of asymptomatic people with no known exposure, public health officials might consider prioritizing high-risk congregate settings, such as long-term care facilities, homeless shelters, and correctional facilities, and workplace settings that include congregate housing with limited access to medical care,” the CDC wrote in its report explaining the changes.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Over two years of pandemic oversight, Johnson said he’s witnessed money being put before public health

From the early days of the pandemic, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has been trying to hold U.S. public health agencies accountable on many issues, including why the agencies censored early treatment options for COVID-19, pushed vaccine mandates, and demonstrated a lack of integrity and transparency involving the vaccine data and reporting.

After conducting two years of oversight, Johnson said that the U.S. medical system has been compromised by money from Big Pharma.

“We have a corrupt medical system in this country,” Johnson said in a recent interview for NTD’s “Capitol Report” program. “From the pharmaceutical companies down to the federal health agencies through to the research centers and medical journals. It should concern every American.”

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Agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration have not freely provided the public with accurate data about the vaccine’s origin, efficacy, and adverse effects, said Johnson, and he and others conducting oversight have had to rely heavily on other countries’ data.

“We’ve had to look to either Israel or Public Health England, Public Health Scotland. Now they’re shutting down their information streams as well,” he said. “One of my biggest concerns is our federal health agencies have not been honest. They’ve not been transparent.”

He called what the CDC is doing “willful ignorance.”

Public Health Agencies Contradicting Themselves

Johnson sent a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in late July, demanding answers as to why there have been conflicting statements about the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, who heads the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from VAERS since February 2021. The CDC, however, told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method was outside of the agency’s purview.

“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson said in the letter.

“The American people deserve the truth and you have not been providing it. That is why I, together with millions of Americans, have completely lost faith in the CDC and other federal health agencies. It is time to start regaining their confidence and your agency’s integrity by coming clean, being transparent, and telling the truth,” the letter states (pdf).

“It’s all BS,” Johnson said in the interview. “As soon as the safety signals started screaming at them through the VAER system, what do they do? They denigrated the VAER system.”

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the NTD interview, Johnson said he believes the health agencies don’t want to provide truthful information.

“I think, among many disappointments, one of the biggest disappointments in terms of the federal health agencies is they’re just not giving us the information, and I don’t think they really want to,” he said.

From the get-go, the vaccine mandates were “pointless, completely idiotic, and totally destructive,” Johnson said, adding that the agencies’ own data has long confirmed that vaccines do not prevent transmission or reoccurring infection.

Johnson implied that Big Pharma has had a role in pushing the vaccine mandates out of its own self-interest.

“I’ve always been supportive of the pharmaceutical industry,” because the drug companies need billions of dollars to develop new drugs that are important for improving lives, said Johnson. “But now I’ve just witnessed the capture of U.S. regulatory agencies by Big Pharma.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump said on Aug. 7 that if he returns to the White House in 2025 he’ll rehire the service members who lost their jobs by refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I think it’s a disgrace what happened to them,” Trump said, answering a reporter’s question.

Trump was responding to questions from the press before he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday.

“I’d let them back. I’d give back pay,” Trump said. “So I would give them their back pay and I would let them back, and they understand that. They know it.”

Back pay is “a common remedy for wage violations” where “the employer makes up the difference between what the employee was paid and the amount he or she should have been paid,” according to the Department of Labor.

Trump’s comments came weeks after the U.S. army announced plans to cut more than 60,000 guards and reserve soldiers for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.

“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” a July 1 statement on the U.S. Army’s website reads.

More than 19,000 U.S. Army personnel have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, as of July 14, 2022, according to U.S. Army data. The Army approved a total of 24 medical and 19 religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine.

Jan. 6 Pardons

In response to another question, Trump said he’ll “very strongly” consider pardoning nonviolent political prisoners who have been indicted as a result of participating in the January 6 Capitol breach.

“We’ll certainly be looking at it, and very strongly,” Trump said, adding that he has made previous statements about potentially pardoning January 6 political prisoners.

“I think many people are being treated very unfair … having to do with that. And we will be looking at that very strongly,” Trump said. “I think you know the answer.”

The president hinted strongly at but stopped short of announcing a 2024 run.

“Well, it’s not a long period, regardless, whether you go before or after, certainly not a very long period of time,” the former president said. He raised the same point in an interview with the New Yorker earlier this year, when he said he’s undecided on whether to announce his decision on a 2024 run before or after the midterms.

“It’s coming,” Trump said, “and I think people are going to be very happy.”

“Our country has never been in a position like this. We lost everything. We’ve lost energy independence. We’ve lost our prestige. We’ve lost every single thing you can lose,” Trump said, noting the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which he previously called “the greatest tactical mistake in history“—and the border crisis.

“So we’ll be making an announcement in the not-too-distance future.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

DeSantis’s office has expressed ‘serious concerns’

With less than a week to go before the official kickoff of Florida’s 2022 primary election cycle, documents obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times expose how one supervisor of elections has repeatedly overstepped his authority to implement COVID-19 mandates and voting procedures that appear to challenge numerous Florida laws.

Early voting in Florida runs between Aug. 13 to 20, and “Each county Supervisor of Elections may offer more days of early voting from one or more of the following days: August 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 21.” Florida’s Primary Election day is Aug. 23.

In a letter dated Nov. 4, 2021, Paul Stamoulis, Supervisor of Elections for Florida’s Charlotte County informed “all applicants interested in serving as a Poll Worker” that they were “required to complete an enclosed Certification form,” verifying that they had “been inoculated for the COVID-19 virus.”

Applicants were told they had to identify the type of vaccine they received and the dates the vaccine was administered. By signing the form, applicants were also acknowledging that they understood they would be required to wear a mask or a face shield, covering their nose and mouth, “at all times.” Applicants who could not “comply with this new policy” for “whatever reason,” were told they were “ineligible to work the 2022 Elections.”

On April 2, 2021, seven months before Stamoulis mailed his letters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Executive Order 21-81 (pdf), banning vaccine mandates and “so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports,” saying it “would create two classes of citizens based on vaccination.”

On May 3, 2021, six months before Stamoulis mailed his letters, DeSantis issued Executive Order 21-101 (pdf), which suspended all local COVID-19 restrictions and mandates on individuals and businesses, and further stated that “no county or municipality may renew or enact an emergency order or ordinance, using a local state of emergency … that imposes restrictions or mandates upon businesses or individuals due to the COVID-19 emergency.”

The order was effective immediately. The same day, DeSantis signed Executive Order 21-102 (pdf) suspending all remaining states of emergency effective July 1, 2021, four months before Stamoulis mailed his letters.

Due to immediate backlash, Stamoulis rescinded this vaccine mandate policy.

Pandemic Procedures

But after his failure to force a vaccine mandate on local poll workers, Stamoulis has released a new set of polling room procedures that would prohibit voters from entering any one of their three early voting locations.

According to Page 8 of Stamoulis’s “Polling Location Pandemic Procedures 2022” manual, Stamoulis wants poll deputies to take the temperature of every voter—including accompanying children or any assistors they bring to help mark and cast their ballots—who wants to cast a ballot during Charlotte County’s 15-day early voting period.

Under the heading, “CHANGES DURING COVID,” the new manual says “each location would be provided with a thermometer,” and “Deputies stationed at the entry to the polling location” will be responsible for that thermometer throughout the day.” Deputies will also “instruct that “EVERYONE WISHING TO ENTER A POLLING LOCATION IS TO HAVE HIS OR HER TEMP CHECKED (kids, assistors, poll watchers, etc.).”

If anyone registers a temperature of 100 degrees or more, “claims to be uncomfortable entering the location” or “claims to feel ill and does not want to enter the polling location” or “refuses to have their temp taken,” a costly, resource and time-consuming procedure ensues.

‘Alternate Voting’ Procedures

When any of the aforementioned situations take place, the “Alternate Voting” procedures are to be implemented.

The deputy must stop attending to their other outside duties—which include ensuring that only voters and qualified individuals are admitted into the polling room, maintaining the peace outside, and ensuring enforcement of the 150 feet “No Solicitation Zone”—in order to find the clerk, at which time the clerk must also stop performing their many inside duties, such as assisting voters casting a provisional ballot, providing assistance to the EViD Operator/Inspector who operates the electronic poll book when they are unable to locate a voter in the registry, ensuring the maintenance of adequate supplies, filling in for poll workers who are on breaks, and managing the overall voting process within the polling location.

Under the heading, “DEPUTY AND CLERK RESPONSIBILITIES,” it describes how the clerk must next go outside and approach the voter, “wearing a mask and single use gloves.” Then, the Clerk is to “explain the new Alternate Voting process” and “request the voter’s photo/signature identification and inform the voter they will be right back.” The clerk must then go back inside and interrupt the check-in procedure of a voter—who already went through the temperature screening process—in order to have the EViD Operator/Inspector force the machine to issue a voting pass, as the voter has not yet provided a signature for verification purposes.

One Voter, Three Poll Workers

Now the clerk goes back outside, with the voter’s ID, Voting Pass, Signature Slip, ballot, and secrecy sleeve. After having the voter sign the Signature Slip, the clerk then compares the signature with the signature on the voter’s ID. If all is well, the voter is directed to a voting booth that has been set up outside, in the Florida summer heat, to mark their ballot.

The deputy must now juggle their normal duties with monitoring the voter to make sure they don’t leave with the ballot and/or that they aren’t approached by a third person. Once the voter has completed their ballot, they are told they must take their ballot to the deputy, who is not permitted to touch the ballot, so the deputy can go inside to get the clerk, who must again stop what they were doing inside in order to go back outside to get the voter’s ballot.

Now the clerk must explain to the voter that they are going to take their ballot away from them and go inside the polling room where they will cast the voter’s ballot into the tabulator. In the meantime, a third poll worker, the assistant clerk, must also stop their inside duties, which consisted of covering for the clerk in their absence, in order to document the procedure for the voter with a “recording device,” leaving no one left to assist voters and other poll workers with ballot casting and check in issues. “The Assistant Clerk records the ballot going from the voter to insertion into the DS200,” the manual describes. Then the clerk “returns to show the voter the video that their ballot was tabulated.”

“Once the voter sees the video it is deleted (in front of the voter).”

Florida Election Laws

According to Fla. Stat. § 102.031, “No photography is permitted in the polling room or early voting area.” Florida’s Voter’s Bill of Rights states that an elector has the right to “Vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person.”

According to Fla. Stat. § 104.20, “Any elector who, except as provided by law, allows his or her ballot to be seen by any person; takes or removes, or attempts to take or remove, any ballot from the polling place before the close of the polls; places any mark on his or her ballot by which it may be identified; endeavors to induce any elector to show how he or she voted; aids or attempts to aid any elector unlawfully; or prints or procures to be printed, or has in his or her possession, any copies of any ballot prepared to be voted is guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree.”

Forcing a voter to have possession of their ballot outside of the polling location, where anyone could walk up and see it, subjects the voter to committing a third-degree felony.

Stamoulis Responds

When asked by The Epoch Times about his policies and procedures that appear to violate at least three executive orders and several statutes in Florida’s election laws, Stamoulis said in an email: “Regarding the sanitizing and social distancing issues, please see Governor Ron DeSantis’ Executive Order cited, in part, below.” He then pasted the following:

STATE OF FLORIDA
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER 20-149
Section 3.  Election Administration Coordination A.  Each Supervisor of Elections shall ensure proper social distancing and cleaning procedures are implemented for Early Voting and Election Day, insofar as is practicable.  This may include, but is not limited to, spacing out voting stations, the use of physical barriers for poll workers interacting with voters, providing personal protective equipment to poll workers and making hand sanitizer and other cleaning products readily available.

DeSantis signed Executive Order 20-149 (pdf) on June 17, 2020. The three aforementioned Executive Orders superseded that one.

“Masks are optional but not required of voters or poll workers in Florida,” Stamoulis said further.

However, his manual clearly states on Page 6, under the heading, “WHAT WE EXPECT OUR VOTERS TO DO FOR OUR COMMUNITY,” that voters are expected to “Arrive with sanitized hands and a face mask.” Under the heading “WHAT WE WILL DO FOR YOU,” it says poll workers will “Provide masks for those without.”

“We are awaiting a ruling on the temperature issue,” Stamoulis added.

However, on the last page of his manual, Stamoulis insists “THE SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS IS THE FINAL AUTHORITY WHEN IT COMES TO DECISIONS SURROUNDING COVID IN OUR OFFICES AND POLLING LOCATIONS.”

“In response to me being the final authority on COVID issues, please be advised that I follow the law in all matters, including Executive Orders, no exceptions,” Stamoulis insisted.

Rebuttal from DeSantis Office

The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis disagrees.

“Florida law is the final authority when it comes to elections in the state,” DeSantis’s Executive Press Secretary Christina Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “Supervisors of Elections must follow state law. If a supervisor is found to be in violation of the law, the governor has the authority to suspend that person from office.”

Under state law, Pushaw asserted that Floridians cannot be required to wear a mask by any government official or entity, which means that a mask mandate for voting would not be permissible.

“Beyond the mask issue, this document as a whole is concerning because it could scare citizens into thinking they must comply or simply not show up,” Pushaw explained. “In other words, this could be seen as voter suppression. It needs to be rectified to be clear to voters about their rights. We do not accept ‘COVID protocols’ that could suppress legal votes or prevent anyone from voting in person.”

Florida Department of State Weighs In

The Epoch Times also reached out to the Florida Department of State for comment.

“We were made aware of the document and reached out to Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) Stamoulis to discuss,” FLDOS Director of External Affairs, Mark R. Ard, told The Epoch Times. “After our conversation, Supervisor Stamoulis understands the concerns presented within the document in question and is revising his policy so that all voters in Charlotte County will [have] equal access to ballots and there are no restrictions on voting. We appreciate Supervisor Stamoulis for being very collaborative throughout the process as we continue to work together to ensure safe, transparent elections in Florida.”

The Epoch Times has asked for an update on how the policy has been revised, but has not heard back from either Stamoulis or Ard as of press time.

Questionable Equipment Security

During the course of the investigation, The Epoch Times also received another manual, which raises serious questions regarding election equipment security at “polling locations that do not have a secured/locked room to store equipment.” According to the “2022 Election Cycle” training manual for “Clerks and Assistant Clerks,” the Charlotte County SOE’s security procedure for storing EViDs and ballot tabulators at unsecured locations consists of laying a large tarp “flat on the floor,” placing the equipment on the tarp, pulling the tarp over the equipment and fitting the U-bar of a combination lock through grommeted holes.

While the manual indicates “there should be no holes to allow access” to the equipment inside the tarp, there is nothing to prevent anyone with a pair of scissors from cutting through the tarp to access the equipment. Should any of the seals be found broken, the equipment would have to be replaced. This is not a simple matter as there is a complicated procedure involved in staging an EViD for an election.

A meticulous and time-consuming Logic and Accuracy Testing procedure must also be performed with ballot tabulators, including the DS200 (pdf), used by Charlotte County, and the ritual must be witnessed and verified by a canvassing board. Considering the high cost of election equipment, odds are that there are limited spare ready-to-go ballot tabulators and EViDs sitting around in some other secure location ready for use when security measures at a polling location have failed.

‘Serious Concerns’

Pushaw said that given the Pandemic Procedures manual is already in the hands of poll workers, some of them are still going to believe that they must enforce the outlined rules.

“Our position is that these policies need to be revised to make clear that voters cannot be required to participate in COVID protocols in order to exercise their right to vote,” Pushaw asserted. “More broadly, no official anywhere in the state is permitted to enact policies that violate Florida law. To summarize, we have serious concerns about this document and this Supervisor’s approach to elections administration.”

Correction: The headline of this article has been updated to more accurately describe the election concerns.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Despite a mother of five’s desperate appeal to the University of Michigan (UM) hospital for a life-saving heart transplant, the state-run facility will not budge from its refusal to consider her for surgery until she is vaccinated against COVID-19.

The university hospital, which has deep ties to vaccine maker Pfizer, also denied 35-year-old Katie Shier’s application for a religious exemption.

In a recent, heart-wrenching email about her condition, Katie Shier describes how the pump she relies on to keep her heart beating has become engulfed in a bacteria that is no longer responding to the series of antibiotics she’s been prescribed by University of Michigan doctors.

As a result, Shier has been repeatedly hospitalized for blood infections. She and her husband Ron are worried it will eventually lead to sepsis, which can be fatal.

“It just feels like no one at UM cares what they are doing to us and to our kids,” Ron Shier told The Epoch Times.

Ron Shier, who works full-time as a mental health counselor, said his children, who range in age from 3 to 11, are constantly worried that mommy is “not coming home from the hospital.”

The University of Michigan (UM) has strong ties to Pfizer, dating back to at least 2008 when it purchased the pharmaceutical company’s giant Ann Arbor facility and all its content.

According to a 2008 press release from the university, the college quickly recruited 13 Pfizer scientists after taking over its facility with most of them still working for the state college today. Ten of them specifically were hired to staff the UM’s College of Pharmacy.

David Canter, senior associate vice president and executive director of UM’s North Campus Research Complex, ran Pfizer pharmaceutical research operation in Ann Arbor; and Scott Larsen, who received the Pfizer Achievement Award in 2007, today is a research professor of medicinal chemistry at the university.

Several executive-level Pfizer employees are also university alumni including Pfizer director Lynne Pauer and 2020 grad Sarah Kusisto, a senior manager at Pfizer’s Portage, Michigan, location.

Also, last year, Pfizer was among three companies that the university’s Tauber Institute for Global Operations chose to receive its annual longevity awards.

According to UM’s website the award is given “in recognition” to companies “for their commitment to operations education through their active participation in Tauber team projects.”

Pfizer also remains a major employer in Michigan, with its largest manufacturing plant located in Kalamazoo where it makes its prescription drug Paxlovid, a pill that the FDA approved last year for the treatment of COVID.

Katie Shier provided The Epoch Times with a notarized authorization to speak to UM about her case. The authorization was sent to the university’s transplant team, clinical ethics services, and CEO Marschall Runge with a request for comment about her case.

It was also sent to the eight-member Board of Regents, elected officials who govern the public hospital. None of them responded.

On July 29, Mary Masson, director of public relations at the university, released a one-line statement by email to The Epoch Times in response to Shier’s case, but refused to answer any questions, even refusing to provide The Epoch Times with her phone number.

“Michigan Medicine does not discuss pending litigation,” was the only response from the taxpayer-funded hospital.

The Epoch Times asked the hospital for a copy of its COVID vaccine mandate policy, if it applied to transplant patients only, and under what circumstance does it grant or consider granting a religious exemption from it.

The Epoch Times never inquired about any pending litigation.

Last month, the Pacific Justice Institute did file a court complaint on behalf of Shier and another university transplant patient against the state college’s Board of Regents seeking declaratory relief from its transplant center’s COVID vaccine policy and its refusal to consider both Shier and the other patient’s request for a religious exemption from it.

The other patient, who is in need of a kidney transplant is not nearly as critical as Shier.

Both were on the list for a transplant but were removed after the university adopted a new policy that the COVID vaccine would be required in order to stay on the list.

The complaint charges that regents “have violated their duty of care to the patients by imposing arbitrary and capricious dictates and effectively giving patients a choice to die or to submit to government-inspired diktats that are not for a legitimate medical purpose.”

Katie Shier told The Epoch Times she is strongly opposed to the vaccine because she believes it is dangerous and will lead to cause her already frail heart, which is functioning at only 7 percent of its full capacity, to fail.

She said she believes their concerns are validated by the growing number of people who have reported experiencing heart problems after getting a COVID injection.

“It’s just an evil experiment on humanity,”  said Shier, ” and I don’t want to be part of it.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Over the past week the entire mainstream media complex has launched an immense attack on my character, Gab, and Christianity itself–calling it a “toxic religion.” Echoing this hateful sentiment Jonathan Greenblatt–head of the Jewish Nationalist organization the ADL–called me “one of the most toxic people in public life right now” on national television. It’s interesting that his organization explicitly endorses, promotes, and defends Zionism, or Jewish Nationalism, while attacking me and others for promoting Christian Nationalism. Do as I say, not as I do. Unfortunately for Jonathan, Christians don’t answer to Jewish Nationalist organizations like the ADL and Godless media outlets. We answer to Jesus Christ. 

VIDEO: GAB Response to ADL

Discussion starts at 2 minutes 30 seconds in.

Naturally I responded to this media onslaught and defended the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well as my personal character. I said we are forming a Christian Nationalist movement and in order to be in any position of influence or leadership in the movement you must be a Christian. I said we are no longer going to answer to people who do not share our values and represent a diametrically different worldview that only 2% of the country holds. We are the 70%+ super majority in this country and we are going to do everything we can to take dominion and disciple this nation for the glory of Jesus Christ our King. 

In typical fashion the media machine has taken short clips from my 30-45 minute long show and twisted them into something that they are not to fit their narrative. What are they so afraid of? Certainly not me. The answer is Jesus Christ and the awakening of hundreds of millions of Christians across this country and around the world. As I have said in my previous articles and videos they have pushed us too far by locking down our churches, masking our children, and forcing us to inject a foreign substance in our bodies in order to keep our jobs. We are no longer being silent. The silent majority is getting loud and speaking the Truth of God’s Word and the Biblical worldview boldly. The Jonathan Greenblatts of the world are not going to tell us how to live our lives, run our businesses, or practive our faith ever again. 

What I hope to show to the millions of you who will read this is that if you double down and do not bend the knee when the mainstream media and our enemies call you a silly name, you win. That’s it. That’s the secret to surviving and thriving against their attacks. The weapons forged against you will not prevail if you stand strong in Truth. These people have great power, but we serve an all powerful God. We need to remember that and start acting like it. 

We need your help to fight back against this attack. For almost six years now Gab has been fully funded and kept online from support by people like you. We can’t do this without you. We ask for your prayers. We ask that you let your friends and family know about Gab to help us grow our community which has grown exclusively through word-of-mouth advertising since 2016.

Finally we ask that you prayerfully consider supporting us by upgrading to GabPRO, purchasing some merchandise from our shop, or running ads on Gab for your business to reach an audience of people who share your values. We don’t have big corporate investors or special interests funding this platform. It’s the grassroots support from people like you that keeps Gab online and we need your support now more than ever. 

To God Be The Glory,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is King of Kings

Published in Christian Nationalism

SHE’S THE HEAD OF U.S. GOVERNMENT BIOETHICS.

Anthony Fauci’s wife – who is also head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center – authored a paper detailing how to enroll children in COVID-19 vaccine trials.

The study – “Enrolling Minors in COVID-19 Vaccine Trials” – was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center and was published in the journal Pediatrics. Christine Grady, wife to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, and four co-authors collaborated on the paper to “propose recommendations for when and how to enroll minors in vaccine trials for the coronavirus disease 2019.”

“The costs that delay poses to children, their families, and society provide strong reasons to consider enrolling minors in vaccine trials for COVID-19 before safety and efficacy have been established in adults,” claimed Grady in the paper.

The paper proceeds to assess the benefits and drawbacks surrounding the timing of enrolling children in COVID-19 vaccine trials along with the ideal selection criteria for participants.

“A different way to address this concern is to enroll minors after there are sufficient safety data in adults, but before there is evidence of efficacy. To pursue this strategy, enrollment of minors should begin with those who are most similar to the adults from whom safety data were collected,” explains researchers.

The paper was published in March of 2021, is roughly one year before public health officials would authorize and urge the vaccination of children against COVID-19.

The unearthed paper comes amidst controversy over Fauci’s decision to fund research on “killer” bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Additionally, Grady’s prominent role in supervising the ethics of NIH research and policy appear to present a conflict of interest given her husband’s role in shaping America’s COVID-19 response and vaccination guidelines.

MUST READ: 40% of Women With The COVID Vaccine Have Reported Significant Effects on their Periods.

It also follows documents revealing Fauci’s frantically increasing investments and net worth amidst COVID-19.

BUT REMEMBER: IT’S ALL A “CONSPIRACY THEORY,” ACCORDING TO THE BIG PHARMA SALESPEOPLE LIKE FAUCI.

Nearly half of women receiving a COVID-19 vaccine reported heavier menstrual bleeding, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The figures come from a survey of over 35,000 women who were fully vaccinated, with the majority of the cohort receiving a Pfizer jab followed by Moderna.

“In this sample, 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles bled more heavily than usual, while 44% reported no change after being vaccinated,” summarized researchers, which counted funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the study.

“Respondents reported noticing changes to their period 1 to 7 days after vaccines (dose 1: 31.4%; dose 2: 37.0%), 8 to 14 days after vaccines (dose 1: 25.9%; dose 2: 23.6%), or more than 14 days after receiving their vaccines (dose 1: 29.9%; dose 2: 26.8%), with the rest of respondents reporting that they were menstruating when they received the vaccine (dose 1: 12.7%; dose 2: 12.5%),” explained the study.

In sum, 42.1 percent of women reported experiencing a heavier menstrual flow after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, 14.3 percent reported a mix of lighter or no change, and 43.6 percent reported no change in flow.

The new study, “Investigating Trends in Those who Experience Menstrual Bleeding Changes After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination,” was published in the journal Science Advances. Another study funded by the NIH found that COVID-19 vaccines had the potential to lengthen women’s menstrual cycles, as well.

The side effects of the “vaccines” – which have been dismissed by mainstream media outlets and social media fact-checkers as untrue – follows lobbying efforts on behalf of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna reaching record-high levels of spending and overall personnel hired. The massive lobbying campaigns are likely responsible for nationwide vaccine mandates, which have subsequently been struck down by district courts.

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

Similarly, posing another conflict of interest, the chairman and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Thomson Reuters Foundation – James C. Smith – is a top investor and board member for pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.

At the time of publication, Reuters has not covered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study.

The outlet, however, has run stories titled “Vaccines not linked to menstrual changes; COVID, flu shots can go together” and “No link found between menstrual changes and COVID vaccines.”

The study also follows researchers concluding that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine resulted in a sustained loss in sperm count and could pose a risk to heart health, especially among young men, despite mockery by mainstream media outlets over the concerns.

A Republican lawmaker is warning that the National Guard’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will possibly cripple the military reserve component weeks after Army officials announced that some 60,000 troops won’t be allowed to participate in their duties if they aren’t vaccinated.

“June 30 marked Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s arbitrary deadline for members of the National Guard and Reserves to receive the COVID-19 vaccine despite Congress’ mandate that the Department of Defense establish uniform procedures under which service members can be exempted,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a retired Army Green Beret, wrote for Fox News on July 25, saying that if the mandate is ultimately enforced, the guard “will be crippled” due to a lack of staffing.

“To date, approximately 60,000 National Guard and Reserves remain unvaccinated and the pending decision from the Biden administration could punish the very service members who have been on the front lines of fighting this pandemic.”

Combined with poor recruitment efforts, “woke indoctrination,” and mandates, Waltz said that the U.S. military is “being depleted” in the midst of the Chinese regime’s military buildup and the Russia–Ukraine conflict. At the same time, the United States is soon to enter both its hurricane season, which generally starts in August, and its wildfire season, the congressman said.

“Two things have changed since the mandate was implemented. First, the vaccine has shown to not stop the spread but rather reduce symptoms,” Waltz wrote. “Second, tens of thousands of National Guard and reservists have expressed serious reservations about the emergency development of the vaccine.”

He added that “many of these service members have already been exposed to COVID-19 and last year’s defense bill specifically asks the department to consider whether previous exposures induce sustained antibody protection, which may produce similar levels of immunity as the vaccine.”

Earlier this month, the Army confirmed that 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers who didn’t get the vaccine will be blocked from their duties.

“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement.

A study published in JAMA found that at least 22 service members have suffered from serious vaccine-related side effects, including heart inflammation. Few service members, meanwhile, have been given religious exemptions, with only 20 being approved in the Army and six National Guard soldiers having their religious exemptions approved.

Several Republican governors have vowed not to remove Guard members who remain unvaccinated. Last year, the governors of Wyoming, Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, and Nebraska wrote in a letter to the Pentagon that the troops don’t need to follow federal military policy.

Pentagon officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Army announced on July 21 that it has approved just 20 permanent religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine amid thousands of requests.

Out of the 8,000 applications for a permanent religious exemption, a total of 1,465 have been reviewed by the Army. Just 20 have been approved—an approval rate of about 1.37 percent.

All those who had their applications approved were in the active Army. None from the Army National Guard or Army Reserve have received an exemption.

That leaves 6,535 applications for a permanent religious exemption yet to be reviewed by the service.

Meanwhile, the Army has reviewed 1,045 permanent medical exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine, out of 1,100 requests. It has approved just 34 of the requests, which is an approval rate of about 3.25 percent.

“Army officials review each request on an individual basis to determine whether an exemption is appropriate,” the Army stated. “Medical requests are reviewed primarily by healthcare providers, while religious accommodation requests include interviews with the Soldier’s chaplain, recommendations from the chain of command, as well as a public health and a legal review.

“All Soldiers who refuse the order to be vaccinated without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to certain adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to continued service, and official reprimands.

“Soldiers who continue to refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption may also be subject to additional adverse administrative action, including separation.”

Ninety-six percent of the active Army, 88 percent of the Army National Guard, and 90 percent of the Army Reserve are fully vaccinated, according to the military branch’s statistics.

Over 17,000 COVID-19 Vaccine Refusals

More than 17,000 Army troops have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, data indicated. Most of the refusals come from the Army National Guard, where more than 10,700 soldiers have refused to be vaccinated.

Out of 1,425 active Army members who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, 1,379 have been separated; no troops in the Army National Guard or Army Reserve have been separated.

Since July 1, under orders of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, members of the Army National Guard or Army Reserve who have refused the vaccine and don’t have a valid exemption “may not participate in federally funded drills, training, and other duty nor receive payment or retirement credit,” the Army said.

While the Army’s vaccine mandate continues to be in force, the U.S. Air Force has been temporarily blocked from enforcing its vaccine mandate after a federal district court in Ohio issued a temporary restraining order in mid-July. The order prevents Air Force authorities from disciplining any service members who are unvaccinated after having their religious exemption applications denied.

Plaintiffs in the case had contended that the class action suit would include more than 12,000 airmen.

According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, more than 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests, while only 104 have been approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the branch.

Army Facing Personnel Shortfalls

The figures point to a low rate of permanent COVID-19 vaccine exemption approvals from the Army at a time when the service branch forecasts it will have significantly fewer troops than originally planned by the end of fiscal 2023.Members of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment deploy to Germany in Savannah, Ga., on March 2, 2022. (Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

Army Gen. Joseph Martin, vice chief of staff for the Army, told a House military personnel panel on July 19 that the projection for the estimated total number of troops in the force by the end of the 2022 fiscal year, on Sept. 30, is 466,400—a drop of 6,600 from the original target of 473,000.

He also said that the estimated number of troops for the end of 2023 fiscal year is 445,000 to 452,000, which is 24,000 to 31,000 troops less than the original target of 476,000.

“Right now, what we’re experiencing—the ‘why’ of what we think is going on right now—is we’ve got unprecedented challenges with both a post-COVID-19 environment and labor market, but also private competition with private companies that have changed their incentives over time,” Martin said.

He said the Army can manage to handle personnel shortfalls in the short term, but it could have an impact on readiness if it persists.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of the House Judiciary and Armed Services committees, took to Twitter on July 19 to advocate for the end of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the military, noting the drastic projected reductions in strength for the Army.

“Army Reserve and Army National Guard reductions will be even worse. We must depoliticize the military and end the vaccine mandate,” he said on Twitter.

Johnson in late June accused the Biden administration of having destroyed the Army’s readiness “by creating an unnecessary recruiting and retention shortfall, and trying to make up the difference by lowering other crucial education and fitness standards.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all students 12 and older in Washington, D.C. violates federal law, a legal expert says.

“There is no FDA-approved COVID shot available and therefore, individuals have a right under the emergency use authorization to refuse these shots,” Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, told The Epoch Times.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted emergency authorization to the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccines.

Under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, people who go to receive a product that has received emergency authorization must be informed that some benefits and risks “are unknown” and of “the option to accept or refuse administration of the product.”

“It is your choice to receive or not receive [the vaccine]. Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care,” FDA fact sheets provided to people getting a shot state.

Staver’s group may challenge the District of Columbia vaccine mandate.

Other interpretations of the law do exist. The U.S. Department of Justice, for instance, has said that the section “concerns only the provision of information to potential vaccine recipients and does not prohibit public or private entities from imposing vaccination requirements for a vaccine that is subject to an emergency use authorization.”

Mandate and Availability

Students in Washington aged 12 and older must already get a COVID-19 vaccine in order to be on school sports teams. The D.C. City Council passed a law in 2021 to extend the mandate to attending school at all.

“We need everyone to get vaccinated to stop the spread and protect vulnerable members of our community,” Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George, a Democrat, said during a hearing on the bill.

The law says that students must “receive a vaccination that is fully approved in the United States to prevent against COVID-19.” But it also states that an approved vaccine needs to be “available” to students for the law to take effect.

The FDA has approved Pfizer’s vaccine for children as young as 12. But vials produced after the approval are marked Comirnaty, which became the vaccine’s trade name. And a survey of vaccine providers in the city indicated there are no vials of Comirnaty available.

“Unfortunately we do not,” West End Pediatrics, one of the providers, told The Epoch Times in an email when asked if they were administering Comirnaty.

Four other providers could not confirm having Comirnaty vials, while nine others did not pick up the phone or respond to requests for comment.

As recently as February, no states could confirm receipt of Comirnaty vials.

Education Officials

Citing the city law, the district’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education said on July 19 that students aged 12 and older must get a COVID-19 vaccine to attend school in the fall, unless they are granted a medical or religious exemption.

The deadline is the start of the school year.

“We want to make sure that all of our students have everything they need for a healthy start to the school year,” State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant said in a statement. “This means making sure children see their primary medical provider for a well-child visit and receive all needed immunizations.”

The office noted that the FDA has approved Pfizer’s shot for the age group but did not mention whether the vials produced after FDA approval were available.

Fred Lewis, a spokesman for the agency, declined to answer questions.

“Please reach out to the DC Department of Health for this information. DC Health is better able to respond to questions on vaccine availability in the District,” Lewis told The Epoch Times in an email.

A spokesman for the department of health did not respond to inquiries.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Retired Lt. Col. Sandy Miarecki, who served over 20 years in the Air Force as a pilot, was given a notice of proposed removal from her position as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) on July 14 for refusing COVID-19 vaccination and testing.

At the beginning of the school term, in January 2022, she was first suspended from teaching for the same reason.

Miarecki was vaccine injured in 1992 during her military service. She was not completely disabled from the injury, and she gave credit to her research on natural medicine, saying it allowed her to be functional.

When the COVID vaccines were mandated in the military, she thought the imposition would violate U.S. law as well as the Nuremberg Code.

“Before the [COVID vaccine] shots mandates came down, I warned my chain of command that they would be breaking federal law if they forced any EUA shots on anyone,” Miarecki told The Epoch Times, referring to the vaccines allowed under emergency use authorization.

Similar to Miarecki, USAFA civilian Olympic-calibre coach Dana Lyon believes that she was terminated due to rejecting COVID vaccination, according to The Gazette.

“When the mandates came down—illegally from SecDef, who has zero authority to mandate anything like this, per the USC—all subsequent people who forced the injections on people or lose their jobs or get kicked out of Academy were guilty of coercion under 21 US Code, Section 360bbb-3 and Nuremberg code,” Miarecki added.

The Nuremberg Code is a set of internationally accepted standards to which doctors have to conform when experimenting on humans. It was established by the war crime tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II.

“Even to this day, neither Pfizer’s Comirnaty (the only FDA approved shots until Jan 2021) nor SpikeVax by Moderna (started in Jan 2021) have EVER been available in the US. Bottom line: all shots are still only EUA, and coercion to take them or lose your job or Academy appointment is a crime against humanity and punishable by death through international tribunals,” Miarecki said.

She says that some of her students told her that they didn’t want the shots, and she told them about the regulations for religious and medical exemptions.

“Since their chain of command denied them due process and withheld this information, the students (and faculty, and civilians) asked me for help,” Miarecki said.

“I helped them write exemption letters and connected them with my legal team when they wanted to talk to a lawyer. That was the first problem, that I was ‘counseling and mentoring students on avoiding the mandates,’” she noted.

Miarecki, who was given the Airman’s Medal for heroism in 1992 for a river rescue, says that she personally knows “three civilian instructors flying under the radar because they will do the EUA testing, and four military instructors doing the same.”

Miarecki told The Epoch Times that she filed formal DoD/IG complaints in Jan 2022, and in March 2022 the IG (Inspector General) informed her that part of the complaint should be handled by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), so she filed new complaints to the OSC but hasn’t heard back from them so far.

“I would guess that I will not receive a favorable outcome, which should arrive any day now,” she said.

Around the same time she was suspended, a federal district court in Ohio temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on thousands of U.S. Air Force service members who remain unvaccinated after having opposed the shot on religious grounds but have had their religious exemption applications denied.

The Air Force has been struggling with pilot shortages for years now.

Former Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein testified before Congress in 2017 about a shortage of aviators, writing in 2016 that the situation was a “quiet crisis.”

A DoD report (pdf) from 2019 noted that by the end of FY 2018, the Air Force was “short 2,000 pilots out of a total inventory of 18,400.”

“I know of personally more than 700 pilots who are actively unvaccinated and have filed a religious accommodation or have filed for a medical exemption or something of the sort,” USAF pilot Lt. John Bowes told The Epoch Times on June 24.

About this, Miarecki said: “I can guarantee that 700 is a low number overall.”

“We’ll be holding our breath to hear if we get a preliminary injunction, but this fight is far from over. Most pilots are still grounded, including myself, and we’ll see how that changes with the coming news,” Bowes told The Epoch Times on July 19.

The Epoch Times reached out to USAF for comment.

Beth Brelje and Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

America’s current education system is antiquated, wasteful, and “bent on saving and serving itself,” argues former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

She is one of the very few department heads to have advocated for the abolition of the agency she ran. Education gaps have only widened since the establishment of the federal Department of Education under President Jimmy Carter, she says.

Two years of remote learning have now put children months, if not years behind during this pandemic. “You couple the learning losses with the mental health challenges, and you have a disaster looming,” she says.

DeVos is the author of the new book, “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child.” Tonight, she breaks down creative new approaches to schooling being adopted in states like Florida and Arizona that could soon change the game for millions of children across America.

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Below is a rush transcript of this American Thought Leaders episode from Jul 21, 2022. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Jan Jekielek:

Betsy DeVos, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Ms. Betsy DeVos:

Thank you, Jan. It’s great to be with you.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s been several years since we spoke last. You were the Secretary of Education at the time and you were getting, I think it’s an understatement to say a ton of flack for just about anything that you were trying to do. And now, you’ve written about it in your book. What is it like to be outside of government now? How has your life changed?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I’ve been busy writing this book, which is about how we actually fix American education. And it’s been very, I would say, energizing and cathartic at the same time. And I’m continuing to advocate for kids and for their family’s ability to direct their own child’s education as I had for 30 years before I went to Washington.

So in that regard, not much has changed. I just am able to do it now with a different perspective and a different set of experiences. And I’m working with governors and state legislators and some of our federal elected officials as well to really promote and advance policies that are going to empower families to do just that.

Mr. Jekielek:

So tell me about this different perspective. What is it that you, what were the big lessons of being in an administration?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, it only confirmed further for me what I knew before even going there. And that is the federal government does not do education well. It is not involved in education in a good and positive and constructive way. It is really the purview of the family and the most local units of government that really have to be able to take charge of and control for the kids’ education.

And we’re seeing this happen now in more meaningful ways across the country with Arizona being the most recent state, the first state to enact a universal education freedom policy, which is going to change the life trajectories for thousands of kids in that state. I’m very excited about that. I’m also excited about how that’s going to continue to build momentum in other states for the policy changes necessary to do that same thing.

Mr. Jekielek:

And so it’s interesting to me, because you are the head of a large federal department. Of course, education is left to the states, but there’s been all sorts of federal mechanisms created to be able to influence the states with time, right?

Ms. DeVos:

Yes. Well, people often don’t realize the fact that only 8% or 9% of funding for K-12 education comes from the federal government and yet the regulations and all of the policies that directly impact state and local education are far beyond that 8% or 9%. And so there are a lot of strings attached to the money that government sends and funds for K-12 education.

I contend that that money is better spent when directed by families from the state level as well. And I use the metaphor of a backpack. Kids go to school every day with the stuff they need for the day. Metaphorically, we should attach the funds that are already being spent on that child to that child’s backpack, for that family to figure out, is there assigned school working for them? If not, let’s figure out where is going to work.

And K-12 education is the least disrupted industry in our country. And it is an industry. We spend $750 billion a year on K-12 education, and we continue to get poorer and worse results in spite of the fact of spending more and more and more money. If we would empower families with those resources to make those buying decisions, we will get the creativity and ingenuity and entrepreneurship we need in K-12 learning experiences that we haven’t had to date with a 175-year-old industrial model approach.

Mr. Jekielek:

What place is there, if any, for a federal department of education? I’ve had someone on the show very recently who simply said, “Do away with it all.”

Ms. DeVos:

I concur with that. I think the department should not exist. It was a payoff to the teachers unions that Jimmy Carter made in 1979 or ’76 when he was running for election. And it was actually affected or implemented in 1979. We have since then spent over $1 trillion at the federal level alone with the express goal of closing the achievement gaps. Not only have those gaps not narrowed one little bit, by most measures they’ve actually widened.

And so there is no compelling reason for having a federal department of education. There are a couple of laws that we need to make sure are followed, protecting civil rights and making sure children with disabilities have the kinds of supports they need. But those don’t need to exist in a federal department. They can exist in another already established department and be overseen very well in those places. The federal department of education does not add any value to kids’ educations.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re perhaps the first department head I’m aware of who’s advocating for the abolition of the department that they headed.

Ms. DeVos:

I did while I was there. I said, I would be very happy to work myself out of a job. And in fact, the last two budgets that we presented to Congress actually sought to block grant all of the funds to the states and local districts. Congress didn’t take it up seriously to even debate it. I hope they do.

I think it’s a very worthy discussion, particularly with how we’ve seen the system act and respond this last two years when families have had a front row seat to see firsthand the failings of the system.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to talk about this Arizona law that you mentioned earlier. It’s obviously a major development. Before we go there, I just want to touch a little bit on this past administration. You actually quit following January 6th. You said that President Trump had crossed the red line. I want to give you a chance just to kind of say your piece, like what exactly happened so people understand what your position was very clearly before we continue.

Ms. DeVos:

Well, to put it a little more in context, following the election in November, during the rest of November and December when there was debate happening around a second COVID relief package, there was a very real opportunity to get a school choice, education freedom provision included in that bill. But The White House was not focused on doing those kinds of things and advocating for that kind of policy.

And so what could have been wasn’t, and my role, my job, focusing on doing the right things and everything we could for students, I’d pretty much come to the end of what we could possibly accomplish. And on January 6th, when I saw what was happening and I didn’t hear the president say the things that he could have or should have said, at least what I felt, to put an end to what was happening.

And when he turned his back on his vice president, it was kind of a line in the sand for me. I also felt we should have been taking victory laps about all of the accomplishments of the administration, of which there were so many. And instead we were focused on this. And so I’m always a forward looking person. That’s what I continue to do. And that’s what I think we need to do.

Look ahead. Let’s learn from what we did in the past, but let’s keep moving forward and doing the right thing for, in my case, the right thing for kids and more broadly the right thing for Americans.

Mr. Jekielek:

So again, you started talking about this Arizona law. A number of people are saying this is groundbreaking. There’s been nothing like this before. So, tell me a bit about this law. Do you see this as the future for the American child and where should it go from here?

Ms. DeVos:

Yeah, so the Education Savings Account is what Arizona just passed and Governor Ducey signed into law. That means that for all 1.1 million students in Arizona, if their families decide that the school to which they’re assigned is not working for them, they can take 90% of what the state would spend on that child and use it to buy that child’s education.

They could use it to go to a different school, one that requires tuition, a faith-based school or another private school of some sort. Or they could use it to customize their child’s education and maybe buy a couple of classes at one place, maybe buy a virtual class, maybe a couple of classes at a charter school, let’s say. Any combination of those things, or perhaps some things that haven’t yet even been developed.

In Arizona during the lockdowns, there were many families, many of them in the urban areas that started to band together in small cadres or consortiums of families and basically start up what I would refer to as a 21st century one-room schoolhouse with multi-age kids. They would hire a teacher that was looking for a different experience. And for them, if that’s working, they need to have the opportunity to continue to pursue that kind of experience for their children.

And like I said, the system has been so one size fits all for 175 years. We haven’t really wrapped our heads around what education in the K-12 years could really look like for kids, because we haven’t had the kind of creativity that we’ve seen in every other industry. This in Arizona, and I think there will be other states that will soon follow, we’re going to see that creativity really fostered and growing in ways that we can’t predict today.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re just making me think of something bizarre that I heard fairly recently. Basically, in a school where all the teachers were not in school. This is in New York, basically. One of the moms is describing this situation. The parents banded together and created one of these schoolhouses in that same school. And they said, how bizarre an experience was that? The teachers couldn’t come and actually, some of these teachers were somehow involved in the creation of this as well.

So on the one hand, the actual system wasn’t really functioning except perhaps virtually, although, certainly not at a hundred percent. And on the other hand, there were people creating these sorts of things. In some cases, even employing people that were involved in the educational system in the first place. What do you make of this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I think it’s just one example of people finding solutions to problems. And I’ve used the example recently of a small school that I’m familiar with in West Michigan. I live in Michigan. It’s cold in the winter in Michigan. And yet there’s this small school where the kids are outside all day, all year long and they’re learning outside and they choose to do this. It is an outdoor school by design. And the teachers who are there are choosing to be there.

And I use it as one small example of thinking about solutions that we need to be much more open to because we know kids learn differently. They have different needs. And parents again have had front row seats to that in the last couple of years. And they’ve seen if distance learning was just the ticket for their child or if it was a disaster. They’ve seen in many cases, curriculums that they didn’t want their children to be exposed to.

And in other cases, they’ve seen curriculums that were very low in their expectations of what a child could do. And the parents may know that their child is capable of much more. They should have the opportunity to find the solution that’s going to work for that child to unlock that child’s full potential.

Mr. Jekielek:

For all intents and purposes, from everyone that I’ve heard, the distance learning didn’t work for most kids. It worked for a few kids that were very self-directed, but it didn’t work for most of them. And I guess, the other part of the previous question, these teachers weren’t in school. And so this is one of the reasons the parents had to start organizing. But what about the fact that these teachers weren’t in school in the first place? There’s a lot of contention about that, right?

Ms. DeVos:

And I think many of them had longed to be in school. They knew that their kids were falling further and further behind, but the system in many cases precluded them from doing that. There were a lot of teachers who I think have walked away from teaching because they’ve become so frustrated by the system.

And in an education freedom environment like Arizona is just creating, teachers are going to become the most valued part of that equation. And there are going to be opportunities for them like they’ve never seen before. Opportunities for them to be really creative themselves about solving problems for families and kids, or addressing needs.

And I’m just very excited about what it can mean for students in Arizona and more broadly, how it’s going to continue to drive change. Because we know that this is a very winning issue for families, for everyone … Like three out of four Americans say, “Money for students should follow the student to where that student goes to school.” You cannot deny the power behind that sentiment.

And when that actually happens at a scale to really make a difference, again, we’re going to see creativity and experiences for kids in their K-12 learning that we haven’t even begun to dream of because we’re just so stuck in this one-size-fits-all old model that is no longer working for way too many kids across the country.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re expecting because of this new legal structure around the funding for students, all sorts of new models will spring up. Teachers will be able to enter them, figure new things out. It’s sort of like this innovation land in education.

Ms. DeVos:

Absolutely, absolutely. And Florida is one state where they’re farthest along with the greatest number of students. They’re going to continue to expand those opportunities for kids. But we’re only at the tip of the iceberg as to what that could look like.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to touch a little bit more on this, the learning during the pandemic. I think you were urging schools to open very early on. And I think you even threatened to withhold funding as part of the urging, so to speak. How did that end up playing out in the end?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there was no ability to withhold funding at the federal level. But we did everything we could as an administration to urge and encourage schools systems, all of those involved to find the solutions, to get kids back to learning.

And again, we don’t even begin to understand the breadth and magnitude of the learning loss and the impact, the negative impact on kids, particularly the most vulnerable kids, low income kids, many kids from minority families. They’re the ones who have been most hurt by the system’s behavior during the pandemic. And you couple the learning losses with the mental health challenges, and you have a disaster looming.

Again, this is the ideal time for states to change their policy, to support funds going to the families for their children’s education, not to systems or buildings that are going to simply double down on doing the same thing, the same way over and over again, with more money and expect different results. It’s not going to happen. It hasn’t happened in the last 30 years. It’s not going to happen tomorrow because the system is bent on saving and serving itself.

Mr. Jekielek:

This is something that’s been really troubling me. This arguably a generational crisis caused by these two years for some students of almost a complete loss of education. I forget what the numbers are exactly. But some significant percentage of students is almost a complete loss in the prime of their lives, so to speak, or their childhood lives. One way to deal with it is to adopt new, innovative methods. But have you thought about how America and frankly, every country that’s faced this is actually going to deal with this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I believe you’re only going to deal with it when you interject creativity and entrepreneurship into it to solve problems because you are not going to get a different result by doing the same thing. And we’ve seen families actually start to address these issues because they did so out of necessity during the pandemic. We should support those and many more who are suddenly attracted to something different because they’ve seen the opportunities.

And the reality is that the traditional system or systems, they’re going to ultimately make changes because they’re going to see the competition. They’re going to have benchmarks to be able to compare themselves to, they’re going to make changes that are ultimately going to benefit kids too. But you have to allow for the families to make those choices and those decisions in order to foster that kind of change.

Mr. Jekielek:

Were there any policies that you instituted while you were a secretary of education that you felt just didn’t work out the way they were planned or things that you wish you had done differently now with a bit of hindsight, like looking at it?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I wish we had been able to get the federal tax credit to support education freedom passed and accomplished. Short of that, everything else we did was really focused on doing the right thing for students. And our work on Title IX on making sure that kids, when they are on campuses and they have an issue with sexual misconduct, that they have a framework that is fair, that is balanced, that is going to treat everyone fairly and with respect, and put the one who brings it forward in control of what happens next.

That and other issues on which we regulated or dealt, those are all … The current administration, the Biden administration is trying to undo all of those and turn us backward. This is a travesty for students, and we have to speak up. We have to push back against this effort to totally upend all of the progress that we made on behalf of students.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s kind of a fundamentally different view of how education should function, isn’t it? I mean, we saw this debate that saw Glenn Youngkin win in Virginia.

Ms. DeVos:

And Terry McAuliffe said that parents didn’t have any business in their knowing or directing what was going on in their child’s schools. I mean, he said he doubled down on it.

[Sound bite/Terry McAuliffe]:

So I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take their child, make their own decision.

[Sound bite/Speaker 4]:

You vetoed it, to our parents. You vetoed it.

[Sound bite/Terry McAuliffe]:

I stopped the bill that I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.

Mr. Jekielek:

Do you feel like that’s the MO here with undoing these pieces? Or what do you think the operating principle is here?

Ms. DeVos:

It’s a very, very left wing, far left of the Democrat party that is really driving these policies. And they are really turning back and doubling down on the disastrous policies that the Obama administration advanced. It would totally reverse everything that we did. It would also expand the definition of biological sex to gender identity, and basically anything you decide at any point in time. And it would decimate women’s sports, ultimately.

Mr. Jekielek:

So we also have this situation where there’s a lot of people that are advocating against school choice, who actually send their kids to private school. And this has always struck me as kind of a bizarre dichotomy.

Ms. DeVos:

Well, it’s a total hypocrisy. It’s for people who consistently fight against low income and middle income parents being able to make these decisions, they’re making those decisions themselves. And the fact that they blatantly do so without apology is, to me, I cannot fathom it or understand it. I don’t. These are the very kids they profess to want to help. And yet they consistently protect and defend a system that denies those families those opportunities.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to talk a little bit about higher education, about college. New York University right now, it’s like, a year is something like 80 grand, $80,000. It’s very difficult to access for the majority of Americans, or frankly, anybody. And so does that make sense?

Ms. DeVos:

No, it doesn’t make any sense. And the cost of higher education has continued to skyrocket and you saw it take off dramatically when the federal government, when they federalized student lending under the Obama administration, ostensibly to pay for Obamacare.

Not only has it not paid for anything to do with Obamacare, it has cost American taxpayers, most of whom never went to college or took out student loans, billions and billions of dollars. It is an unsustainable model. It is out of control. And now you have an administration that’s trying to wipe away all kinds of student debt.

You cannot do that. The president cannot do that. He cannot legally do that on his own. And you cannot say with a straight face that wiping out a bunch of student debt is a good policy, because it is not fair to the two out of three Americans who didn’t go to college, who will ultimately have to pay those bills. And it’s not fair to the students who took out student loans and have faithfully paid on them, or the families that save for their children to go to college, or for the veterans that served and earned their college funds.

It makes zero sense. And even if you said it did make sense and you wiped it away, where does that leave you? You haven’t solved anything. You’re going to have students next year taking out student loans and you’re going to have the same problem all over again.

So this is an issue that Congress and the administration have really got to deal with. It is unsustainable the way it has gone. There is no accountability on the part of higher ed institutions for what kind of quality or what kind of outcomes they are serving up. And there’s just no governor on what they can charge for a tuition.

Mr. Jekielek:

And for those of us uninitiated, what are the nuts and bolts of how that worked? How did that Obama policy basically create this trend?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there used to be private lenders that were backed by the federal government for certain students. And that worked. It worked for everyone, but the federal government took over all student lending in 2010.

And at that point … And so they send all the student loans directly to the schools and then the schools take out what they’re going to take out. And if there’s some left over, then the students get it. But very often the students don’t understand the implications of that. And they will go and spend it on things that are not related to education, which is not a good decision either.

And so the whole model is it’s not a logical or defensible model for the long term.

Mr. Jekielek:

But how did that actually balloon these? Just the university-

Ms. DeVos:

Well, because they’re on the government’s balance sheets as though they’re all good loans that are going to be fully repaid. And in many cases, they’re not. And in many cases, students have elected and Congress has continued to adopt all of these repayment plans that are based on a student’s income versus what they actually owe. And so they’re ultimately paying back pennies on the dollar from what they have borrowed and someone somewhere has to pay that.

Mr. Jekielek:

So I guess the big question here is, American education already prior to COVID was in rough shape. And we’ve talked a little bit about this already. And so now we have this prototype in Arizona, but we don’t know for sure how that’s going to play. What are you suggesting states do?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I’m suggesting all states adopt policies that are going to give parents and families the freedom to direct their children’s education, to choose where their child gets their K-12 education. And I’ve cited Arizona as the most recent state, the first state to do a universal model in approach.

But there have been many other states that have been very forward leaning on this. Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, there are a lot of states that have undertaken these programs. They’ve been at smaller scales. But Florida, as I said, is the most advanced in this, has the greatest number of students in programs, going to schools other than their assigned schools.

And interestingly, the districts where students are the highest number or percentage of students are going to schools other than their assigned school, the students who are remaining in their assigned schools are actually the outcomes, the achievement levels are actually improving.

I argue there has not been a definitive study on this, but there’s a couple of reasons, logical reasons. First, the kids have left if that school wasn’t working for them. They’re choosing to go somewhere else that is working. And the kids who are still staying there are the beneficiaries of leadership now making decisions and changes that they refuse to or wouldn’t make before, because they have other schools and other experiences now to benchmark themselves against.

And they’re actually improving opportunities for kids within the traditional schools as well. It’s a win-win for everyone. And the system that continues to defend the monopolistic government run system cannot fight back against these arguments because they are obvious and they are proliferating in many states where these policies have been adopted.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re very obviously against Critical Race Theory, Praxis, within education K to 12, I suspect any area. Now, what do you make of the fact that some of the most woke schools are actually the elite private schools? And so, we talk about school choice, the opportunity. Ostensibly, these are the schools that anybody would dream of coming, yet they’re the ones that have seemed to be hit by this ideology, perhaps the most. I mean, obviously not empirically, but that’s what people are telling me. So what do you think of this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, this is a problem all over the place, and that’s why I think parents need to be demanding and expecting radical transparency around curriculum. And while many of these elite private schools are experiencing the same type of phenomenon or families have finally found out about it, there are many other schools, faith-based schools in states across the country that have been doing a great job of preparing and educating students and giving families opportunities at much lower costs than these elite private schools.

Many people, when we talk about choosing a private school through an education freedom model, immediately go to these, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year schools. But there are many, many schools that educate children at a much lower cost, $10,000, in some cases less, and have a faith-based grounding that are doing a good job and families want to be able to make those choices as well.

And so these policies can support whatever families decide is going to be the right environment and the right setting for their kids.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re seeing this correlation between them being faith based and having the more classical education model, basically. That’s what you’re saying?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there are a lot of classical models that there’s classical charter schools, there’s classical Christian schools. And that focus, I think, have been reawakened and is going to continue to grow. The opportunity to access those opportunities is only going to happen for all families if they’re empowered to make those choices with policies that support that.

Mr. Jekielek:

Got it. Any final thoughts as we finish up?

Ms. DeVos:

Just again, thanks for the opportunity to be here. My book is really about how we fix American K-12 education and how we can make learning a great experience for every child. And I hope that folks will enjoy it.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Betsy DeVos, it’s such a pleasure to have you on.

Ms. DeVos:

Thanks so much, Jan.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A new study published this month revealed that COVID-19 mask mandates in schools have little to no effect.

“Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California–Davis said in a preprint study published on Research Square.

Researchers evaluated two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not during the 2021–2022 academic year.

“We observed no significant difference between student case rates while the districts had differing masking policies nor while they had the same mask policies,” they noted, adding that the “impact of school-based mask mandates on COVID-19 transmission in children is not fully established” amid mandates nationwide.

A number of other studies have found no link between mask mandates and a drop in COVID-19 cases.

In one study published in May, researchers found that COVID-19 mask and vaccine rules implemented by Cornell University had limited impact against the transmission of Omicron in late 2021 and 2022.

“Cornell’s experience shows that traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron. While vaccination protected against severe illness, it was not sufficient to prevent rapid spread, even when combined with other public health measures including widespread surveillance testing,” the paper said.

And researchers in Spain found that mask mandates for children in Spain weren’t linked to a lower rate of COVID-19 cases or transmission.

In an evaluation of schoolchildren, kids aged 6 and older in Catalonia were required to wear masks once school reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers said.

Researchers compared the incidence of COVID-19 in older children to younger children to try to determine whether the mandates had been effective in the aim of reducing transmission of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, in schools.

Their study identified a much lower case rate in preschool, where there were no mandates when compared to older groups who were required to wear masks. Five-year-olds, for instance, had an incidence of 3.1 percent, while 6-year-olds had an incidence of 3.5 percent.

Researchers in Toronto, Canada, and California replicated a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of counties in Arizona, published in The Lancet in May, that expanded the number of data points and extended the time period. They discovered that cases quickly declined in the weeks after the CDC cut off its study and decreased more quickly in the counties that didn’t have mask mandates.

“School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval,” the researchers said.

“It was known long before COVID-19 that face masks don’t do anything,” Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon, a toxicologist and allergy research specialist, told The Epoch Times in May.  “Many don’t know that blue medical masks aren’t filters. Your inspired and expired air moves in and out between the mask [and] your face. They are splashguards, that’s all.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Via this genetic engineering experiment, they’ve literally injected ‘seeds of demise’ into everyday people like a cockroach spray. Based on a 2011 estimate, he believes an extra 700 million will be killed from this bioweapon – and they’ve known about the risks since 2005.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines, but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population
• The spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a known biologic agent of concern
• Martin believes the number that may die may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their “decade of vaccination”
• The objective for the decade of vaccination was a population reduction of 15% globally, which would be about 700 million people dead; in the U.S., this may amount to between 75 million and 100 million people dying from COVID-19 shots
• When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested “there’s a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it’s between now and 2028”
• The projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028 suggests the “fewer people who are recipients of these programs, the better;” Martin believes this may be why people 65 and over were targeted with COVID-19 shots first

In this revealing interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com, David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population.¹

In March 2022, Martin filed a federal lawsuit against resident Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services alleging that COVID-19 shots turn the body into a biological weapons factory, manufacturing spike protein. Not only is the term “vaccination” misleading when referring to COVID-19 shots, it’s inaccurate since they are actually a form of gene therapy.²

“And we are not only not going to be sued for, you know, any libel or misinformation, we are actually holding people criminally accountable for their domestic terrorism, their crimes against humanity and the story of the coronavirus weaponization that goes back to 1998,” Martin says.³

SARS-CoV-2 Has Been in the Works for Decades

Martin has been in the business of tracking patent applications and approvals since 1998. His company, M-Cam International Innovation Risk Management, is the world’s largest underwriter of intangible assets used in finance in 168 countries. M-Cam has also monitored biological and chemical weapons treaty violations on behalf of the U.S. government, following the anthrax scare in September 2001.⁴

According to Martin, there are more than 4,000 patents relating to the SARS coronavirus. His company has also done a comprehensive review of the financing of research involving the manipulation of coronaviruses that gave rise to SARS as a subclade of the beta coronavirus family.

Much of the research was funded by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci.⁵ Martin explained:⁶

“I think it’s important for your listeners and viewers to remember that it was 1999 when Anthony Fauci and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill decided to start weaponizing coronavirus they patented in 2002 — and you heard that date correctly, that’s a year before the SARS outbreak in China.

You know, they knew it was a bioweapon since 2005. They knew it was effective at harming populations, intimidating and coercing populations”

COVID-19 Shots Are an ‘Act of Bioterrorism’

According to Martin, the spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a computer simulation of a chimera of the spike protein of coronavirus. “It is, in fact, not a coronavirus vaccine. It is a spike protein instruction to make the human body produce a toxin, and that toxin has been scheduled as a known biologic agent of concern with respect to biological weapons for the last now decade and a half,” he said.⁷

Rather than being a public health measure as they were widely campaigned to be, COVID-19 shots are an act of bioweapons and bioterrorism. Martin shared that in 2015, Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance that funneled research dollars from the NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for coronavirus research, stated:⁸

“We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage, to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”

Daszak, who Martin refers to as “the money launderer in chief,” “actually stated that this entire exercise was a campaign of domestic terror to get the public to accept the universal vaccine platform using a known biological weapon. And that is their own words, not my interpretation,” Martin said.⁹

Martin: 100 Million May Die Due to COVID Shots

Both Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 shots contain nucleic acid sequences that are not part of nature and have not been previously introduced to the human body. This amounts to a genetic engineering experiment that did not go through animal studies or clinical trials.

However, already people are dying from the shots and, Martin states, “many more will” due to issues such as blood clots, damage to the cardiovascular system and problems with liver, kidney and pulmonary function.¹⁰

An onslaught of reproductive and cancer cases related to the shots are also anticipated. “The fact of the matter is an enormous number of people who are injected are already carrying the seeds of their own demise,” Martin said.¹¹ As for how many may die, Martin believes the numbers may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their “decade of vaccination”:¹²

“Based on their own 2011 estimate, and … this is a chilling estimate, but we just have to put it out there … When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chinese CDC, the Jeremy Farrar Wellcome Trust and others published The Decade of Vaccination for the World Health Organization back in 2011 their stated objective was a population reduction of 15% of the world’s population.

Put that in perspective, that’s about 700 million people dead … and that would put the U.S. participation in that certainly as a pro rata of injected population somewhere between 75 and 100 million people.”

When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested “there’s a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it’s between now and 2028.”¹³ This is because of “a tiny little glitch on the horizon” — the projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028.

“So the fewer people who are recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the better,” Martin said. “Not surprisingly, it’s probably one of the motivations that led to the recommendation that people over the age of 65 were the first ones getting injected.”¹⁴ Other populations at risk are caregivers, including health care providers, and others in the workforce who were forced to be injected, such as pilots.

“Why is it that we’re suddenly having 700 flights a day being canceled because, allegedly, airlines don’t have pilots? … the dirty secret … is there a lot of pilots who are having microvascular problems and clotting problems, and that keeps them out of the cockpit, which is a good place to not have them if they’re going to throw a clot for a stroke or a heart attack,” Martin said.

“But the problem is we’re going to start seeing that exact same phenomenon in the health care industry and at a much larger scale, which means we now have, in addition to the problem of the actual morbidity and mortality, meaning people getting sick and people dying.

We actually have that targeting the health care industry writ large, which means we are going to have doctors and nurses who are going to be among the sick and the dead. And that means that the sick and the dying also do not get care.”¹⁵

Why COVID Shots May Change Your DNA

It’s been stressed by the media and public health officials that COVID-19 shots do not alter DNA. However, Martin brings attention to a little-known grant from the National Science Foundation, known as Darwinian chemical systems,¹⁶ which involved research to incorporate mRNA into targeted genomes. According to Martin:¹⁷

“Moderna was started … on the back of a 10-year National Science Foundation grant. And that grant was called Darwinian chemical systems … the project that gave rise to the Moderna company itself was a project where they were specifically figuring out how to get mRNA to write itself into the genome of whatever target they were going after.

That could be a single-celled organism, it could be a multi-celled organism or it could be a human. And the fact of the matter is Moderna was started on the back of having proven that mRNA can be transfected and write itself into the human genome.”

It is completely unknown what the short- or long-term effects of the spike protein analog that’s inside people who received COVID-19 injections will be. But with respect to alteration of the genome, Martin states that data show mRNA has the capacity to write into the DNA of humans, and “as such, the long-term effects are not going to merely be symptomatic. The long-term effects are going to be the human genome of injected individuals is going to be altered.”¹⁸

Fraud Removes Big Pharma’s Liability Shield

The 2001 anthrax attack, which came out of medical and defense research, led to the passage of the PREP Act, which removed liability for manufacturers of emergency medical countermeasures.

This means that as long as the U.S. is under a state of emergency, things like COVID-19 “vaccines” are allowed under emergency use authorization. And as long as the emergency use authorization is in effect, the makers of these experimental gene therapies are not financially liable for any harm that comes from their use.

That is, provided they’re “vaccines.” If these injections are NOT vaccines, then the liability shield falls away, because there is no liability shield for a medical emergency countermeasure that is gene therapy. Further, lawsuits that can prove the companies engaged in fraud will also negate the liability shield. Martin states:¹⁹

“One of the convenient things about the PREP Act is the immunity shield from liability actually is only as good as the absence of fraud. Because if there was fraud in the promulgation of the events, leading to an emergency use authorization, then all of the immunity shield gets wiped out.

So the reason why it is so important for conversations like the one we’re having to actually be promoted and be advanced is because the pharmaceutical companies — and this includes Pfizer and Moderna and J&J — know they are perpetuating a fraud. The great thing about this is when that fraud is established, 100% of the liability flows back to them.

… when a fraud was the basis for a fraud, then we actually have a number of other legal remedies that allow you to pierce that veil. So in the end, there’s no question … and it’s quite evident based on the current mortality and morbidity data that given the fact that when it comes to biological weapons and bioterror each count comes with $100 million penalty. That’s what the federal statute gives us.

The penalty for corporate domestic terrorism, when you have per count $100 million a pop liabilities — that is an existential threat that takes a company like Pfizer or takes a company like Moderna out of existence. And that is what we’re working for every day.”

If you’d like to follow the progress of the ongoing legal cases seeking to expose the truth — that a criminal organization is seeking to obtain control over the global population via the creation of patented bioweapons marketed as novel viruses and injections — you can find all the details at ProsecuteNow.io, a website compiled by Martin and colleagues.²⁰

Originally published July 16, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ¹ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022
• ² Europe Reloaded March 23, 2022
• ³ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 1:21
• ^4, 5 Substack July 24, 2021
• ⁶ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 9:52
• ^7, 8, 9 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 3:26
• ^10, 11 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 6:22
• ¹² Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 7:58
• ^13, 14 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 12:40
• ¹⁵ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 13:38
• ¹⁶ National Science Foundation, Darwinian Chemical Systems
• ^17, 18 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 17:21
• ¹⁹ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 52:01
• ²⁰ Prosecute Now

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Moderate Democrats will play a key role in the coming midterm election and very likely handle the U.S. House to the Republicans, analysts said.

The main reason for the rebelling moderates is President Joe Biden’s policies.

“This [moderate voting] base is becoming increasingly disenchanted with what seems to be the ongoing failures of the Biden administration on major party platforms such as rising inflation, gas prices, and a pretty weak economy,” Jamie Wright, a political pundit at The Wright Law Firm, told The Epoch Times.

Josh Wilson, a political consultant and ex-aide to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, shared the view that the state of the economy under Biden is a significant factor in the shift.

Besides this, Wilson also pointed out that the historical pattern of midterm elections for the party of the president will also contribute.

“Simply based on U.S. electoral history, where the president’s political party tends to suffer major losses during the first midterm of the presidential term, it is highly likely that Republicans will see major gains in the House of Representatives,” he said.

Progressive Movement Pushing Moderates Away

For over a decade, progressive activists have been pushing the political spectrum in the United States to the left in various ways, from woke textbooks in the education system to protests on the streets.

As a result, some moderate Democrats found themself isolated and being pushed out.

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was a liberal, shared a meme on April 28 explaining how the progressive movement has made him closer to the conservative side. The meme shows the political left moving away from the centers since 2008 while the center and right remaining stationary. As a result, he falls into the area close to the conservative without even changing his political stance.

The meme was liked by over 1.5 million users after Musk shared it on his Twitter account.

Biden, who mainly posed as a moderate during his campaign, followed the progressive movement closely after he came to the White House and adopted policies from the woke agenda.

That deepened the discontent among moderates.

A major factor was the extreme lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, outbreak.

“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent Democrat, criticized the policies during an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23.

The mandates were “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” he added.

Biden’s Energy Policies and Soaring Gas Price

Another area that moderate Democrats feel upset about is the economic performance during Biden’s presidency, especially the rising inflation and gas prices.

According to CNBC’s All-America Survey, Biden’s economic approval rating dropped 5 points from April’s survey to 30 percent. His approval of the overall handling of the presidency dropped to 36 percent. Of the 800 people across the nation polled by CNBC, 51 percent believe Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are making no difference, and 30 percent think the measures are actually hurting.

The Biden administration has strictly adhered to its climate crisis agenda, rejecting boosting domestic energy production and insisting people should buy electric vehicles as an alternative option amid high gas prices.

However, electric vehicles are unaffordable for many families.

A Consumer Reports survey shows that 52 percent of people say they would not buy an electric vehicle because the costs of buying and maintaining them are too high.

How Moderate Democrats May Act in Midterms

Though the moderates are not as popular in the mainstream media or on some politicians’ priority agendas, they still make up the majority of Democrats, Wright said.

“There is a real power struggle between the moderates and the extreme left within the party. However, moderates still make up the majority,” she said.

She believes it’s important for the Democrat candidates to appeal to the moderate voting base to ensure they don’t leave the party over failed policies.

Wilson believes the moderates will act in two ways—either they won’t show up or vote Republican—and will cost the Democrat Party heavily.

“Democrat members of the Congress seem to be trending more to the left but Democrat voters are not. To be more specific, Democrats in D.C. seem to be putting social issues ahead of economic issues. [However,] most voters want the government to focus on things that impact them daily,” he said.

“It’s more likely that moderate Democrat voters will not vote in the midterm if [they are] extremely fed up, rather than cast a ballot for a Republican,” he said. “If the Republican candidate in those swing districts is also a moderate, they may be able to bring Democrat voters across the line.”

“By not showing up and voting for the Democrat, Democrat voters will absolutely be protesting the current situation and indirectly helping Republicans take control,” he added.

The situation is also likely to put moderate Democrat candidates in harm’s way because “they will be painted as extreme liberals during the campaigns” under the current political climate, Wilson stated.

Masooma Haq and Jack Phillips contributed to the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The first hospital in America to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine for all employees is now facing a staffing shortage from infections.

Houston’s Methodist Hospital has hundreds of employees out of work because they tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. At the same hospital in 2021, 153 staff members who refused to get vaccinated quit or were fired. Now Methodist leadership is trying to avert a crisis.

“What is worrisome is the climbing number of our employees who cannot work because they are home sick with COVID-19. Almost 400 employees tested positive last week,” Dr. Robert Phillips, the executive vice president and chief physician executive of Houston Methodist, wrote in an internal email on July 12 obtained by The Epoch Times.

“While most of these employees are getting COVID-19 from the community, it is vital that we don’t face a situation where too many employees are out sick and we find ourselves with a staffing shortage,” he added.

Houston Methodist, with a workforce of around 28,000, was the first hospital system in the country to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all of its employees. It also was the first system in the nation to mandate the vaccine for its private health care providers who are credentialed members of its medical staff. The hospital later required all its employees to get a vaccine booster by March 1.

Most employees got vaccinated and stayed, but the system is having trouble with staffing as the vaccines prove increasingly worse at protecting against infection as new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerge.

“The spike in cases is happening all over the country and is likely attributed to the highly contagious and more vaccine-resistant omicron subvariant,” Phillips wrote. “BA.5 is now the most infectious variant so far and is thought to be four times more vaccine evasive than the last dominant variant.”

BA.5 is a subvariant of Omicron. It recently became the dominant strain in the United States, according to federal data.

Phillips nodded at how the vaccines provide little protection against infection, describing BA.5 as four times more “vaccine-evasive” than the last dominant strain, which was BA2.12.1.

While many employees are sick, Phillips said the spike is “not yet correlating with a large surge in hospitalizations” in Houston Methodist, with just 290 COVID-19 patients in the system as of July 12.

None of the patients are Methodist employees, according to Stefanie Asin, a spokeswoman for Houston Methodist Hospital. Asked how many of the hospitalized COVID patients are vaccinated, Asin said she didn’t know. Nearly half of the patients in the system in late 2021 were vaccinated.

Problem With Mandates

“The problem with vaccine mandates is that they are immunologically ignorant by ignoring the powerful effect of natural immunity,” Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor, told The Epoch Times. “Natural immunity has been formally studied in over 200 studies and has been found to be more effective than vaccinated immunity.”

Studies from scientists in Qatar, the United States, and other countries have found those who survived COVID-19 had superior protection than the vaccinated, though a smaller number of studies indicate the opposite.

Nurse Jennifer Bridges was fired by Methodist in June 2021 for refusing the vaccine. “This only proves our point that the vaccine doesn’t work. A true vaccine would prevent you from catching the virus. It’s time Methodist owns up to its mistakes,” Bridges told The Epoch Times after reviewing Phillips’ memo.

“That is absolutely a false premise,” Asin, the hospital’s spokeswoman responded. “The vaccines were never intended to stop you from getting it. The point of the vaccines is to keep you from severe illness and being hospitalized. The mandates and the vaccines are absolutely working.”

Bridges now works at a private COVID-19 clinic located in Houston called BreatheMD, which is owned by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden.

“I had COVID two years ago and have never gotten sick again—even though all I do is care for COVID  patients,” she said.

Bridges and a number of other former Houston Methodist workers sued their employer over the refusal to recognize natural immunity and other aspects of the mandate, but the lawsuit was thrown out and the appeal was rejected.

But Makary, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, said the science shows the naturally immune should have been retained.

“When Methodist fired nurses who had natural immunity for not being vaccinated, they fired those least likely to spread the infection at the workplace,” he said. “Many nurses have circulating antibodies that neutralize the COVID virus, but they are not antibodies that Methodist hospital recognizes.”

Bridges said, “The patients are suffering in the hospitals, and the little staff they have are overworked due to these shortages. It’s sad that they would rather keep away very healthy, unvaccinated nurses with natural immunity when they need us so badly.”

“What does natural immunity actually mean?” Asin responded. “We required the vaccines for our employees to keep the patients safe.” She said they do not currently have staffing shortages.

Change in Tune

The vaccines were authorized by federal regulators to prevent symptomatic infection, and were touted by vaccine makers and numerous health officials as offering high protection.

As that protection has waned, authorities focus on the protection the vaccines provide against severe disease.

While Methodist Hospital now says the vaccines were intended to protect its employees from severe illness, that is not what its leaders said a year and a half ago, according to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times. In February 2021, the hospital emailed an offer of a $500 bonus to any hospital employee who got two shots of the vaccines. The email says, “The Hope Bonus is a reward for setting the right example and doing our part to stop the spread.”

Dr. Marc Boom, the president and CEO of Houston Methodist, emailed employees on April 15, 2021, telling them that the mandate was for preventing infection and spread to patients:  “We’re seeing positive results as the number of employee infections has dropped inversely with the number of employees receiving the vaccine. It appears we’ve successfully created herd immunity at Houston Methodist.”

Herd immunity means the level of protection that comes from vaccines, prior infection, or both, is so high that the spread of a disease is no longer an issue.

“COVID vaccines were originally thought to reduce COVID transmission, but that understanding quickly changed, rendering policies for unvaccinated people obsolete,” Makary said. “If someone who does not have natural immunity chooses not to get vaccinated, they do so at their own individual risk, but they pose no public health threat now that population immunity is high.”

Bowden, Bridges’s new employer, lost her privileges with Houston Methodist after she announced that she would only treat unvaccinated patients who couldn’t get care elsewhere. The hospital said Bowden was spreading “misinformation.” Bowden was suspended, and then she resigned.

Bowden said the number of vaccinated employees who are out sick means Houston Methodist leaders owe an explanation “to those of us who were persecuted for questioning the mandates.”

“We have 400 employees out sick with COVID. They are out sick without severe illness. We stand by the effectiveness of the vaccine,” Asin responded.

Phillips told his employees to do their best to not get sick.

“Our patients need us to stay healthy, so I strongly encourage our employees to be as vigilant as possible,” he said, adding later, “please use good judgment in your personal lives as community spread … is high right now.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it’s “astonishing” that mainstream media is not holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his remarks on Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect “overly well” against the CCP virus.

“One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that … vaccines—because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus—don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection,” Fauci said.

“It’s astonishing that mainstream media allows [Fauci] to blindly make that statement without any effort to hold him accountable for the costly national policies and the lockdowns that were utterly built upon his initial assertion that the vaccines would prevent transmission and end the pandemic,” Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

The lockdowns initially were imposed to flatten the curve in two weeks. Kennedy asserts that they “were contrary to every previous advisory for pandemic countermeasures by the CDC and the WHO.”

He believes that “the house of cards should be falling” and that the media should be putting pressure on the NIH.

“The national media, which was fooled by all these lies, should be surrounding NIH with pitchforks and torches. And yet it’s like water on a duck,” he said.

Kennedy is the author of the best-selling book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” an encyclopedic work that encompasses Big Pharma’s meddling in public health and people’s liberties.

He’s an attorney, environmental activist, and founder of Children’s Health Defense. He is the son of former U.S. Senator, Attorney General, and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and the nephew of former Democrat President John F. Kennedy.

“If they don’t prevent transmission, then how does he justify the mandates? Particularly for children?”

The Epoch Times reached out to Fauci’s office for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Temporary restraining order on vaccine mandate

A federal district court in Ohio has temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on thousands of U.S. Air Force service members who remain unvaccinated after having opposed the shot on religious grounds but have had their religious exemption applications denied.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew McFarland, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in late 2019, issued a temporary restraining order filed on Thursday preventing the Biden administration from taking any action for at least 14 days against any Air Force member who opted not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The judge’s ruling also grants the case “class status,” which means the temporary restraining order will grant relief to all members of the Air Force who submitted a religious accommodation request from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from Sept. 1, 2021, to the present, and were confirmed via the Air Force Chaplains as having a sincerely held religious belief, but had their requests denied or not yet acted upon. Plaintiffs had contended that such a class would include over 12,000 airmen.

The action stems from a case filed in February 2022 challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Plaintiffs comprise 18 active-duty members of the Air Force serving at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; Hurlburt Field in Florida; Randolph Air Force Base in Texas; and Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, plus all similarly affected members.

“The court has already granted a preliminary injunction to our 18 original plaintiffs,” an attorney in the case, Tom Bruns of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. “The court has now granted a class certification—and that’s kind of the historic moment—Air Force-wide, service-wide, it covers every member of the Air Force. And now he’s saying, ‘Why shouldn’t I grant the preliminary injunction to all those folks?’”

McFarland wrote in his order (pdf) in granting the class status: “They face separation from the Air Force and other disciplinary measures. A single injunction would provide relief to the entire class. Indeed, the main purpose of a [lawsuit class] is to provide relief through a single injunction or declaratory judgment. Because Defendants have uniformly maintained a policy of overriding Airmen’s religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine, they have acted ‘on grounds that apply generally to the class.’

“Moreover, the class definition requires that a Chaplain certify that the airman’s religious beliefs are sincerely held. Finally, a single injunction would provide the proposed class with the relief they seek from the harm they stand to suffer.”

McFarland gave Air Force officials until July 21 to file a response “identifying why this Court should not grant a class-wide preliminary injunction.” He also gave plaintiffs an opportunity to then file a response by July 25.

According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, over 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests. Only 104 have had their applications approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the force. According to the figures, 97.1 percent of the Air Force has been fully vaccinated, and 0.1 percent has been partially vaccinated.

Painful Consequences

McFarland’s order came in the nick of time for some airmen. Many have received notices in the last week, with a date of their final day, an airman at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska told The Epoch Times.

One client was in the middle of a board hearing determining his future with the service, Attorney Wendy Cox of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. Objecting to the COVID-19 shot put airmen at risk of job loss and disciplinary measures.

“One of the officers we were representing was facing $1,000 a month pay reduction for two months as well as an official letter of reprimand,” Cox said. “We’ve had people removed from positions of commands because of their alleged violation of this order to get a vaccination, of which they are unable to get because it violates their religious beliefs.”

“Some were stranded in foreign countries after refusing the shot, and missed weddings. There’s some pretty tragic stories about what has happened,” Cox said.

The Air Force officials told the court that they had every consequence still on the table for service members who refused to get the shot, and those consequences included everything up to court martial and two years incarceration at Leavenworth, the attorneys said.

“The proof in the case was very clear. The Air Force tried to pretend that they did individualized analysis of each service member’s religious objection, and, and that did occur in terms of the service member proving they had a sincerely held religious belief,” Bruns said. “But then the Air Force, in its affidavits, proved that when it came to accommodating that belief, they took the position we can’t grant religious exemptions, because we have to save these slots for administrative and medical exemptions. So their own proof was ‘We didn’t do the individualized analysis on the back end, because we weren’t granting any religious exemptions.’ And it was only once the lawsuits got filed, that they granted a few religious exemptions. And all of those folks were near the end of their career.”

The Air Force wanted the airmen’s cases heard individually, but in his decision allowing class status, McFarland noted how the Air Force did not consider each case individually when denying religious accommodation requests.

“Defendants appear to again argue that the court must individually analyze each airmen’s claims on the one hand, while systematically denying all religious accommodation requests despite the factual differences defendants claim the court should consider on the other,” McFarland wrote.

“The Court appreciates there may be minor factual differences between the members of the class, including roles, responsibilities, levels of proximity, likelihood of deployment or travel, and ability to telework, as well as different religious beliefs and reasons for objecting to the COVID-19 vaccine.

“However, these minor differences do not outweigh that defendants’ typical response when receiving a religious accommodation request is to deny it. The typicality of the putative class is reflected in the fact that defendants have indiscriminately denied almost all religious accommodation requests, and their use of form letters to deny the accommodation requests. Such facts suggest that defendants do not individually weigh each applicant’s belief or circumstances in issuing their response, further cementing the typicality of the class.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci conceded Wednesday morning that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect “overly well” against the virus.

Speaking during a Fox News interview, Fauci told host Neil Cavuto that “one of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that … vaccines—because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus—don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection.”

But Fauci said later that the vaccines “protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death” before he made note of his recent COVID-19 diagnosis.

“At my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” said Fauci, who is 81 and has worked in various capacities in the federal government since the late 1960s. He’s also headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since the Reagan administration.

Fauci then said it’s because of the vaccination that it is “very likely why I had a relatively mild course.”

Natural Immunity

The official’s comments come just days after a bombshell study revealed that natural immunity, or the immunity conferred via a previous COVID-19 infection, provides superior protection against the virus when compared with vaccines.

Researchers in Qatar said that individuals who survived a COVID-19 infection and weren’t vaccinated had very high protection against severe or fatal disease.

“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad of Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar wrote.

But the researchers noted that both natural and artificial immunity conferred via vaccines waned over time. People who were previously infected with COVID-19 and were not vaccinated had half the risks of reinfection as compared to those that were vaccinated with two doses but not infected.

During an interview with the Washington Post this week, Fauci suggested that Americans aged 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster shot.

The federal government, he argued, “need[s] to allow people who are under 50 to get their second booster shot, since it may have been months since many of them got their first booster.”

“If I got my third shot [in 2021], it is very likely the immunity is waning,” Fauci proclaimed.

Marina Zhang contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The details in the stories of the families whose loved ones died in the hospital due to what they call “death protocols” are strikingly similar.

The patients were all scorned because of their unvaccinated status and were given a combination of sedatives and the antiviral drug remdesivir.

The patients were also kept isolated, malnourished, and ultimately put on a ventilator before dying.

After death, the families were left in confusion and with inconceivable stories that many don’t believe—stories of chilling administrative cruelty.

The FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation (FFFF) has gathered about 200 of these stories through its COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project to build an online database of testimonies for the purpose of surveying accounts of treatment for the sick unvaccinated and prosecuting any cases involving alleged abuse.

“They are horror stories,” Carolyn Blakeman, media director and task force coordinator for FFFF, told The Epoch Times.

Many of these deaths in hospitals occurred in 2021 after COVID-19 vaccine mandates were announced by resident Joe Biden.

In some cases, people who didn’t want to take the experimental vaccine were being fired, while unvaccinated patients in hospitals were being treated much differently than the vaccinated.

The phrase “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” was used by public officials to place blame on those who chose not to take vaccines that later proved to not be as safe and effective as touted.

Reports from people such as Scott Schara in Wisconsin and Anne Quiner in Minnesota began to reveal patterns of behavior by hospital administrators that suggested medical discrimination and protocols that many, like Schara and Quiner, alleged led to the barbaric death of their loved ones.

To grasp how health officials, physicians, and citizens were falling in lockstep with what appeared to be a global trance, Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer of mRNA technology, presented the idea that many have fallen into “mass formation psychosis.”

‘We Need Massive Investigations’

Brad Geyer, a former federal prosecutor for 21 years with the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told The Epoch Times, “We found these testimonial accounts to be so overwhelming, unimpeachable, and compelling that it might be exactly what we need to break the spell.”

Dr. Peter McCullough, the renowned cardiologist who has spoken out against COVID-19 protocols, is the president of FFFF, a New Jersey-based nonprofit comprised of former federal agents, prosecutors, lawyers, medical professionals, researchers, and volunteers whose efforts are geared toward exposing what it has determined are fraudulent COVID-19 practices established by the medical establishment and Marxist ideologies infiltrating American institutions that have directed society into a “new normal” of unconstitutionality.

There are several goals of the project, one being to create a historical document on what has taken place for those who can’t get their voices heard in mainstream media outlets that have been corrupted by the “safe and effective” feedback loop, Geyer said.

Then, FFFF finds representation for the victims while building a larger, collective case for crimes against humanity investigations, Geyer said.

There is also the goal of putting pressure on elected officials to hold everyone involved accountable, Geyer said.

“What is the purpose of sedating patients with fifteen different drugs, including fentanyl, and withholding food and water while keeping them isolated from their families?” Geyer asked. “We need massive investigations.”

‘They Scare These People to Death Through Emotional and Psychological Abuse’

In each story, Blakeman said family members have told her that doctors presented the same case for a ventilator.

“If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 200 times in the exact words: ‘We’re just going to put you on the vent for a couple of days to give your lungs a rest,’” Blakeman said. “It’s like they all got the same memo on what to tell their patients. It’s insane.”

There is also the “COVID Cocktail” that is set before every patient, Blakeman said, which is what she called a kidney-failing concoction of remdesivir, vancomycin, and dexamethasone.

Each report also includes vitriolic contempt from doctors for the unvaccinated patients, Blakeman said.

“They scare these people to death through emotional and psychological abuse,” Blakeman said. “We had a victim whose husband literally had to break her out, with cops chasing them down the hallway to their getaway car. They are treated worse than prisoners.”

The value of the interviews as historical documents will help future generations to remember and not repeat these atrocities, Geyer said.

“Imagine if we could have interviewed all of those in the concentration camps,” Geyer said. “That’s what we are doing here in trying to build a machine that unearths the full truth of what occurred while it can deprogram enough people to get engaged in our effort to ensure our government continues to honor and respect the full measure of rights associated with citizenship and protect our constitutional rights.”

Another goal is to set up a humanity restoration board of physicians who have been uncorrupted, such as Drs. McCullough and Malone, to administer an organization that would confer, recommend, and advocate for physicians and nurses who want to come forward to make full disclosures of what they’ve done in exchange for leniency and amnesty.

“If we could create a quasi-governmental entity of physicians and scientists to administer a whistleblower program that would initially be a trickle, it could eventually become a stream and then hopefully a river of testimonies from physicians and nurses who want to get off their consciences what they’ve done,” Geyer said.

‘Our Stories are Eerily the Same’

Among the people FFFF has interviewed are Katrin Crum, Aletha Chavez, and Ashley Wines, each of whom also spoke with The Epoch Times about their experiences.

“It’s been eight months since my husband was killed, and I say killed because that’s exactly what happened,” Crum said. “He did not die of COVID. He died from the federal COVID protocols that were dictated to every hospital in the country.”

Crum started the private Facebook group C19 Widows/Widowers that want JUSTICE, where she met Chavez and Wines.

The group now has 600 members.

“All of our stories are eerily the same, and there’s a reason for that,” Crum said.

Crum’s husband, 58-year-old Richard, was a principal in Washington state at a private school that served special needs students, Crum said.

“Over 20 of his former students attended his memorial and spoke about the positive impact he had on their lives,” Crum said.

After his death—a more detailed account of which can be found here on FFFF’s web page—Crum said she turned her grief and anger into activism and advocacy, pouring herself into research.

“When the pandemic started, the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) handed down protocols for hospitals to follow in treating COVID patients,” Crum said. “Never before in the history of our country did a three-letter agency dictate to the doctor what the standard of care for a patient was going to be.”

Neither the NIH nor the FDA responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Individual treatment had been left up to the physician and was an open discussion between the physician and the patient, Crum said.

“But now, all of that has been thrown out the window,” Crum said. “My 58-year-old husband in Washington received the exact same treatment as a 40-year-old woman in Florida who had none of the same health issues that my husband had.”

Richard was admitted on Oct. 21 and died in the hospital on Nov. 5, 2021, with Crum, who had been able to advocate her way into finally seeing him after 11 days, in the room with him as nurses attempted CPR.

“He had wrist restraints on, a sore on his face from the mask, and had lost 36 pounds in 14 days,” Crum said.

Before he died, one doctor had attempted to coerce Crum into agreeing to change his classification to “Do Not Resuscitate,” Crum said.

“I kept refusing, and finally, at the end of our conversation, she was so mad she told me, ‘Fine, if you won’t change him to DNR when your husband goes into cardiac arrest, I’ll refuse to give him chest compressions,’” Crum said.

Crum had a private autopsy and toxicology report that listed medical conditions that caused his death other than COVID: a 90 percent blockage in the main artery of his heart that went untreated throughout his 16-day stay at the hospital, and a lethal dose of fentanyl, she said.

The protocols make the patients like her husband sicker and lead to death, Crum said, while reaping high financial incentives from the federal government through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan supplemental funding to hospitals.

The hospitals get reimbursed for admitting or having a patient test positive for COVID, which is why there are reports such as Crum’s in which staff will continue to test a patient even if they weren’t admitted with a positive test, Crum said.

In addition, Crum said hospitals get reimbursed for using remdesivir, putting a patient on a ventilator, and having a patient die with COVID on the death certificate.

‘A Perverse Agenda’

Tom Renz, an attorney with America’s Frontline Doctors and Make Americans Free Again—organizations that oppose unconstitutional federal health mandates, spoke with The Epoch Times in a previous article about the reimbursements.

Renz said hospitals get federal funding through the CARES Act, which gives a 20 percent increase in reimbursement to hospitals for inpatient stays resulting from COVID-19, Renz said.

“The laws are structured in a way that incentivizes hospitals to kill people,” Renz said. “The hospital makes more money if you die from COVID-19 than if you recover from it. Why don’t we incentivize hospitals for getting people cured of COVID?”

In a Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services in June, Texas state Sen. Bob Hall alluded to the stories like ones collected by the FFFF when he said, “Never before have we seen the government step between the patient and the doctor and usurp that doctor’s right to exercise their conscience, their training, and what they know that patient needed.”

Hall said it’s something “we need to get to the bottom of” so that it doesn’t become “the norm” because the treatment is not only not helping, but also causing harm.

“How many people walk into U.S. hospitals and don’t walk out again because of this perverse agenda?” Crum asked. “A very high number.”

‘I Trusted Them’

Chavez’s more detailed account of her husband Roberto’s death in a hospital in California can be found on FFFF’s web page.

Roberto was a deputy sheriff for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who lifted weights and hiked every day.

“We were told he was the healthiest person there with COVID,” Chavez said.  “He never took any medications, worked out every day, and had no co-morbidities.”

Roberto was aware of stories of neglect in nursing homes and hospitals throughout COVID, Chavez said.

“He didn’t want to be admitted, but we just thought that he would go in and get a breathing treatment and come home, so, I took him to the hospital,” Chavez said. “It’s my biggest regret after all I know now.”

Roberto was admitted overnight on Aug. 17, Chavez said.

From the beginning, he was isolated, treated with neglect and disrespect because of his unvaccinated status, and put through the same series of protocols that led to Richard’s death, Chavez said.

“He had told me he needed to use the bathroom but couldn’t get a nurse to help him,” Chavez said. “He asked me to call the nurses station at least five times since they would not respond to him.”

Chavez received a call at 4 a.m. from a nurse telling her that he had fallen out of bed, she said.

“I know my husband,” Chavez said. “He’s not just going to lay there. He’s going to get up and use the bathroom.”

The nurse told Chavez there were no injuries from the fall, but because he lost his oxygen mask, he had gone into respiratory failure, which then led to their petition to put him on ventilation, Chavez said, though it was never a treatment he wanted.

“We had been texting and talking on the phone every day, so I knew he had been fine,” Chavez said. “They told me if we don’t vent him he’ll die, so I was put on the spot. I agreed. When given that choice, what would you do? I trusted them.”

The next day his heart stopped twice, and on the third time, he could not be resuscitated, Chavez said, and he died on Aug. 26, 2021.

“That was the worst day of my life,” Chavez said.

At first, Chavez said she thought it was just neglect, then she paid an outside company of physicians and nurses to review Roberto’s medical records which showed what they referred to as many red flags and, among other issues, that Roberto had been saturated with cross-interaction drugs while kept on fentanyl.

“As I delved further into this, I found that my story is many, many other people’s stories,” Chavez said.

‘They Told Us It Was His Fault’

Ashley Wines, a nursing student herself whose story in more detail can be found on FFFF’s webpage, lost her 32-year-old fiance Phillip Carron on Oct. 14, after he was admitted on September 23, 2021.

“Phil was a real estate agent here locally in Bellingham, Washington,” Wines said. “He actually just became sales manager and senior vice president for NW Premium Homes shortly before everything happened. We pretty much had our future set up for us.”

Like Crum and Chavez, she encountered rabid discrimination because of Phillip’s unvaccinated status, she said.

“When I tried to drop off some food, one nurse yelled at me, telling me that because he was unvaccinated, he was going to die and that he’s not going to be eating or drinking for the rest of the time he’s here,” Wines said.

Initially, Phillip was going to be kept for observation; however, after he denied vaccination, Wines said he was put on morphine overnight, which she said increases respiratory distress.

“The next morning, he’s getting sent to ICU and labeled ‘imminent death,’” Wines said. “A couple of days later they start giving him precedex, which is a strong sedative, and remdesivir.”

After one dose of remdesivir, Phillip went into complete liver failure, Wines said.

Wines’s questioning of the protocols eventually got her banned from calling the hospital, Wines said, and she could no longer speak with Phillip, so she relied on Phillips’s mother, Pam, as power of attorney.

While Phillip was on the ventilator for 15 days, Wines said he lost 86 pounds.

“I would say 75 percent of the nurses were just nasty,” Wines said. “Every single doctor was nasty. We had doctors laugh at us. They told us it was his fault because he was not vaccinated.”

Wines and Phillip’s mother, Pam, were with Phillip the day he died, but had left two hours earlier, Wines said.

“I worked in hospice; I know what end-of-life looks like,” Wines said. “There’s no way we would have left had I thought he was going to pass. I find it interesting that two hours after we left, he passed.”

These are just brief vignettes skimming the surface of Crum’s, Chavez’s, and Wines’s stories that can be found in more detail— in addition to the stories of others—on the FFFF’s COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project’s webpage.

‘We Are Going to Get Justice’

“People don’t want to believe that this is happening,” Crum said. “But as more stories come out, you cannot deny it.”

There are hundreds of people willing to come forward to share stories like theirs, Crum said.

“This has got to stop,” Crum said. “I think whoever set this evil system in place thought we would just dissolve into a heap of grief.”

Though there are times when they may want to, Crum said, it’s now become bigger than that.

“We are going to fight. We want the protocols to stop, and we want to hold these people accountable,” Crum said. “We are going to get justice.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Army suspended a decorated general for criticizing a tweet by first lady Jill Biden, USA Today reported.

The branch released retired three-star lieutenant general Gary Volesky, a veteran of the wars in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan, from advising senior officers because of his June 25 response to a Jill Biden tweet about the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade.

“For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies,” the first lady tweeted. “Today, that right was stolen from us.”

“Glad to see you finally know what a woman is,” Volesky replied.

Volesky’s tweet has since been taken down.

Volesky was likely talking about Biden’s support for transgender rights, a cause the military has also embraced. As Russia this year began its bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army was training officers on “gender pronouns” and “when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. Top-ranking General Mark Milley, who secretly promised to warn the Chinese People’s Liberation Army about U.S. military actions, has in recent years embraced left-wing causes, saying he wants to “understand white rage” and apologizing for appearing with former president Donald Trump.

This is the second time this month that the Army has punished service members for disagreeing with someone in the Biden White House. The Army announced July 1 that it will deprive soldiers of pay and benefits if they do not comply with the administration’s vaccine mandate.

Volesky, who retired in 2020, received the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest decoration for valor, the New York Post reported. He served as the Army’s chief of public affairs from 2012 to 2014 and commanded the 101st Airborne Division.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Decision to not get COVID-19 vaccine comes with consequences, but maybe not for the health care system

A large-scale international study of those unvaccinated against COVID-19 finds a pattern of discrimination—and a relatively low hospitalization rate.

While the study’s findings are limited by the nature of the selection process, in which unvaccinated people opted in to participate, the new study suggests that those who declined the vaccine may not be the burden to the health care system many have claimed them to be. The study is now available as a preprint (which means it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed). It was uploaded to ResearchGate earlier this month.

The findings hold significant importance to policymakers. According to Our World in Data, 60 percent of the world is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The 40 percent who aren’t vaccinated against the virus have been frequently blamed for the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as vaccination rates reached up to 90 percent in many jurisdictions.

With government agencies, news media, and social media algorithms ignoring or misrepresenting the contending science around COVID-19, the unvaccinated have faced often intense pressure to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“What the survey aimed to do is gather insights about health outcomes, choices, and discrimination experienced by the marginalized subpopulation of people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures who have elected to exercise their right of refusal of COVID-19 injections,” the study authors said.

In many places in the United States, those who declined the COVID-19 vaccines have been discriminated against, stigmatized, and marginalized from society. Nurses and health care workers were fired, Air Force cadets were denied commissions, and family members found themselves ostracized within some of their most intimate and important relationships.

The vilification of the unvaccinated has come with the censorship of both science and personal experience. Many doctors, nurses, scientists, and other health care professionals who speak out about the safety and necessity of these vaccines have been threatened with the loss of their medical licenses, deleted from social media, canceled from events with their peers, and fired from their jobs.

The Control Group

The study is based on data collected from the Control Group Cooperative (CGC), which was founded in July 2021 by a citizens group in the UK to represent and connect people who elected to not get the COVID-19 vaccines.

The goal of the CGC has been to analyze the long-term health outcomes and experiences of these individuals through self-reported surveys. According to their website, there are currently more than 300,000 unvaccinated participants from more than 175 countries participating in their long-term study.

The study was conducted by Robert Verkerk, founder of the Alliance for Natural Health International, an affiliate of the CGC. A team of international scientists contributed to the research. The study analyzes the data from the CGC survey from the first five months of its operation—from September 2021 through February.

The Cohort

The cohort analyzed by Verkerk consisted of 18,497 individuals out of the 297,618 people who had joined the CGC by the end of February.

A plurality of participants were from the continent of Europe (40 percent), followed by Oceania (27 percent), and North America (25 percent). Three percent of participants were from South America and Asia, while less than 1 percent were from Africa. Ages ranged anywhere from 1 to more than 90 years old, with most participants being middle-aged.

Motive for Refusal

Individuals participating in the study declined COVID-19 vaccination for various reasons. These included past vaccine injuries, preference for more natural remedies, lack of trust in pharmaceutical companies and government entities, and concerns about the validity of vaccine study results.

One-third of the individuals in the study self-reported that they received vaccinations as children. That figure may be low, as others may not have reported—or even remembered—their previous vaccinations.

While some had never been vaccinated, the cohort was mainly concerned about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines, not all vaccines in general.

Discrimination Based on Vaccination

Between 20 and 50 percent of respondents, depending on where they lived, reported being personal targets of hate and discrimination. Many felt victimized for their vaccination status, especially those living in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America.

They reported that they faced discrimination in the workplace, from friends or family members, and from their respective state authorities, because of their “unvaccinated” status.

The prejudice experienced within the workplace by respondents resulted in heavy economic burdens for many. For example, 29 percent of respondents from Australia and New Zealand reported losing their jobs during the five months that the survey was administered.

These survey results dovetail with what unvaccinated individuals have been facing globally. Those who don’t succumb to peer pressure, advertising, or incentivizing are then threatened with an ultimatum: Get the vaccine or get fired.

That’s what happened to Destiny Carpenter, a former nurse at Colorado Canyons Hospital. Carpenter is among one of the hundreds of U.S. nurses who have been fired for refusing to get the vaccine, as Fox News reported in September 2021.

Carpenter was nominated for the Daisy Award for extraordinary nursing three times during her tenure at the hospital. This award is granted to the most deserving nurse for exuding compassionate care to their patients.

In February, FiercePharma reported that more than 15,500 health care workers in the United States had been fired or suspended or had chosen to resign from their hospital jobs over their decision to remain unvaccinated.

About 40 percent of respondents, regardless of age, reported that they experienced mild or moderate mental health issues during the duration of the survey, while approximately 20 percent reported experiencing severe mental health issues.

In an analysis of the mental health issues experienced by the cohort, the scientists noted that the mental health burden “may be associated more to the human response to the pandemic, rather than psychological, fear-based reactions to any threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.”

In other words, the respondents’ mental health problems appeared to mainly be a result of being stigmatized and marginalized from society.

A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?

While the study gives insight into the experience of the unvaccinated, it always raises questions about assertions that this group is an undue burden on the health care system.

“Only 74 respondents out of the 5,196 (1.4 percent) who reported suspected or known SARS-CoV-2 infection also reported that they were hospitalized following infection. Therefore, outpatient or inpatient hospitalization was reported in just 0.4 percent of the full survey cohort. Of these, 15 were outpatient only, another 15 were hospitalized for less than 3 days, 26 were hospitalized between 3 and 7 days, 11 for between 7 and 14 days and only 10 for more than 14 days,” the study reads.

While the study is potentially prone to bias because of the selection pool for the survey, an infection-hospitalization ratio of 0.4 percent would certainly challenge many assertions about the burden of the unvaccinated.

A study published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice in May 2021 found an overall infection-hospitalization ratio of 2.1 percent that varied more by age than by race or sex.

“Infection-hospitalization ratio estimates ranged from 0.4 percent for those younger than 40 years to 9.2 percent for those older than 60 years.”

The study also found that hospitalization rates based on case counts overestimated the IHR by a factor of 10, “but this overestimation differed by demographic groups, especially age.”

Most of the CGC respondents who reported that they had caught COVID-19 had only mild symptoms and were sick for less than a week. Fatigue and coughing were the most common symptoms recorded.

Beyond the fact that they were unvaccinated, another unique trait of the CGC cohort may also be their propensity to try various therapeutics to treat their COVID-19 infections.

Against the Grain

Participants reported that they didn’t need a vaccine to lessen their symptoms: Most infections were mild to begin with, and many respondents said they turned to natural remedies when they did get sick.

Participants reported that they opted to support their immune systems naturally by taking preventative vitamins such as zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, and quercetin.

A study published in June 2021 in the journal Inflammopharmacology by an international team of researchers from India, Italy, and the United States, shows that using natural remedies is a scientifically sound choice.

This study explored the immune-boosting properties of vitamins and minerals in combating COVID-19 infections. The scientists found that if administered at higher-than-recommended daily doses, many vitamins had the potential to reduce viral load and risk of hospitalization from COVID-19.

The decision to combat COVID-19 with non-pharmacological immune-enhancing interventions may also help explain why the hospitalization rates of the unvaccinated in the study were so low.

What About Ivermectin?

A portion of the participants reported that they also took ivermectin, an anti-parasitical that has been both promoted and hotly criticized as a treatment for COVID-19, as The Epoch Times has reported.

While ivermectin remains controversial, a meta-analysis published in June 2021 in the American Journal of Therapeutics states: “Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.”

Injecting Infants

On June 18, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it was authorizing the emergency use of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for babies 6 months and older. About 20 million U.S. children are in this age bracket.

The announcement has raised concerns that side effects from the vaccine aren’t being weighed against potential benefits.

As of June 12, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicated that there have been 1,301,354 adverse events and 28,859 deaths from COVID-19 vaccines. A recent analysis of VAERS reports done by two journalists in Israel revealed that there were 58 serious adverse effects in babies prior to the rollout of the vaccine authorization for those aged 6 months and older. The reports failed to indicate if these infants and toddlers were involved in the Pfizer clinical trial or why they received vaccination.

Verkerk is deeply concerned about the CDC vaccine authorization for children younger than 5. He holds master’s and doctorate degrees from Imperial College London and is co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles in the areas of health, agriculture, and environment. He’s also the co-chair of the World Council of Health’s Health & Humanity Committee. He told The Epoch Times via email that many parents want this vaccine for their children because, like every parent, they want what’s best for their child.

“However, they’ve been misled as to the known science on both the benefits and the risks,” he wrote. “There could be disastrous long-term consequences for some children if they are exposed to the spike protein via the vaccine before they are exposed to circulating coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which would otherwise result in broader-based, more robust, naturally-acquired immunity.”

For Verkerk, it’s about choice. We shouldn’t vilify those who rely on natural immunity or refuse the vaccines for religious, medical, or ethical reasons, he said.

“We have seen a dramatic erosion of the principles of medical ethics,” he wrote.

We need to respect autonomy (the right of competent adults to make individualized and informed decisions about their own medical care) and adhere to the principle of first doing no harm, as well as to the principles of beneficence and justice, according to Verkerk.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

We spend a good deal of time on this Substack articulating the vast array of negative consequences of lockdowns on society. As I note in my upcoming book:

The Radical Left is Trying to Pressure the Supreme Court – Fight Back Here!

Many of those who joined Rational Ground and what we came to call Team Reality had similar experiences. Life isn’t always fair, and we adults are willing to bear with the challenges foisted on us, but when the government’s insane rules harm our children, watch out.

Below are links to some of the more prominent impacts we’ve cataloged against children from the egregious policies foisted on families during the pandemic. We’ll be discussing these and other items today at noon on our Rational Ground podcast.

Listen to the podcast live on the Callin website, or later on Apple iTunes or Spotify.

Stringency Measures and Their Impact on Children

This week a new study scanned the literature to determine what countries across the world are experiencing because of the pandemic and stringency measures. Here’s a thread on that:

Meta-study:
“… anxiety, depression, [PTSD], and sleep disorders.”
“… measures such as quarantine and isolation for infection prevention may have immediate and prolonged mental health impacts.”

The kids are not all righthttps://t.co/umGo0uWBZp
1/July 7, 2022

From RationalGround.com

• Our 4-part series by Emily Burns published last year is a tremendous overview about masking kids.
• Screamed for Mom to “Make it Stop”
• Ridiculous mandates, over-testing, unreasonable quarantines, illogical masking policies… the list goes on. This next generation is going to have a tough time grappling with concepts like “reason” and “logic.” One mom emailed us her letter to the school board. See below… feel free to re-use it.
• Our illustrious overlords of health determined it was better for kids that they be banished from school and locked indoors eating takeout. The result? BMI rate of change for 2 to 19 year olds DOUBLED! COVID didn’t do this. OUR POLICIES DID.

• A group of parents in Gainesville, FL, sent 6 face masks to a lab at the University of Florida, requesting an analysis of contaminants found on the masks after they had been worn. The resulting report found that five masks were contaminated with bacteria, parasites, and fungi, including three with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria.

Our friends at the Brownstone Institute have compiled a tremendous list of resources, analysis and commentary on this subject:

• What Covid Containment Has Done to Our Children
• A Partial List of the Myriad Abuses That Facemasks Inflict on Our Children
• More Than 400 Studies on the Failure of Compulsory Covid Interventions (Lockdowns, Restrictions, Closures)
• 75 Studies and Articles Against COVID-19 School Closures
• Hurting Children to Protect Them
• Human Shields: The Public-Health War on Children
• What Will We Tell Our Children?
• Why Have They Done This to the Children?
• Lockdowns Might Have Contributed to Myopia In Children
• More than 150 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms

Articles From Our Substack:

• Masking Children is an Ineffective Policy and Not Supported by Research or Data
• Saving Children and Mental Health
• Low, Low, Low
• 16 States Where Kids Breathe Freely!
• Kids and Masks: A Review of the Insanity
• The List: Lockdown Impact

This article originally appeared in Rational Ground. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

A second professor from Laval University in Quebec City has been suspended for questioning the need to vaccinate children against COVID-19.

Nicolas Derome, a professor of molecular biology, was suspended for the same reason and under similar circumstances as his colleague Patrick Provost, a professor of microbiology, infectious diseases, and immunology.

Derome and Provost both participated in activities organized by Réinfo COVID, which describes itself as a collective of nurses, physicians, scientists, and citizens seeking to generate debate about how the pandemic has been handled by the government.

Derome gave an online presentation organized by the collective in late November 2021, in which he said children were not at high risk for complications from COVID-19.

He said there had been “zero” serious cases among the 0 to 17 age bracket, with or without comorbidity, with his presentation slide indicating the data came from Quebec’s public health institute (INSPQ) and expert assessments.

A review of the INSPQ data for the first four waves, covering Feb. 23, 2020, to Dec. 4, 2021, reveals there were 73 ICU admissions for individuals between age 0 and 19. The data does not indicate if the admissions were “because of COVID” or “with COVID.”

These 73 ICU admissions represent an average of 1.6 percent of total ICU admissions across age groups during the four waves covered.

Derome also said children between 1 and 14 years old were 15 times more likely to die from a road accident than from COVID, and noted there had been no deaths for the 5 to 19 years olds.

“This information is very important to have in order to make a free and informed choice regarding this vaccination campaign for kids 5 to 11,” he said at the start of his presentation.

A current review of data for the first four waves shows one death occurred for the 10–19 age group during the third wave. A separate INSPQ chart reviewed on deaths and presence of comorbidities shows no deaths reported for the 19 and under category with the mention that percentages are not reported when the total number is less than 5.

Derome said, quoting published literature, that children have a better innate response to defend against COVID, which explains why they suffer less serious outcomes.

The professor also quoted from the U.N. children agency UNICEF, which said at the time that the World Health Organization (WHO) did not recommend COVID vaccines for children, due to lack of trials and little to no safety data for that age group.

Since then, the WHO has said that the Pfizer vaccine can be safely administered to children from 5 years of age and that both Pfizer and Moderna are licensed for use in children above 12.

The professor also raised the issue of the waning efficacy of vaccines—not only against infection, but hospitalizations—by quoting White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci.

Derome gave his presentation when Quebec had just started its vaccination campaign for 5- to 11-year-olds.

Derome was contacted by The Epoch Times but was not available to comment.

Laval University said when contacted that it would not comment on the “personal situation of its employees.”

At the time Derome’s video was published, Laval spokesperson Andrée-Anne Stewart told Radio-Canada that his remarks “in no way reflect the stance of Laval University and its faculty of science and engineering regarding the health crisis.”

“Like all members of the teaching staff, professor Derome is held to all the rigour and scientific integrity required by this function,” Stewart said.

‘Sliding Into Dictatorship’

On Dec. 7, 2021, Derome’s colleague, Patrick Provost, said in a scientific panel organized by Réinfo COVID that, based on provincial data, there is more risk of hospitalization for children from the vaccines than from COVID-19 itself, in addition to not having a portrait of mid- to long-term side effects.

Provost was suspended for eight weeks without pay in mid-June for his comments. It’s likely that Derome received a similar penalty.

Réinfo COVID posted a letter on its website presumably from Provost asking, on behalf of Laval University, that the video of the panel he participated in be taken down, or else he could face further sanctions, including being fired.

The collective refused, citing the need for the public to be aware of the “utility, efficacy, risks, and ethics of vaccinating children.”

Réinfo said it would try to help the professors, noting: “If universities gag their professors, as do different professional orders, we’re sliding into dictatorship.”

Academic Freedom

The suspensions of Derome and Provost have added fuel to the debate about academic freedom in Quebec, which just last month adopted a law to protect it.

“Those situations at Laval University confirm that it was necessary to legislate on this issue and the law stipulates that every university must, within a year, write a policy and put in place a committee to monitor the implementation of the policy and review the complaints related to academic freedom in universities,” Higher Education Minister Danielle McCann said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“The law also emphasizes that academic freedom must be practiced in conformity with norms of scientific rigour.”

The professors have the support of their union, which has filed a grievance, and of the larger union federation it’s affiliated to.

“Independently of what we can think of comments or statements made by a colleague, heads of the university have no legitimacy to intervene in the content of comments made by those colleagues,” says an email sent by the Laval teacher’s union (SPUL) to its members.

“The leadership of Laval University made a wrong call and hurts the principles guaranteeing the functioning of the University and academic freedom,” SPUL president Louis-Philippe Lampron said in a tweet.

The Epoch Times reached out to SPUL but didn’t hear back by publication time.

A provincial university professor’s labour union federation to which the SPUL is attached, the FQPPU, said the suspension of the two professors was even more “serious and surprising” since it occurred after the province passed the law on academic freedom.

“The conformity to the consensus of a scientific community is in itself not a sufficiently precise norm to justify a disciplinary sanction against a professor who exercises his academic freedom,” the FQPPU said in a statement.

It said it’s the duty of colleagues and other academics to refute or point out weaknesses in remarks or works presented.

“In an institution that respects academic freedom, it’s by refutation that professors and others participating in teaching and research must push back against comments which drift away from the knowledge validated by proven methods.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccine shots for hundreds of thousands of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will remain on pause after a Los Angeles County judge ruled on July 5 that the district lacks the authority to do so.

In his ruling, Judge Mitchell Beckloff of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County sided with a parent, whose 12-year-old son attends a public magnet school in North Hollywood. The parent filed the complaint in October 2021, about a month after the LAUSD announced its vaccination mandate.

Under the district’s mandate, all eligible students aged 12 and above must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, or get approved for exemptions by Jan. 10 in order to attend school in person. Those who don’t comply would be transferred into the district’s remote learning program, City of Angels, which offers a mixture of live instruction and self-study.

The suing parent, identified as G.F., argued that it is unfair and unlawful for the child, identified as D.F., to have to lose his hard-earned place at a competitive school just because he and his parent have chosen to not get vaccinated on the basis of personal beliefs.

According to G.F., his son had acquired natural immunity after recovering from COVID-19. He also said he worried that vaccinating the child would put the child’s health in jeopardy.

“Either I get him a vaccine that I fear could harm him, or I send him to a virtual school that I know from experience and LAUSD’s own data would prove academically vastly inferior,” the father said earlier this year in a sworn declaration, reported City News Service. “The idea of dumping him into an online school, free of a rigorous academic program and torn away from his like-minded classmates, breaks my heart.”

Beckloff, who wrote in March in a tentative opinion that he might dismiss the case, agreed with the father in his final ruling, acknowledging that if D.F. refuses to comply with the mandate, he will be forced to accept a very different education.

“The [mandate] is not merely about how education is delivered or who may be physically present on campus as the court previously viewed it. Instead, the [mandate] dictates which school the student may attend, and the curriculum he may continue to receive,” the judge wrote, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The judge also noted that the LAUSD mandate is in conflict with California’s public health law, which allows personal beliefs-based vaccination exemptions.

“Judge Beckloff’s ruling confirms that individual school districts do not have the authority to impose local vaccination requirements in excess of statewide requirements,” Arie Spangler, an attorney for G.F., said in a statement. “We are very pleased with the ruling, as it ensures that no child will be forced out of the classroom due to their COVID-19 vaccination status.”

The decision doesn’t have an immediate impact on LAUSD, since the mandate has already been placed on hold after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in April that the state would wait for the federal government to give full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine for young children. The Newsom administration and school district have both said they won’t pursue the pediatric vaccine mandate until at least the summer of 2023.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Gretchen Whitmer says the state has added 25,000 auto jobs since she took office. It has actually lost thousands.

Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer says she’s added 25,000 “good-paying auto jobs” during her tenure. The state has actually lost thousands of auto jobs on her watch, labor statistics show.

In a June 2 press release, Whitmer said she was “proud” to announce Michigan has “added nearly 25,000 auto jobs since I took office.” The Democrat roughly three weeks later repeated the claim, writing in a “mobility and electrification” fact sheet that she “is ensuring Michigan lives up to its legacy as the place that put the world on wheels by creating nearly 25,000 good-paying auto jobs.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics data, however, contradict that claim. Whitmer inherited 169,500 auto jobs when she became governor in January 2019, according to the agency. As of May 2022, that number is 166,700—a decrease of nearly 3,000 jobs.

Whitmer’s deceptive declaration shows how the Democrat is attempting to rebound on economic issues following her stringent stay-at-home orders, which shuttered local stores but deemed marijuana dispensaries, lottery ticket vendors, and big-box retailers “essential.” While Whitmer has touted leading the “best economic recovery in Michigan history,” a June WalletHub report ranked Michigan 46th in unemployment claim recovery.

Michigan Rising Action communications director Mary Drabik said Whitmer’s “gaslighting” on auto jobs is “not surprising.”

“When Gov. Whitmer’s claims are this far detached from reality, it becomes difficult to believe anything she says,” Drabik told the Washington Free Beacon. “But coming from the governor who claims her nursing-home policies saved lives and vacationed in Florida while telling Michiganders to avoid flying south, the gaslighting is not surprising.”

Whitmer’s office acknowledged that the governor’s claim stems from “the number of jobs announced since January 2019,” some of which are not yet actualized. Still, Whitmer communications director Bobby Leddy said the governor “is proud of her record of job creation, particularly in the auto industry, as we move to cement Michigan’s legacy of manufacturing.” Leddy did not address why Whitmer’s statistic does not account for jobs that have left the state since 2019.

This is far from the first time Whitmer has faced criticism for failing to deliver on a claim. In April 2020, the Democrat pledged to give back a portion of her salary for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. But Whitmer ended the pledge just five months later in September, even as her indoor gathering restrictions and public face mask requirements lasted for 15 months.

Whitmer, who implemented a policy that required nursing homes to accept positive coronavirus patients who were discharged from hospitals, is up for reelection in November after a roller coaster of a first term. Whitmer’s national profile exploded during the beginning of the pandemic thanks to her harsh restrictions and public feud with then-president Donald Trump. Whitmer went on to ramp up those restrictions, which sparked large protests, particularly as the Democrat defied her own rules.

Whitmer’s potential Republican opponents include political commentator Tudor Dixon, chiropractor Garrett Soldano, and businessman Kevin Rinke. Republican voters will choose their nominee during Michigan’s August 2 primary.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/michigan-governor-wont-stop-lying-to-voters-about-job-gains/

USAF pilot Lt. John Bowes dreamt of flying and protecting the country his entire life—since he was a child.

He is heartbroken now that he had to put his religious faith over his dream due to the COVID vaccine mandates within the U.S. military, but believes that God is helping him get through the tribulation and that he has a duty to speak up.

The 24-year-old was an F-16 student pilot but was taken out of training and prevented from flying since September of last year when he first submitted his religious accommodation.

“I exercised my constitutional and statutory right to receive a religious accommodation. And then I was, as a direct consequence of doing that, removed from training to fly the F-16. I personally believe that is religious discrimination,” Bowes told The Epoch Times.

He made clear that his views are not representative of the USAF.

“Now that my religious accommodation is denied, I have been formally removed from training. I’ve received a letter of reprimand, which is a disciplinary action that goes on my record as an officer. And I’ve been told that I’ll be processed for discharge here pretty soon,” he said.

Bowes says that nine months ago he filed an equal opportunity complaint with the Air Force Equal Opportunity office, but has not heard back from them so far.

“I’m absolutely heartbroken,” Bowes said, “it’s sad to see that my dream is at risk over something like the COVID vaccine, which doesn’t stop you from getting or spreading COVID.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the USAF for comment.

Vaccine Efficacy and Risk

COVID vaccines, which were marketed as preventing infection from the Chinese Communist Party virus, are now known to provide little protection against infection after the Omicron virus variant became dominant, with vaccine booster efficacy waning over time.

What’s more, cases of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—and pericarditis—inflammation of the lining outside the heart—have spiked dramatically since the COVID vaccines started being administered worldwide.

“My faith is what gets me through it because I know that God has called me to speak up about these mandates, and God has called me to stand up for the beliefs that I have—that he gave me, and I’m risking my dream and my career and my future and my financial stability, and my honor as an officer, which is being tainted by these disciplinary actions. All because of my oath to my faith, my oath to God which got me here in the first place, as well as my oath to the Constitution of the United States, which all officers take,” Bowes said.

“And so I’m not here to be rebellious. I’m not here to stick it to the man and so many service members aren’t here to do that, either. We’re simply doing what we swore to do. And standing up for our religious beliefs.”

As the June 30 deadline nears for compliance with the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, U.S. Army officials publicly claim a very small percentage of its members are unvaccinated, reporting 96 percent or more of its members are fully vaccinated.

However, the Army’s vaccination rate could be far lower than 96 percent, an anonymous active-duty senior Army official told The Defender.

Sanctity of Life

As a Catholic, Bowes believes in the sanctity of human life and doesn’t want to use the COVID vaccines because aborted fetal cell lines are involved in either the production or the testing of these.

“That action, the use of that vaccine is not in line with my belief that all human life is sacred and ordained by God to exist on this earth. And the use of abortion, in order to accomplish the production of these vaccines, is just morally abhorrent to me,” Bowes said.

Disclosed CDC emails show that they have been producing and culturing human stem cell lines.

Bowes added that he knows “a lot of service members” whose primary argument in their religious accommodations is the sanctity of their genetic material and not wanting to be forced into having it altered.

Recent studies have found that the mRNA in vaccines can become embedded in DNA, and the Pfizer vaccine’s mRNA is even able to enter human liver cells and be converted into DNA.

According to official data from the Air Force, over 9,500 religious accommodations requests had been denied approval as of June 14.

This is despite Archbishop for the Military Service Timothy Broglio saying in October 2021 that: “The denial of religious accommodations, or punitive or adverse personnel actions taken against those who raise earnest, conscience-based objections, would be contrary to federal law and morally reprehensible.”

Bowes personally knows a few pilots who “developed myocarditis from the vaccine, and they don’t fly anymore.”

Pilot Shortage

The Air Force has been struggling with pilot shortages for years now.

Former Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein testified before congress in 2017 about a shortage of aviators, writing in 2016 that the situation was a “quiet crisis.”

A DoD report (pdf) from 2019 noted that by the end of FY 2018, the Air Force was “short 2,000 pilots out of a total inventory of 18,400.”

“I know of personally more than 700 pilots who are actively unvaccinated and have filed a religious accommodation or have filed for a medical exemption or something of the sort,” Bowes said.

A letter from November 2021 (pdf) from DoD pilots submitting religious accommodation for vaccination to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees details the impacts based on an analysis of a group of 357 pilots that did not want to take the COVID vaccines.

Their estimated value was totaled at $7.8 billion tax dollars, 4,842 years of cumulative service, and 14 years of service on average.

Nineteen percent of them support the mission of nuclear deterrence, 69 percent are instructors, and nine percent are Air Force Weapons Instructors or Navy TOPGUN graduates.

“The implications of 700 pilots is pretty extreme,” Bowes said in an interview with LifeSite news.

Recently, an American Airlines pilot suffered a cardiac arrest between flights after mandatory COVID vaccination, and a law group started suing all major airlines over the vaccine mandates.

Attorneys and doctors have also charged that the FAA is violating its own rule that pilots should not fly after having taken medications that have been approved for less than a year.

An advocacy group called Freedom Flyers is assisting pilots to come forward and speak out about their conditions.

“Many of these pilots are afraid to come forward because if they come forward they lose their flight physical, they lose their flight medical. So they’re continuing to fly. We have a lot of pilots that are flying with chest pain and neurological conditions, because if they come forward they lose their careers,” Josh Yoder, a spokesperson for Freedom Flyers told The Epoch Times.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/god-has-called-me-to-stand-up-usaf-pilot-facing-discharge-for-rejecting-covid-vaccine_4550492.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-26&utm_medium=email&est=S%2FkiBu942fuCvHm9O7oI6j3DN2KX591lrUn%2FSGyOgR47tDvGieWdOISgj1u3vnkK3w%3D%3D

The nation of Austria has suspended its controversial COVID-19 vaccine mandate, with government officials citing concerns about the policy infringing on individual freedoms.

Ministers for health and constitutional affairs announced the move on June 22nd, just six days before individuals who failed to comply with the policy would have begun receiving fines for their decision.

The measure was the most comprehensive mandate within the European Union, as it applied to all adults with virtually no exceptions. It had been in effect since February 5th, 2022, but enforcement formally began on March 15th, 2022z

“We will… suspend the vaccine mandate in accordance with the principle of proportionality,” constitutional affairs minister Karoline Edtstadler remarked during a news conference.

“Why? Because there are many convincing arguments at the moment that this infringement of fundamental rights is not justified.”

Edtstadler detailed how the Austrian government was acting on the recommendation of a panel of experts that must regularly review the public health and constitutional law aspects of the recently overturned mandate.

She and Health Minister Johannes Rauch, however, said the vaccine mandate could yet be reintroduced if necessary, with the next review due within three months.

Austria’s decision to scrap its COVID-19 vaccine mandate comes amidst controversy in the U.S. over resident Joe Biden’s efforts to force the jab on federal workers. Many private companies have issued similar ultimatums to employees, despite a host of recent studies demonstrating the harmful side effects of the vaccine.

Studies have show the COVID-19 vaccine affects male and female reproductive organs while other research suggests the efficacy of the jab is far weaker than natural immunity.

MUST READ: Facebook’s Audit Director AND Marketing Leads Are Former Pfizer Directors.

Despite the fact that more research into the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine needs to be done, pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Moderna have increased their lobbying efforts to record-breaking highs in terms of personnel hired and overall money spent.

Retired U.S. Army Major General Paul Vallely is vigorously sounding the alarm against a potential communist takeover of the country and is also very concerned about the mandatory COVID vaccination of all members of the military.

Vallely asserts that there have been many adverse reactions within the force since the rollout of the vaccines, singling out the risk of blood clots and heart problems with the jabs.

“The mandatory vaccines and boosters … under Department of Defense guidance and directives to the commands throughout the Armed Forces have caused a great deal of controversy. Number one: those that declined mandatory vaccination under the First Amendment religious rights,” Vallely told The Epoch Times.

He believes that there is no need to force COVID vaccines on them, as “these are the healthiest men and women we have in the country.”

“They can take [the vaccines] as an option, but we’ve got to stop this mandatory vaccination. It’s hurting the armed forces. And of course, our enemies see that—the Russians, the Chinese, the cartels. And then [there’s] the wokeism, the teaching of critical race theory. So there are a lot of things going on that are affecting the status and the readiness of our forces right now. I’m very worried about that.”

According to U.S. Army Public Affairs, 97 percent of the active army and 88 percent of the army reserve is completely vaccinated. It also states that 2,846 exemption requests have been refused and there have been 3,330 official reprimands, as of April 13. However, an anonymous whistleblower told The Defender that the actual vaccination rates may be significantly lower.

The Army had separated 669 soldiers “for refusing the lawful order to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” as of May 19.

Vallely served for 31 years in the U.S. Army and retired in 1992 as the deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has over 15 years of experience in special operations, psychological operations, and civil-military operations.

He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and earned his commission in the Army in 1961, at the height of the Vietnam war.

After serving two combat tours in Vietnam, Vallely also served in several other overseas theaters in Europe and Pacific Rim countries. Vallely also served on U.S. security assistance missions and civilian–military relations tours all over the world.

Time Spent on CRT and Communist Ideology Could Be Used for Gun Training

“I think the Russians and the cartels and the Chinese, they’re letting us destroy ourselves from within. They don’t have to even do anything. It’s self-destruction within our own government. They see that, and of course, that makes us very, very vulnerable when we have critical race theory and ideology and what we call indoctrination, rather than putting forth the training and education that has to go on within our military,” Vallely said.

He believes that there “absolutely” is an agenda to transform the republic, that the country is being dismantled from within, and that a socialist takeover has already made substantial progress.

“When you take away to teach a critical race theory and communist ideology, you’re taking away from the time that could be used for learning how to shoot better, how to operate airplanes better, take care of airplanes through maintenance; and even within the medical corps of the armed forces, it has affected many the doctors and nurses. So it’s a terrible thing. They need to stop it right now. They need to stop enforcing the mandates,” he stated.

“This is terrible tyranny that’s going on.”

How to Stop a Communist Takeover

Despite the gloomy prospects, Vallely keeps a positive spirit and thinks that if the country is to be preserved, Americans need to awaken and act, starting at the local level—and quickly turn the tides before it’s too late.

“We have to have the sheriffs and the governors enforcing the 10th Amendment. We need to have that happen. I’m not sure that the elections are going to be fair in November.

“People have to stand up before we are led into a really bloody civil war. And that’s what it’s looking like.”

Vallely further asserted that there are “high-tech oligarchs” that, behind the scenes, want to “change the direction of this country, and they’re doing it. They’re dismantling this country. They don’t believe in our Constitution, for example they don’t care about the First Amendment or Second Amendment. They want to completely dominate the society culturally.”

Vallely is now the chairman of Stand Up America US Foundation and the Legacy National Security Advisory Group. He is a founding member of the Citizens Committee on National Security and is the founder of Nemo Arms incorporated in Boise, Idaho.

“2022 is the awakening of America. We need to wake up to see what’s happening to our country and to our government—the demolishing of our Constitution, increased burglaries, crime, and deaths within our cities. We got to enforce the law. These are all things that are on the table that must be done to turn the country around. If not, we’ll be destroyed,” Vallely concluded.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/people-have-to-stand-up-before-we-are-led-into-a-really-bloody-civil-war-former-us-major-general-paul-vallely_4546269.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-23-1&utm_medium=email&est=bDM0I89cUm%2F30nojeh7gA17jQ%2BQPboEzYmIZ8N2oHM11rO9s1uDnXZFAHOk1%2BKIttw%3D%3D

Australians are still suffering from the trauma of government health mandates.

In the wake of Australia’s “zero COVID” policy, which boasts 95 percent of all citizens over 16 vaccinated and some of the world’s strictest lockdowns, Scott Morrison’s government was swept out of power in May. Yet broken businesses and people’s wrecked health struggle to recover.

Some fear they may never recover.

Ask Liz Mann, who was vaccinated and says she hasn’t been the same since. Mann, 50, who works in agriculture and runs a farm in northern Victoria, wasn’t an anti-vaxxer — she had her yellow fever, Hep-A, and other shots — but decided to pass on the corona vaccine. She had COVID already, she reckons, having suffered prolonged flu-like symptoms in January 2020. So she’d have immunity. With her health history of chronic fatigue, a UK study found, she had a 27 percent chance of a “severe reaction” to Pfizer’s vaccine. On those accounts, she ought to’ve been exempt.

None of that mattered.

Per Victoria’s mandate, to work, she’d have to roll up her sleeve. Delaying the inevitable, she tried working remotely from home for two weeks and took another two weeks off, but the mandates loomed. So, she caved, visited the drive-through clinic in Murchison, got the jab, and was told to park and wait 15 minutes in case of aftereffects before driving home.

Her reaction was instantaneous.

“I wound down the window feeling like I was going to black out, I honked the horn, turned around and looked at the doctor out my rear vision mirror,” she told The Epoch Times. “And then I just dropped the seat because I was about to black out.” Medical staff at the clinic checked her blood pressure and it was “160 over 100,” she said, adding that she’s “normally low blood pressure.” “I had trouble standing up at that point,” she recalled, and told how chest pains followed. “Within about three hours, it felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.”

Doctors at the clinic watched on, arms crossed over their chests, and made remarks as she lay outside. “‘Well, wonder what will happen when she has her second vaccine,’ and I said, ‘I’m not having it,’” Liz recalled. “And they had a bit of a laugh and said, ‘We’ll see about that.’ I was pretty disgusted actually.”

We contacted Murchison Medical Clinic for comment, but they were unable to respond before publishing.

Mann’s condition showed little improvement in the days and weeks following. She remained lethargic, was bedridden for weeks on end, and was unable to perform daily tasks maintaining the farm. When a tree fell onto a fence and she had to use a chainsaw, the physical strain spurred chest pains, which extended to her face, and she had to call an ambulance. Within two weeks of the jab, other symptoms, including rashes, spontaneous bruising, and a black eye, appeared. On day 41, one side of her face drooped, and she experienced “stroke-like symptoms.”

Despite all this, Mann couldn’t get a medical exemption for her impending second jab — unlike what one would expect with side effects from other drugs like penicillin. Meanwhile, her job demanded it. She refused. They terminated her contract, but the letter they sent made no mention of vaccine stipulations.

The point was moot anyway; she couldn’t work. Her health bottomed out.

Mann did eventually get a medical exemption after eight weeks, but couldn’t work at the level she once did. Any physical activity, such as tending to her livestock, brought on pain in her chest and face, with some days being lost entirely to poor health.

Adding insult to injury, when Mann was granted a public records request, she saw her doctor had written that she had “psychological issues,” placing the blame on “anxiety.” She also found a discrepancy: Her doctors had put in a claim for two doses (was it a double?) while her immunization history showed none.

Yet Mann is lucky in some respects. With her situation, having multiple jobs and the ability to work remotely or outside Victoria, where restrictions are less strict, she can earn a living. Not everyone’s so lucky.

Nevertheless, if the election proves anything, it’s that while Australians who’ve suffered due to health mandates struggle to reclaim their lost health and livelihoods, their collective faith in the medical industry and government may be beyond repair.

“I don’t trust them anymore. I never want to see another GP in my whole life,” said Mann, adding that, even while awaiting her exemption, all the doctors wanted to do “was to put the next vaccine in [her].” It’s not exactly lucid what lies behind the curtain of absurdities. She posits it’s “very much about control.”

There were medical professionals who were forthcoming in varying degrees. Doctors admitted Mann’s adverse reactions were due to the vaccine, yet referrals to specialists were few and excuses many: “Chest pain is nothing to worry about.” A nurse did look her in the eye and prod her to speak up — even though many in society aren’t open to it.

She did just that.

“I’m not afraid to speak out. I have lost friends over this,” said Mann. “People don’t want to know about this, and it annoys me when you hear from mainstream media about stories of long COVID, but ‘vaccine side effects’ is a dirty [term] that nobody wants to hear.”

In hindsight, faced with that ultimatum again — the jab or no job — would Mann choose differently? “I would have said, ‘I don’t want the job,’ and walked away at that point and had my health,” she said. “I lost the job anyway, so it would have been the same as what happened. But I would have had my health.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/i-was-about-to-black-out-aussie-woman-loses-job-for-refusing-2nd-jab-after-covid-shots-stroke-like-symptoms_4539716.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-21-2&utm_medium=email&est=i7QQYqxYcNUi1uodt6vG%2Fgs5jVbMTj4Qg8RUFQBNymhVbsZd5HuuA5%2Bfxo4HZiZEYg%3D%3D

A majority of New Yorkers say their city is headed in the wrong direction under Democratic mayor Eric Adams, according to a Siena College poll released Tuesday.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said the city is headed in the wrong direction, while an overwhelming majority—70 percent—said they feel less safe than when the pandemic began. Adams’s approval rating, meanwhile, is underwater: Just 29 percent of New Yorkers said his performance has been “excellent” or “good,” while 64 percent said it has been “fair” or “poor.”

Spectrum News NY1, which commissioned the poll, published the results on the same day that residents in another leftwing city are pushing back against their far-left leaders. Radical San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin (D.), whose soft-on-crime policies led to the release of a serial criminal who went on to kill two people, on Tuesday faces a recall effort organized by members of his own party, who say he is too extreme even for famously liberal San Francisco. Recent polling indicates that a majority of San Franciscans want Boudin out.

While Adams said this week that shootings in New York are trending downward, overall crime jumped 28 percent last month, Spectrum News reported Friday. Grand larcenies, burglaries, robberies, and gun arrests all rose.

While Adams has said addressing homelessness is a priority, 49 percent of New Yorkers said he’s doing a poor job on the issue. Forty-five percent said he’s also doing a poor job on fighting crime.

New Yorkers are similarly unhappy with Democratic state leaders, including Governor Kathy Hochul. A plurality of respondents, 46 percent, said the state is heading in the wrong direction, and a majority, 54 percent, called Hochul’s performance only “fair” or “poor.”

The poll respondents are far from the only New Yorkers to show their dissatisfaction with left-wing leadership. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Yorkers have fled the Empire State in droves, with many heading to Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida.

Many former Gothamites told the New York Post they left the state because of leftwing policies such as lockdowns, mask mandates, and high taxes. The state’s tax base shrank in 2020 by $19.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/another-liberal-city-is-losing-faith-in-its-liberal-leadership/

Survivors of communist regimes warn that as Marxist ideology strengthens its grip on the left, Americans must defend freedom of speech and religion, or they will lose the ability to educate their children.

Marxism has gained a foothold in the American education system through the rise of cancel culture, revisionist history lessons, critical race theory, and divisive gender ideology, survivor of Albanian communism Merita McCormack said Thursday at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. The museum, which is organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and opens to the public on June 13, seeks to educate Americans on the 100 million lives taken by communism, the efforts of those who have taken a stand against the ideology, and those who resist communist regimes today. McCormack told the Washington Free Beacon she hopes to protect the next generation from the evils she was exposed to growing up in a communist nation.

“Politically and ideologically, Marxism leads to totalitarianism,” McCormack said. “Parents must teach their children what is true, right, and just, and they must be well informed and have a strong voice in what students learn at schools. Public universities must be held accountable to taxpayers for what they teach.”

The coronavirus pandemic, McCormack said, unveiled the extent of Marxist ideology in public education, which is undermining religious freedom and free speech, as well as the role of parents.

“The pandemic was a heavy cross for this nation as it was for the world, and during the pandemic parents figured out what their children were learning in school,” McCormack said. “Schools should be an extension of family education and should be in harmony with the family. Sadly, currently one can say that we have the American version of Marxism.”

The dangers of communism are self-evident, McCormack said, but the ideology has captured much of the left and forced anticommunists to live on the defensive. Members of the left increasingly support Marxist ideology, according to a Data for Progress poll conducted in January that showed Democrats prefer democratic socialism to capitalism.

Aldona Wos, a former U.S. ambassador to Estonia who immigrated to America from Poland’s communist regime as a child, said Americans must stand against Marxism just as anticommunists have in the century since Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution.

“The greatest danger of communism is that it is an ideology built on lies,” Wos said, “and you must have education to understand that it is a lie.”

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/survivors-of-communism-warn-of-leftwing-threats-to-american-education/

Former Pfizer VP: ‘Massive Fraud Playing Out on a Global Scale,’ Reckless to Vaccine the Whole Population

In order to get an insider’s view, we spoke with Dr. Michael Yeadon, former chief scientific officer at Pfizer’s Global Allergy & Respiratory Research Department. 

We discussed many topics, such as how, in his professional opinion, there is no safe way to combat a pandemic with a vaccine—since the necessary safety trials take longer than the length of the pandemic—that it’s reckless to attempt to vaccinate an entire population, and that if we continue down the path we’ve been traveling over the past two years, it will lead to total global control by a small group of elites.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/former-pfizer-vp-massive-fraud-playing-out-on-a-global-scale-reckless-to-vaccine-the-whole-population_4509490.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-04-4&utm_medium=email&est=MrKiBXUmbpd3E6cXlxqMxpUGrTSL9bSvzDx%2BDHZSfo0nvKb8AWhRZ4RGRSbTnvtN8A%3D%3D

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs denied a life-saving lung transplant to U.S. Army veteran because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19.

James Jooyandeh’s requests for both a referral for the transplant and a religious exemption from the vaccine were recently denied by the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Wisconsin where Jooyandeh has been treated for the past several years.

Jooyandeh, a former tank commander for the U.S. military, suffers from advanced stages of pulmonary fibrosis.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to offer lung transplant as a treatment option for you due to your unwillingness to receive recommended routine health maintenance, including your vaccinations, which is an absolute contraindication to lung transplantation at our center,” wrote Jooyandeh’s primary care physician Dr. Samir Sultan, a transplant pulmonologist with the VA hospital in Wisconsin, and Dr. James Maloney, chief of surgical services at the Veterans Hospital.

In an exclusive interview with The EpochTimes, Jooyandeh and wife Deborah told The Epoch Times they are both against the COVID-19 vaccine because fetal cell lines were used in the development and testing of the vaccine and because of the vaccine’s potential health risks.

“One of the side effects that was just released was interstitial lung disease and that’s what we have,” Deborah Jooyandeh told The Epoch Times, “so why would he take a vaccine that causes what’s killing him.”

Jooyandeh said he is also feeling “slighted” by the very administration he for so long served. Following a 13-year tour in the U.S. Army, Jooyaneh served eight years in the National Guard and five years in the Army Reserve.

Now 52, as a civilian he worked as a merchandiser for Nestle and does not have the means to afford a lung transplant out of pocket. His only choice is to use his VA benefits.

In order to do that, a VA doctor must write a referral to a facility since VA hospitals do not perform transplants themselves. The VA mostly refers veterans in need of transplants to Vanderbilt University Hospital in Tennessee.

Vanderbilt does not require the COVID-19 vaccine for transplant patients, but Sultan, as records show, still refused to make the referral.

Both he and Maloney acknowledged in their letter that Jooyandeh “is significantly impaired due to his lung condition,” but refused to reconsider their decision.

They also refused to consider Jooyandeh’s request for a religious exemption.

What remains unclear is what VA policy Sultan and Maloney are following in refusing to give Jooyandeh a referral for his much needed lung transplant.

In a letter preceding their denial of Jooyandeh’s request for a referral, John Rohrer, director of the Transplant and Surgical Service Department of Veterans Affairs in Wisconsin stated in a letter that he had confirmed from the hospital’s “coordinator” that the COVID-19 vaccine is required “per current Lung Transplant program guidelines.”

However a spokesman for the VA was unable to provide The Epoch Times with the VA’s policy on referring veterans who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 for a transplant.

Rohrer also did not respond to inquiries by The Epoch Times asking him to clarify what guidelines he was referring to.

Sultan and Maloney, who adid not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times, cited the recommendations of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) as a basis for their decision.

In March, The Epoch Times reported that Pfizer is one of UNOS corporate sponsors. Private hospitals who have denied unvaccinated patients transplants have too cited UNOS policies for their position. In response, UNOS issued a statement to The Epoch Times emphasizing their recommendations are not mandates and hospitals are free to make their own decisions regarding transplants for unvaccinated patients.

Last month, the Liberty Counsel sent the VA a formal request for an emergency referral on behalf of Jooyandeh, but according to Deborah Catalano, senior counsel for the civil rights organization, the VA has yet to respond to her April 15 request.

“We are talking about a man who served his country and probably saved lives and now the very administration he served under is willing to let him die,” she told The Epoch Times.

Jooyandeh’s lung condition may stem from his military service. While he admitted he smoked, Jooyandeh also was part of an Army unit tasked with burning spent ammo and other munitions in an open pit.

Jooyandeh, who has no other comorbidities, told The Epoch Times he believes Sultan is operating on his own personal beliefs and has “blacklisted him to a point where no one else will override him.”

He even wrote a negative report about Jooyandeh refusing to take medication, even though his medical records show he had an adverse reaction to it.

“He’s continuously standing in our way,” said Jooyandeh, “it’s like he’s bruising my records to make me look uncooperative.”

Catalano said she questions why the VA would even care if Jooyandeh is vaccinated since none of their hospitals would be performing the transplant.

“The VA is denying their access to health care, nobody is asking the VA to perform it,” she said “it should grant the religious exemption or just let them go to Vanderbilt and pay for it.”

Catalano pointed to a recent study that shows the VA is in the minority when it comes to refusing to make referrals for unvaccinated patients in need of a major organ transplant.

According to the study, which was conducted by the American Journal of Transplantation, out of 141 U.S. transplants centers surveyed, 60.7 percent reported that the COVID vaccination was not required in order to receive a transplant.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/veterans-affairs-denies-life-saving-lung-transplant-to-unvaccinated-veteran_4511707.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-04-2&utm_medium=email&est=Ya%2F6y58H86kpxRzI5w6OgqfJZOXZlviDG2zeFnVgNspwzCFZSlO%2FqulCRzcUSXi3Cw%3D%3D

NO WONDER THERE’S NO END TO AMERICA’S SUPPLY CHAIN ISSUES.

A leading advisor to Joe Biden on supply chains is an alum of several World Economic Forum climate change initiatives, who additionally served as a former fellow at a think tank chaired by Hunter Biden.

Betty Cremmins, whose LinkedIn profile reveals she’s held the position of Director for Sustainable Supply Chains at the White House, since February 2022, has overseen the U.S. government’s ongoing supply chain issues, exacerbated by policies that mandated vaccines for many American workers and truckers.

Prior to taking over the White House’s supply chain initiative, Cremmins was a National Security Fellow and Climate Affiliate Group Co-Lead at the Truman National Security Project. The Washington, D.C.-based, left-leaning foreign policy network has featured Biden’s son Hunter Biden on its board since 2011.

Archived versions of the organization’s website reveal that Biden ascended to the role of vice-chairman of the board, serving there until at least March 2019 and, therefore, overlapping with Cremmins’s fellowship.

In addition to her ties to the Hunter Biden-linked group, Cremmins is also an alum of the World Economic Forum (WEF), chaired by Klaus Schwab. The WEF, which seeks to abolish private property ownership, has exploited issues like COVID-19 and climate change for its controversial “Great Reset” agenda.

Cremmins was previously the Lead of “1t.org,” a WEF initiative in support of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, from June 2020 to July 2021. The initiative seeks to “conserve, restore and grow one trillion trees by 2030,” demonstrating how environmental issues are often intertwined with WEF’s broader agenda. She was later promoted to the Lead on Engagement for “1t.org” and the WEF Natural Climate Solutions Alliance, which seeks to combat climate change through “voluntary or compliance action” with businesses, governments, and investors.

MUST READ: Biden’s Chief Climate Officer Is A Klaus Schwab Fellow.

Cremmins has also authored several articles for the WEF website focused on combatting climate change via the private sector.

“Beyond the disruptive and tragic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world finds itself facing a crisis like no other in every corner of the planet; the accelerated destruction of nature and the impacts of climate change. Although these issues have often been regarded in silos, we cannot ignore that they are inextricably linked,” explained Cremmins in a post from July 29th, 2021.

Cremmins also worked for Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a “not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts.” The CDP runs a Supply Chain program, where Cremmins previously served as its Senior Account Manager, that prioritizes sustainability and combatting climate change among the world’s leading multinational corporations.

“To transform the global economic system to prevent dangerous climate change,” explains the objective of the program in a slideshow presentation delivered by Cremmins.

Cremmins’s unearthed role in the White House follows The National Pulse revealing another WEF-linked activist advocating for Chinese Communist Party-style “re-education camps.”

Don’t believe what you’re being told by the propaganda machine. Facts don’t lie, and it’s now clear that COVID vaccination makes it more likely you’ll die if you are 60 years old or younger, not less likely. Here’s why.

Story at-a-glance

• According to a recent modeling experiment, “Increased contact among vaccinated people can give the false impression that COVID-19 vaccines are not working”
• This rationale is dubious at best, considering the unvaccinated have continuously been accused of not taking COVID seriously and going about their lives as normal, while the “vaccinated” are, by and large, more fearful and take “authorities” advice to heart, which includes avoiding large gatherings and close one-on-one interactions without wearing a face mask
• Many data sources reveal that COVID-jabbed individuals are now getting COVID-19 at far higher rates than the unjabbed. Death rates, both for COVID and other causes, have also risen in tandem with the number of shots administered
• According to an analysis of U.S. data, in September 2021, when Delta was most prominent, 23% of those who died from COVID had received the jab. In January and February 2022, when Omicron started dominating, that percentage jumped to 42%
• Many argue that Omicron was more contagious than Delta, hence the higher death toll. But Omicron was also far milder than Delta, and there’s no reason the jabbed would die at a higher rate from a less lethal variant than a more lethal one, unless the injection made the infection worse
• A preprint study found adult participants in Moderna’s trial who got the real injection and later got a breakthrough infection did not generate antibodies against the nucleocapsid — a key component of the virus — as frequently as did those in the placebo arm. Their anti-nucleocapsid response was also lower regardless of the viral load. As a result of this reduced antibody response, those who got the jab may be more prone to repeated COVID infections

Well, the COVID jab pushers have had to resort to all sorts of obfuscation to hide the fact that the injections don’t work, and now they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel of excuses. According to a recent Reuters report,¹ “Increased contact among vaccinated people can give the false impression that COVID-19 vaccines are not working.”

This irrational explanation has been levied in response to studies showing COVID-jabbed individuals are getting infected at higher rates than the unjabbed, and there are many such studies.

“These studies are likely to involve statistical errors, particularly if they did not account for different contact patterns among vaccinated versus unvaccinated people,” Korryn Bodner, a research associate in infectious disease modeling in Toronto, told Reuters. Bodner is the first author of a preprint study² posted on medRxiv at the end of April 2022.

Are the Jabbed More Carefree Than the Unvaxxed?

Bodner’s claim is that those who got the jab may be more likely to throw caution to the wind and mingle with others, hence getting infected more frequently, while the unjabbed may be more cautious because they know they’re vulnerable. This rationale is dubious at best, considering:

a) The unvaccinated have continuously been accused of not taking COVID seriously and going about their lives as normal

b) Those who have taken the jab are, by and large, a far more fearful lot; they tend to listen to the “authorities” and take all of their advice to heart, which would include avoiding large gatherings and close one-on-one interactions without wearing a face mask

Check out the following story, reported by Anchorage Daily News:³

“Arianne Bennett recalled her husband, Scott Bennett, saying, ‘But I’m vaxxed. But I’m vaxxed,’ from the Washington hospital bed where he struggled to fight off COVID-19 this winter … Bennett went to get his booster in early December after returning to Washington from a lodge he owned in the Poconos, where he and his wife hunkered down for fall.

Just a few days after his shot, Bennett began experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, meaning he was probably exposed before the extra dose of immunity could kick in. His wife suspects he was infected at a dinner where he and his server were unmasked at times …

‘He was absolutely shocked. He did not expect to be sick. He really thought he was safe,’ Arianne Bennett recalled. ‘And I’m like, ‘But baby, you’ve got to wear the mask all the time. All the time. Up over your nose.’”

Within days of his third dose, he got a serious case of COVID. Yet they blame it on hypothetical exposure to an apparently healthy food server. This kind of irrational reasoning is prevalent among those who got the jabs and who keep going back for more as they are part of the 30% of the population that have been completely brainwashed.

To reiterate what I’ve explained since 2020, asymptomatic spread is likely to be so rare as to be nonexistent.⁴ It was a lie perpetuated to drive up fear and prop up rising “case” rates that didn’t really exist. It’s basic virology that you cannot transmit a virus unless you have a “hot” infection, and if you have an active, transmissible infection, you have symptoms. The symptoms are a sign that your body’s defenses are kicking in to rid itself of the live virus.

No symptoms, no transmission. So, unless the server was feeling sick and went to work anyway, the simplest explanation for Bennett’s demise was the shot itself. And if the server was sick, the fact that Bennett got so ill suggests the shot is ineffective, even at two doses.

The pro-pharma shills want you to believe there are so many confounding variables, we can’t possibly draw any conclusions from data showing the shots don’t work. Yet looking at data from a wide spectrum of sources, all show the same alarming trends. What “confounding factor” could possibly account for ALL of them being misinterpreted?

An Unproven Hypothesis

Reuters⁵ does note that Bodner’s simulations “do not prove that this type of bias affected studies of vaccine effectiveness versus the Omicron variant.” What it does show, according to Bodner, is that “even if vaccines work, increased contact among vaccinated persons can lead to the appearance of the vaccine not working.”

In other words, this is a hypothesis that has yet to be proven. Her modeling suggests it COULD make the jabs appear ineffective IF those who got the jab actually behave very differently from the unjabbed.

But again, it’s highly unlikely that the unvaccinated are avoiding exposure by steering clear of close contacts and crowds to a greater degree than those who got the jab. It’s far more reasonable to suspect that the shots don’t work.

On a side note, Bodner’s study was funded by the Canada COVID-19 Immunity Task Force.⁶ This task force is housed at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and McGill University is a long-term recipient of grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.^7,8,9,10

What Do the Data Say About COVID Jab Effectiveness?

Based on data from around the world, it seems clear that the COVID gene transfer injections are not working. In fact, they’re having the opposite effect of what you’d expect from a real vaccine. According to a Washington Post analysis of state and federal data,¹¹ in September 2021, when Delta was most prominent, 23% of those who died from COVID in the U.S. had received the jab.

In January and February 2022, when Omicron started dominating, that percentage jumped to 42%. In December 2021 and January 2022, just under half of all the COVID patients in intensive care at Kaiser Permanente’s hospital system in Northern California had also received one or more shots.¹²

Many argue that Omicron was more contagious than Delta, hence the higher death toll. But Omicron was also far milder than Delta, so why would the jabbed die at a higher rate from a less lethal variant than a more lethal one?

One attempt at an explanation is that the fatalities are now occurring primarily among the elderly. Nearly two-thirds of those who died from COVID during the Omicron wave were 75 and older. During the Delta wave, 75-year-olds and older accounted for just one-third of the deaths.¹³

But that was the case from the beginning, and it still doesn’t answer the question: Why would old people be more likely to die from a milder virus than a more serious one? To answer that question, the injection pushers revert back to the argument of waning potency. Two-thirds of those who died in January and February 2022 did not have a booster shot. According to Anchorage Daily News:¹⁴

“Experts say the rising number of vaccinated people dying should not cause panic in those who got shots, the vast majority of whom will survive infections. Instead, they say, these deaths serve as a reminder that vaccines are not foolproof and that those in high-risk groups should consider getting boosted and taking extra precautions during surges.”

So, in other words, the jab only works for a handful of months, and then you have to take another. And another. And another. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,¹⁵ the first two doses wear off after five months, necessitating a third dose, and the third dose wears off in just four months, at which time you’re supposed to get dose No. 4.

Israeli data¹⁶ show the effectiveness of shot No. 4 in preventing severe disease declines by 56% in just seven weeks. So, it appears the protection you get from the shots keeps getting shorter with each dose. Meanwhile, data show the shots can render you increasingly susceptible to all manner of infection and disease, through a wide variety of mechanisms.

Moderna Trial Data Reveal Repeated Infections Are Likely

Among such data is a preprint study¹⁷ posted on medRxiv April 19, 2022, which found adult participants in Moderna’s COVID jab trial who got the real injection, and later got a breakthrough infection, did not generate antibodies against the nucleocapsid — a key component of the virus — as frequently as did those in the placebo arm.

Curiously, placebo recipients produced anti-nucleocapsid antibodies twice as often as those who got the Moderna shot, and their anti-nucleocapsid response was larger regardless of the viral load. As a result of this reduced antibody response, those who got the jab may be more prone to repeated COVID infections. As reported by The Defender:¹⁸

“[T]he authors found that using the presence of anti-nucleocapsid (anti-N) antibodies to determine whether a person was exposed to SARS-CoV-2 will miss some infections. Thus, the sensitivity of this kind of test, when applied to vaccinated individuals, is not ideal.

However, there are more important implications^19,20 of these findings … Specifically, the study implies that the reduced ability of a vaccinated individual to produce antibodies to other portions of the virus may lead to a greater risk of future infections in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated.

It is important to note that this is not just another argument for the superiority of natural immunity. Rather, this is evidence suggesting that even after a vaccinated person has a breakthrough infection, that individual still does not acquire the same level of protection against subsequent exposures that an unvaccinated person acquires.

This is a troubling finding, and something investigators conducting the Moderna vaccine trial likely knew in 2020.”

UK Data Confirm Results

These findings are corroborated by data from the U.K. Health Security Agency. It publishes weekly COVID-19 vaccine surveillance data, including anti-nucleocapsid antibody levels. The report²¹ for Week 13, issued March 31, 2022, shows that COVID-jabbed individuals with breakthrough infections have lower levels of these antibodies — a finding they attributed to the protective benefit of the shot:

“These lower anti N responses in individuals with breakthrough infections (post-vaccination) compared to primary infections likely reflect the shorter and milder infections in these patients.”

However, this interpretation is likely flawed, because less severe infection is associated with lower viral load, and as the study above demonstrated, the “vaccinated” have lower anti-nucleocapsid antibody levels than the unvaccinated at all viral load levels, but especially so at the lowest viral loads. As noted by The Defender:²²

“This is one of the most significant findings of the study because it overturns the heretofore unchallenged idea that decreased seroconversion in the vaccinated is due to less severe infection in this population — which is a benefit provided by the vaccine.

However, this new study shows that even at low viral loads, the unvaccinated are more likely to seroconvert than those who are vaccinated. In fact, the difference in seroconversion rates is the greatest at lowest viral loads. The decrease in conversion rates is not a result of a benefit from the vaccine. It is a consequence of it.”

Boosted Now Have Three to Four Times Higher Case Rates

The Defender also reviews other U.K. data showing the COVID case rate is three to four times higher among those who have received a booster shot, compared to the unvaccinated. This is true for all age groups with the exception of children under 18:²³

“What could explain such a large increase in infection rates among the boosted? Interestingly, the authors … warn that the unvaccinated may have contracted COVID-19 prior to the observation period — in other words, they may have acquired natural immunity previously, giving them added protection …

But their own data tells the opposite story. The boosted are more likely to contract the disease — by a factor of 3 to 4. How do we know whether the larger infection rates in the boosted are due to more robust immunity in the unvaccinated because of prior infection or due to an immune deficiency in the boosted?

The question can be definitively answered by examining the trend of infection rates [using] … the equivalent table from two months earlier. There is still a greater infection rate among the boosted, but it is only two to three times higher. If the authors’ hypothesis was correct, the more recent data should have shown less of a difference, not more.

If anything, their data support the finding that the decreased seroconversion rates in the vaccinated may be causing a greater risk of repeated infections.”

Walgreens’ Data

Data from the pharmacy chain Walgreens in the U.S. also reveal the same trend — COVID-jabbed individuals are testing positive for COVID at higher rates than the unjabbed, and those who got their last shot five months or more ago have the highest risk.

As you can see in the screenshot from Walgreens’ COVID-19 tracker²⁴ below, during the week of May 9 through 15, 2022, 21.4% of unvaccinated individuals who got tested for COVID got a positive result. Of those who had gotten just one COVID shot, the positivity rate was 26.3%.

Of those who received two doses five months or more ago, 31.3% tested positive, and of those who received a third dose five months or more ago, the positive rate was 32.7%. So, after the first booster shot (the third dose), people are at greatest risk of testing positive for COVID.

More Jabs, More COVID Deaths

Perhaps most disturbing of all are the data showing the COVID shots are raising mortality rates, both from COVID and other causes. Above is an animated illustration²⁵ sourced from Our World In Data, first showing the vaccination rates of South America, North America, Europe and Africa, from mid-December 2020 through the third week of April 2022, followed by the cumulative confirmed COVID deaths per million in those countries during that same timeframe.

Africa has had a consistently low vaccination rate throughout, while North America, Europe and South America all have had rapidly rising vaccination rates. Africa has also had a consistently low COVID mortality rate, although a slight rise began around September 2021. Still, it’s nowhere near the COVID death rates of North America, South America and Europe, all of which saw dramatic increases.

Here’s another one,²⁶ also sourced from Our World In Data, first showing the excess death rate in the U.S. (the cumulative number of deaths from all causes compared to projections based on previous years), between January 26, 2020, and January 30, 2022, followed by an illustration of the tandem rise of vaccine doses administered and the excess mortality rate. It clearly shows that as vaccination rates rose, so did excess mortality.

Risk-Benefit Analyses

We also have the benefit of more than one risk-benefit analysis, and all show that, with very few exceptions, the COVID jabs do more harm than good. A risk-benefit analysis²⁷ by Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and independent researcher Kathy Dopp, published in mid-February 2022, concluded that the COVID jab is deadlier than COVID-19 itself for anyone under the age of 80.

Another analysis,²⁸ which relied on data in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), concluded that in those under age 18, the shots only increase the risk of death from COVID, and there’s no point at which the shot can prevent a single COVID death, no matter how many are vaccinated.If you’re under 18, you’re 51 times more likely to die from the COVID jab than you are to die from COVID if not vaccinated.

If you’re under 18, you’re a shocking 51 times more likely to die from the jab than you are to die from COVID if not vaccinated. In the 18 to 29 age range, the shot will kill 16 for every person it saves from dying from COVID, and in the 30 to 39 age range, the expected number of vaccine fatalities to prevent a single COVID death is 15. Only when you get into the 60 and older categories do the risks between the jab and COVID infection even out.

A third risk-benefit analysis by researchers in Germany and The Netherlands was published in June 2021, in the journal Vaccines.²⁹ The paper caused such an uproar, part of the editorial board resigned in protest.³⁰ The journal retracted the paper, but after a thorough re-review, it was republished in the August 2021 issue of Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.³¹

These researchers concluded that, “as we vaccinate 100 000 persons, we might save five lives but risk two to four deaths.”³² A fourth, still preliminary, analysis — based on more than 1,700 death reports collected by Steve Kirsch — shows the shots do more harm than good in anyone under age 60. Kirsch writes:³³

“Figure 1 below is an analysis of survey data I collected. The analysis shows that the vaccines are harmful to those under 60. The red dots higher than the error bar means more vaccinated people observed dead than expected based on the population of vaccinated to all people.

In other words, if we vaccinated 60% of people (middle of the grey bar) and 70% (red dot) of the deaths are vaccinated, we have a serious problem. The precautionary principle of medicine suggests if you are under 60 and thinking of taking a vaccine, you shouldn’t. These preliminary results are both statistically significant …

The conclusion is very clear: nobody under 60 years old should get the vaccine because there is no evidence of a benefit. In fact, if you are between 40-60, it’s clear that vaccination makes it more likely you’ll die, not less likely.”

Figure 1. Red dot below error bar = vax works. Red dot above error bar = vax likely causes harm. Red dot inside the error bar = Insufficient evidence to justify taking a new, unproven vaccine. Conclusion: Vaccine shouldn’t be considered unless there is a clear benefit. 60 and older seems to justify use based on the data we have so far. Limitations: we are waiting for others to confirm / challenge the analysis. See text³⁴ for more info. Joel Smalley did the analysis.

While some analyses present a direr picture than others, taken together, it’s clear that there appears to be no long term benefits to the COVID jabs. We’re consistently ending up with a higher cost than can conceivably be considered reasonable. The pro-pharma side will likely continue to lob flimsy excuses at the data, but at some point, the truth will be so clear that even the blind will see it. Until that day, continue to inform yourself and share what you find.

Originally published May 26, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ^1, 5 Medscape May 13, 2022
• ² medRxiv April 29, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.04.25.22274266
• ^{3, 11, 12, 13, 14} Anchorage Daily News April 29, 2022
• ⁴ Nature Communications November 20, 2020; 11 Article number 5917
• ⁶ medRxiv April 29, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.04.25.22274266, See funding statement
• ⁷ Gates Foundation Grant to McGill University September 2020
• ⁸ Gates Foundation Grant to McGill University April 2020
• ⁹ McGill International Funding Sources
• ¹⁰ McGill newsroom December 17, 2015
• ¹⁵ CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Shots
• ¹⁶ The Defender April 7, 2022
• ¹⁷ medRxiv April 19, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.04.18.22271936
• ^18, 22, 23 The Defender May 4, 2022
• ¹⁹ Igor’s Newsletter April 26, 2022
• ²⁰ Bad Cattitude Substack April 27, 2022
• ²¹ UK Health Security Agency COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report Week 13
• ²⁴ Walgreens COVID-19 Index
• ²⁵ Twitter TexasLindsay April 23, 2022
• ²⁶ Twitter TexasLindsay April 25, 2022
• ²⁷ COVID-19 and All-Cause Mortality Data Analysis by Kathy Dopp and Stephanie Seneff (PDF)
• ²⁸ COVID Vaccination and Age-Stratified All-Cause Mortality Risk (PDF)
• ²⁹ Vaccines 2021; 9(7): 693
• ³⁰ Science, Public Health Policy and the Law August 2021; 3: 81-86, page 82
• ³¹ Science, Public Health Policy and the Law August 2021; 3: 87-89
• ³² Clinical and Translational Discovery February 25, 2022; 2(1): e35
• ^33, 34 Steve Kirsch Substack May 17, 2022

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-those-under-60-are-more-likely-to-die-if-jabbed_4492774.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-29-3&utm_medium=email&est=m2zjwyl9FrrGyYscQa5JCNQw%2FIFtmIhClRoeuMVLbSvSkZM56JSsLFoh9UbesiKTqQ%3D%3D

Robert Snow, a pilot for American Airlines, one of the top 3 largest airlines in the country, has 31 years of commercial airline experience and additionally seven years of experience as a U.S. Air Force pilot.

Snow says that he might not be able to fly again after he suffered a cardiac arrest only 6 or 7 minutes after landing a plane he piloted from Denver to Dallas Fort Worth (DFW).

He still had two more flights scheduled on April 9.

He believes that his cardiac arrest is connected to the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine he was forced to take in order to keep his job on Nov. 4, 2021, even though he already had natural immunity from previously contracting the virus.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a world-renowned cardiologist, told Newsmax that Snow’s case fits a “pattern.”

“There is no other explanation,” McCullough said about Snow’s case since Snow has no coronary disease.

“The MRI pattern is consistent,” the doctor said. “Indeed, it may have been vaccine-induced myocarditis with a late manifestation of cardiac death.”

In addition, he told The Epoch Times that he has received “several phone calls and communications from friends in the industry that do think that they might have had issues with a vaccine.”

Most alarming is that some pilots are “afraid to raise the flag and say, ‘Hey, I think I might have an issue because they’re afraid they’ll either lose their medical certification to fly, which if we lose our medical, we can no longer operate. We can’t be a commercial pilot anymore. And in worst-case scenario, which is what right now probably what I’m experiencing is you can’t fly at all. Period,” Snow said.

“I would just tell you that there are other pilots out there that have had concerns, not just pilots, also because it was an employee mandate. So we have flight attendants, we have mechanics, we have dispatchers, we have gate agents, you name it. Of course, for pilots, we consider that a safety-sensitive job so we’re a little bit more concerned from the standpoint of aviation safety; but yes, I have received calls from other pilots and other communications stating that they have concerns but because of the nature of this, they’re afraid to come forward.”

The veteran pilot had serious questions about the novel COVID vaccines that are supposed to prevent infection from the Chinese Communist Party virus, but are now known to provide little protection against infection after the Omicron virus variant became dominant.

Vaccine booster efficacy also wanes over time.

What’s more, cases of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis—inflammation of the lining outside the heart have spiked dramatically since the COVID vaccines started being administered worldwide.

He did not want to get the shot, but being the sole provider for his family, decided to take the risk.

Amid short sighs, Snow told The Epoch Times: “Initially, my employer was not going to force the vaccine on its employees. They subsequently changed their mind on approximately October 1, in conjunction with the executive office here in the United States mandate on federal contractors. They decided that now that they would enforce the vaccine mandate on all employees of the airline. And in regard to that, we were told that if we did not receive the vaccination we would be terminated. There was no question as to the sincerity at that time of their statement.”

Airlines, which are government contractors, were affected by President Joe Biden’s executive order from September that states all employees of those companies have to be vaccinated against the CCP virus.

The Epoch Times reported on December last year that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) was breaking its own rule that states pilots should not fly after having taken medications that have been approved for less than a year, according to a group of attorneys, doctors, and other experts; including another pilot who says his career ended due to adverse reactions from a vaccine.

“So I elected, after some serious consideration given that I was the sole source of income for my family, that I would go ahead and receive the vaccine. I didn’t want to,” Snow said.

“I had serious questions as to the safety and the efficiency and the effectiveness of the vaccine. I’d already had COVID. I’d already tested positive for antibodies, and really didn’t see the rationale for it. But, the only solution that might have been available to me to not receive the vaccine was to request a religious or medical exemption. Neither of which did I really feel like I should request. Medical exemption, I didn’t have any reason to not to, scientifically speaking, not receive it, other than the fact that it was issued under an EUA and not fully tested. And as far as a religious exemption, I didn’t see any reason to request that because I don’t really have a religious belief that would prevent me from receiving this particular vaccination. So for moral and ethical reasons, absolutely. But that wasn’t considered a valid reason not to get the vaccine.”

The veteran pilot had a sore arm for 10 days after getting the jab, and later experienced a strange pain that spread through his upper body.

Snow said that his arm became “pretty sore,” for 10 days, something which he didn’t experience with any previous vaccinations. For other vaccines for travel or in the military, he would usually have soreness for two or three days maximum.

Things returned to normal until January, then he recalled:

“I was on that course of a flight and noticed a strange pain while I was working on the overhead panel. …  I got a strange pain in my right shoulder, seemed to spread down to my lower right quadrant and then up into my chest and through my shoulder blades, which I thought was very strange, but I just kind of chalked it up to manipulating myself oddly on the overhead panel, maybe tweaked a nerve or something like that, because I really had no history of that whatsoever that I’d ever experienced. And so [the] pain went away after one or two minutes and then back to normal.

“When we finished that flight, I actually tested positive again for COVID for the second time, [the] first time I had it was in March of 2021. Second time then would have been in January of 2022—this is postvaccination mind you— and that was what I presumed to be the Omicron variant because it presented itself basically as just allergies, I kept sneezing a lot, runny nose and that was it, no fever, no chills, no nothing, no loss of taste and smell like I had the first time. So I went back to work, after the mandatory amount of time, and I started getting the pain again, only a little bit more frequently this time. So actually, with a history of gastrointestinal issues, I went to see a gastroenterologist he elected to do an endoscopy to take a look to see if I had maybe a hiatal hernia or something that was aggravating the vagus nerve. We also did an abdominal CAT scan.

“During the course of awaiting the results of the abdominal CAT scan, that’s when I had my sudden cardiac arrest and that was after the course of a flight from Denver to DFW. We had been on the gate just a few minutes after shutting the aircraft down, probably about six minutes, six, seven minutes after touchdown. And I stood up to collect my bags to proceed to the next aircraft. We were to finish up with another turn to a different city to come back and then finish the trip on day four. And that’s the last I remember, standing up collecting my luggage. And at that point, witnesses say I collapsed in the flight deck. And that’s all I know at this point. When I woke up, I was in the ICU at Baylor Scott and White in Grapevine Texas, having suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.”

He now has to wear an automatic external defibrillator or “life vest” that monitors his heartbeats, except when he showers when he is supposed to be monitored by a family member. The life vest is designed so that if the heart rhythm becomes abnormal, it will send a small shock to get it back to sinus rhythm, and if it detects full atrial fibrillation, ventricular fibrillation, or any sort of fibrillation, it would send a much stronger shock to try to get it back to the right rhythm.

Albeit all this trauma, Snow feels very fortunate because he was able to get professional care immediately, which is not the case for many other people.

According to heart.org: “Cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating. Some 350,000 cases occur each year outside of a hospital, and the survival rate is less than 12 percent. CPR can double or triple the chances of survival.”

“If you look at the numbers … I try not to look too closely at them because it’s rather intimidating.” Snow said, referring to the survival rate of cardiac arrests.

“The thing that concerns me, is [that] this happened in the right place at the right time. Because if it had happened … any other time where I was either alone or beyond reasonable response time for a medical response, I wouldn’t be here having this conversation.”

John Pierce Law, who previously represented many prominent conservatives, is going to sue 18 major airlines, including American Airlines, focusing on the alleged unconstitutionality of the vaccine mandates that were imposed on the airline employees.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Johnson & Johnson for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/top-airline-pilot-suffers-cardiac-arrest-between-flights-post-mandatory-covid-vaccination_4477128.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-24&utm_medium=email&est=Qie%2Fx46W068lt7Y2XdPFKlIzR72nB03WYdkAu1y33sPoyUPDdZGcJBQKd5ltY4zrXA%3D%3D

Speaking to Dana Perino on Fox News, Mike Rowe posited that the reason for the massive number of people who have left their jobs and not looked for replacement jobs is a “topography that ultimately encourages people to not work.”

Perino noted that more than 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September but reports said there were over 10 million job openings.  She asked, “Why are all these people quitting their jobs but not taking the other jobs?”

“Look, I mean, the honest answer is the 300-page book I can’t get around to finishing, but in general, I think it’s coming down to the ever-evolving definition of what a good job is, the expectations that most people have when it comes to determining what they want to do with the useful part of their life,” Rowe answered. “Money, incentives, disincentives, uncertainty, it’s all swirling around.”

“And look, it’s really tempting to get on the back porch and scream at the kids to get off the lawn vis-a-vis laziness and all of the other work ethic things that I do love to talk about,” he continued. “But we can’t blame people for acting in their own interests. And if we lay out a topography that ultimately encourages people to not work, then I’m afraid that’s the fault in our stars. We’re not going to do it. And so that’s part of the problem. But ultimately I think it’s a real complex thing.”

“Fundamentally, though, you can’t argue with the numbers. 10.4 million open jobs,” he stated. “That has to mean, among other things, that opportunity is not dead if we can simply get around to making a more persuasive case for the opportunities we have. “

Perino asked, “So if parents or grandparents or young people are watching, this program or ‘How America Works’ on Fox Business, what could they learn maybe start to change that perception of what is a good job?”

“I think so much of the debate always — the way we set the table, is here are the employers and here are the employees and here’s the gap and here’s the problem,” Rowe replied. “The shows I work on all attempt to remind the rest of us how much skin we have in the game. So on ‘How America Works,’ for instance, tonight we look at salt production. We meet the men, a guy named Raul Flores, down in Carlsbad, New Mexico, to get a better understanding of how reliant we are on salt and what it takes to get it out of the ground and on to the roads so interstate commerce can exist. It’s a real simple look at that job. It’s also a very clever recruiting mechanism, because when you look at a show like this, you see people who love their jobs; you see them prospering; you see them moving the needle and contributing in a meaningful way to society.”

“So my thing is to try and get to 300 million other people who are daily unimpressed with the fact that the lights come on when we flick the switch or the poop goes away when we flush the toilet. We have to remember we’re all connected,” he concluded.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/mike-rowe-millions-not-looking-for-work-because-of-topography-that-ultimately-encourages-people-to-not-work?itm_source=parsely-api&utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email

A recent episode prompts me to ponder the fact that Facebook is becoming a force for censorship that might leave even some Communist Party of China members shamefaced.

Last week, I passed along a prospective editorial opinion column to The Epoch Times on behalf of two colleagues who are partners at a boutique law firm in Ottawa. Epoch Times editors liked the content and after giving it their professional scrutiny and suggesting some clarification, posted it on the outlet’s website.

The folks at the law firm were delighted and wanted their work to get even wider attention so they sought to pay to have it boosted on Facebook. Here’s the answer they got back:

“Your ad was rejected because it doesn’t comply with our advertising policies.
To learn more, view your ad in Account Quality. You can request a review if you think your ad was incorrectly rejected.”

The “failure to comply” rejection, bear in mind, came from the very same social media company whose policies of profiting from gross violations of user privacy led to it being fined almost US$5 billion in 2019. That would be the Facebook whose advertising policies let it inundate you with “friend” requests from individuals having such unlikely names as Lotsa Hotsa Buttishaken, not to mention newsfeed scams from all manner of fly-by-night shysters.

And what, you might well ask, was so egregious about the opinions expressed in the law firm partners’ column that they violated Facebook’s pristine standards? Did they advocate legalized free delivery of your stupefacient of choice with every order from Skip the Dishes? Was it a slightly more outré call for, oh I don’t know, say, decriminalizing slavery? Did it seek to convince the world in general that Holocaust deniers really aren’t, you know, such horrendous idiots once you get to know them? No, no, and nothing even remotely close.

The column made three straightforward points. 1. The boutique law firm in question has been swamped with calls from panicking Canadian workers and students terrified of losing their jobs or their academic years if they fail to comply with COVID vaccine mandates. 2. The problem the callers face isn’t one that can be solved at a legal level yet, but it can be redressed at the political level, and indeed is a function of the political response to the pandemic. 3. The people pleading with the law firm to help are, to a person, responsible, thoughtful citizens of Canada, not the conspiracy theorist wingnuts said to be the sole opposition to vaccine mandates.

They are nurses, they are doctors, they are clergy, they are university students, they are public servants.

“Given their roles and responsibilities, if they are all wingnuts, we have an even bigger problem in Canada than COVID presents,” the lawyers wrote.

Think about this. Here you have two legal beagles, both of whom have made representations in the Supreme Court of Canada and recently won a major freedom-of-conscience case against the federal government, arguing that something’s amiss with the vaccine mandate scheme that requires serious and immediate attention. They submit that contention by writing to the editing standards of a professional publication that is committed, on its front page, to Truth.

They don’t denigrate vaccines. They don’t counsel reckless lawbreaking. They do counsel people to stand for their rights and engage the democratic political process to do so. Yet Facebook, with its impeccable track record of meeting sterling standards of integrity and beyond-reproach content management, won’t permit the widest possible distribution of that opinion.

Now, there’s a fair argument from a libertarian perspective that Facebook is free to accept or reject whatever content it likes, and equally free to refuse any emolument to overcome its resistance to publication. That would actually be an argument if Facebook itself didn’t insist that it is not a publisher but rather just a platform where like-minded or contrary-minded contributors can freely engage.

Given that, its rejection constitutes nothing less than raw suppression of an opinion that it dislikes and does not want to see in the public domain, never mind the opinion being based on verifiable facts drawn from the experience of the writers, and from their knowledge of both law and politics.

The issue, of course, is that the full problem isn’t Facebook. It is what’s happening as dissenting arguments across North American society are stifled by a myriad of means. Facebook, admittedly, is one tool in that toolbox. But, like the Communist Party of China, it is a very large, very powerful, and extremely ubiquitous hammer.

Within the CPC, the sheer magnitude of its membership numbers opens the possibility of minor disagreement, at least within the Party’s hard red line. Now Facebook, despite its high-minded invocation of “quality” and “policy,” is busily drawing red lines of its own around the opinions dissenting citizens of democratic countries can, and cannot, promote.

Even if that causes no shamed faces in China, it should leave North Americans outraged.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/facebook-censors-dissenting-opinion-blames-advertising-policy_4105158.html

A Texas hospital announced that it has suspended the privileges of a doctor who posted concerns on social media about COVID-19 vaccine mandates and suggested that ivermectin may be able to treat the virus.

Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose, and throat doctor at Houston Methodist Hospital, posted what was called “dangerous misinformation” that’s “not based in science” about the virus, the hospital announced on Twitter. The firm didn’t elaborate on the so-called misinformation and didn’t explain how her social media claims aren’t scientifically factual.

“Dr. Mary Bowden, who recently joined the medical staff at Houston Methodist Hospital, is using her social media accounts to express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments,” Houston Methodist, which drew national headlines for becoming one of the first hospital systems in the United States to mandate vaccines for all its employees earlier in 2021, wrote on Twitter.

Patty Muck, a spokesperson for the hospital, confirmed to media outlets over the weekend that Bowden’s privileges were suspended.

“The physician’s privileges at Houston Methodist have been suspended,” Muck wrote in an email to the Washington Post.

When contacted by The Epoch Times, a separate spokesperson for the hospital sent a statement that echoed several of its Twitter posts. The spokesperson didn’t elaborate on the suspension.

Last week, Bowden wrote on her Twitter account that “vaccine mandates are wrong” and included a screenshot of a message that apparently came from an individual who told her that “what the government is doing to its citizens in the United States is incomprehensible.” She also used her account to suggest that the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin may be able to treat COVID-19 symptoms.

In recent weeks, podcaster Joe Rogan and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers both publicly confirmed that they took ivermectin after they were each diagnosed with COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) haven’t recommended the drug to be used for treating the virus.

“Ivermectin might not be as deadly as everyone said it was. Speak up!” Bowden said on Nov. 10.

Bowden’s attorney, Steve Mitby, told local media outlets that the doctor has treated more than 2,000 COVID-19 patients and said she isn’t against vaccines.

“Like many Americans, Dr. Bowden believes that people should have a choice and believes that all people, regardless of vaccine status, should have access to the same high-quality health care,” Mitby said.

Speaking to local media outlet Click2Houston, Bowden, who also runs her own private practice, BreatheMD, said she had a “great relationship” with Houston Methodist.

But the “issues with vaccines and ivermectin really go against patient autonomy and their right to choose their treatment,” she said.

“All of my comments are backed by clinical experience,” Bowden told the Houston Chronicle. “I have been open seven days a week since the pandemic began, performing over 80,000 COVID tests and treating over 2,000 patients with COVID.”

Mitby’s law firm didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-hospital-suspends-doctors-privileges-as-she-voices-concerns-over-vaccine-mandates_4105172.html

Remember all of the CNN and MSNBC talking heads coming up with unique and funny ways to take away former President Donald Trump’s phone when he would tweet something problematic?

The good news is that they can reprise all of those jokes again. The bad news, for them, is that they’ll have to use them against an administration they generally support — and in a high-stakes matter where that tweet could end with one of the new administration’s most divisive policies getting nixed.

In a Friday ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that stayed President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s retweet of an MSNBC host was used as evidence that the administration used a rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as a “work around.”

The three-judge panel found “the Mandate’s true purpose is not to enhance workplace safety, but instead to ramp up vaccine uptake by any means necessary,” as per the ruling penned by Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt.

The ruling declared the mandate was “the rare government pronouncement that is both overinclusive (applying to employers and employees in virtually all industries and workplaces in America, with little attempt to account for the obvious differences between the risks facing, say, a security guard on a lonely night shift, and a meatpacker working shoulder to shoulder in a cramped warehouse) and underinclusive (purporting to save employees with 99 or more coworkers from a ‘grave danger’ in the workplace, while making no attempt to shield employees with 98 or fewer coworkers from the very same threat.

CNN’s Stelter Shows How Insulated He Is by Media Bubble with Clueless Supply Chain Tweet

“The Mandate’s stated impetus — a purported ’emergency’ that the entire globe has now endured for nearly two years, and which OSHA itself spent nearly two months responding to — is unavailing as well. And its promulgation grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority,” the court concluded.

Part of the court’s reasoning had to do with one of Klain’s retweets, this one from MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle.

“OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations,” she tweeted Sept. 9. Klain retweeted it later that day, according to the Fifth Circuit’s ruling.

OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.

— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 9, 2021

Is the vaccine mandate unconstitutional?Yes No

This, the court said, was some proof the Biden administration knew they lacked the authority for a vaccine mandate.

“After the President voiced his displeasure with the country’s vaccination rate in September, the Administration pored over the U.S. Code in search of authority, or a ‘work-around,’ for imposing a national vaccine mandate,” the court stated.

“The vehicle it landed on was an OSHA [emergency temporary standard]. The statute empowering OSHA allows OSHA to bypass typical notice-and-comment proceedings for six months by providing ‘for an emergency temporary standard to take immediate effect upon publication in the Federal Register’ if it ‘determines (A) that employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards, and (B) that such emergency standard is necessary to protect employees from such danger.’”

The citation for the “work around,” of course, was Klain’s retweet.

COVID Vaccines, Mandates Are Tearing American Families Apart

It isn’t the only reason the 5th Circuit issued a thoroughgoing destruction of the ruling, as an editorial from the board of The Wall Street Journal noted.

“The court’s opinion takes apart the OSHA mandate every which way — on constitutional, statutory and procedural grounds,” the editorial, published Sunday, stated.

“The Constitution gives states, not the federal government, the police powers to regulate individual behavior to protect public health and safety. The Administration tried to circumvent this limitation on federal power by conscripting private employers via an OSHA ’emergency temporary standard.’”

However, Klain’s retweet provides an important glimpse into what the White House was thinking when it implemented the widely hated mandate — and it could end up helping destroy it as the case continues in the courts.

As GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz noted at the time, the retweet was “Foolish” and said it meant the “Biden admin knows it’s likely illegal (like the eviction moratorium) but they don’t care.”

Important.

Foolish RT from WH chief of staff. He said the quiet part out loud.

Biden admin knows it’s likely illegal (like the eviction moratorium) but they don’t care. https://t.co/AlfmYtuvhp

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 10, 2021

But like the eviction moratorium that was struck down by the Supreme Court in August, the administration hoped it would stand up for long enough that it would scare people into getting the vaccine. The problem is that if you say that part out loud, it can induce a court to notice just how flawed the mandate is.

This isn’t the only time Klain has had Twitter issues, either. Last month, the chief of staff retweeted a Harvard economist who called inflation and supply-chain issues “high class problems,” adding a millennial-ish “This,” along with two fingers pointing down, to the tweet:

This 👇👇 https://t.co/ymh53nEHAg

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) October 14, 2021

Mind you, he’s far from the only problematic member of the Biden administration. Vice President Kamala Harris has been handed several major issues as tests of her seaworthiness, and on all of them she’s ended up sinking. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin oversaw the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has made a bungle of the border crisis.

All of these things loom much bigger than a retweet by the chief of staff, but it speaks to a culture of general incompetence in the administration. Funny how, during the last administration, CNN and MSNBC would have seized upon this — just like they would joke about how the president’s phone should be taken away. They seem strangely silent on it this time.

You can trot out the Klain jokes all you want, media. After all, this is twice now he’s said the silent part out loud on social media — and one of those times, it may have affected a court ruling. Strange how the Don Lemons and Joe Scarboroughs of the world don’t want to recycle their own material.

Veterans Day was this past Thursday in the United States. In our neighbor to the north, Canada, it was Remembrance Day — a day commemorating the military fallen of the U.K. Commonwealth.

In one Canadian city, however, vandals decided there were a different set of “heroes” on this most solemn of days: namely, those who had received the COVID-19 vaccine.

According CTV News in Calgary, a wall of honor in Cranbrook, British Columbia, was defaced by vandals early Thursday morning. Their message: “The real heroes are the vaccinated!”

Wall of Honour vandalized with COVID-19 graffiti on Remembrance Day in Cranbrook https://t.co/VzyKWQ0JZ9

— Vernon Morning Star (@VernonNews) November 12, 2021

Prosecution Makes Explosive Admission: A ‘Reasonable Jury’ Could Acquit Rittenhouse of First-Degree Murder

“Thankfully, the Cranbrook RCMP, Cranbrook Fire Services and City of Cranbrook staff worked together and were able to quickly remove the writings before any of our war heroes and veterans were able to see what had been written,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Const. Katie Forgeron said, according to the Cranbook Daily Townsman.

The RCMP is investigating the vandalism.

Wall of Honour vandalised ahead of Remembrance Day ceremonies in Rotary Park https://t.co/qTztrDbr7h

— Cranbrook Townsman (@CranTownsman) November 11, 2021

The city released a statement on their Facebook page, saying “we are beyond disappointed by the disrespectful actions of those responsible for defacing such an important monument on such an important day for all Canadians.”

Do you support vaccine mandates?

“This act does not speak to the character and values of our citizens and our community,” the statement continued.

“We are grateful to the member of the community that alerted us of the vandalism early this morning. We are extremely proud of our staff, RCMP and Fire Services members who were able to quickly remove the graffiti and allow for the Remembrance Day ceremonies to go on, and remain focused on honoring all our veterans, past and present for their selfless sacrifice.”

The vandalism came amid anti-vaccination protests in two other cities in British Columbia on Remembrance Day, according to the CBC — Kamloops and Kelowna.

**Correction: They brought their own microphone.**

— KelownaNow (@KelownaNow) November 11, 2021

It Happened Again: Walgreens Gives 5-Year-Old Child Adult Dose of COVID Vaccine

“We are saddened that anyone would feel it necessary to distract from the sacrifice of our veterans and their families with political agendas. Especially on Remembrance Day,” said Val McGregor, president of the British Columbia/Yukon Command of the Royal Canadian Legion, in a statement.

Distasteful though this may be, protests against vaccination are unpleasant distractions. Graffiti on a memorial for veterans — calling the vaccinated the “real heroes” — is a direct insult to those who have served and died for Canada.

And yet, most of the CBC’s coverage was dedicated to the anti-vaccination protests.

The defacement was addressed in the second paragraph. The rest was mostly given over to what happened in Kelowna and Kamloops. In the final three paragraphs, the Cranbrook defacement was briefly sketched out.

While we don’t know the motives of the Cranbrook vandals, we know the message: Forget service members who have fought and died, those who’ve gotten an inoculation are the ones we ought to be celebrating. This is the kind of vaccine craziness we’re seeing now. To at least one person, heroism apparently isn’t service, it’s just getting a shot.

Assuming this isn’t a hoax, it’s rebarbative stuff — and something that merited far more condemnation than just the desultory mention it got from the national media in Canada. Any distraction from Remembrance Day is problematic. However, the inability to tell the difference between protests and vandalism which states the vaccinated are more heroic than veterans speaks to a different sickness entirely.

A public school district in Northern California announced Wednesday it will not be enforcing the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for K–12 schools.

In a 5–0 vote, the governing board of the Calaveras Unified School District (CUSD) decided at a Tuesday meeting to not “enforce, support, or comply” with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mandate, which would require students at all public, public charter, and private schools to receive COVID-19 vaccines following full federal approval of the shots for their grade span.

The school board said in a message to the school community that the decision, which came during the meeting, applies to both students and employees, adding that it will further discuss and potentially make a decision on mask mandates and testing protocols at its next meeting scheduled for Nov. 23.

In an earlier statement, the CUSD said its board was aware of the possible repercussions the district may face as a result of rejecting the state mandate, including “possible liability exposure, funding loss, and other formal actions that can be taken against the district.”

“[Board members] understand there are strong perspectives and opinions on both sides of the issue,” the statement read. “They understand the Superintendent’s recommendation for mandate compliance based on these potential consequences, but they feel strong in their individual positions on this topic.”

CUSD serves about 5,300 students and includes five elementary schools, one middle school, and Calaveras County’s only two public high schools.

California became the first state in the nation to announce COVID-19 vaccine requirements for K–12 schools in October, when the pediatric vaccines were still pending a recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Newsom said the mandate would take effect only when the vaccines receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in children.

“The state already requires that students are vaccinated against viruses that cause measles, mumps, and rubella,” Newsom said when he announced the mandate. “There’s no reason why we wouldn’t do the same for COVID-19.”

“Vaccines work. It’s why California leads the country in preventing school closures and has the lowest case rates,” said the Democratic governor, who survived his recall election fueled by his pandemic response. “We encourage other states to follow our lead to keep our kids safe and prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

Despite mask mandates and other preventive measures the Newsom administration put in place, California’ COVID-19 infection rate has recently stopped dropping and started ticking up. As of Nov. 10, California remains one of the CDC’s red “high” level of virus transmission states, compared to yellow “moderate” level in Florida, where there is no state-issued mask or vaccination mandate.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-school-board-votes-to-not-support-enforce-or-comply-with-gov-newsoms-vaccine-mandate_4099663.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

NIH to host seminar on vaccine mandates on Dec. 1, official says

A top infectious disease doctor has raised alarm about COVID-19 vaccine mandates despite top federal officials recommending them for businesses, schools, and other institutions.

Dr. Matthew Memoli, who runs a clinical studies unit within the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci—is scheduled to argue against COVID-19 vaccine mandates during a Dec. 1 seminar hosted by the agency, according to David Wendler, a senior NIH bioethicist who is planning the seminar.

“There’s a lot of debate within the NIH about whether [a vaccine mandate] is appropriate,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s an important, hot topic.”

Memoli had told Fauci in a July 30 email that he believes “the way we are using the vaccines is wrong,” adding that mandated vaccines are “extraordinarily problematic,” according to the WSJ.

In comments to the paper, Memoli said that he supports COVID-19 vaccination in high-risk groups including obese people and the elderly. However, widespread vaccinations for people who have a low risk of death or severe illness from COVID-19 could hamper the U.S. population’s ability to develop more robust protection against the virus via previous infections, he said.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study released last month suggested that those who had a previous COVID-19 infection saw a five times higher chance of testing positive than those who were fully vaccinated and never had COVID-19.

Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, who previously conducted a study that suggested people with natural immunity are at low risk of reinfection, told The Epoch Times that the CDC’s research was observational and said that “randomized controlled clinical trials are the gold standard of medical evidence.”

Memoli also told the paper that he has sought an exemption from the federal vaccine mandate on religious grounds, saying he is willing to risk his job and medical license for the right not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

Regarding the discussion, Memoli said that “part of my career is to share my expert opinions, right or wrong … I mean, if they all end up saying I’m wrong, that’s fine. I want to have the discussion.”

The NIH seminar comes as a federal appeals court temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate targeting private businesses with 100 or more employees. About two-dozen states have filed lawsuits against the rule, arguing the federal government lacks the authority to implement it.

The NIH has not responded to a request for comment on the email. When contacted by The Epoch Times, an NIH official said Memoli would decline to comment.

The Epoch Times has also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain Memoli’s email.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/senior-nih-doctor-pushes-back-on-covid-19-vaccine-mandates_4095305.html

In the aftermath of reports that the conservative media company Newsmax would comply with President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, the company itself said that’s not quite true.

On Friday, Mediaite reported that it had obtained an internal email sent to Newsmax employees that indicated the company would not fight the Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule requiring every employer with more than 100 employees to have its workers vaccinated.

“To ensure that we are in compliance, we require that all vaccinated employees submit a copy of their vaccination card,” the email told Newsmax employees, Mediaite reported.

News of the corporate policy came as Newsmax host Steve Cortes was issuing blistering comments against a vaccine mandate.

I will not comply w/ any organization’s attempt to enforce Biden’s capricious & unscientific Medical Apartheid mandate.

I will not be forced into the injection, nor will I disclose my vaccination status.

No one should be pressured to choose between medical privacy & their job.

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 6, 2021

Seconds After Being Shot by Alec Baldwin, Here’s What Halyna Hutchins Told Someone Nearby

The company said Sunday it will not force vaccinations.

“Newsmax has no vaccine mandate nor do we require it for employment,” Newsmax wrote in an editorial on its website in which it called the rule “a dangerous overreach of federal power and opposed by Newsmax.”

The Newsmax editorial said that the company “informed our staff of the upcoming federal rule. At the same time, we have notified staff we will create an easy opt-out for any employee who does not want to be vaccinated.”

“Under the rule, any employee who is not vaccinated will be tested for COVID on a weekly basis,” the editorial continued, adding, “Newsmax is going beyond the OSHA rule to provide free weekly testing on its company premises.”

As noted by USA Today, the rule does not force employers to bear the cost of weekly testing, meaning that if they should wish, employers with more than 100 people could force unvaccinated workers to pay those costs themselves.

@KenPaxtonTX The testing option of the OSHA mandate stipulates that the employee is responsible for paying for the weekly COVD test. In many area COVD tests are $50+, which would be $200+ month. *Also, not free with insurance at doctors as person has to pay copay to get the test

— CovfefeForT (@MeBeHealthy) November 7, 2021

The editorial said the company will work with employees.

‘Nothing is Off the Table’: Biden’s Surgeon General Admits the Hated Vax Mandate May Expand Once Again

“No Newsmax employee will be forced to receive the vaccine or be fired for not doing so,” the editorial said.

The balance of the editorial discusses the merits — or lack of same — concerning the mandate and the vaccine. It calls the OSHA rule “not good and probably illegal.”

“The Biden administration’s decision to implement an OSHA requirement is a dangerous overreach of federal power,” the editorial read, noting that states have been shepherding their populations through the pandemic, and there seems to be no need for federal intervention.

“Now the Biden administration is using authority intended for workplace safety to bypass the traditional governmental approach to health safety,” the editorial continued, adding that “by engaging in an unprecedented power grab, the Biden administration is taking its eye off the ball.”

The editorial states that the vaccine “which has been demonstrated to be safe and effective, is clearly playing a role” in the decline of COVID-19 deaths; however, it did point out that the vaccine is not the only contributing factor.

“While the vaccine works, so does natural immunity,” it read.

A LOT of fake news out there about @newsmax and the Vaccine. Well–here’s the TRUTH: no one at NEWSMAX will ever be forced get “the jab”—it’s a CHOICE!!! You can work at “The Max” if you’re unvaccinated!!!! (PS: @JoeBiden you SCREWED this up in EVERY) https://t.co/oAA4T5jqTj

— Greg Kelly–LET’S GO BRANDON! (@gregkellyusa) November 7, 2021

“At Newsmax, we do not ignore the science nor the facts,” it said.

“President Donald Trump provided the funding for the vaccine and cut through the red tape to see it implemented. And Trump himself has been vaccinated. Publicly, he has encouraged others to receive the vaccine,” the editorial stated, while noting that Trump recommended it, but did not force it on anyone.

“His approach is the right way. Government provides an opportunity, but an informed citizenry in a free nation should make its own health decisions,” the editorial concluded.

“Sesame Street” has become a propaganda arm of the Biden regime, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas charged Saturday.

On Saturday, the Twitter account of the “Sesame Street” character Big Bird tweeted a message telling children to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

“I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy. Ms. @EricaRHill even said I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!” the tweet read, referring to CNN journalist Erica Hill, who on Saturday hosted an event with Big Bird called “The ABCs of COVID Vaccines.”

I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.

Ms. @EricaRHill even said I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!

— Big Bird (@BigBird) November 6, 2021

Seconds After Being Shot by Alec Baldwin, Here’s What Halyna Hutchins Told Someone Nearby

Cruz soon vented his disgust.

Government propaganda…for your 5 year old! https://t.co/lKUlomnpq1

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 6, 2021

“Government propaganda … for your 5 year old!” he tweeted.

Has everything become political these days?

The Food and Drug Administration late last month gave Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be given to children between the ages of 5 and 11.

Newsmax host Steve Cortes joined in with his criticism of the “Sesame Street” edorsement.

“This kind of propaganda is actually evil. Your children are not statistically at risk, and should not be pressured into a brand new treatment. Do Not Comply!” he tweeted.

This kind of propaganda is actually evil.

Your children are not statistically at risk, and should not be pressured into a brand new treatment.

Do Not Comply! https://t.co/cnS1GAqowi

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 6, 2021

Fox News host Lisa Boothe also ruled Big Bird’s pushing the Biden line was a foul.

Newsmax Denies It Will Force Vaccine, But Employees Who Refuse It Face an Invasive Weekly Alternative

“Brainwashing children who are not at risk from COVID. Twisted,” she tweeted.

Brainwashing children who are not at risk from COVID. Twisted. https://t.co/KPjdHJjpUy

— Lisa Boothe (@LisaMarieBoothe) November 6, 2021

The “Sesame Street” push resulted in many others pushing back.

Who is the target of the Sesame Street vaccine outreach?

Parents who trust Elmo & Big Bird with their children’s medical decisions?

Toddlers who are on Twitter and tune in to CNN?

It makes no sense. https://t.co/gKvU5ujaQx

— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) November 7, 2021

Sesame Street is now indoctrinating toddlers. What a disgrace.

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) November 7, 2021

Some parents are hesitant of the vaccine.

Erin Gauch, of Middletown, Rhode Island, said concerns over side effects make her pause, according to The New York Times.

“I’m looking at a 9-year-old, and if I make a bad decision and he ends up with some debilitating side effects or lifelong adverse reaction, I don’t think I could live with that,” she said.

“If we ultimately decide not to get my youngest vaccinated right now, I guess I’ll be subjected to mommy shaming, but I’ll just have to deal with it,” Gauch said.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly announced Friday she is opposed to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for companies with 100 or more employees, saying it is not the “correct” solution.

The statement makes Kelly the first Democratic governor to officially oppose the mandate.

“Yesterday, I reviewed the new vaccine mandate from the Biden Administration. While I appreciate the intention to keep people safe, a goal I share, I don’t believe this directive is the correct, or the most effective, solution for Kansas,” Kelly said.

Governor Laura Kelly’s statement addressing the new federal vaccine mandate: pic.twitter.com/lAFAs3pQLK

— Governor Laura Kelly (@GovLauraKelly) November 5, 2021

Horrified Jake Tapper’s Three-Word Response When He Realized McAuliffe Was Crashing and Burning

Kelly also expressed that the timing of the mandate is too late, as Kansas already has systems in place that work for residents.

“It is too late to impose a federal standard now that we have already developed systems and strategies that are tailored for our specific needs,” she said.

The governor said she will look for a solution that is better suited to the needs of the people of Kansas.

“I will seek a resolution that continues to recognize the uniqueness of our state and builds on our on-going efforts to combat a once-in-a-century crisis,” she said.

Should more governors oppose vaccine mandates?

Kelly is not the only leader to come out against the president’s employer vaccine mandate.

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel released a statement on Thursday announcing the organization is suing the Biden administration over the mandate, calling it “authoritarian overreach.”

The Republican National Committee is suing the Biden admin for its forced vaccine mandate. pic.twitter.com/fm0iv5d5Zc

— GOP (@GOP) November 4, 2021

“Joe Biden failed to shut down the virus as he promised — he couldn’t do his job, so now he wants you to lose yours,” McDaniel said. “This mandate is yet another attack on frontline workers, first responders, small businesses, and the rights of the American people.”

DeSantis Pledges Immediate Action Against Biden’s Vaccine Mandate: ‘The Rule’s Going Down’

“While I am pro-vaccine, the Biden administration does not have the authority to force hardworking Americans to choose between being vaccinated and providing for their families. That’s why the RNC is suing the Biden administration over this unlawful vaccine mandate and will maintain every legal option to fight this authoritarian overreach.”

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem also posted a video on Twitter Thursday telling Biden she would be taking legal action.

“This morning, the Biden Administration released their guidance through OSHA that affects over 100 million Americans,” Noem tweeted.

This morning, the Biden Administration released their guidance through OSHA that affects over 100 million Americans.

I am announcing that today, we are joining a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s unconstitutional vaccine mandates.@JoeBiden, see you in court. pic.twitter.com/sA3xnEIYuQ

— Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) November 4, 2021

“I am announcing that today, we are joining a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s unconstitutional vaccine mandates. [Biden], see you in court.”

A group of GOP senators criticized the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate while seeking a ban on dishonorable discharge directives for unvaccinated service members.

Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), and First Liberty Institute’s general counsel, Mike Berry, held a press conference Thursday morning here they slammed President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for the military.

The senators also discussed the COVID-19 Vaccine Dishonorable Discharge Prevention Act—a bill Marshall introduced in September to prohibit dishonorable charges for service members not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. The bill was introduced as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act FY 2022.

“I joined the Navy at 18 years old. I served as a rifleman,” Scott said during the press conference.

“I never imagined that our federal government that I took the oath to defend the freedoms of this country, will come back and say, ‘if you don’t put something in your body that you don’t feel comfortable with, right or wrong,’—and I took the vaccine, I’ve had COVID—that we’re going kick you out of the military, … and we’re going to give you a dishonorable discharge.”

Scott said with the dishonorable discharge, the Biden administration is trying to ruin the lives of those who choose not to get vaccinated.

A dishonorable discharge would mean that the individual would have to surrender a slew of rights and benefits, including ownership of any firearms and ammunition, access to the G.I. Bill for further education, Veterans Affairs home loans and medical benefits, military funeral honors, and reenlistment in another military branch.

“This is disgusting. It’s wrong. It needs to stop,” Scott continued.

“Joe Biden needs to start standing up for the men and women of our military instead of trashing them and tell them he’s going to ruin their lives—that’s exactly what his goal is—he is going to ruin their lives by kicking them out of the military and give him a dishonorable discharge. This needs to change.”

Wicker, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Biden has misjudged how Americans view the issue.

“Our commander in chief is grossly miscalculating the will of the American people,” Wicker said. “Not only is he going to create a crisis in the United States military, but writ large these mandates across our economy—mandates to small businesses, mandates to businesses that would contract with the federal government—they are not going to be well received,” Wicker said.

“He is going to create a shortage in the military, he is going to create morale problems, and in the economy as a whole, he is going to create a recession.”

Cramer said the vaccine mandate violates common sense and ethics.

“Scripture tells us there’s no greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend,” Cramer said at the press conference.

“These are the kinds of people who make these decisions to sign up to serve. They have a servant’s heart. And then to disrespect that servant’s heart with this kind of a rule just violates all kinds of common sense and ethics and great traditions of our great country.”

Dishonorable discharge is “bullying” service members, Marshall told FoxNews.

“I would use the term bullying, you know, the military has its ways,” said Marshal, who spent seven years in the Army Reserve. “So I get it. They’re able to bully people if they want you to do something,” he said adding that they’re able to apply peer pressure. “And you know, it works.”

Marshall explained why he wanted to get support for his bill, a legislature trying to prohibit dishonorable discharge for unvaccinated service members.

“What really lit my fire was when I heard the White House say, we want them [to] have a dishonorable discharge,” Marshall said. “So next week is Veterans Day. We’re honoring them this week [as] the president of the United States is dishonoring our military members.”

Marshall has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

The White House stated that it “strongly opposes” the senators’ bill, saying that it 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.”

During a Sept. 28 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was asked if he supports dishonorable discharges for unvaccinated service members.

“Taking a vaccine is a requirement. I’ll just leave it at that,” Austin replied at the time.

On Wednesday, Marshall and nine senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), pledging to oppose any legislation that would fund Biden’s vaccine mandate.

“President Biden is waging a cruel campaign to punish unvaccinated Americans—depriving them of their ability to provide for their families. This is nothing short of immoral,” the letter reads.

Schumer hasn’t provided a floor time for the National Defense Authorization Act. The delay has brought bipartisan anger against him.

Mark Tapscott and Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gop-senators-dishonorable-discharge-for-unvaccinated-service-member-needs-to-stop_4087441.html

Several large business groups on Thursday said President Joe Biden’s latest COVID-19 vaccine requirement was poorly planned and would burden employers during the holiday season.

The mandate, announced by Biden in September, was released to the public for the first time on Nov. 4.

It requires employers with 100 or more employees—and, perhaps, smaller businesses—to secure proof of COVID-19 vaccination from workers or force them to get tested for the disease on a regular basis, at least once a week.

David French, a senior vice president at the National Retail Foundation, said retailers have taken “extraordinary measures” during the pandemic to protect employees and customers, including encouraging and mandating vaccination.

“Since the president’s announcement of the vaccine mandate for private industry, the seven-day average number of cases in the United States has plummeted by more than half. Nevertheless, the Biden administration has chosen to declare an ‘emergency’ and impose burdensome new requirements on retailers during the crucial holiday shopping season,” he said in a statement.

Michael Hanson, a senior executive vice president at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said the deadline of Jan. 4, 2022, was disappointing because planning and implementation would fall “during the busiest part of the shopping season.”

Hanson also said that retailers want to serve as partners in the push to increase vaccination rates but decried the fines threatened by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which promulgated the mandate in an emergency standard.

“It pits government against private employers instead of working with them to create a safe working environment,” Hanson said.

Large groups, including the association, had urged the Biden administration to allow at least 90 days for implementation.

The National Federation of Independent Business is opposed to the standard, Karen Harned, executive director of its Small Business Legal Center, said in a statement. She said it “restricts the freedom of small business owners to decide how best to operate their own businesses and imposes unwarranted burdens on small businesses that further threaten the small business recovery.”

Some other groups backed the standard, with several claiming it should have been stricter.

“Today’s action from the Biden administration, while not going far enough, is a critical first step to keep workers safe on the job as COVID-19 dangers continue,” Marc Perrone, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, said in a statement.

“While we are still digesting the details of the rule, initially we are encouraged by the compliance flexibility given to employers in the standard. We especially appreciate that the administration provided a longer compliance window and made the compliance dates consistent between the OSHA ETS and the federal contractor vaccine mandates,” added Timothy Bartl, president and CEO of the JR Policy Association.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a statement saying that OSHA “made some significant adjustments” in the standard “that reflect concerns raised by the business community.”

The deadline was pushed back to align with the deadline for federal contractors that were already in place, deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre told reporters during a briefing.

“We wanted to avoid confusion,” she said, later adding that the administration doesn’t think the vaccination requirements will affect the already fragile supply chain.

The standard drew multiple lawsuits just hours after it was unveiled but the White House maintains it will survive legal challenges.

Biden said in a statement that vaccine mandates are working to increase vaccination rates and claimed that they have not led to “mass firings” or “worker shortages,” even though thousands of Americans have been confirmed by various companies as quitting or getting fired over mandates. Businesses and government agencies in multiple states have likewise had to curb services due to a shortage of workers as the mandate deadlines have kicked in.

“Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support,” he said. “I’m calling on employers to act. Businesses have more power than ever before to accelerate our path out of this pandemic, save lives, and protect our economic recovery.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/several-big-business-groups-express-displeasure-with-bidens-private-employer-covid-19-vaccine-mandate_4087437.html

Children’s natural defenses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus have largely spared them and I ask, why would we seek to bypass these defenses and threaten them?

Why vaccinate our children for this mild and typically non-consequential virus when they bring protective innate immunity towards SARS-VoV-2, other coronaviruses, and other respiratory viruses? Why push to vaccinate our children who may well be immune due to prior exposure (asymptomatic or mild illness) and cross-reactivity/cross-protection from other coronavirus (common colds)?

Many children are likely COVID-recovered and as such are immune, so why not consider assessing their immune status? Between their young age and robust innate immunity and this possibility of being COVID-recovered, it should be hands-off regarding the vaccine.

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche writes that children’s innate immunity “normally/ naturally largely protects them and provides a kind of herd immunity in that it dilutes infectious CoV [coronavirus] pressure at the level of the population, whereas mass vaccination turns them into shedders of more infectious variants. Children/ youngsters who get the disease mostly develop mild to moderate disease and as a result continue to contribute to herd immunity by developing broad and long-lived immunity.”

This is a potentially very serious issue, for the vaccine offers children no opportunity for benefit and only potential for harms. We could end up harming thousands of our children with these vaccines, for which there’s no proper medium or long-term safety data. Below are several studies that help make the case that children must be considered “already vaccinated” and must not be touched by these vaccines.

Different Immune Response

A Yale and Albert Einstein College of Medicine report on Sept. 18, 2020, in the journal Science Translational Medicine indicates that children and adults display different immune system responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection, which helps in understating why they have far less illness or mortality from COVID-19.

“Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, scientists have observed that children infected with the virus tend to fare much better than adults,” stated a Yale news article about the study.

Researchers reported that “levels of two immune system molecules—interleukin 17A (IL-17A), which helps mobilize immune system response during early infection, and interferon gamma (INF-g), which combats viral replication—were strongly linked to the age of the patients. The younger the patient, the higher the levels of IL-17A and INF-g, the analysis showed. These two molecules are part of the innate immune system, a more primitive, non-specific type of response activated early after infection.”

Different Physiology

The virus uses the ACE2 receptor to gain entry to the host cell, and the ACE2 receptor has less presence in the lining of the nose in young children (potentially also in upper respiratory airways); this partly explains why children are less likely to be infected in the first place, or spread it to other children or adults, or even get severely ill—the biological molecular apparatus is simply not there in the nasal cavity of children as reported eloquently by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.

By bypassing this natural protection and entering the shoulder deltoid muscle, the vaccine, its mRNA and lipid nanoparticle content, and generated spike protein could be released into the blood circulation and could then damage the lining of the blood vessels and cause severe allergic reactions (e.g. Varga et al. 2020 in The Lancet, Nuovo et al. 2021 in the Annals of Diagnostic Pathology, Ogata et al. 2021 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, and Lei et al. 2021 in Circulation Research).

Fewer Deaths from COVID-19 Compared to Other Common Causes

Statistician William Briggs looked at the rationale for vaccinating children based on their risk of death from COVID-19. He notes 542 children aged 0–17 have died (crude rate of 0.00007 per 100; 132 under 1 years old) since January 2020 with a diagnosis of COVID-19 linked to their death, according to CDC data up to Oct. 22. This doesn’t indicate whether, as Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Marty Makary has been clamoring, the death was “causal or incidental.” That said, from January 2020, 1,043 children aged 0–17 have died of pneumonia.

Briggs writes: “There is no good vaccine for pneumonia. But it could be avoided by keeping kids socially distanced from each other—permanently. If one death is ‘too many,’ then you must not allow kids to be within contact of any human being who has a disease that may be passed to them, from which they may acquire pneumonia. They must also not be allowed in any car. In one year, just about 3,091 kids 0-17 died in car crashes (435 from 0-4, 847 from 5-14, and 30% of 6,031 from 15-24). Multiply these 3,000 deaths in cars by about 1.75, since the Covid deaths are over a 21-month period. That makes about 5,250 kids dying in car crashes in the same period—10 times as many as Covid.”

Yearly, around 500 children in the United States die of seasonal influenza and there has never been a mandated vaccine.

Briggs concludes, “There exists no justification based on any available evidence for mandatory vaccines for kids.”

Different Immune Systems

Dr. Stuart Weisberg, of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and colleagues (building on 2018 research work by Brahma Kumar and colleagues at Columbia) suggest that the reason children can more easily neutralize the virus is that their T cells are relatively naïve. They argue that since children’s T cells are mostly untrained, they can thus immunologically respond more rapidly and nimbly to novel viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 for an effective robust response.

Research published in the journal Nature Biotechnology in August 2021 deepens our understanding of this natural type biological/molecular protection even further by showing that pre-activated (primed) antiviral innate immunity in the upper airways of children works to control early SARS-CoV-2 infection.

“The airway immune cells of children are primed for virus sensing, resulting in a stronger early innate antiviral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection than in adults,” states a report on the study by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

When one is vaccinated or gets infected naturally, this drives the formation, tissue distribution, and clonal evolution of B cells, which is key to encoding humoral immune memory. There is research evidence published in May 2021 in the journal Science that blood from children retrieved prior to the COVID-19 pandemic has memory B cells that can bind to SARS-CoV-2, suggestive of the potent role of early childhood exposure to common cold coronaviruses. This is supported by Mateus and colleagues’ October 2020 report in Science on T cell memory to prior coronaviruses that cause the common cold (known as cross-reactivity/cross-protection).

In closing, there’s very little risk and no data or evidence or science to justify any of the COVID-19 vaccinations in children. Can the content of these vaccines cross the blood-brain barrier in children? We don’t know for it wasn’t studied. Recklessly so. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration are all going along with this push when there’s no sound medical justification for this. In my opinion, based on the science and all the data collected across 19 months, under no circumstances should we expose children to the risk of the COVID-19 vaccinations. To consider putting healthy children at risk so as to protect adults is illogical, irrational, perverse, and reckless. There’s no proper safety data.

The focus rather has to be on early treatment and testing (sero-antibody or T-cell testing) to establish who is a credible candidate for these injections if properly ethically informed and consented to, for it’s also harmful to layer inoculation on top of existing COVID-recovered, naturally acquired immunity (as studies are showing).

What does all of this mean? We could end up harming our children. Liability protection should be taken off the table. Government officials and vaccine companies must stand to be at risk too, not only our children. Don’t touch our children unless you’re 100 percent sure that any drug or vaccine is safe. These vaccines have not been shown to be. They aren’t needed based on the risk to children from COVID-19—near zero! Consider them already vaccinated. Leave them alone.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/children-are-essentially-immune-already-so-dont-touch-them-with-these-covid-vaccines_4082562.html

A group of Republican lawmakers are planning to introduce a resolution to strike down President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate after the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released its emergency temporary standard requiring businesses with 100 or more workers to have their workers get vaccinated or submit to regular testing for COVID-19.

In a statement issued on Thursday, House Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) confirmed that GOP lawmakers on her committee will “introduce immediately a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify OSHA’s ’emergency’ rule when it is received by Congress.”

Biden’s rule (pdf) will go into effect on Jan. 4 in a bid to raise vaccination rates and get more people back to work. However, a significant number of trade groups have issued warnings about the mandate, saying that it would exacerbate supply chain bottlenecks and staffing shortages nationwide—leading some association presidents to ask the White House to delay the rule until after the holiday season.

Employers are not required to provide or pay for tests, and the rule offers medical and religious exemptions. Unvaccinated people have to wear masks while on the job, the rule stipulates.

Those who do not comply with the mandate will result in an approximately $14,000 fine per violation with a scale that increases with several violations, according to the rule. It’s not clear what penalty will be handed down for workers who don’t wear face masks and who are not vaccinated.

A senior Biden administration official said Thursday that the White House believes the mandate will spur vaccinations across the United States.

“Thousands of employers have answered the president’s call and stepped up to implement vaccination requirements covering tens of millions of Americans,” the official said.

After Biden announced the mandate on Sept. 9, a number of Republican governors and attorneys general promised to file lawsuits against the rule. So far, more than a dozen GOP-led states have sued the administration over a related but separate mandate that federal contractors and workers get the vaccine.

And on Wednesday, a group of Republican senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaling their intention to block funding for the vaccine mandate.

“We will oppose all efforts to implement and enforce it with every tool at our disposal, including our votes on spending measures considered by the Senate,” the letter led by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) read. “To be sure, we agree that countless Americans have benefitted from the protection offered by the COVID-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, the decision whether to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is a highly personal one that should never be forced upon individuals by the federal government.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/house-republicans-to-introduce-resolution-to-strike-down-biden-vaccine-mandate_4080054.html

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued a federal rule mandating COVID-19 vaccinations or weekly testing for companies with 100 or more employees while also seeking comments about potential parts of the rule that could force massive government overreach into American lives.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro highlighted the Request for Comment section of OSHA’s document announcing the emergency temporary standard, which featured seven authoritarian aspects of the ETS that could become part of a permanent rule.

OSHA standards are required to be replaced by a permanent regulation after six months, according to Bloomberg.

So, OSHA is promulgating this insanely authoritarian regulation on an emergency temporary basis. They’re seeking to make a rule permanent. Here are the questions they are asking about when formulating a permanent rule:

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 4, 2021

Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Is Worse Than We Thought: Look How He’s Punishing Unvaxxed Employees

The seven areas OSHA sought comments about included sweeping, invasive suggestions like the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for companies with under 100 employees.

Questions in the document included, “How much time would it take, what types of costs would you incur, and how much would it cost for you to implement [vaccination and/or testing requirements]?”

7. Social distancing, physical barriers, and further ventilation requirements.
In other words, this is only the beginning of the authoritarianism. If made permanent, the OSHA rule would be far more onerous. They could push a national vaccination AND mask mandate.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 4, 2021

Should Biden end all vaccine mandates?

Another section asked whether fully vaccinated people should be required to wear masks in the workplace.

“Should portions of the rule, such as face coverings, apply to fully vaccinated persons?” OSHA’s document asked.

The third area of consideration involved no exceptions for natural immunity.

“Given scientific uncertainty and limitations in testing for infection and immunity, OSHA is concerned that it would be infeasible for employers to operationalize a standard that would permit or require an exception from vaccination or testing and face covering based on prior infection with COVID-19,” the document said.

The fourth area discussed the potential to remove testing as an alternative to vaccination.

DeSantis Pledges Immediate Action Against Biden’s Vaccine Mandate: ‘The Rule’s Going Down’

“Should OSHA impose a strict vaccination mandate (i.e., all employers required to implement mandatory vaccination policies as defined in this ETS) with no alternative compliance option?” OSHA asked.

The fifth area asked questions about testing employees more than once per week.

“Should OSHA require testing more often than on a weekly basis?” it asked.

The sixth area addressed quality standards for masks.

“Are there particular workplace settings in which face coverings meeting one standard should be favored over another?” OSHA asked, suggesting only masks meeting a certain quality standard would be acceptable in the workplace.

The seventh area included other “controls against SARS-CoV-2 transmission recommended by OSHA and the CDC.”

The open-ended list included ongoing social distancing, physical barriers and specifics such as ventilation requirements for businesses, suggesting a potential addition of requirements for American businesses.

The Republicans MUST push Democrats in the Senate for a Congressional Review Act vote. Today. Force the Democrats to sign onto this authoritarian nonsense.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 4, 2021

After posting about OSHA’s detailed requests for recommendations in its 490-page document, Shapiro concluded, “The Republicans MUST push Democrats in the Senate for a Congressional Review Act vote. Today. Force the Democrats to sign onto this authoritarian nonsense.”

Despite there being only one vaccine in the country approved for children between the ages of 5 and 11, San Francisco is already looking at the day in the not-too-distant future when a vaccine mandate will apply to those children.

On Tuesday, federal officials gave final approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be given to children aged 5 to 11.

Moderna has developed a shot for children between 6 and 11, but it has not even asked the Food and Drug Administration for approval yet because its vaccine for adolescents aged 12-17 is being held up over concerns that it is linked to a higher-than-normal number of cases of heart inflammation.

Johnson and Johnson is in the process of studying the impact of a vaccine on adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17.

San Francisco currently forces anyone 12 and older to prove they are vaccinated against COVID to enter indoor establishments including bars, restaurants, clubs, and gyms. A vaccine mandate would require children to also show proof of vaccination to enter many businesses and public places.

Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Is Worse Than We Thought: Look How He’s Punishing Unvaxxed Employees

City Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip said during a Tuesday town hall that a proof-of-vaccination mandate for children is an idea on the horizon and could be implemented early next year, according to SFGate.

“We definitely want to wait and make sure that children have an opportunity to get vaccinated,” Philip said.

“That will happen no sooner than about eight weeks after the vaccine is available to kids. So there will be a limited time in which there will not be those requirements, but then at some point, 5- to 11-year-olds will also have to show proof of vaccination to access some of those same settings.”

During the debate over authorizing the vaccine for children, some voiced concern that mandates would follow.

Do you trust these vaccines for children?

“I am just worried that if we say yes, then the states are going to mandate administration of this vaccine for children to go to school. And I do not agree with that,” Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine, said during the FDA vaccine committee meeting last week, according to U.S. News and World Report.

“I think that would be an error at this time.”

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has indicated that the Biden administration will push to have children vaccinated.

“We know that vaccination eligibility for our elementary-aged students would be a game changer,” Cardona told the outlet in September. “Not only would it help us keep our schools open and have less quarantining and closures, but it would also help parents breathe a lot easier and increase confidence in communities that their schools are safe.”

But some parents have concerns.

Cruz Introduces Bill to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates for Children

Erin Gauch, of Middletown, Rhode Island, said concerns over side effects give her pause, according to The New York Times.

“I’m looking at a 9-year-old and if I make a bad decision and he ends up with some debilitating side effects or lifelong adverse reaction, I don’t think I could live with that,” she said.

“If we ultimately decide not to get my youngest vaccinated right now, I guess I’ll be subjected to mommy shaming but I’ll just have to deal with it.”

Pro-vaccine parent Abby Cooper of Bergen County, New Jersey, said the issue defines who is and is not in her circle of friends, and those who do not get their children vaccinated are no longer welcome.

“Their kids are going to school with my kids and putting them at risk for no reason. It’s very upsetting. So, sadly, I’ve lost friends over this,” she said.

The Biden administration’s emergency COVID-19 vaccination requirement released today could be expanded in the future to employers who have fewer than 100 workers.

The emergency temporary standard, issued by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and scheduled to go into effect on Friday, is presented as only applying to firms that have 100 or more employees.

But OSHA is seeking public comments on that aspect of the standard, and it may be ultimately expanded to include smaller businesses, the agency said in the 490-page document.

OSHA said it is “soliciting stakeholder comment and additional information to determine whether to adjust the scope of the ETS,” or emergency standard, “to address smaller employers in the future.”

The agency is seeking perspectives from employers, it indicated (pdf).

“OSHA seeks information about the ability of employers with fewer than 100 employees to implement COVID-19 vaccination and/or testing programs,” it said.

“Have you instituted vaccination mandates (with or without alternatives), or requirements for regular COVID-19 testing or face covering use? What have been the benefits of your approach? What challenges have you had or could you foresee in implementing such programs? Is there anything specific to your industry, or the size of your business, that poses particular obstacles in implementing the requirements in this standard? How much time would it take, what types of costs would you incur, and how much would it cost for you to implement such requirements?”

The standard takes effect on Friday but also serves as a proposal under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. That means OSHA is seeking feedback and may adjust the finalized version based on the comments.

The standard forces many private employers to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination from workers or submit to COVID-19 testing on a regular basis, at least once a week.

Workers who refuse to provide proof must be compelled to wear masks.

The deadline to comply is Jan. 4, 2022.

Administration officials assert OSHA has the authority to promulgate such a rule because the COVID-19 pandemic presents an emergency and the agency is bestowed powers through the OSH Act.

Critics say the regulation is government overreach and outside the authority of OSHA. Dozens of attorneys general have vowed to sue over the standard and Republican members of Congress are gearing up to try to strike it down.

Penalties for noncompliance include a $14,000 fine for a single violation, an administration official told reporters in a call late Wednesday.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/osha-covid-19-vaccine-rule-may-be-expanded-to-small-businesses-labor-department_4085878.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-04-2&mktids=b9112475c3b51621601525d6101183d8&est=fJTzTs6CJmnYNWY%2BG2c7w4xGMQXHbf%2BSuIgO5mXO%2B7rzZilVNGJ%2B7gS%2FmTh10X%2BG3Q%3D%3D

Firefighters, nurses, and other so-called frontline workers are being fired or facing termination across the country for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

That’s wrong, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says.

“It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all,” he told NTD’s “The Beau Show.”

Officials in New York City and other locales that have imposed vaccine requirements say they will help decrease community spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, though the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against infection has dropped sharply in recent months.

“In terms of COVID, we are one of the safest places in America, because we have one of the highest levels of vaccination,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday.

Paul disagrees, particularly because many mandates lack opt-outs for those who have had COVID-19 and recovered. That means they have some level of protection against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, many studies have shown.

“Many of them got COVID while taking care of people. The doctors and nurses caught COVID from their patients. Most of them survived, fortunately. They now have immunity and all the science—102 studies—show that you have immunity if you’ve had the disease naturally,” he told NTD.

NTD is part of the Epoch Media Group.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges natural immunity, or protection bestowed by having COVID-19, but asserts even those with it should get a vaccine for an extra boost.

“We do know that after nearly all infectious diseases, you have some protection from getting that infection again, but we don’t really know how long that lasts or how robust it is,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s head, told reporters on Wednesday.

Critics argue those points are largely the same for vaccines and note that many of the studies suggest the level of protection is similar to or even superior to vaccination.

“What kind of discriminatory policies do we have in place that are excluding someone like me from the workplace when I’m 99.8 percent protected against reinfection, whereas someone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by the company’s own data that they submitted to the FDA, is 67 percent protective against COVID infection?” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was suspended by the University of California, Irvine for not getting a vaccine, told The Epoch Times last month.

Paul, a doctor, said that “nothing’s perfect, but your immunity is as good as the vaccine.”

“And there’s no reason for the government to be mandating a vaccine, particularly on people who’ve already had the disease,” he added.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/they-put-their-life-at-risk-sen-paul-decries-firing-of-frontline-workers-over-vaccine-mandates_4085830.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva challenged the county’s leaders Nov. 2 to open public debate over vaccine mandates, citing a possible loss of up to one-third of sworn personnel by the end of the year.

Typically, the department loses 500 to retirement and another 300 to injuries each year. So far, 655 employees have filed paperwork to leave the department.

This year, the department could lose 1,000 to voluntary retirement and injury claims, Villanueva said. An additional 3,137 sworn personnel, which includes patrol deputies and detectives, and 1,048 staff could be fired for not getting vaccinated.

Villanueva, who oversees the largest sheriff’s department in the country, with about 18,000 employees, announced earlier this month that he wouldn’t enforce the county’s vaccine mandate in his agency.

A COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees has caused many at the department to leave, Villanueva said. Under the mandate, employees had to be fully vaccinated by Oct 1.

By Tuesday, 57 percent of the sheriff’s department was fully vaccinated, according to Villanueva. Of those, 43 percent of sworn staff were vaccinated. Sixty-seven percent of the professional, non-sworn staff were vaccinated.

Villanueva said sworn staff could easily leave the county to work in surrounding counties that do not require COVID-19 vaccines, such as San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, Ventura, or Kern. Many of the department’s personnel live in the surrounding counties because of the high cost of living in Los Angeles County, he said.

Los Angeles was unique in the nation regarding the mandate and the “defund the police” movement, Villanueva said.

“The only one entity that is steadfast in defunding in the entire nation is the LA County Board of Supervisors,” he said. “They have a very weird group of people that are in charge. They worship at the altar of ‘wokeism’ and they don’t understand that their own community is saying ‘no.’”

The sheriff said he thinks more department personnel would get vaccinated if the department could pursue a voluntary system.

Villanueva showed photos of stadiums filled with cheering and unmasked fans and talked about people eating in restaurants without masks.

“Again, how many people are eating at a restaurant but then you’re worried about a cop that may or may not show up at your door on a call for service?” Villanueva said.

Residents have asked sheriff’s operators not to send unvaccinated deputies to respond to their calls, according to the department’s information bureau.

“We’re not mandating that the public gets a vaccine. We have to deal with the public unvaccinated, vaccinated. With COVID, without COVID,” he said.

Villanueva said the vaccine issue needed to be aired publicly. However, the public has been excluded from the decisions because county supervisors continue to hold meetings over the internet, in violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, an act passed in 1953 that guarantees the public’s right to attend and participate in local legislative meetings held by city, county, or legislative bodies, the sheriff said.

“Everything they’re doing is a violation of the Brown Act, because they’re deliberately excluding the public from participating fully from airing all of the motions and all of the decisions the board is making, which are being made behind closed doors, behind plexiglass and you don’t really need to know why,” Villanueva said. “And this is what’s going on right now.”

Facts and science don’t support the vaccine mandate, he said.

“Something’s going on. Something’s rotten and we need to fix it,” Villanueva said.

The decision by Los Angeles County to include population equity questions, such as sexual orientation, in the system that documents COVID-19 vaccinations among employees made more employees hesitant, the sheriff said.

Los Angeles County responded to the sheriff’s comments Tuesday, saying it had not seen an increase in early retirements or resignations among sworn staff in the sheriff’s department since the vaccination policy took effect, according to a county spokeswoman.

A review of attrition data from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 20, 2021, was compared to Oct. 2021, when the vaccination policy was implemented. There has been no increase in attrition, according to the county.

The department’s level of attrition over the past year has been slightly lower than the overall county rate.

There were nine sheriff department retirements in October, which is not considered a high number, according to the county.

“It is our hope that all department heads will support this important public health measure to keep their employees—and the public—safe. That means encouraging their employees to join the more than 90 percent of county employees who have already registered in the system, and the more than 77 percent who are fully vaccinated,” said County Spokeswoman Brenda Duran.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/la-sheriff-somethings-rotten-and-we-need-to-fix-it_4082898.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Despite the establishment media’s attempts to push the COVID-19 vaccine on every American, there are legitimate risks of side effects that need to be reported. In particular, a new study found the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine increases the risk of blood clots.

The study was conducted by Mayo Clinic researchers in Rochester, Minnesota. They were specifically looking for cases of a type of blood cot called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis in Olmstead County, Minnesota, and they published their findings in JAMA Internal Medicine.

First, the researchers studied cases of CVST from 2001 to 2015 in Olmstead County. According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the county has a population of about 158,000.

Over that 14-year span, the researchers found 39 patients who had developed acute incident CVST. Adjusted for population, that translated to about 2.34 cases per 100,000 person-years.

Of those 39 patients, 29 of them had a pre-existing risk factor within 92 days before developing the blood clot, according to the study. The Daily Mail said those risk factors include things like cancer or infection.

Next, the researchers studied CVST cases from the J&J vaccine’s approval in late February to May 7, 2021. The Daily Mail reported about 8.7 million doses of the vaccine had been given around the country during that time period.

In Olmstead County, the researchers found 46 CVST cases were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System within 92 days of receiving the vaccine. Eight of those were disregarded for various reasons, bringing the total to 38 “objectively diagnosed cases” of CVST.

At 15 days after vaccination, the researchers found 8.65 cases per 100,000 person-years. That rate is 3.7 times higher than the rate researchers found during their 14-year analysis of the general population.

In female patients, in particular, the rate was 13.01 cases per 100,000 person-years. The study said the CVST case rate was 5.1 times higher after vaccination among just female individuals compared to the pre-pandemic rate.

Does this study change your opinion of the J&J vaccine?

Overall, the researchers said their study found the CVST incidence rate within 15 days of receiving the J&J vaccine was “significantly higher than the prepandemic rate.”

To the average American, that should be concerning. While correlation does not necessarily equal causation, it certainly appears that the J&J vaccine may increase the risk of blood clots.

“[T]he higher rate of this rare adverse effect must be considered in the context of the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19,” the researchers said in the discussion portion of the study.

That may very well be true, but it does not change the fact that a higher risk of CVST does appear to be present post-vaccination. Americans have a right to choose for themselves which risk they want to take, and deserve to have the full information presented to them.

If a person is not vaccinated, they run the risk of getting COVID-19 and possibly more severe symptoms. If they are vaccinated, they face the risk of adverse effects like blood clots.

Musician Turns Down $9 Million Payday, Refuses to Get COVID Vaccine

Even if the risk of side effects from the vaccine is relatively low, it still exists. That is yet another reason vaccine mandates are so blatantly unconstitutional.

President Joe Biden may feel the risk of severe COVID-19 in an unvaccinated person is much higher than the risk of vaccine side effects, and he may be correct in that assumption. But that does not give him the right to make that decision for every American.

A cornerstone of a free country is that citizens ought to be able to make choices for themselves, especially when it comes to risk factors. As the Biden administration attempts to enforce medical tyranny, that right is more important than ever.

The Western Journal has published this article in the interest of shedding light on stories about the COVID-19 vaccine that go largely unreported by the establishment media. In the same spirit, according to the most recent statistics from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, 9,143 deaths have been reported among those who received a vaccine, or 22 out of every 1,000,000. By contrast, 740,348 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported by the CDC, or 19,483 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 to receive a COVID-19 vaccine is a personal one, and it is important to consider context when making that decision. — Ed. note

The vaccine mandate recently implemented by the Biden administration is costing jobs and affecting the U.S. economy, said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) in an interview with NTD.

President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 announced sweeping COVID-19 vaccine mandates for federal workers and contractors, and set a Dec. 8 deadline. Federal workers and contractors under the mandate won’t have the option to submit weekly COVID-19 tests and instead have to get vaccinated or seek a religious or medical exemption.

Norman said the mandate is creating a “huge issue” in South Carolina where essential workers such as engineers have walked off jobs and military families have come under pressure.

“It affects their livelihood, food on the table, not to mention their retirement,” said Norman. “This is a man-made crisis.”

Norman also cited “millions” of illegal immigrants entering the United States without needing proof of COVID-19 vaccination or having received a negative test.

“If it’s so important that Americans get vaccinated and to cause people to lose jobs again, how is it not important for the millions coming into this country?” said Norman.

President Joe Biden has presided over what is on track to be the worst border crisis in U.S. history in terms of the number of illegal immigrants that U.S. agents and officers have encountered. The number topped 200,000 in both July and August.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki in September had defended the Biden administration’s decision not to require negative COVID-19 test results or proof of vaccination from people illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border.

Psaki, responding to a question from a reporter on whether border patrol officials ask to see proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or negative test results “if somebody walks into the country, right across the river,” said illegal immigration is not comparable to foreign nationals who arrive by airplane to the United States.

In August, 40 percent of illegal immigrants released in Texas city had tested positive for COVID-19.

Regarding the Biden administration’s enforcement of the vaccine mandate for employers with 100 or more employees, Norman said private companies are “being held hostage” while postal unions were exempt from the mandate.

“It’s been a pick and choose, it’s been a sham show that this administration continues to do,” stated Norman. “They say one thing and do opposite.”

A U.S. Postal Service (USPS) spokesman told The Epoch Times in September that the USPS is not one of the agencies compelled to require COVID-19 vaccination.

The USPS, with more than 630,000 employees, is an independent agency of the Executive Branch.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/rep-norman-vaccine-mandate-is-a-man-made-crisis-affecting-u-s-economy_4079275.html

The immunity conferred by COVID-19 infection and recovery has by now been shown to be superior to the protection given by COVID-19 vaccines, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) says.

“For people who’ve had the disease and who have naturally acquired immunity, there is no reason to get a vaccine,” Harris, the co-chair of the House Doctors Caucus, said on NTD’s “Capitol Report” this week.Play Video

Dozens of studies have shown strong immunity to reinfection among people who got COVID-19 and recovered.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

“Our conclusion is that if you were previously infected, you are protected because of the previous infection and you don’t need the vaccine,” Dr. Nabin Shrestha, of the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Infectious Disease, told The Epoch Times earlier this year.

Shrestha led a team that found employees at the clinic who had natural immunity were unlikely to benefit from vaccination.

“The science is becoming very clear that naturally acquired immunity actually is better than vaccine-acquired immunity,” Harris said.

Many experts agree with the school of thought, though the view is far from universal.

Top public health officials and agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, still urge practically everybody to get a COVID-19 vaccine, even those who recovered from the disease.

“Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads around the country,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the centers, said in August after a study suggested those with natural immunity benefited from vaccination.

The debate was on full display during a recent Food and Drug Administration panel hearing considering whether to advise the agency to give shots to children as young as 5 years old.

Multiple members said data indicates children with prior infection don’t need a vaccine. Another proposal bandied about is giving such children a single shot, as opposed to the two-dose regimen often used for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

Harris says the COVID-19 vaccine mandates that don’t incorporate testing or natural immunity opt-outs have widespread resistance and the consequences of the mandates are severe.

“There are always going to be 15 or 20 percent of Americans who will just resist the government mandate. They just won’t get the vaccine, whether or not they’ve had naturally acquired immunity, and the consequences of taking those people out of the workplace, for instance, is going to be very broad, very widespread, and I think very bad for our economy,” he told NTD.

“If someone doesn’t want to get the vaccine, then just ask them to be tested every few days, make sure that if they’re tested, they quarantine themselves. But vaccine mandate that doesn’t take into account naturally acquired immunity and doesn’t allow an exception, either for religious, medical reasons, or with a test out option, I think in the long run is going to be shown to be more harmful than helpful.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/people-with-natural-immunity-dont-need-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-rep-harris_4075791.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A district court judge in Washington, D.C. issued a temporary injunction Thursday that bars both civilian and military plaintiffs from being fired after they filed a lawsuit against the White House’s vaccine mandate.

District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, issued a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing the plaintiffs from being fired while their religious exemption requests to the COVID-19 vaccine are pending.

“None of the civilian employee plaintiffs will be subject to discipline while his or her request for a religious exception is pending,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in an order, dated Thursday.You May Also Like

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• Biden COVID-19 Adviser: Vaccine Mandate on Private Businesses Will Be Ready ‘Soon’
• ‘I Had to Stand up and Try to Do Something:’ Professor of Medicine on Suing School Over Vaccine Mandate
• DeSantis Sues Biden Administration Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

The judge also ruled that “active duty military plaintiffs, whose religious exception requests have been denied, will not be disciplined or separated during the pendency of their appeals,” noting that the federal government has provided “no guarantee of what will happen … if their exemption requests are denied.”

Defendants named in the lawsuit, including all Biden administration executive branch secretaries, have to issue supplemental memos by Friday that say they will not terminate or penalize staff while religious exemptions are being heard, Kollar-Kotelly also ruled.

President Joe Biden and members of his administration were sued by 20 plaintiffs last month over his Sept. 9 executive order requiring vaccines for all federal employees and contractors, reported Fox News.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs wrote that “plaintiffs along with hundreds of thousands of other federal employees and active-duty service members will be terminated, discharged or separated on or before November 22, 2021.”

“The Biden administration has shown an unprecedented, cavalier attitude toward the rule of law and an utter ineptitude at basic constitutional contours,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Yoder told the network after Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling.

Describing this mandate as “dangerous to American liberty,” Yoder said that “our Constitution protects and secures the right to remain free from religious persecution and coercion.”

Similarly, he praised Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling and said that “we are one step closer to putting the Biden administration back in its place by limiting government to its enumerated powers. It’s time citizens and courts said no to tyranny. The Constitution does not need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread.”

Biden’s announcement on vaccine mandates across different sectors of society drew significant criticism, leading to lawsuits from several states over the requirements.

Ahead of the mandate’s deadline, several trade associations—including cargo carriers and truckers groups—issued warnings to the Biden administration that vaccine mandates would snarl supply chain bottlenecks and trigger chaos nationwide.

The Washington court order came as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced that his state filed a lawsuit against the White House over its vaccine mandate for federal contractors.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House press office for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-blocks-biden-admin-from-firing-unvaccinated-employees-with-pending-religious-exemptions_4075959.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Wednesday signed an executive order she says will “protect” state employees against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate by allowing them to easily obtain medical and religious exemptions.

“South Dakota is fighting back against the heavy hand of @JoeBiden & his Administration,” the Republican governor announced on Twitter. “Today I signed an Executive Order to protect state employees, & those w/ federal contracts who are being forced to get vaccinated against their wishes. The order protects medical & religious exemptions for these workers.”

“Additionally, I am working w/ legislators on addressing other areas. I have always said the decision to get vaccinated should be a personal choice-not a mandate from Joe Biden, Fauci or your boss,” she added.You May Also Like

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• Biden COVID-19 Adviser: Vaccine Mandate on Private Businesses Will Be Ready ‘Soon’
• Top Florida Official Pleads With In-N-Out to Move After Vaccine Mandate Closures
• Live Q&A: CDC Reveals Plan to Give ‘Counseling’ to the Unvaccinated ; Labor Unions Push Back on Vaccine Mandates

Noem said the move was necessary to ensure that employees aren’t forced to get COVID-19 vaccinations under  Biden’s initiative, which covers not only people directly paid by federal contracts but also anyone who works to support them.

State lawmakers have said South Dakotans are being denied medical and religious exemptions from feds and have called for a special session to stop it.

Noem spokesman Jordan Overturf said Noem’s exemptions are “explicit and offer a clear path” for state workers to opt-out of the shots.

In a press release from Noem’s office, the governor said that employees who wish to receive a medical exemption from the vaccine mandate need a note from a doctor stating that the COVID-19 vaccination is too risky for health reasons.

Workers who wish to be exempted for religious reasons must fill out a form from the Bureau of Human Resources that states that they “dissent and object to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, which includes moral, ethical, and philosophical beliefs or principles.”

“Due to established precedent, this Executive Order does not apply to service members with the South Dakota National Guard who must meet federal readiness responsibilities for deployment,” the release adds.

It also states that Noem will work during next year’s legislative session with South Dakota lawmakers to make these “protections” for state employees permanent, and “to extend similar health and religious liberty protections” to employees of private businesses who adopted mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies.

The governor earlier criticized proposals by Republican lawmakers to ban vaccine mandates as “not conservative” because they’re telling businesses what to do and how to treat their employees. This order, spokesman Overturf said, is about upholding rights already included in the Constitution.

“She has repeatedly said private businesses should offer medical and religious exemptions for COVID vaccine mandates,” Overturf said.

Noem earlier said on Twitter that the state will “l stand up to defend freedom,” referring to the president’s vaccine mandates.

“@JoeBiden see you in court,” she wrote in September, later adding that her legal team is prepared to stand up to the Biden administration’s mandates.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/south-dakota-gov-noem-signs-order-to-protect-state-employees-from-bidens-vaccine-mandate_4075264.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Federal workers who are fighting President Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate on the grounds of religion have won a round in court.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District of Columbia on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order that protects military and civilian employees from being fired while their requests for religious exemptions to Biden’s vaccine mandate are being heard, according to Fox News.

“None of the civilian employee plaintiffs will be subject to discipline while his or her request for a religious exception is pending,” Kollar-Kotelly ordered.

The judge also ruled that “active duty military plaintiffs, whose religious exception requests have been denied, will not be disciplined or separated during the pendency of their appeals,” according to Fox News.

The court further ordered that Biden and the top administration officials named in the lawsuit file a notice Friday to indicate whether they will agree that no plaintiff will be disciplined or terminated until there is a final ruling on the question of religious exemptions.

Twenty people had sued Biden and his top officials over the executive order that mandated vaccinations for all federal workers, civilian and military alike.

“The Biden administration has shown an unprecedented, cavalier attitude toward the rule of law and an utter ineptitude at basic constitutional contours,” attorney Michael Yoder, who represented those suing the administration, said in a statement.

“This combination is dangerous to American liberty,” Yoder said “Thankfully, our Constitution protects and secures the right to remain free from religious persecution and coercion.”

“With this order, we are one step closer to putting the Biden administration back in its place by limiting government to its enumerated powers. It’s time citizens and courts said no to tyranny. The Constitution does not need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread,” he said.

BREAKING: @Yoder_Esq with a HUGE WIN in Church v. Biden.

(Yes, that’s the actual case caption. For those playing along, 1:21-cv-2815)

This is an amazing development from the DC District Court in the stand for OUR RIGHTS against the unconstitutional vaccine mandates. pic.twitter.com/kWus7XQ4pp

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) October 28, 2021

The complaint Yoder filed indicated that those filing it, and others, would face termination on Nov. 22.

“Contemporaneous with the commencement of this action Plaintiffs have filed an Application for a Temporary Restraining Order (‘TRO’) and Preliminary Injunction to maintain the status quo of our federal governmental operations and to put an end to this involuntary game of Monty Hall millions of Americans have been compelled to involuntary play,” the complaint said.

“And while the currency of this game is not exclusively money but also the rights to life, liberty, and property, it would be imprudent to not address the magnitude of the economic impact of this case,” it said.

School Board President Urged to Resign After Hot Mic Catches Her Comment About Anti-Vaccine Mandate Parent

The complaint said the stakes were high for those suing and the nation as a whole.

“Absent the injunctive relief Plaintiffs request herein, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm as their fundamental rights are trampled and they lose their jobs for no reason beyond their sincerely held religious beliefs,” the complaint said.

When religious exemptions are denied and thousands of Americans lose jobs because of their faith in God…

Let me be clear:
— I will sue you RELENTLESSLY

God is more important than money.
— learn that lesson or I’ll teach it to you

— Mike Yoder (@Yoder_Esq) October 9, 2021

“If Defendants are not enjoined from enforcing the Vaccine Mandates, hundreds of thousands of federal workers and military personnel will be forcibly removed from our government and Armed Forces, thrusting our nation into a state more vulnerable than the United States has experienced in a quarter of a millennium,” it said.

The complaint noted that abortion was central to the religious objections offered by those suing the Biden administration.

“Because all three of the currently available COVID-19 vaccines are developed and produced from, tested with, researched on, or otherwise connected with the aborted fetal cell lines HEK-293 and PER.C6, Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs compel them to abstain from obtaining or injecting any of these products into their body, regardless of the perceived benefit or rationale,” the complaint said.

The Delta COVID-19 variant can easily transmit from vaccinated people to their household members, said a recent UK study, although its researchers concluded that vaccinations and boosters are the way forward.

A year-long study from the Imperial College London published in The Lancet on Thursday found that the Delta variant is still highly transmissible within a vaccinated population.

“By carrying out repeated and frequent sampling from contacts of COVID-19 cases, we found that vaccinated people can contract and pass on infection within households, including to vaccinated household members,” Dr. Anika Singanayagam, co-lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The findings, Singanayagam added, provide some insight into why the Delta variant is “continuing to cause high COVID-19 case numbers … even in countries with high vaccination rates.”

An analysis found that the viral load declined most rapidly for those who were vaccinated with the Delta variant compared with those who are unvaccinated, according to the researchers.

But the peak levels of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, in vaccinated people were similar to levels in unvaccinated people, they found, adding that it might be the reason why the Delta variant can spread despite vaccination.

Because the Delta variant can spread easily among vaccinated people, another researcher involved in the study, Dr. Ajit Lalvani, argued it is necessary for people to get the vaccine or boosters to reduce severe COVID-19 symptoms.

“We found that susceptibility to infection increased already within a few months after the second vaccine dose … so those offered a booster should get it promptly,” Lalvani said.

Their study, which surveyed 621 participants, found that of 205 household contacts of people who had the Delta infection, about 38 percent of household contacts who were not vaccinated tested positive, compared with 25 percent who tested positive among vaccinated household contacts.

Immunity from full vaccination also dropped in as little as three months, their research also found. They didn’t say whether it should inform the UK’s booster policy.

However, amid the push to get large swaths of the population vaccinated, some immunologists and doctors have argued that natural immunity needs more research and should be factored into policy decision-making.

Steve Templeton, an immunologist with Indiana University’s school of medicine, wrote that “the key to ending the pandemic has always been the immune system.”

“The fact that so many have recovered from infection and that robust, durable, and protective immunity in those individuals has been unequivocally proven should be considered a good thing,” he said in an article dated Oct. 22, adding that “there appears to be a drive to cancel the term ‘natural immunity,’ a pretense that the vaccinated need fear the unvaccinated, and an unwillingness to treat the public as adults that can handle nuanced information and make decisions regarding their health.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/vaccinated-people-easily-transmit-covid-19-delta-variant-in-households-uk-study_4074277.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-10-29&mktids=441fb8cdbb840e1bf985645dec549317&est=elLB7xZfBsmzfNIsIK9hxftOKb17gproxTFfru4pnGD4CJPPrtmz332fKavMPNj6dA%3D%3D

A school board president in southern California is facing calls to resign after a hot mic caught her throwing a vulgar insult toward a parent who had expressed concern over vaccine mandates for children.

The incident occurred Tuesday in Orange County at a meeting between parents and members of the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education, KTLA-TV reported.

Marlys Davidson, the board president, and other members of the board listened to questions and statements from parents who expressed their opinions on issues ranging from mask mandates to critical race theory.

As we’ve seen in recent months, some of those questions were passionate. One woman who had identified herself as a concerned parent came up to a podium during the meeting with a message for Davidson.

KTLA reported Lauren Roupoli had asked the board to respect parents by not calling parents “selfish,” and concluded that any assumption that those in attendance to speak up for their children were there for themselves was “rude.”

Roupoli had barely concluded her comments when a microphone caught Davidson sharing a two-word response which she apparently thought could not be heard by the parents in the room.

Would you enroll your child in this school district?

“F*** you,” said a voice reported to be that of Davidson in a brazen display of disrespect amid a broader conversation nationally about school boards and their relationships with their communities. Footage from the meeting cuts before parents or fellow board members are given time to respond to the comment.

WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language which some viewers will find offensive.

Davidson later issued an apology to Roupoli through a statement that was sent to KTLA.

“I am going go personally apologize to the speaker who most certainly deserves to know that when the member of the public address the Board of Education, they must be heard with respect,” Davidson said. “I reaffirm my commitment to serve our community with dignity and integrity, and I hope they will accept my sincere apology.”

The apology felt hollow to Roupoli, however, who said she wants Davidson to step down from the board.

Authorities Declare No Crime Was Committed When Teacher Allegedly Taped Mask to Student’s Face

“After her true colors showed last night, there’s no taking that back,” Roupoli told KTLA.

The meeting was held the same day an expert panel advising the Food and Drug Administration recommended Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged 5 to 11, The New York Times reported.

Every school in California is required to mandate masks for students, faculty and staff. KNTV-TV reported Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom intends to make the shots mandatory for every student in the state.

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, suggested that In-N-Out Burger should move to the Sunshine State after several In-N-Out locations were shut down by California officials.

Patronis appealed to In-N-Out CEO Lunsi Snyder to move to the state, arguing that Florida has a superior business climate—noting the state has no personal income tax, low corporate taxes, and no mandates.

“I’m writing you today not only as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, but as a small business owner who grew up in a family-owned restaurant and worked there for more than 30 years,” his letter reads. “I know how hard it is to turn a profit and make payroll on a good day, let alone when your own government is working to crush your business with absurd mandates. Once I heard the news of your shutdown for refusing to act as ‘vaccine police,’ I knew I had to reach out immediately.”

It came as health officials in Contra Costa County, Calfornia, shut down another In-N-Out Burger location for allowing indoor dining without checking customers for proof of vaccination, coming after a location was closed in nearby San Francisco for a similar reason.

Contra Costa County District 1 Supervisor John Gioia claimed that In-N-Out’s staff in Pleasant Hill “have just flouted the law.”

“It was other residents who complained about them,” he told ABC7. “That is why the health department followed up and issued fines.”

The Contra Costa Environmental Health said in a news release the commercial food permit for the Pleasant Hill location was suspended Tuesday “for creating a public health hazard by repeatedly violating a county health order intended to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

“Despite repeated notices of violation and fine, this business continued to permit indoor dining on site without verifying the COVID-19 vaccination status or recent, negative test result of customers,” the press release from Contra Costa health officials also said.

The restaurant chain, which has numerous locations across the West Coast, said its staff will not check the vaccination status of customers.

“The reason for the closure is that In-N-Out Associates were not actively demanding vaccine documentation and photo identification from each dine-in Customer before serving them,” In-N-Out Chief legal officer Arnie Wensinger said in a statement to local media after the Contra Costa location was closed.

“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” he added. “It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant Associates to segregate Customers into those who may be served and those who may not, whether based on the documentation they carry, or any other reason.”

Wensinger continued to say that the chain doesn’t agree “with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business.”

The move comes about two weeks after another In-N-Out Burger in San Francisco’s Fisherman Warf was closed down for allowing indoor dining without having its staff check whether they’re vaccinated or not. A vaccine passport mandate was implemented in San Francisco earlier this year by Democrat Mayor London Breed, and similar systems have been implemented in New York City, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and several other U.S. cities.

The San Francisco location was reopened to outdoor dining and takeout.

Some would-be customers in Pleasant Hill criticized the move to shut down the business.

“It’s not their job, they’re here to make hamburgers for us in all reality,” said Sean Vance to ABC7. “Absolute government overreach, it’s too much government control over us, we are a nation of freedom,” said Army veteran Laura Moser.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/top-florida-official-pleads-with-in-n-out-to-move-after-vaccine-mandate-closures_4071753.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee approved the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 today after about eight hours of discussion.

Six hours into the conversation, one doctor made a comment about how widespread the rollout of the vaccine should be.

He said it is a legitimate question to consider and though this advisory committee was planning to punt the question on to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, it was worth talking about.

“We’re never going to learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it, and that’s just the way it goes. That’s how we found out about rare complications of other vaccines,” Dr. Eric Rubin said in the meeting.

No Woke Agenda in Court: Rittenhouse Judge Says Rioters Can’t Be Called ‘Victims,’ Approves This List Instead

The committee voted 17 to 0, with one abstention, in favor of recommending emergency use of the vaccine in young children. The final decision will be made by FDA leaders, most likely in the next few days, NBC News reported.

The one abstention came from Dr. Michael Kurilla, who said he “would have preferred a more nuanced approach,” and not a blanket authorization for the age group, according to Stat.

Another committee member, Dr. Cody Meissner, a pediatrician at Tufts Medical Center, did voice his concern over the possibility of a vaccine mandate for children.

“I am just worried that if we say yes, then the states are going to mandate administration of this vaccine for children to go to school, and I do not agree with that. I think that would be an error at this time,” he said, according to CNN.

Should the FDA approve COVID vaccines for young children?

Dr. James Hildreth, a temporary committee member, also had concerns due to the number of children who have already had COVID-19, NBC reported. He pointed out some estimated that almost 40 percent of children already had some form of immunity to COVID-19.

“It just seemed to me that in some ways we’re vaccinating children to protect the adults when it should be the other way around. If 30 million children already have some form of immunity, they’ve made their contribution to herd immunity already and our focus should be to get the adults vaccinated to protect the children,” Hildreth said.

Last month, when Pfizer announced that the vaccine was safe for this age demographic, outside experts did say the clinical study did not produce copious amounts of data.

“It’s not a lot to go on, but what we do have to go on looks great,” Kathleen Neuzil of the University of Maryland School of Medicine told Stat last month.

With the passing vote of this advisory committee, though, the process for getting vaccines to 5- to 11-year-olds is underway. If the FDA leaders give their approval, then the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory will meet on Nov. 2 and 3 to decide whether to recommend the vaccine for this age group.

FDA Panel Approves COVID-19 Vaccine for Kids, Authorization Process Begins

The final step will be for CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to sign off on the decision.

Then, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will be available for 5- to 11-year-olds.

Since President Joe Biden began his push to subject Americans to vaccine mandates, many have pushed back. On Monday, superstar boxer Floyd Mayweather became the latest famous figure to speak out against the mandates.

In a video posted to his Twitter account, Mayweather expressed support for Kyrie Irving, an NBA player who has chosen not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

“America is the land of the free — freedom of speech, freedom of religion and supposedly freedom to choose,” Mayweather said. “Never be controlled by money. I respect you for having some integrity and being your own man.”

Choice is defined as an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. America gave us the choice to take the vaccine or not take the vaccine. As time moves on, that choice is gradually being stripped from us. pic.twitter.com/7F6RsWaDkL

— Floyd Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) October 25, 2021

Mayweather went on to suggest that Irving is making a true difference.Trending:

No Woke Agenda in Court: Rittenhouse Judge Says Rioters Can’t Be Called ‘Victims,’ Approves This List Instead

“A free mind makes its own choices; an enslaved mind follows the crowd,” he said. “Stand for something or fall for anything. One man can lead a revolution to stand up and fight for what’s right. One choice, one word, one action can change the world.”

In the caption of the video, Mayweather made clear that he is not arguing against the vaccine itself, but rather against vaccine mandates.

“America gave us the choice to take the vaccine or not take the vaccine,” he wrote. “As time moves on, that choice is gradually being stripped from us.”

Mayweather is absolutely right. While Americans can technically choose not to receive the vaccine, the federal government wants to make sure that choice comes at the price of a job.

Do you agree with Mayweather?

For most Americans, living without employment is not possible. When employers and governments threaten to fire unvaccinated workers, they are attempting to back them into a corner so that compliance is the only viable option.

Leftists on Twitter have attempted to argue that people losing their jobs for refusing the vaccine is simply an example of the old adage “actions have consequences.”

That is their decision to not get the vaccine so I have no sympathy for them. Actions have consequences and theirs is to not have their job. Same for all professions dealing with the public!! 👍

— Ferret Lady (@NicoleT83530892) October 18, 2021

You made the choice not to get the vaccine that saves lives. Your employer requires the vaccine for you to work there. Actions have consequences, and this is yours. Hope your selfishness and irresponsibility doesn’t kill someone, or you.

— Linda Weston (@LindaWestonpdx) October 20, 2021

‘COVID Conscious’ Biden Coughs Into Hand, Then Shares His Germs with the Front Row

This logic is completely flawed. Losing your job should not be a consequence of a personal medical choice. In fact, this so-called “consequence” is manufactured by tyrannical governments whose goal is to force as many vaccinations as possible.

If Irving had chosen not to get vaccinated and then contracted COVID-19, that would have been a consequence of his actions. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio barring Irving from earning a paycheck because he is unvaccinated is simply a gross abuse of power.

Instead of addressing the concerns of Irving, Mayweather and other black Americans, the Biden administration has continued to spout pro-mandate rhetoric in the hopes of convincing them to submit to the government.

The only way to stop further government overreach is to stand up to mistreatment, and that is exactly what Irving and Mayweather are doing.

Rapper Bryson Gray announced on Twitter Thursday that his anti-Biden music video “Let’s Go Brandon” was banned by YouTube due to “medical misinformation.”

“YouTube has banned ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ song from YouTube due to ‘medical information.’ What medical misinformation is in the song? Whoa,” Gray posted on Twitter.

YouTube has banned “Let’s Go Brandon” song from YouTube due to “medical information”. What medical misinformation is in the song? Whoa. pic.twitter.com/W8sCcyH4IM

— CCG BRYSON (@RealBrysonGray) October 21, 2021

The policy reason noted in Gray’s post said, “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”

The ban involved “1 active strike” that includes the inability to “upload, post, or live stream for 1 week,” the post showed.

Gray noted that the lyric video was the first to be removed. The music video was taken down soon after.

Despite the YouTube ban, Gray’s song recently reached #1 on iTunes in the United States.

“We did it,” Bryson said in another Twitter post on Sunday. “From banned on YouTube to passing Adele on the iTunes charts to become the #1 song in the country!”

The post also challenged fans to stand up against censorship. “Stop being afraid of censorship. Stop being afraid to be cancelled,” Bryson added. “STAND UP. Thank y’all so much! KEEP IT GOING!”

The same post reported Bryson’s video had also been “removed” from Instagram. The Instagram response said, “It goes against our Community Guidelines on harmful false information.”

Bryson responded, “Haha cute but it’s too late.”

The phrase, “Let’s go, Brandon!” began trending online after an NBC reporter interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown after a race said fans were shouting support for the driver in the background. The fans were instead chanting, “[Expletive] Joe Biden!”

The “Let’s go, Brandon!” chant also quickly spread to major stadium events, including the day after the original interview at a New York Jets NFL game.

YouTube said on Sept. 29 that it will ban all “harmful vaccine content” from its platform, including claims that vaccines are ineffective at reducing transmission of disease, prompting concerns that the firm will escalate censorship of dissenting viewpoints.

“We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines,” YouTube wrote in a blog post.

Now, it removes content that claims, “approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines,” YouTube stated on its blog, saying that its policy will now apply to content that questions the efficacy of all vaccines, not just those for COVID-19.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/youtube-deletes-bryson-grays-lets-go-brandon-music-video_4063951.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Despite being promoted as safe and effective by legacy media, many health care workers are refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccines, and those who openly speak out about their concerns get censored by Big Tech companies or kicked off their platforms.

Some nurses and doctors are refusing vaccine mandates even if means it will cost them their jobs.

The Epoch Times reached out to some of these health care professionals to see why.

‘Impossible to Give Fully Informed Consent’

Emily Nixon is a registered nurse who has been working in the health industry for 18 years. When her employer, MaineHealth, announced that it would make the vaccine mandatory, she quickly organized a group called The Coalition for Healthcare Workers Against Medical Mandates and filed a lawsuit.

“Thousands of health care workers have and will be losing their jobs. The already weak health care infrastructure of Maine will not withstand this devastating loss of staff. Life will be lost. Care is already being rationed. We have been experiencing a media blackout in this state,” Nixon said.

“Speaking from my point of view, an intelligent, healthy, and empowered health care professional that takes excellent care of herself, it is an insult to expect that I would accept an injection of unknown substance and efficacy and provide an example to the great people that I serve that they too should submit their power over to pharmaceutical companies—convicted felons—in an effort to put a band-aid on the gaping wound of reality.

“It is unconscionable to mandate injections without exemption, especially when the injection is a brand new medical product still undergoing its first year of study. Breakthrough cases are not properly reported on. We know this vaccine is ‘leaky.’ The safety and effectiveness of this vaccine has not been proven. There are other safe and alternative treatments. It is impossible to give fully informed consent without long-term, unbiased data. Threatening our jobs is blatant coercion. Our God-given right to bodily integrity and personal autonomy has been stripped with these mandates and we will not stand for it,” Nixon said.

‘The Side Effects Are Real’

Jaclyn Zubiate, who was working for Southern Maine Health Care, loved her job as a nurse.

“I did not take the vaccine, even though I will be terminated … Now with the data that we have, we know that the survival rate is quite high. Over the last 18 months, I have only sent one patient to the ER in respiratory distress. COVID has no distinguishing features among other viruses like other diseases that we have vaccines for. Why would I need a vaccine for something with a 99 percent survival rate that does not have any distinguishable features?” said Zubiate.

“Health care workers are not taking it because they know that the side effects are real. In urgent care, I have seen myocarditis, cellulitis, [and] unusual neurological symptoms, among a variety of other side effects. I have seen people very ill post-vaccine, and then go on to test positive. The positivity rate for contracting COVID on the vaccinated is very high per the recent studies and what I am seeing in my clinic. A vaccine should work, and it is not working. It should be tested for years on something other than humans before we call it ‘safe and effective.’ There have been over 15,000 deaths from the vaccine that the media is not talking about. I will never take that risk on myself,” Zubiate said.

‘The Data Speaks for Itself’

Jessica Mosher has been a registered nurse for more than a decade. She is a mother of four and a veteran of the United States Navy who lost her job for refusing the shots.

She was a nursing supervisor, patient observer manager, and nurse program director at Redington-Fairview General Hospital.

“Protecting my health and staying true to my religious convictions will always be my choice over a job. The scriptures promise that ‘as long as the earth remains, there will be seedtime and harvest’; this side of heaven, we have an abundance of employment options, but only one life,” Mosher said.

“I have a master’s degree in nursing and am employed as a professor of nursing research and evidence-based practice. I am skilled in collecting and analyzing data and in drawing conclusions. I did not rely on the media, government, or Big Tech for any of my health care decisions prior to COVID-19 and I have no plans to change course. The data speaks for itself related to the harm these experimental vaccines have caused and the lack of studies that have been conducted.

“What I have seen as a nurse and what others have shared post-vaccination seals the deal. The virus, like the cold and flu, does not have a cure. However, it has an almost 100 percent survival rate. Those pushing the vaccine are following the money. I am following the science. Health care workers do not walk away from their passion or stable salary to be difficult. The amount of people willing to be fired should be cause for alarm in and of itself,” she said.

‘Health Care Workers Have Natural Immunity‘

John Lewis worked for a large hospital in southern Maine.

He is pro-life and believes that all life is precious.

“Knowing all three available vaccines were either tested, developed, or produced using fetal cell lines from elective abortions, I could not in good conscience violate my deeply held beliefs. Anticipating I would be able to file a religious exemption, it is hard to accept [that] I’m not being afforded an exemption based on my duties after considering I am a remote worker and do not interact with patients,” Lewis said.

“Outside of medical or religious exemptions, many health care workers consider the risk-benefits of getting the vaccine. It is the same approach to providing patient care, where the patient is allowed informed consent. Many of the health care workers have natural immunity. Others do not feel there is enough long-term research into adverse effects. Also, these health care workers see with their own eyes what is happening in hospitals, which isn’t necessarily in line with the narrative,” Lewis said.

‘None of Us Are Seeing’ Surges

Heather Sadler, a registered nurse, also loves to be a nurse, but she said that her and her family’s health are much more important than her paycheck.

“This is new vaccine (if you want to call it that) technology that has NEVER been deployed successfully, and has no data regarding long-term effects, not to be confused with ‘side effects’ as the general public seems to be hung up on. I have always been someone who analyzes my health care choices through the lens of risk-benefit ratio. Knowing what I know about COVID (and I’ve done a lot of research), I do not fall into any of the high-risk for severe illness/death categories: age over 65, obese, heart disease, diabetes, chronic lung conditions, and immunocompromised. For me and my immediate family, there is greater risk of having a side effect, or long-term effect from injecting a virtually unknown substance into ourselves,” Sadler said.

“I am a nurse in Oncology/Hematology, and I’m seeing that we are experiencing an increase in hospitalizations/referrals for clotting and bleeding disorders. For one example, in one week, we had two patients in the hospital who were diagnosed with a rare clotting disorder that is normally only seen in 4 percent of the general population. And this happened twice in one week in rural central Maine. The only common factor, a COVID shot three days prior in each case. Was this reported to the CDC? I do not know.

“Only 4 of the roughly 20 to 25 people I’ve known personally who have tested positive for COVID recently have been unvaccinated. Yes, unvaccinated. The majority of the people around me who have tested positive in the past three months have been fully vaccinated. Why would I want to risk side effects or long-term effects of the shot if I can still contract and spread this virus? It’s just not logical. Those two examples clearly blow their theory that ‘it’s safe and effective’ out of the water,” Sadler said.

“I am in constant communication with other health care workers in the state of Maine and none of us are seeing the ‘surges’ that the general public is told is happening.”

“This is America! I have every right to make an educated decision regarding my health care. No matter what you are told, what I do has no direct effect on you,” Sadler said.

‘Freedom Is the Most Important Thing’

Sherri Thornton was a Maine SAFE Advisory Board member and chair and has been a nurse for 45 years.

She was planning to retire but wanted to work until the end of the year; however, when she saw the mandate coming, she decided to retire earlier.

“I believe that freedom is the most important thing in life outside of salvation. No one has the right to tell me what I can or can not do with my body except the Lord. The vaccines have been produced with fetal tissue, and I am staunchly opposed to abortion,” Thornton said.

“The components of the vaccines are not safe. There are many side effects that cause more harm than the coronavirus. It doesn’t protect against the variants.  … Vaccinating everyone will not gain herd immunity and will only cause more variants to which those without natural immunity will succumb,” Thornton said.

Three other health care workers that are against the vaccine mandates reached out to The Epoch Times but didn’t want to have their names or employers disclosed.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health-care-workers-speak-out-on-why-they-would-rather-lose-their-jobs-than-take-a-covid-19-vaccine_4065164.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Joe’s cough sounds pretty rumbling and nasty…

Is Joe Biden okay?

He doesn’t sound very good…and no, I’m not talking about how he can hardly string a sentence together and looks like a gray, sickly old man…It’s his new cough…it sounds pretty bad.

And he coughed an awful lot while he was in California yesterday.

Has old Bumbling Joe been tested for COVID lately?

TRENDING: Joe Biden Caught Telling Yet Another Shameful Whopper…This One Was Debunked in Record-Time

Western Journal reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has choked his way through his first term in office, and on Monday, President Joe Biden coughed his way through remarks rallying against Newsom’s recall in the Golden State.

Is there anything more symbolic than that of the state of the Democratic Party both nationally and in California?

Biden spoke for roughly 15 minutes in Long Beach on Monday, KTTV reported. As is the standard for Biden, the speech was neither inspiring nor even very coherent. What stood out most were the repeated coughing interruptions.

You can watch the videos below:

“We need science, we need courage, we need leadership”: President Biden calls out “hypocrisy” of Republican governors on vaccine mandates pic.twitter.com/Vwe0FjnbEo

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 14, 2021

Biden in California: “You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor (cough) or you’ll get Donald Trump. It’s not a joke.” pic.twitter.com/KMnTXLKaS0

— DaybreakInsider (@DaybreakInsider) September 14, 2021

Not only is Joe mentally unfit, now he’s coughing all over the place while there’s a supposed pandemic going on.

We need an update on his COVID status, after all, COVID cases in the vaccinated are surging in many places all across the country.

Whoops! Looks like the broadcast started earlier than they thought….

There’s been a lot of questions, suspicion, and controversy surrounding the COVID pandemic.

Now, before I get too deep into this, I want to make it clear that I believe COVID is 100 percent real. I’ve actually had it. Twice.

And if I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d tell you that the virus was used as a biological weapon in order to win an election and reset the entire world back to its “globalist” status, but I’m not, so I won’t tell you that.

But what I will tell you is that I believe the virus has been politicized in a big way by our dear leaders. I believe that it’s used to push an agenda and assert a great deal of power and dependence over the citizens of the world.

And I don’t think the “fact-checkers” would call that a “conspiracy theory,” because there’s proof of that everywhere we turn. Just look at what’s happening in Australia. That country has turned into the Hunger Games over a virus with a 99.8 survival rate.

TRENDING: [VIDEO] Joe Biden’s New Cough Sounds Pretty Bad

The average death age for COVID is like 85-years-old. The “Died FROM” and “Died WITH” numbers are wildly different and yet, we don’t talk about that. Natural immunity matters, but we’re not allowed to talk about that either. And forget discussing therapeutics, we can’t mention those, we can only talk about the vax, and you can’t speak ill of the vax – only “good things” allowed.

Nothing weird about that, right?

And all the while, the people who are telling us to be afraid, don’t seem the least bit worried for themselves.

The political and social elites are having the time of their lives, while the “peasants” are told to wear masks, stay 6-feet apart, and don’t attend events or go to church and sing.

The unvaccinated are berated and treated like lepers, even as the vaccinated “breakthrough” cases surge in many states.

And what about natural immunity?

We can’t talk about any of that, either.

Unvaccinated people are told that the vaccine won’t work unless we’re vaccinated – a statement that is so bizarre, most people can’t even wrap their heads around it.

“My diet doesn’t work because YOU keep overeating.” 

We’ve watched as mask-free Obama and the elites at the Met Gala have the time of their lives while the “help” is masked up.

What about the Delta variant and all the vaxed people getting sick?

We’ve seen political elites order their citizens to lockdown while they’re off on some fabulous Barbados vacation.

We’re masking children in schools, but there’s no science to prove that’s helpful – but we can’t talk about that.

And we’ve watched time and time again as elites only put on masks for the benefit of the camera – and that’s exactly what’s happened yet again.

A group of French politicians rushed to quickly put their maks on when they realize that live cameras were rolling.

Prior to that, they didn’t seem to have a care in the world…are we allowed to talk about that?

You can watch the video below:

What happens when the live TV broadcasting of politicians calling for the continuation of mask mandates starts earlier than expected… pic.twitter.com/XZIU2MWdFL

— Vallachian Rex – Infected with the F.U. variant (@VallachianR) September 14, 2021

Here are some of the comments from people online:

“How many videos like this do people need to see before they understand that this was never about anything but controlling you?”

“This is literally like The Truman Show lol”

“I said this a long time ago. Unreal that people still don’t believe we are being played”

“How do people not see this? Do people see a video like this and truly not see the theater going on? Its not a small deal. Its total bs and a massive, dividing issue in our country”

“It’s all theatre and people still believe this crap”

“…then the same politicians send the cops to beat and arrest people who don’t wear masks in the stores and on the streets.”

It’s things like this, and more that keep happening over and over and over since this pandemic started that make people feel very suspicious and leery, and honestly, how can you blame them?

The Constitutional Conservative Argument For State-Level Bans On Businesses’ Vaccine Mandates

Limited government does not mean no government.Posted by Fuzzy Slippers Friday, October 22, 2021 at 09:00am 22 Comments

Back in 2001, Obama infamously noted that the United States Constitution is a “charter of negative liberties” that details “what the states can’t do to you, what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”

On this point, he is essentially right.  The Constitution is designed to limit the degree to which the federal (and to a lesser degree, state) government can meddle in our lives.  The Bill of Rights is a key example of this, detailing what the government cannot do—what it is not at liberty to do—to the American people.

This is right and just.  The government should not be meddling in our God-given rights to freedom of speech and assembly, to keep and bear arms, to freely exercise our religion, and etc.

Obama was also correct in noting that the Constitution does not state what the government “must do on your behalf” beyond that detailed in the Constitution concerning the role and purview of each branch of government.   He, of course, sees this as a flaw, but it’s a feature.

Indeed, it is arguably the single factor that makes our Constitution the best ever written in terms of establishing the government of a free people.  By limiting the role of government, our Founders established that we, the people, are intended to have historically unprecedented freedom to make our decisions and to be able to live our lives free of endless and ever-growing government interference.

So what is the role of the states in all of this?  What if the federal government tramples the rights of a free people by requiring a WuFlu vaccination that some people have determined they neither want nor need?  Where is the recourse when the federal government itself steps beyond its Constitutional scope to force a private business to do its bidding?

It is through this lens that I consider the decision of Republican governors and legislatures to ban mask and/or vaccination mandates by companies in their states.  Joe “I am the Democratic Party” Biden announced a WuFlu vaccine mandate on businesses with 100 or more employees.  While this mandate has thus far not actually manifested (though the rule is expected to drop . . . at some point), the mandate on private businesses is an overreach.  It falls into the category of Obama’s “what the government must do on your behalf” and, as such, is anathema to Constitutional conservatives.

The federal government, under the false premise of protecting public health, is forcing companies to force Americans to choose between their jobs and their God-given right to self-determination.  At this point, these companies are not acting as private entities but as government agents acting not as they wish but as extensions of the federal government.

The federal government cannot mandate that every American get vaccinated, so this is the next best thing: an end-run around the Constitution.

Large parts of the RW commentariat are mentally incapable of grasping that when the Federal government orders private companies to act in certain ways, without there being a law passed or so much as a single regulation promulgated, this isn’t “voluntary private corporate action”. https://t.co/M3ARKb4Iyz

— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) October 14, 2021

The Houston Chronicle editorial board published a sophomoric and moronic piece claiming that governors banning federal mandates are themselves guilty of mandates.  In this twisted view, Texas governor Greg Abbott’s move to protect the American people from livelihood-destroying government overreach is itself government overreach (archive link).

The governor’s order conflicts with a soon-to-be-enacted federal regulation that will require businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure they’re either vaccinated or tested weekly. Butting up against President Joe Biden is precisely the point.

“In yet another instance of federal overreach, the Biden administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates,” Abbott wrote in the order.

Abbott’s anti-mandate mandate also conflicts with the classic conservative tradition in this state and elsewhere of the primacy of local control. Since Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have ruled the Capitol roost, such rank hypocrisy is par for the course. Still, it’s one thing when the governor ignores local control over the use of plastic bags, cutting down trees or restricting fracking within the city limits; it’s another when thousands of lives are at stake in a global pandemic.

Well, no, there is no conflict “with the classic conservative tradition in this state and elsewhere of the primacy of local control.” Not only is the Constitution silent on the issue of “local control” of a person’s God-given rights, but the Constitution gives all authority not specifically assigned to the federal government to the states and to the people.

Abbott, as the duly-elected governor of Texas, is the exact Constitutionally-appointed person intended to step in to protect the rights of his state’s citizens. If the people choose to be vaccinated, that’s their choice. A federal government ultimatum—get this series of shots with untold numbers of “boosters” for the foreseeable future or lose your job—is the exact time that a governor not only can but must step in to stop the tyranny.

Furthermore, even companies and businesses that are imposing these vaccine mandates on their own, not under threat of the full force and power of the federal government, are depriving Americans of their liberty to make their own decisions and should therefore be constrained from doing so by the state government.

Doing so is in the very spirit of the Constitution, as a “charter of negative liberties.”  No, the federal government should not be able to coerce or force you to take a vaccine you may not need upon threat of unemployment, and no, a private business should not be able to coerce or force you to do so, either. The very idea is anti-Constitutional conservative.

Constitutional conservatives—unlike, say, libertarians—are very much pro-government, as long as it’s the republic established in our Constitution.  We recognize that there are some things that the government must do to protect the nation and her people.

That is why, as an example, Constitutional conservatives are perfectly fine with government bans on private companies engaging in the coerced or forced hysterectomies of its female employees. That is why we support minimal regulations such as those that ensure abortion mills are not literally selling baby parts for profit.  Limited government, in other words, does not mean no government.

The state government should absolutely intervene to protect the liberty of we, the people.  If a tobacco company mandated that all employees become addicted to cigarette smoking, this would be unacceptable and a good place for government intervention.  If any company mandated abortions for all female employees or that all employees submit to plastic surgery or foot-binding, we would be, justly, outraged and demand legislative action to stop it.

Companies cannot just do whatever they like, and they certainly should not be free to coerce or force their employees to take one of or a mix of the WuFlu vaccine buffet items.  Not only are the various vaccines available problematic and concerning for most age groups without high risk factors, but scientific research and findings are being deliberately ignored and/or suppressed (regarding acquired immunity, for example).

Further, and this seems to get missed rather frequently, these Republican governors or not banning the vaccine; indeed, they are urging everyone to get it.  They are merely saying that a vaccine mandate is one step too far, that threatening a person’s career and livelihood over “getting the jab” is unacceptable.

These governors are taking a stand and saying, no, the federal government cannot do this to you, nor can it compel private business to do it to you; indeed, businesses cannot ‘independently’ do this to you, they cannot strip away your rights to self-determination, they cannot bully you or coerce you to accept the injection of something you do not want (and probably don’t need) into your body in order to remain employed and able to support your family.

This Biden (and so far only pending) vaccine mandate on private businesses is a federal government one-size-fits-all “solution” to a coronavirus (reminder: the common cold is caused by a coronavirus) that is demonstrably not a one-size-affects-all virus.

As such, banning harmful and unnecessary business mandates is not only correct, but it is the responsibility and duty of elected public servants whose job it is to protect and defend our Constitution and our individual liberty.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/10/the-constitutional-conservative-argument-for-state-level-bans-on-businesses-vaccine-mandates/

Colorado health system UCHealth explained that transplant patients who contract COVID-19 have a 20 to 30% mortality rate

With hospitals in Colorado denying unvaccinated patients organ transplants, more people are looking to Texas in the hopes of getting the potentially life-saving procedures. 

Colorado’s UCHealth recently told Dawn McLaughlin, a woman with polycystic kidney disease, she was being kicked off the wait list to receive a transplant because she hadn’t gotten the COVID vaccine, CBS4 reported.

And earlier this month, another Colorado woman, Leilani Lutali, despite having stage 5 kidney disease, found out her hospital won’t approve her kidney transplant surgery until she’s gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. 

Leilani Lutali, foreground, and Jaimee Fougner pose for a photo, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021 in Colorado Springs, Colo. Lutali recently found out her hospital wouldn’t approve her kidney transplant surgery until she got a COVID-19 vaccine. She has stage 5 kidney disease that puts her at risk of dying without a new kidney. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)

Colorado health system UCHealth explained that transplant patients who contract COVID-19 have a 20 to 30% mortality rate. 

“This shows the extreme risk that COVID-19 poses to transplant recipients after their surgeries,” UCHealth told Fox News in a statement.  

UCHealth said patients who have undergone an organ transplant procedure require a lifetime of specialized management to ensure the organ is not rejected, which, in extreme cases, can lead to death. 

LOS ANGELES MAYOR TO CITY EMPLOYEES: BE PREPARED TO LOSE YOUR JOB IF YOU AREN’T VACCINATED BY DEADLINE

“Physicians must consider the short- and long-term health risks for patients as they consider whether to recommend an organ transplant,” UCHealth said.

It noted that other transplant hospitals have been putting similar policies in place. 

Now, many Texans – including the governor himself – are saying those denied transplants will be welcome in the Lone Star state. 

FILE: A health care worker fills a syringe with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, Fil)

“Here in Texas, vaccines remain voluntary and never forced,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office told Fox News in a statement. “Anyone being denied critical, life-saving organ transplants is welcome here in Texas, where one’s rights and freedoms are always protected.” 

Texas State Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican, told Fox News he was happy that Texas hospitals have, for now at least, “chosen to put patients before politics.” 

“It seems too many in the medical profession have forgotten their oaths,” Cain said. 

Meanwhile, the Niklas Organ Donor Awareness Foundation, based in Grand Prairie, Texas, is offering to help people like McLaughlin and Lutali find housing while they await organ transplants in Texas. 

HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER OF THE YEAR FACES TERMINATION OVER VACCINE MANDATE

Rodney DeBaun, vice president of the foundation, told Fox News he is personally not against the vaccine, having gotten it himself. But he believes vaccines are “a personal choice.” 

“It’s not up to the government to dictate whether you do, whether you don’t (get the vaccine),” DeBaun said. 

He remains unpersuaded by UCHealth’s data showing that unvaccinated patients are at higher risk of mortality if they contract COVID after an organ transplant.   

“If someone’s waiting for an organ transplant, if they don’t get a transplant, they’re going to die,” DeBaun said. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

DeBaun received a heart transplant in 1993 and said he is grateful for the years he was given. 

“I’ve been given 28 years of life. My boys were 8 and 11 years old, and I’ve gotten to see my kids grow up. I now have grandkids,” DeBaun told Fox News. “My philosophy is that I need to earn every single day that I’ve got. So, we just try to help any way we can help.” 

Fox News’ Stephanie Pagones contributed to this report.Bradford Betz is an editor for Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @bradford_betz.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-welcomes-patients-denied-lifesaving-organ-transplants-in-colorado-because-of-covid-vaccination-status

Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett spoke out against the Department of Justice’s probe of parents, calling President Joe Biden a “toy totalitarian” and arguing American freedom “is at stake.”

Bennett made the comments during an interview on Friday with Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” following Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Thursday hearing where he was questioned about his letter concerning parents at school board meetings.

Garland sent a memorandum to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in early October with advice on dealing with parents at school board meetings. His memo followed a letter from the National School Boards Association that requested the Biden administration consider those who take part in certain disruptive acts as “domestic terrorists.”

“This shows that this school board is part of this establishment which parents are protesting,” Bennett said.

“I’m not surprised, but I’m very disappointed that the Justice Department would take its direction from the very liberal now National School Board Association.”

Former NYPD Chief Calls Big Brian Laundrie Development ‘Very Strange,’ Suggests ‘Something Is Amiss’

https://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=6278328869001&loc=westernjournal.com&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.westernjournal.com%2Fformer-education-secretary-calls-biden-toy-totalitarian-admits-american-freedom-stake%2F&_xcf=

Bennett also addressed Biden’s role in COVID-19 vaccine mandates and the teaching of critical race theory.

“Joe Biden became such a toy totalitarian, but we’ve got some real issues out here about American freedom. That’s what is at stake I think in Virginia, and will be I think next fall [in the midterms] as well. You’re seeing this all across the country,” Bennett said.

The former education secretary also expressed concern regarding the level of pushback that will take place as a result of the Biden administration’s totalitarian approach.

Should Attorney General Merrick Garland resign?

“People are saying ‘Hell no, we won’t go, we’re not gonna get vaccinated, we’re not going to put up with critical race theory, you’re not gonna ask my kid what gender do you want to be today. No, no ma’am. No sir,’” he said.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter last week to Garland to demand an explanation concerning his memorandum to the FBI.

The letter was led by Lousiana Rep. Mike Johnson and joined by 18 additional GOP House members on the committee.

“This letter is to express our serious concerns about your recent decision to involve federal law enforcement entities in local school board debates and to stifle First Amendment-protected political speech. Your actions are not just inappropriate, but also appear to have been improperly influenced by politics and by your family’s interest in the matter,” the representatives wrote.

“As members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, we have a responsibility to conduct oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and we trust that you will fully cooperate with our inquiry.”

Rep. Stefanik Blasts Biden for Mocking Opposition to Vaccine Mandates, Says It’s ‘Un-American’

Part of the letter’s request included a call for Garland to submit himself to an ethics investigation.

The House members concluded with the “request you promptly consult with the designated agency ethics official to determine if your actions in this matter have resulted in an ethics violation for a breach of impartiality.”

“Judiciary Republicans trust that Mr. Garland will submit to our requested ethics inquiry, publicly release its results, and take whatever actions are necessary to protect the integrity of the office of Attorney General, including either recusing himself from this issue and/or rescinding the October 4th memorandum,” Johnson told the Daily Caller.

As terrifying crime waves grip Democrat-run cities nationwide, President Joe Biden tacitly encouraged more lawlessness by saying unvaccinated police officers should be fired.

Biden made the alarming remarks Thursday during a CNN town hall in Baltimore hosted by liberal commentator Anderson Cooper.

“Should police officers, emergency responders, be mandated to get vaccines? And if not, should they be — stay at home, or let go?” Cooper asked.

Biden replied, “Yes and yes.”

WATCH: Joe Biden says “yes” police officers and emergency responders should be FIRED if they don’t comply with coercive vaccine mandates. pic.twitter.com/DQRUFRnHZe

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 22, 2021

Former NYPD Chief Calls Big Brian Laundrie Development ‘Very Strange,’ Suggests ‘Something Is Amiss’

This is a stark reversal from last year, when presidential candidate Biden opposed vaccine mandates.

As recently as December 2020 — a month after being installed in the White House — the 78-year-old career politician insisted that he would not impose such mandates.

“No, I don’t think [vaccines] should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory…”
Biden on December 4, 2020

He lied. pic.twitter.com/seEgMcqgsO

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) September 10, 2021

Almost a year into his presidential tenure, Biden has fully embraced vaccine mandates, which he claims are working despite an explosion of COVID-19 infections under his watch and mounting opposition from many Americans.

“By the way, I waited until July to talk about mandating, because I tried everything else possible,” the president told Cooper, according to a CNN transcript.

Last month, he signed an executive order requiring all federal employees to get the coronavirus vaccine.

In a comical irony, members of Congress and employees of the federal court system are exempt from Biden’s vaccine mandate.

Members of Congress, their staff, and federal court system employees are exempt from the Biden administration’s new vaccine mandates.

https://t.co/xjnCcEr3a7

— Kambree (@KamVTV) September 11, 2021

Biden Suggests Medical Freedom Is Horrible and Unvaccinated Americans Are Murderers

Across the United States, there is a growing movement of airline workers, military personnel, police officers, teachers and other Americans protesting vaccine mandates as unconstitutional and oppressive.

In Chicago, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot is engaged in a standoff with the nation’s second-largest police force over her vaccine mandate.Do you agree with Biden that police officers and first responders who refuse the vaccine should be fired?Yes No
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A report last week said as much as half of the Chicago police force — or roughly 6,500 officers — could be placed on unpaid leave for refusing Lightfoot’s order.

The potential layoffs could ignite more crime surges across the city, which is already engulfed by rampant lawlessness that has been exacerbated by the left’s defund the police frenzy.

The stalemate is continuing into a second week as neither side is budging.

John Catanzara, the president of the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, has underscored that he is vaccinated and is not anti-vaccine.

He and his fellow union members merely oppose the one-size-fits-all mandate and the invasive requirement that they disclose their vaccination status, which they say is a personal, confidential medical decision.

Despite the left-wing media narrative that people who oppose vaccine mandates are white Republicans, in reality, numerous Americans of all races and political persuasions oppose the Big Government overreach implicit in the mandates.

Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale, a Democrat, warned that firing unvaccinated cops would ignite a public safety nightmare.

“When you look at it, it’s a recipe for disaster,” Beale told WGN-TV. “And that’s what we’re seeing right now. It is why crime is escalating in the city of Chicago.”

Former Democratic mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, who previously served as city budget director and as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, said Lightfoot is opportunistically weaponizing the vaccine mandate to wield unprecedented power.

Vallas said the mayor didn’t care about public safety or the welfare of law enforcement before, as evidenced by her past actions.

“From start @ChicagoMayor threw CPD to COVID wolves,” he tweeted Tuesday. “Not enough masks, exp. hand sanitizer, no social dist during riots/looting by packing CPD in buses/vans.

“No quarantine still for CPD when in contact with an infected person they must still work. She’s never been about CPD safety.”

From start @ChicagoMayor threw CPD to COVID wolves. Not enough masks, exp. hand sanitizer, no social dist during riots/looting by packing CPD in buses/vans. No quarantine still for CPD when in contact with an infected person they must still work. She’s never been about CPD safety pic.twitter.com/xhepYq3svw

— Paul Vallas (@Paulvallas) October 19, 2021

The Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police said Lightfoot is sacrificing public safety on the altar of unscientific vaccine mandates.

“@chicagosmayor seems to think that her game of brinksmanship is an acceptable risk to the citizens… Clearly, her position has nothing to do with the public’s safety or health policy and everything to do with ‘winning’ the political game against the union.” #LightfootDuty https://t.co/u2OPpS60Z9

— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) October 21, 2021

If Biden gets his way and thousands of police officers who refuse the vaccine are fired, the crime infesting Chicago and other cities nationwide surely will get even worse than it is now. This is dystopian America under Democratic rule.

A North Carolina parent seeks to prohibit “medical tribalism” in schools after his child reported school officials differentiating between the vaccinated and unvaccinated students.

Chad Slotta spoke of two reported incidents to The Epoch Times: one in which his child recorded a Wake County school principal advising students over the intercom to get vaccinated, and the other in which a teacher had asked for a show of hands of who has had the COVID-19 vaccine and who hasn’t.

Slotta read the principal’s quote from what was recorded at a Wake County School Board meeting on Sept. 7: “I spent the last three or four days on the phone all day talking with students and parents who were forced into quarantine.  If you are not vaccinated, I encourage you to seek out a vaccine if you are able to get one.”

In the meeting, Slotta asked the board to issue directives to all school officials that medical recommendations, including those regarding taking specific medications, remain between the parent and the child.

“If I have to sign a waiver that says my child is allowed to take an Ibuprofen, certainly I should have the say on if my child gets the vaccine,” Slotta said.

He also asked that the board issue a directive precluding teachers from inquiring about a student’s vaccination status, or any other private medical information.

“I advocate for a student’s right to privacy and secondly a parent’s exclusive and inviolable right to make all medical decisions and recommendations for their children without the influence or interference of a school official,” Slotta told the board.  “Children rightly listen to and obey the authority figures in their lives. This administrator overstepped their authority in an unwise and an unethical manner.”

Transgressed Lines

A line of demarcation has been transgressed, Slotta said.

“It really concerned me,” he said. “I was very clear. I said I wasn’t there to argue for or against the wisdom of any vaccine, mask, or any other medical decision related to the current pandemic.  I was specifically addressing a parent’s right to make those medical recommendations and decisions for their children.”

There could be numerous reasons why parents aren’t allowing their kids to get the vaccine, he said.

Vested Interest

One of the Wake County school system’s sources on COVID-19 policy is the ABC Science Collaborative (pdf), coordinated by Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), a government agency that also has what NIH Director Francis Collins said in 2020 was a “particular stake in the intellectual property” of the Moderna vaccine.

The NIH is currently under criticism for its funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the first outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus occurred.

“You’ve got the NIH with a financial interest in the Moderna vaccine funding the ABC Science Collaborative, which is coming into school districts promoting vaccine mandates,” Slotta said.  “That doesn’t mean that their advice is necessarily bad. What it does mean to me is that this information should be shared with parents.  It should be pointed out that the school districts are listening to organizations who happen to be funded by people who have a vested interest in the vaccines.”

When this information is not disclosed, “it sadly creates doubt,” Slotta said.

“I think that’s something that we are seeing in our culture,” he said. “There is a mishandling with the rollout of this information that may be unnecessarily creating doubt where it might not need to be.”

Slotta emphasized that he and his family are not anti-vaccine, however, he said the money trails running through the COVID-19 vaccine narrative “are concerning.”

‘Creating Tension’

“Now you have a school administrator telling students to go get vaccinated, and that may very well put a child against their mom or dad at home in terms of creating tension,” Slotta said.

Just by having a show of hands, the “blatant violation of students’ right to privacy” can lead to dividing students into groups, pitting them against not just their parents, but against one another, Slotta said.

“We must never divide students into groups of any kind,” Slotta said.  “We must never allow medical tribalism or any other form of tribalism to be taught or to take hold in our schools.”

While tribalism is festering in many areas of the country, Slotta said, it’s not the way to raise children.

“We are teaching the future leadership of this country, and we will certainly reap from the seeds that we are sowing, so I hope, as it relates to tribalism on a number of levels, that we make wise decisions here,” Slotta said.

Wake County School District Response

When reached for comment, the communications director for the Wake County School system said the school district doesn’t ask for the COVID-19 vaccination status of its students and has no plans to do so.

In accordance with North Carolina law, however, the school district is required to collect other vaccination information, such as measles, mumps, and rubella.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-carolina-parent-seeks-to-halt-medical-tribalism-in-schools_4061305.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

By nearly any metric, President Joe Biden has disappointed the American people during his short time in office. Even many of the people who voted for him last November are coming to regret their decision.

Natalya Murakhver is one of those very people, and she went on Fox News on Thursday to discuss her concerns about Biden’s leadership.

“When I consider what [Biden] has done to America’s children, or rather not done, it is heartbreaking,” Murakhver said.

“I think we’re about 274 days into his presidency, and we are still masking, restricting and just curtailing every single freedom our school children have. He promised us schools open and children restored within 100 days, and we are way past that deadline.”

Biden voter Natalya: “What [Joe Biden] has done to America’s children, or rather not done, is heartbreaking. We are still masking, restricting, and just curtailing every single freedom our school children have.” pic.twitter.com/y3G0JAwhjQ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 21, 2021

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According to The Associated Press, Biden said on Dec. 8, 2020, that he would reopen “the majority of our schools” within the first 100 days of his presidency. He also said he would require Americans to wear masks for 100 days, implying that after that time period, the masks could come off.

While most schools in the country are reopened, many are still operating under ridiculously stringent restrictions, including requiring children to wear masks well past Biden’s initial deadline.

As of Sept. 29, 16 states and Washington, D.C., still had mask mandates for their schools, Education Week reported. Of the remaining 34 states, only nine have banned school districts from enforcing universal mask mandates.

Has Biden abandoned American children?

According to Bloomberg, Biden’s COVID-19 response team held a news briefing Wednesday to announce plans for the vaccination of millions of American children aged 5 to 11. Given the numerous questions regarding the safety of the quickly developed vaccines, many of which have been dismissed by the medical elites in Washington rather than answered, this is an incredibly disturbing plan.

Even if children do get the vaccine like the health elites are pushing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said they should still be forced to wear masks in schools, Fox News reported.

“So, right now we are going to continue to recommend masks in all schools for all people in those schools and we will look forward to scaling out pediatric vaccination during this period of time,” Walensky said.

It is hard to express just how anti-science these recommendations are. First of all, recommending vaccines for children — the portion of our population least at risk of becoming severely ill or dying from COVID-19 — is at best questionable and at worst reckless.

According to The New York Times, only 63,000 children were hospitalized between August 2020 and Oct. 6, 2021, and just 520 had died.

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Of course, the Times only reported those numbers after a previous version of the article inflated them by over 800,000, but that is beside the point.

Given that Statista reported only 5.2 million cases in Americans age 17 and under since the start of the pandemic, hospitalization and death rates for children are very low.

In addition, while adverse effects from the vaccine for children are relatively rare, they certainly do exist. Those two things combined are a pretty strong argument against vaccines requirements for children, especially until more research has been completed.

In its quest to maintain control over Americans, the Biden administration has abandoned its promises, especially as they pertain to American children. Murakhver is completely justified in her frustration, and many Americans are joining her by the day.

The Mainstream Media has done its absolute best to ignore Project Veritas’ #CovidVaxExposed series in the last month.

However, in the few occasions they did cover those stories, they did so to mislead the public.

The Associated Press [AP] is a great example – they downplayed Pfizer Insider Melissa Strickler’s story revealing internal emails between Pfizer executives that stated: “we have tried really hard not to share” that  “one or more cell lines with an origin that can be traced back to human fetal tissue has been used in laboratory tests associated with the vaccine program…”

The AP did so by using a “straw man” argument to claim that it was FALSE that fetal cells are in Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

You can watch my response to AP’s “journalism” here:

Here is what the AP published as a result of Veritas’ Pfizer whistleblower video:

Allow me to summarize just how ridiculous this is.

In the same article, AP is stating that there is a “claim” about Pfizer’s COVID vaccine containing fetal cells based upon leaked emails to Project Veritas, but then says the “facts” show that the Veritas video only covered “fetal cell line when testing the efficacy” of the Pfizer COVID vaccine.

They’re fact checking a NON-ISSUE. Or worse, they’re fact checking random social media comments and trying to say Project Veritas is to blame for people’s interpretations of our reporting. Truly…our so-called news media is broken beyond repair.

The article writer, Angelo Fichera, received the following letter from Veritas attorneys as a result of this nonsense:

Isn’t it funny how these reporters think so highly of themselves, but are unable to perform the most basic obligation in journalism? How do they get away with not reaching out to me or Project Veritas for comment before publishing this story?

The only plausible explanation I can think of is that they already had a preset narrative to run with, and they feared that getting comment from us would be detrimental to their narrative.

You may also be asking, why does this matter?

Here is my answer:

An individual on Instagram messaged Fox 10 Phoenix asking them why the Pfizer whistleblower story was not being covered on their station.

Fox 10 Phoenix responded with a link to this “fact check” and told the individual that they were “fooled by the internet.”

THAT WAS AP’S GOAL.

They created a “straw man” argument that enabled other outlets to pile on to their misleading piece and attack Project Veritas.

Here’s the only problem they weren’t ready for: Project Veritas fights back.

We will not let these lies about us become normalized. We will NEVER allow propaganda to defeat the truth.

Stay tuned as our battle against these sorts of attacks from the establishment is just beginning…

In Veritas,

James

ESPN reporter Allison Williams announced in an emotion-packed video that she will leave the network rather than compromise her principles and be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Williams, a college sports reporter for the network, wrote in a Twitter post that is trying to have a second child and that being vaccinated was “not in my best interest.”

She said in an Instagram video posted on Friday her “request for accommodation” was denied and that as of this coming week, she would part ways with the Disney-owned network.

In her video, she thanked the many people who offered support.

Alison Williams is sticking to her principles and resigning from #ESPN

“I am also so morally and ethically not aligned with this.”

Additionally, Williams said she wasn’t going to “put a paycheck over principle.”

We salute you! #FreedomFlu🇺🇸https://t.co/2gSyFLVJRb

— Libertarian Party NH (@LPNH) October 17, 2021

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“Belief is a word I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, because in addition to the medical apprehensions regarding my desire to have another child in regards to receiving this injection, I am also so morally and ethically not aligned with this. And I’ve had to really dig deep and analyze my values and my morals, and ultimately I need to put them first,” she said.

“And the irony in all this is that a lot of these same values and principles that I hold dear are what made me a really good employee, what helped with the success that I’m able to have in my career,” she said.

Since then, however, the company line has hardened.

“Their values have clearly changed,” she said, later adding, “I had hoped they would respect that mine did not.”

“Ultimately, I cannot put a paycheck over principle,” she said. “I will not sacrifice something that I believe and hold so strongly to maintain a career.”

She noted that many people in other walks of life are standing up for their principles, and said that making a stand is important.

Former NBA Player Says Blood Clots from COVID Vaccine Ended His Season, League Tried to Bury It

And that those acquiescing to the mandates now — or even applauding them — might come to regret it.

“If this is the direction we take our country, there will come a time when the government or corporations mandate you to get something that does not align with your values,” she said.

We can fight Covid and defend freedom simultaneously.

— Jonathan Isaac (@JJudahIsaac) October 15, 2021

“I don’t know what the future holds … I’m trying to wrap my head around the thought that the largest game I’ve worked in my career, the national championship game, might be the last game I work. But I’m going to focus on what I have to be thankful for,” she said.

“I’m going to hold on to my faith. I’m going to pray that things get better, and that I can see you on the television set in some capacity, in some stadium, covering some game soon. Until then, God bless, and I’m going to go hug my baby.”

Last month, ESPN commentator Sage Steele, who bowed to the mandate, spoke out against it.

“I respect everyone’s decision, I really do, but to mandate it is, um, sick,” Steele said. “And it’s scary to me in many ways. But I have a job, a job that I love, and frankly, a job that I need, but again, I love it. I’m not surprised it got to this point, especially with Disney, a global company … but it was actually emotional.”

The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for companies with over 100 employees through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to be put in place soon, and Republican governors around the country are prepared to take legal action against the measure.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made it clear that his state will be suing the administration for the invasive policy.

“I think that the mandate is going to lose in court,” he said at a news conference Thursday. According to Fox News, a lawsuit from the state would be filed through the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“No one should lose their job over these shots. I think we want to protect people’s jobs,” DeSantis said. “These are folks that have been working throughout this whole time, they were put in situations where they were exposing themselves to risk knowingly to help others, and we did that, and we considered them heroes just a year ago.

“Now, you’re gonna let them go by the wayside?”

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Floridians should not lose their jobs due to heavy-handed mandates. pic.twitter.com/zhgYZYsrIL

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) October 15, 2021

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott took preventive action by signing an executive order banning a requirement for vaccines by any person or group in the public or private sector.

“No entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine by any individual, including an employee or a consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19,” the order states, directly bucking both President Joe Biden and companies that want to mandate the coronavirus vaccine.

Should the government mandate COVID-19 shots?

A criticism of Abbott’s order is that is interferes with the freedom of private businesses to determine health guidelines for their employees, which explains why many Republican governors are not considering that level of action.

Regardless, there is almost uniform consensus from conservative state leaders that the government should not be forcing the vaccine onto the public through employers.

An example of the nuanced difference between Abbott’s approach and other governors was articulated in Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s remarks earlier this week about the imminent mandate.

“This action is not just federal overreach, it’s unconstitutional,” Stitt said. “I’ve talked this over with Attorney General John O’Connor, and I know he’s on our side. He’s ready to take President Biden to court the second the rules are made public.”

“I don’t believe it’s the government’s job to dictate policies to private companies. Just as I believe Joe Biden can’t tell businesses they have to mandate a vaccine, I don’t believe the government should tell a company they can’t. Businesses should have the freedom to make decisions based on their circumstances. When the government starts to pick winners and losers, we are headed down a slippery slope.”

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While the debate over how far bans on vaccine mandates will rage on, one thing is being made perfectly clear by Republicans: They will fight back against the Biden administration’s overreach.

The argument that this is not truly a vaccine mandate because companies also have the option to conduct weekly tests does not hold much weight.

It’s a major hassle to require weekly testing, especially at large companies, so many will likely take the easy way out and lay off employees that reject the shot.

As Stitt mentioned, this is not about the effectiveness of the vaccine or whether somebody “should” get the shot. It’s about the principle.

It is possible for someone to be vaccinated and also understand that it is a personal health decision, but the divisive nature of left-wing politicians has encouraged a caste system based on vaccination status.

Walgreens issued a statement saying vaccine mix-ups are rare after an Indiana family said their two young children got two full adult doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine instead of influenza shots.

Speaking to 14News, Alexandra and Joshua Price said a Walgreens in Evansville, Indiana, administered the COVID-19 vaccines to their two young children, aged 4 and 5, on Oct. 5. The Pfizer vaccine isn’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children under the age of 12.

“Walgreens called me to say there was a mix-up, we did not receive the flu shot,” Alexandra Price told the local news outlet. “And I’m like well what did we get? And he was like we got the COVID-19 shot … And instantly I was like, ‘Well what does this mean for my kids?’”

A lawyer for the family, Daniel Tuley, told the outlet that both children were taken to a pediatric cardiologist. The family was told that both kids were showing signs of heart trouble.

“The children have experienced a number of adverse effects since receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Fever, body aches, cough, headaches, and nausea are among the symptoms the children are experiencing,” Tuley said in a statement to news outlets. “The 4- and 5-year-old are also under treatment of a pediatric cardiologist for tachycardia and elevated blood pressure, respectively.”

The family said the younger child became sick with a fever and a cough and the older child developed a fever.

“Lukas started feeling sick before we even got home from Walgreens,” Price said, referring to her son, CNN reported.

On Tuesday after a follow-up appointment, Alexandra said her son’s condition had improved but her daughter’s condition is worsening.

“Her blood pressure is in the 98th percentile and she continues to have no energy,” Price said, referring to her daughter Sophia.

Walgreens issued statements to several news outlets about the incident, describing such mix-ups as uncommon.

“Generally speaking, such instances are rare, and Walgreens takes these matters very seriously,” Walgreens said in a statement. “In the event of any error, our first concern is always our patients’ well-being.”

The pharmacy chain also said, “Our multi-step vaccination procedure includes several safety checks to minimize the chance of human error and we have reviewed this process with our pharmacy staff in order to prevent such occurrences.”

Walgreens did not elaborate on how the mix-up could have occurred. The Epoch Times has contacted both Walgreens and Pfizer for comment.

In September, a Wallgreens in Fresno, California, also mistakenly injected a COVID-19 vaccine instead of a flu shot.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/walgreens-responds-after-family-says-children-received-covid-19-vaccine-instead-of-flu-shot_4051067.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

When one Atlanta Hawks player was forced to cut his season short last year, the team chalked it up to minor health concerns. Now, Brandon Goodwin has said he was forced to stop playing due to side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine.

Goodwin revealed the news on a YouTube stream, according to SB Nation’s Peachtree Hoops blog. He said he first noticed fatigue and various aches after he received the vaccine.

“I got sick and I never quite recovered from it,” Goodwin said. “I would always have back pain. I was just super tired in the games.”

Goodwin singled out back-to-back games against the Philadelphia 76ers on April 28 and 30 as a time when his symptoms were particularly noticeable.

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“Bro, I was so tired,” he said. “I felt like I couldn’t run up and down the court, and my back was hurting.”

When the Hawks returned home from Philadelphia, Goodwin said he was no longer able to ignore his symptoms.

“My back really started hurting bad,” he said. “Then I’m like, ‘All right, I’ve got to go to the doctor.’ And that’s when I found out I had blood clots.”

Goodwin said the entire saga occurred in the span of just one month, and he didn’t mince words when discussing what he felt caused his health concerns.

“Up until I took the vaccine, I was fine,” Goodwin said.

The left has insisted every American should get the vaccine to help protect themselves and others. In order to support this argument, many have attempted to downplay the possible side effects of the vaccine.

“People try to tell you, ‘No, it’s not the vaccine, no,’ Goodwin said. “It’s like, how do you know?”

Goodwin added he was “1000 percent” sure the vaccine ended his 2020-21 NBA season. He also alleged the Hawks told him not to tell anyone about his experience.

After he was put on blood thinners to treat his clots, Goodwin said he felt fine and began to play three-on-three basketball. However, his doctors advised against returning the court, and he said the Hawks did not “seem to care at all” that he was not allowed to play.

Gina Carano Cancels Movie Over COVID Vax Mandate, Moves Entire Set to Red State

As the 2021-22 NBA season approaches, Goodwin is not currently on an active roster. He said he does not know what team he will be on this season, but he promised his fans he will be back.

Goodwin is far from the only athlete who has said he experienced career-threatening side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine. On Sept. 6, Tennessee State University golfer John Stokes said in a since-deleted TikTok video that he would likely have to forgo his senior season after developing myocarditis following his second vaccine dose.

A couple of weeks later, French professional tennis player Jeremy Chardy said he was no longer able to train or play in events after receiving the vaccine. He said he regretted the decision to be vaccinated.

Admittedly, severe side effects from the vaccine are still relatively rare compared to the number of doses given out. Still, side effects do occur, and it is important to weigh all the relevant facts before making a personal decision about the vaccine.

GoFundMe has said it took down a campaign worth more than $180,000 that was started by a nurse who sought to overturn a Texas hospital system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The campaign was created by Jennifer Bridges, a former registered nurse at Houston Methodist hospital who was fired along with hundreds of other staff members earlier this year after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

“When our team initially reviewed the fundraiser, it was within our terms of service as the funds were for legal fees to fight vaccine mandates,” Heidi Hagberg, a spokesperson for GoFundMe, said in a statement to news outlets this week. “The fundraiser has since been updated to include misinformation which violates our terms of service.”

Hagberg didn’t elaborate on the nature of the alleged misinformation. The Epoch Times has contacted GoFundMe and Bridges for comment.

GoFundMe also stated that it has taken down “hundreds” of other fundraisers that allegedly contained “misinformation related to vaccines.”

Earlier this year, Bridges told Fox News that because she already contracted COVID-19, she doesn’t need to get the vaccine. Several studies have shown that a prior COVID-19 infection provides long-lasting and robust protection against the virus, and one Israeli research paper released about a month ago found that natural immunity confers greater protection than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Bridges also confirmed to the Epoch Times in June that she was fired by Houston Methodist, which was one of the first hospital systems to mandate vaccines in the United States.

“We worked so hard last year,” she said at the time. “I mean, we were there through thick and thin when we had no help … it was horrible. And these people that are putting forth these rules right now for us and kicking us to the curb, they weren’t there. They weren’t even in the building to be seen for months. They were staying at home while we were doing all the work.”

A spokesperson for Houston Methodist at the time described some of Bridges’ comments as false.

“Our leaders have supported our employees every step of the way,” the spokesperson said over the summer. “We greatly appreciate what all of our dedicated employees have done for our patients, and our leaders have been by their side since the beginning.”

A lawsuit that was filed by Bridges and a number of other healthcare workers against Houston Methodist was dismissed by a judge in June. Their attorneys, who have argued that mandatory vaccines violate the Nuremberg Code against medical experimentation, have appealed the judge’s decision.

Last year, GoFundMe courted controversy when it took down fundraising pages for Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who was charged in a shooting during widespread riots and unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gofundme-takes-down-180000-fundraiser-for-nurse-seeking-to-overturn-vaccine-mandate_4048962.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

It’s showdown time in Chicago, as the leader of the union representing its police officers squares off with Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot over her demand that all city workers report their vaccination status to the city by Friday or be put on unpaid leave.

Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said that the union will resist and take the city to court if it tries to enforce its mandate on vaccine reporting.

“He’s threatening litigation, I say, bring it,” Lightfoot said, according to The Washington Post.

Catanzara said that if the union heeds his advice and the city plays hardball by implementing its threat, Chicago streets will be very different.

“It’s safe to say that the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50 percent or less for this weekend coming up,” according to NBC.

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“Whatever happens because of that manpower issue, that falls at the mayor’s doorstep,” Catanzara said in a Youtube video message to Chicago police officers.

He made it clear that he expects to win a war of wills.

“I can guarantee you that no-pay status will not last more than 30 days,” Catanzara said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “There’s no way they’re going to be able to sustain a police department workforce at 50 percent capacity or less for more than seven days without something budging.”

He said that the city has refused to work with the union.

“The reality is the city acknowledged from the beginning their obligation to bargain in good faith over this subject,” Catanzara said, according to WGN-TV. “They have refused.”

Catanzara has said that the union’s issue is not whether or not to be vaccinated.  He said he opposes the mandate and the requirement to disclose an officer’s vaccination status.

He has urged union members to file requests for exemptions to the rule on Thursday, the day before the city’s deadline, and not tell the city their vaccination status.

Lightfoot has said the city is ready for whatever comes after Friday.

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She said that Catanzara was “doing a patent disservice to his members every single day” by opposing her mandate, according to the Post.

“What we’re focused on is making sure that we maximize the opportunity to create a very safe workplace,” Lightfoot said, according to NBC.

“The data is very clear. It is unfortunate that the FOP leadership has chosen to put out a counter-narrative. But the fact of the matter is, if you are not vaccinated, you are playing with your life, the life of your family, the life of your colleagues and members of the public,” she continued.

But the union is not budging.

“I don’t know how the mayor in good conscience can force this to go forward, and risk sending half the police department home, and subjecting the citizens of this city to that,” Catanzara said, according to WLS-TV.

Aldermen Marty Quinn and Matt O’Shea issued a letter to the mayor that said, in part, “We are extremely concerned that our communities will be put in serious danger.”

Alderman Anthony Napolitano made his case clear.

“I think the mayor has done her due diligence, as well, but we’re asking that there be a repeal of this mandate,” he said.

Amid school closures, cancelled holidays, and compulsory mask wearing, 2020 was a difficult year for children, but none more so than for those who lived in abusive homes.

A recently released annual child abuse report from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services showed that in 2020, the state registered a 43 percent increase in child abuse deaths compared to 2019.

That is, 73 children died from child abuse in 2020 compared to 51 deaths in 2019. The increase is new and significant; reports going back to 2010 average 37 deaths a year. And it is notably higher than the 17 COVID-19 deaths in children aged 0-19 recorded in Pennsylvania not only in 2020, but also counting all COVID-19 deaths in Pennsylvania children up to Oct. 7 this year, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The child abuse report (pdf) also shows that in 2020, there were 115 near deaths compared to 93 near deaths in 2019.

Reports of suspected child abuse also dropped by 22 percent, from 42,252 reports in 2019 to 32,919 reports. This decline in reports coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic can be attributed to the reduced contact between children and mandated reporters during that time, the report says. COVID-19 mitigation measures like school closures meant children had fewer interactions in 2020 with mandated child abuse reporters, such as teachers, coaches, and scout leaders who work or volunteer with children and are required to report cases of suspected child abuse.

The report also detailed 4,941 substantiated statewide reports of child abuse. Of those, 1,932 were sexual abuse cases, the leading category, and 1,384 were physical abuse/bodily injury. Other categories include serious physical neglect, serious mental injury, sexual exploitation, and trafficking.

As in previous years, parents continue to be the persons most responsible for abusing children, with 1,417 fathers and 1,332 mothers found guilty of child abusers. The report describes other abusers as siblings, babysitters, school staff, relatives, and others who have access to children.

There are issues that do not rise to the level of suspected child abuse but show a need for intervention. In these cases, Statewide General Protective Services provide reports to the Department of Human Services, which then send them to each county’s Children and Youth Service Agency to respond.

Children and Youth Service Agencies handled 87,018 cases like this in 2020. Of those, 20,892 cases involved a caregiver with a substance abuse problem—by far, the most common concern. Other categories of concern include a caregiver placing a child at risk or failing to protect a child, educational neglect/truancy, homelessness, domestic violence, a lack of supervision, and inappropriate discipline.

In these cases, the department’s aim is to prevent abuse or neglect, and preserve and stabilize family life wherever appropriate, the report said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/more-children-died-from-abuse-than-covid-19-in-2020-in-pennsylvania_4046836.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A hospital CEO said on Wednesday that he won’t yet be enforcing the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate, as doing so could create a mass exodus of health care workers.

Dr. Randy Tobler, CEO of Scotland County Hospital in Missouri, shared his concerns in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.

“If we lose more staff, we won’t be able to deliver the great care that people have become accustomed to in our area,” Tobler said.

“We’ve lost already many of our staff due to the emotional consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. And now on top of this, many have expressed their very sincere desire to resign or find another industry, do something else, other than get the vaccine,” he added.

Vaccine Tyranny: UCLA Doctor Escorted Off Property for Refusing Vax, Then He Reveals His Plan

The repercussions of the vaccine mandate could be dire, according to Tobler.

“This could be a crushing blow for our ability to deliver care to our community,” he said.

Tobler said 70 percent of his hospital’s income comes from Medicare and Medicaid. Once the vaccine mandate goes into effect, he plans to abide by the rules in order to continue receiving funds.

However, enforcing the mandate will have serious consequences.

“We are already running on fumes when it comes to staff,” Tobler said.

“If we lose a few more people due to resignations … we’ll have to turn people away because we simply won’t have the staff to deliver the care.”

Similar problems have already been encountered in New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order last month to address staffing shortages.

According to a statement on her website, the order authorizes out-of-state health care workers to practice in New York, implements a 24/7 operations center to monitor and troubleshoot staffing shortages, and allows recent graduates who are not yet registered and professionals without current registrations to practice without penalty.

“The only way we can move past this pandemic is to ensure that everyone eligible is vaccinated, and that includes those who are taking care of our vulnerable family members and loved ones,” Hochul said in the statement.

Head of Chicago Police Union Calls on Officers to Openly Defy Mayor Lightfoot

The thousands of New Yorkers who work in the health care industry were threatened with termination if they did not get the vaccine by Sept. 27.

According to Business Insider, the New York Department of Labor warned that those health care workers who were fired would not be able to collect unemployment benefits unless they had a doctor-approved medical exemption from the vaccine.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that religious exemptions to receiving the vaccine must also be upheld in the state of New York for health care workers.

CORRECTION, Oct. 13, 2021: This article previously claimed that no religious exemption existed for health care workers in New York who did not wish to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that religious exemptions to receiving the vaccine must be upheld in the state of New York for health care workers.

The Biden administration appears hell-bent on continuing to ignore natural immunity as the president and his team persist in pushing for stiffer and stiffer vaccine mandates.

The Brownstone Institute, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit founded in May that opposes lockdown and champions academic freedom, has compiled a list of 30 peer-reviewed studies showing that those who have recovered from the coronavirus have long-lasting and robust immunity comparable to or better than those who are vaccinated.

This fact does not seem to impact President Joe Biden’s thinking about vaccine policy.

Last month, after receiving a vaccine booster shot, Biden was asked how many Americans need to be vaccinated before life could return to normal.

He responded, “Well, I think, look — I think we get the vast majority like is going on in some industries and some schools, 97, 98 percent. I think we’ll come awful close.”

Vaccine Tyranny: UCLA Doctor Escorted Off Property for Refusing Vax, Then He Reveals His Plan

REPORTER: How many Americans need to be vaccinated before getting back to normal?

BIDEN: Well, I think, look — I think we get the vast majority. 97, 98 percent. pic.twitter.com/mQ4ekSH5jN

— August Takala (@RudyTakala) September 27, 2021

Biden then acknowledged, “But I’m not the scientist. One thing for sure, a quarter of the country can’t go unvaccinated.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that’s about where we are as a country right now, at least among those eligible to receive the shot.  Approximately 77 percent of Americans 12 and older have received at least one COVID-19 dose, and about 66 percent are fully vaccinated. Overall, 217 million Americans have at least one shot.

Not included in that statistic are many millions, probably tens of millions of Americans, who have natural immunity because they have recovered from the virus.

The vaccine mandate Biden announced in September included no exception for natural immunity, leaving American businesses demanding answers, Newsweek reported.

Last month, Dr. Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote that the number of those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the U.S. has likely been vastly underestimated, citing a report that concluded that, by the end of 2020, likely 100 million Americans had already had the sickness.

So they have immunity.

Over 44 million Americans have received a positive COVID test. Why should they be forced to take the vaccine?

Number of Americans Who Quit in August Hits 21 Year High as Biden’s Economy Burns to the Ground

Among the findings contained in the Brownstone Institute’s list of studies is that natural immunity offers approximately 95 percent protection against re-infection for at least six or more months.

30 Peer reviewed journal articles confirming natural immunity after Covid infection. Will Fauci now finally apologize to the 100 million or more Americans who’ve had COVID?

Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies to Share https://t.co/qJlWuS6ZOP

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 11, 2021

An Israeli Health Ministry study released in July and included on the Brownstone list showed that in the country’s most recent of reported infections — beginning in May — less than 1 percent of 7,700 new cases were among those who had previously recovered from COVID.

“With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID,”  the conservative news outlet Israel National News reported.

Meanwhile, roughly 40 percent of the new cases were among those who were vaccinated.

“Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave,” according to Israel National News.

Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has written that the strength of natural immunity from COVID has not been appropriately recognized by policy makers.

“During every month of this pandemic, I’ve had debates with other public researchers about the effectiveness and durability of natural immunity,” he wrote in a piece published by U.S. News & World Report in August.

“I’ve been told that natural immunity could fall off a cliff, rendering people susceptible to infection. But here we are now, over a year and a half into the clinical experience of observing patients who were infected, and natural immunity is effective and going strong,” he recounted.

“And that’s because with natural immunity, the body develops antibodies to the entire surface of the virus, not just a spike protein constructed from a vaccine.”

Makary argued that rather than categorizing people as being vaccinated and unvaccinated, the better designations would be “immune and the non-immune.”

If you have not had the virus, by all means get vaccinated, he exhorted.

The pandemic of the unvaccinated is a misnomer. It’s a pandemic of the non-immune. More precisely, it’s a series of regional outbreaks in select pockets of the country with low population immunity. Same take-home message though: If you’re not immune, get immune by getting vaxed.

— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) July 29, 2021

In an August interview on “The Vince Coglianese Show,” airing on the Washington, D.C.-area WMAL-FM, the medical professor contended, “One of the great failures of our medical leadership has been ignoring the half of America with natural immunity, which is the half of non-vaccinated folks.”

Dr. Ben Carson, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration and former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, told Fox News Monday night that the Biden administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is ignoring natural immunity.

“The fact of the matter is, many studies have demonstrated that natural immunity is just as good as immunity induced by vaccines and probably even better because it affects more of the immune system in a positive way,” Carson said.

“Dr. Fauci knows that,” he continued. “The CDC knows that and yet they’re just completely ignoring it. And I think if they would deal truthfully with these things, put the real facts out, people would do the right thing.”

Dr. Ben Carson tosses Covid truth bombs during this great convo w/@HeyTammyBruce:

“Natural immunity is just as good as immunity induced by vaccines, and probably even better.”

“A lot of people in the healthcare field know that this is foolishness …”

“It’s all about control.” pic.twitter.com/bZMrUvFigw

— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) October 12, 2021

“People are smart, but they don’t like being manipulated, and that’s exactly what’s going on right now: Manipulation of the people,” Carson said.

He added that many in the health care field know not recognizing natural immunity is not sound policy.

“They’ve had COVID already,” Carson said. “And why would they go ahead and expose themselves to extra risk when it’s unnecessary? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.”

“It’s all about control.”

It’s long past time for the United States to truly follow the science and recognize the efficacy of natural immunity and stop trying to force Americans to get a vaccine when they do not need or want it.

U.S. troops who are Catholic can refuse to comply with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the military’s archbishop said Tuesday.

People can sincerely hold a religious belief “that receiving the vaccine would violate his conscience,” Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy Broglio said in a statement.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in August ordered military branch heads to draw up COVID-19 vaccine mandates, all of which have since been issued.

Lawyers for clients seeking religious exemptions have told The Epoch Times some of the opposition to the jabs center on their use of aborted fetal cells.

Three vaccines are authorized or approved in the United States. The Johnson & Johnson shot used abortion-derived cell lines in design, production, and laboratory tests, according to an analysis (pdf) of the vaccines from self-described pro-life scientists. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines also utilized the cells.

The companies have said the final products do not contain aborted fetal cells.

Broglio said the testing with the cells done for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines has long been considered not sinful because of its remote link “with evil.” However, he said the Johnson & Johnson shot is “more problematic”

He also said that each Catholic is bound to follow his conscience, quoting St. Paul VI.

“Accordingly, no one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience,” he wrote, adding later, “The denial of religious accommodations, or punitive or adverse personnel actions taken against those who raise earnest, conscience-based objections, would be contrary to federal law and morally reprehensible.”

Tully Rinckey is representing more than 100 military members in their fight over the vaccine mandate. Sean Timmons, a managing partner and military attorney with the firm, told The Epoch Times he’d seen Broglio’s letter. Clients have gotten similar missives from local priests or bishops in their effort to obtain exemptions.

“The accommodation based on religion is not up to a test of the validity of the religious tenets’ adherence, meaning the Army and Navy can’t say, ‘okay, you’re Catholic therefore you believe a and b, Catholic leadership says the vaccine’s fine, so you’re not really a Catholic.’ That doesn’t affect the way that it works because that would be objective analysis of the contents of religious practice. The military can’t possibly do that. The only thing the military can do is look at it subjectively, ‘is your religious religious beliefs sincere, yes or no.’ If your religious belief is sincere, that’s the only analysis necessary, it doesn’t really matter what the leadership of a religion says,” Timmons said.

Several clients of Tully Rinckey have already secured exemptions while others are working their way through the process. None have been rejected so far.

Asked about the letter, a Department of Defense spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that each service has put into place processes that let members apply for religious exemptions.

“These exemptions are considered on an individual basis and service members are welcome to apply for religious exemptions,” he said.

The branches did not respond to requests for comment.

The Air Force has the earliest deadline, Nov. 2. Nearly 97 percent of the 335,818 active-duty airmen have received at least one vaccine dose, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters this week.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told troops during a town hall on Tuesday, when queried about mandate exceptions, that applications are evaluated by senior Army leaders and considered.

Concerns about health and readiness compelled the mandate, she added, asserting that the vaccines are safe and effective.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/catholic-troops-can-refuse-covid-19-vaccine-military-archbishop_4047797.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

An Ohio man says he was informed just five days before his scheduled kidney transplant that the operation was off because his donor has not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine.

Mike Ganim is fully vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19. But his donor is not.

Ganim and his wife told WKYC they were told on Oct. 8 that the Cleveland Clinic started a new policy that requires both organ donors and recipients to be fully vaccinated.

“It’s just wrong in so many ways,” Debi Ganim said. “All because of a policy that was just decided.”

“We were blindsided,” Sue George, the donor, told the outlet.

She said she’s not getting a COVID-19 vaccine due to medical, religious, and freedom reasons.

“We have one goal here and that’s to get Mike a kidney. So, it may come down to looking for another donor,” George told News 5 Cleveland.

Asked about what happened, a Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email that the clinic did recently implement a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for donors and recipients of solid organ transplants.

“Vaccination is particularly important in these patients for their safety. Living donation for organ transplantation has been a life-saving treatment, but it is not without risks to the donor. For the living donor, reducing the risk of a COVID-19 infection around the time of their surgery and recovery is crucial. We continually strive to minimize risk to our living donors, and vaccination is an important component to ensure the safest approach and optimal outcomes for donors,” she said.

“For the transplant candidate, in addition to a major operation, medications taken after an organ transplant weaken a person’s immune response. Serious complications of COVID-19 are most likely to develop in those individuals who have weakened immune systems, as their body has a reduced ability to fight and recover from infections. The FDA-authorized vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective and are the best way to prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19,” she added.

No one at the Cleveland Clinic has been removed from the transplant waiting list as of yet for not being vaccinated.

The rejection comes after Leilani Lutali, a Colorado woman, was informed a kidney transplant was no longer proceeding because neither she nor her donor were vaccinated.

The case drew nationwide attention and cast the spotlight on evolving transplant policies.

Vaccination policies are in place at facilities across the country, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that manages the U.S. organ transplantation system. They are not required.

A study (pdf) published in July found that less than 7 percent of the 92 transplant centers who responded to a survey reported inactivating patients who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.

“Very few centers are requiring COVID-19 vaccination prior to transplantation despite early evidence suggesting reduced immunogenicity in transplant patients on immunosuppression,” researchers said.

The University of Colorado Hospital, which was slated to perform Lutali’s transplant, told news outlets that it is requiring COVID-19 vaccination for almost all organ transplants.

Not all centers have implemented such requirements.

A spokeswoman for the University of Kentucky HealthCare, which runs a transplant center, told The Epoch Times in an email it does not.

“There is not a vaccination requirement in place but we encourage patients to obtain the vaccine both pre and post-transplant,” she said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/ohio-man-says-kidney-transplant-canceled-because-donor-didnt-get-covid-19-vaccine_4047733.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-13-3&mktids=381f95c0b65b8613e8978cdf520da268&est=FiayD08HhpzmTBUzfMzccdxne0%2BbeHETGvK0vRiJd6SdxTrCdEkQI3wx9WqFN0jVEg%3D%3D

Another Democrat selfishly endangers American lives

A Democratic congressman best known for comparing former president Donald Trump to 9/11 architect Osama bin Laden was spotted without a protective face mask at one of the busiest airports in the United States.

Photos obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show Rep. Sean Casten (D., Ill.) chatting with a masked companion at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. In the photos, which were taken early Tuesday morning, the maskless congressman appears to be holding a drink-like object, presumably in an effort to evade the Centers for Disease Control mandate for transportation hubs.

“Masks are required at O’Hare,” the airport states on its website. It links to the CDC page explaining the mandate, which “require[s] people to wear masks” indoors unless “eating, drinking, or taking medication for brief periods of time.”

An airport source told the Free Beacon the amount of time Casten spent without a mask far exceeded the “brief period” allowed under CDC guidelines. Either way, scientific experts have warned that taking your mask off at any point while traveling is potentially dangerous, even for vaccinated individuals.

“Please don’t ignore science,” Casten has urged his social media followers. “Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay safe.” Wearing a mask, he wrote last month, was not only “the right thing to do scientifically,” but also “the most responsible thing to do” in terms of protecting others.

Casten is merely the latest Democrat to reject science and put lives at risk by declining to cover his face in a public indoor setting. In August, for example, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D., N.Y.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, attended a maskless wedding at an estate in France and was photographed without a mask at an indoor art studio in Italy.

Days later, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) was a maskless guest at Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s wedding in New Mexico. The indoor gathering was almost certainly in violation of state masking guidelines. In September, senior Biden administration official Samantha Power was spotted maskless on an Amtrak train in blatant violation of federal law, which “requires all customers and employees to wear a mask at all times while onboard trains and in stations, regardless of vaccination status or state or local laws.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the celebrity activist and part-time member of Congress, was photographed walking the halls of Congress without a mask over the summer. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), another member of the so-called Squad, recently admitted that she only wears a mask when her political opponents are watching.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/sean-casten-mask-scandal/