Federal Judge Rules Against Natural Immunity Claim Challenging COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Human rights and science have no standing.

The Epoch Times: Federal Judge Rules Against Natural Immunity Claim Challenging COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

by Jack Philips, 2021-10-09

A federal judge on Oct. 8 denied a request to block Michigan State University’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the basis of natural immunity.

An employee at the school, Jeanna Norris, filed a lawsuit against the mandate and asked a judge to intervene on the basis that she had already contracted COVID-19 and recovered. She presented two antibody tests showing her previous infection, and her doctors told her that she didn’t need to get the vaccine at this time.

Despite her natural immunity, Norris faces termination from the university for not complying with the school’s mandate that all students and staff get the shot unless they have a medical or religious exemption.

U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, declined her lawsuit. The mandate, Maloney said, didn’t violate her fundamental rights and pointed to a 1905 Supreme Court ruling.

“This Court must apply the law from the Supreme Court: Jacobson essentially applied rational basis review and found that the vaccine mandate was rational in ‘protect[ing] the public health and public safety,’” Maloney said in his order. “The Court cannot ignore this binding precedent.”

...It comes just days after a federal judge in California ruled against a professor who argued that his previous infection should make him exempt from the University of California’s vaccine requirement.

WIND: baloney from Maloney.

Ignoring science and modern technology is “rational”? Science has no standing in this federal judge’s empty skull.

A “binding precedent” from 116 years ago* is more important than human rights? Cases decided before any person now living when everything was different in every aspect of life? The judgment of the entire judiciary should be called into question if this stands, because timeless dogma decided by nine long-since-dead privileged white men has no place in any legal institution. Apparently this cause does not rise to the level of numerous other invented “rights”.

What are “fundamental rights” these days? None, presumably. BTW, why should something based on irrationality (belief in a deity for which no evidence exists and disagreed upon) be granted an exemption, whereas a proven scientific finding counts for nothing?

Judges can capriciously doom you to any whim of the government, offering “legal reasoning” for ideological viewpoints or simply callous indifference or ignorance. I once had respect for the judiciary, but these days it has little to do with the justice, let alone rationality.

* A case decided when medical science was little more than a wood-saw for gangrene and there was no way of knowing any of the facts presented to the court today! The context-dropping in ignoring what little was known 116 yeara ago vs today shows this judge to be either stupid beyond belief or politically motivated.

COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Plummet in Southern US, Rise in Northern States

re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The latest compelling evidence that experts have it all figured out. Not.

The Epoch Times: COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Plummet in Southern US, Rise in Northern States

by Zachary Stieber, 2021-10-09

COVID-19 metrics in southern states like Florida have plummeted in recent weeks while rising in many northern states, including heavily vaccinated ones.

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Mississippi, for instance, have plunged some 95 percent from the peak of 5,018 on Aug. 19 to just 268 on Oct. 7. COVID-19 related hospitalizations in the state, one of the worst-hit in the nation, dropped from 1,667 on Aug. 19 to 403 on Thursday.

Similar drops have been recorded in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, and Texas.

At the same time, metrics have been rising in many northern states, including those in New England....

Seasonal Pattern

Experts say the shift is part of a seasonal pattern for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

Last year, cases started dropping in the south at the same time they climbed in much of the upper Midwest and other northern areas. The same pattern is playing out again, Dr. Scott Atlas, who advised former President Donald Trump and is now a senior fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution, told The Epoch Times.

...Experts aren’t sure what’s driving the pattern. Ideas include differences in humidity and differences in temperature, which may lead more people to spend longer portions of time indoors. The virus spreads much more easily in crowded indoor spaces.

...Scientists are becoming more aware that the CCP virus is different than any other virus. The epidemic “is almost impossible to predict,” Saag said. “I’ve been humbled tremendously about this epidemic in terms of having no ability to predict, really, what to expect,” he added.

...One problem stems from counting hospitalizations, Atlas noted. Approximately half of COVID-19 hospitalizations may have been admitted “for another reason entirely,” researchers said last month. That’s a major issue when counting child hospitalizations. Many of the children have respiratory syncytial virus, which is more dangerous to young kids than COVID-19.

...

WIND: garbage data and no one knows what is really going on. But masks and lockdowns have zero credible evidence of efficacy to this day.

Iceland Stops Using Moderna Vaccine Over Heart Inflammation Risk

re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Can you believe these troglodytes over in Iceland? The science is settled here in the USA! But these crackpots over in Iceland and Sweden and Finland cannot follow the science, which any idiot can have explained in simple terms on CNN.

The Epoch Times: Iceland Stops Using Moderna Vaccine Over Heart Inflammation Risk

by Ivan Pentchoukov, 2021-10-08

Iceland on Oct. 8 halted the use of the Moderna vaccine against the CCP virus due to reports from Nordic countries of “increased incidence” of inflammation of heart muscle and tissues triggered by the injection.

Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway have already limited the use of the Moderna vaccine over the same concerns. Iceland went further than its neighbors and stopped using the vaccine entirely.

“In recent days, there has been data from the Nordic countries on the increased incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination with Moderna vaccine in addition to vaccination with Pfizer/BioNTech (Comirnaty),” an announcement from Iceland’s Directorate of Health stated.

“As there is a sufficient supply of Pfizer vaccine in Iceland for both the pre-vaccine activation vaccines and the primary vaccinations of those who have not yet been vaccinated, the epidemiologist has decided not to use the Moderna vaccine in Iceland, while providing further information on the safety of the Moderna vaccine.”

Sweden limited the use of the Moderna shot on Oct. 6 to those born before 1991. The Swedish health agency said at the time that new data from Swedish and other Nordic sources “indicate that the connection is especially clear” between Moderna’s vaccine and side effects “especially after the second dose.”

...Finland on Oct. 7 discontinued the use of the Moderna shot for men under the age of 30. That decision came one day after Sweden and Denmark haltedthe use of the vaccine for the younger age groups.

...

WIND: cracks in the narrative? What are the long-term cardiac health effects of heart inflammation BTW?

When Will the Brown Stuff Hit the Fan, what with the Trump COVID Vaccines Waning Efficacy for Most of the Population Soon?

re: Why Vaccinating COVID-Recovered Individuals Does more Harm than Good
re: Matt Taibbi: The Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic
re: Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press
re: The Epoch Times: 'US State With Highest Vaccination Rate Hit by Virus Surge'
re: Science.org: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta — “Vaccines Work, but not well enough”
re: COVID
re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The evidence that the Trump COVID Vaccines are valuable to high-risk portions of the population is overwhelming at this point. So I fully support free and uncoerced vaccination for people at risk, just as I support the “free and uncoerced” part for everyone else. If you are at risk, vaccination is a smart move on a risk assessment basis. And if so, get your booster shot, because it has both a protective (antibodies) and psychological benefit.

The evidence is now also very strong that the “vaccines” have short-lived efficacy as vaccines go. That’s not at all an argument against vaccination, but it is a concerning fact. Notwithstanding the propaganda being spewed relentlessly, there are significant odds that we are entering the early stages of a pandemic of the vaccinated, a nightmare scenario. Early signs are that vaccinated people are increasingly acquiring COVID. I could be wrong, and I hope I am wrong. And maybe significant reinfection will be limited only to the weakest/oldest among us—only time will tell.

It is also a fact supported by all credible existing science that natural immunity is far superior to vaccination, yet those with natural immunity are being coerced into vaccination, which is both anti-scientific and stupidly unnecessary, failing to weigh the increased risks of side effects, particularly since COVID can screw-up the body for months following infection, leaving it vulnerable to oddball reactions from injections of chemicals and viral material. Even if that means only 5% or 1%, that’s millions of people who could be harmed. No doctor or expert can nullify that hypothesis, not yet at least.

Follow the science—except when it works against the narrative. The moralizing moral degenerates in charge are the dregs of humanity, demonstrating that every day with their vicious hate-filled attacks on the “unvaccinated”, and their legalized child-abuse policies.

The advent of highly inaccurate rapid tests means gasoline on the fire will feed more hysterical COVID terrorism —the press and policy-makes have zero interest in false positive rates.

Talk to your doctor about vaccination—specialists and generalists of all kinds are of course up to speed on the one-pager they skimmed, making them very wise and well-informed. Besides, they need their jobs, and following guidelines by applying epidemiological statistical results to you as an individual (a logical fallacy sort of thing) keeps their employers and insurers off their backs. Everyone wins!

With the bulk of the population approaching 6+ months post-vaccination around December/January and people visiting family in droves, what might come to pass this winter? Perhaps this is why the chief moralizing propagandist in charge (Dr. Anthony 'Frankenstein' Fauci) is saying that people should not visit family for XMAS, and that booster shots should be deployed. Bet on the “unvaccinated” being blamed for the vaccinated crowd incubating and spreading COVID all over again.

I could be wrong. BTW, do you ever hear “I could be wrong” from the experts, who are usually wrong about most things? If not, dismiss them as lacking all credibility. Because anyone who has certainty about such things has strayed into the weeds along the path of science.

No one knows the future, and nature has a way of defying experts whose expertise is in television-grade deception and self-promotion. No one can rule out the (hopefully low odds) idea that mass vaccination is Pandora’s Box that will cause far greater harm.

I wonder how it will all turn out—I don’t know, but given how science has been abandoned, the world is not likely to be in for a good outcome.

* Making it necessary (literally!) to redefine what a vaccine is.

Matt Taibbi: The Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic

re: “Why Has "Ivermectin" Become a Dirty Word?”
re: Matt Taibbi

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The “get the jab” crowd is suffering from cognitive dissonance, with their world view turned upside down with the mere hint that a drug might make the the vaccine unnecessary for most people.

re: Did Political and Media Bias Stall the Release of Merck's New Covid-19 Drug?

Matt Taibbi: The Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic

by Matt Taibbi, 2021-10-07 [emphasis added]

"The jab" is just the latest story to be reported as mantra

Yesterday, I ran a story that had nothing to do with vaccines, about the seeming delay of the development of a drug called molnupiravir (see the above segment with the gracious hosts of The Hill: Rising for more). In the time it took to report and write that piece, conventional wisdom turned against the drug, which is now suspected of ivermectinism and other deviationist, anti-vax tendencies, in the latest iteration of our most recent collective national mania — the Cult of the Vaccine Neurotic.

The speed of the change was incredible. Just a week ago, on October 1st, the pharmaceutical giant Merck issued a terse announcement that quickly became big news. Molnupiravir, an experimental antiviral drug, “reduced the risk of hospitalization or death” of Covid-19 patients by as much as 50%, according to a study.

...

...This is what news looks like before propagandists get their hands on it. Time writer Alice Park’s lede was sensible and clear. If molnupiravir works — a big if, incidentally — it’s good news for everyone, since not everyone is immunized, and the vaccines aren’t 100% effective anyway. As even Vox put it initially, molnupiravir could “help compensate for persistent gaps in Covid-19 vaccination coverage.”

Within a day, though, the tone of coverage turned. Writers began stressing a Yeah, but approach, as in, “Any new treatment is of course good, but get your fucking shot.” A CNN lede read, “A pill that could potentially treat Covid-19 is a ‘game-changer,’ but experts are emphasizing that it's not an alternative to vaccinations.” The New York Times went with, “Health officials said the drug could provide an effective way to treat Covid-19, but stressed that vaccines remained the best tool.”

...In other words, it took less than 24 hours for the drug — barely tested, let alone released yet — to be accused of prolonging the pandemic. By the third day, mentions of molnupiravir in news reports nearly all came affixed to stern reminders of its place beneath vaccines in the medical hierarchy, as in the New York Times explaining that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who initially told reporters the new drug was “impressive,” now “warned that Americans should not wait to be vaccinated because they believe they can take the pill.”

Since the start of the Trump years, we’ve been introduced to a new kind of news story, which assumes adults can’t handle multiple ideas at once, and has reporters frantically wrapping facts deemed dangerous, unorthodox, or even just insufficiently obvious in layers of disclaimers... The key term was moral opprobrium. Moralizing was exactly what journalists were once trained not to do, at least outside the op-ed page, but it soon became a central part of the job... Voluble stupidity is a great disguise in a society where silence is suspect.

We’re similarly becoming a nation of totalitarian nitwits, speaking in a borrowed lexicon of mandatory phrases and smelling heresy in anyone who doesn’t...

...

WIND: BTW, anyone referring to Ivermectin as “horse dewormer” (e.g. Bloomberg, CDC, FDA and most “news” sources today) can be summarily dismissed as a non-credible propaganda source run by vicious morons, never to be trusted again. Yes, Ivermectin can and is used for horses, just like numerous ntibiotics can be used for animals of all kinds (e.g., Metronidazole even for reptiles), but Ivermectin has had a critical role to play for many decades now as a miracle drug for ending human suffering in places like Africa.

Vaccination of Children on the Altar of COVID Fanaticism is Legalized Child Abuse — California to Mandate Vaccinating Kindergarten Children Too! 

re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

A society that sacrifices its children for the benefit of its adults has turned to evil.

With no demonstrable benefit to children of vaccination for COVID (extremely rare cases excepted), the perverted child abusers in charge propose to mandate vaccines down to the age of five.

California will require the COVID-19 vaccine for students in kindergarten through sixth grades after it gets final federal approval for children 5 to 11.

Governor Newsom here in California has not mandated vaccines for teachers, thanks to the teacher’s unions*. That tells you all you need to know. UPDATE: the reporting in the news is so poor that I might have gotten this wrong—the most recent bill might finally require teachers to be vaccinated, though it’s unclear what exemptions will be allowed.

The proper endpoint (medical meaning) of vaccination was never antibody levels, though I am sure there are doctors stupid enough to think so. The only proper endpoint is harm prevented, and how that is weighed against side effects (short and long term) via risk assessment. But that is an easy one for children: nil benefit, but with all the short-term risks, plus as-yet unknown long-term risks on their rapidly developing and very different bodies. Oh, and never mind that children have been shown to be poor transmitters of COVID, so they are not even a risk factor in any statistically meaningful way*.

I’d bet that at least 100 times more children are sexually abused by teachers than harmed seriously by COVID. Follow that link if you think it is an exaggeration because even if the claimed figures are cut back by 10X, the figures are devastating to anyone who actually cares about children.

For children, COVID is not measles or polio; COVID is little more than the common cold and doesn’t remotely approach deadly things for children, like RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). Any idiot (including doctors!) who compares any of these to COVID should have the sense to not speak in public about anything and to find another career.

As it relates to COVID, the medical profession as a group is beneath contempt at this point. I don’t blame most doctors for not speaking out (and thus being canceled), but at least there should be passive resistance to medical malpractice we are seeing. I do blame doctors who willingly go along and rationalize their actions.

“Follow the money” is a principle that will never let you down. Massive profits to accrue to corporations like Pfizer and Moderna. The major news networks get most of their profits from Big Pharma, politicians love compaign donations, and shareholders profit—everyone wins, except children.

* The teacher’s unions are also the single biggest source of systemic racism nationwide, by guaranteeing bad education for everyone, which particularly damages the poor and people of color.

** Children don’t have voices on this issue, and now we have President LetsGoBrandon branding parents as terrorists who object to vaccination and/or institutionalized racism in governement schoolprisons.

Why Vaccinating COVID-Recovered Individuals Does more Harm than Good

re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Why is there nil debate or discusssion in any public venue about the natural immunity enjoyed by large portions of the world population, along with the harms being caused by vaccinating those with natural immunity?

Aaron Kheriaty MD: On Vaccinating Covid Recovered Individuals

...The largest population-based study comparing natural immunity and vaccine immunity (a study I will summarize in more detail in my next Research Overview post) actually analyzed this situation: giving a one-dose Pfizer vaccine booster to those previously infected and comparing these individuals to unvaccinated previously infected individuals. The previously infected went from 99.74% immunity before vaccination to 99.86% after vaccination for the duration of the study. 

The differences here before and after vaccination are clearly negligible and have no clinical relevance whatsoever. This minuscule, barely perceptible bump in immunity actually included asymptomatic reinfections. The same analysis for symptomaticreinfections found no statistically significant differences at all. When the efficacy of natural immunity is already extremely high, vaccination—or other interventions for that matter—cannot improve it much.

On the other hand, vaccination always involves some risk of adverse events, however small. Such risks are warranted only where there are potentially meaningful clinical benefits. In fact, as I will summarize in a future Research Overview post, several studies now suggest that individuals with prior Covid infections are at higher risk of vaccine adverse effects compared to those without a history of Covid infection. 

To make this very concrete, consider the number needed to treat (NNT) to prevent one asymptomatic reinfection in those with natural immunity vs. the number needed to harm (NNH) by causing a vaccine adverse event. We would need to vaccinate 833 Covid-recovered people to prevent 1 asymptomatic reinfection (NNT=833). We cannot even calculate the number of necessary vaccinations to prevent 1 symptomatic infection because the data shows no differences before and after vaccination for symptomatic infections, hospitalizations, or deaths.

...In short: to prevent one case of asymptomatic reinfection, we would cause over 75 cases of clinically significant adverse events (NNT/NNH = 833/11). The number of people harmed to prevent one case of symptomatic reinfection would be even higher—too high to calculate with our current data...

...

WIND: with rare exceptions, to insist on vaccination for those with natural immunity is a gross violation of medical ethics, and as anti-science as it gets.

Nearly all medical experts must now be viewed as among the persons least worthy of trust in our society. Medicine has long been guesswork and opinion in so many areas, but at least we could hope it was i

See also:

UC Irvine Director Of Medical Ethics Placed On 'Investigatory Leave' Over Challenge To Vaccine Mandate

Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press

re: Why Vaccinating Covid Recovered Individuals Does more Harm than Good
re: ethics in medicine

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Intolerant totalitarian mindsets now dominate medicine and the press and the government. In an era where diversity means conformity.

Nothing could be more anti-science than suppressing dissenting viewpoints, especially when accurate and substantiated by science, which is far from settled when it comes to COVID.

I am going to speak bluntly. Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press. They are trying to deligitimize and pick us off one by one. This is not a conspiracy theory - this is a fact. Please wake up. This is happening globally.

I was labeled as a "terrorist" in the Italian press when I was in Rome for the International COVID Summit. My crime? Advocating for early treatment of COVID-19 disease. I suggest that merits a bit of meditation.
— Dr Robert Malone, MD, 2021-10-07

WIND: the constitution is somewhat better than toilet paper these days, and countries like Australia are reverting to their prison-colony heritage.

See also:

UC Irvine Director Of Medical Ethics Placed On 'Investigatory Leave' Over Challenge To Vaccine Mandate

The Healthy Skeptic: 'CDC Brings the Garbage' (on masks)

re: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: How to understand scientific studies (in health and medicine)
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: How Well do Doctors Understand Probability?
re: The Healthy Skeptic

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The CDC is now in the business of pure propaganda and anti-science, by cherry-picking only the data that supports the narrative.

The Healthy Skeptic: 'CDC Brings the Garbage' (on masks)

by Kevin Roche, 2021-09-28

...Here is the press release announcing studies  supporting masking in school, with links to each paper.  (CDC Garbage)

One of the studies, a supposed comparison of CV-19 rates among children in counties with and without a school mask requirement,  is an absolute embarassment that is the worst piece of dreck yet, so bad that it doesn’t even use statistics properly...

Now what is the first thing that we look for in a CDC study?  That’s right, a cherrypicked time period.  Now what is the second thing we look for in a CDC study?  Correct again, completely ignoring important and relevant potential confounders...

...Just a made-up inference that it must have been associated with school.

...So no assessment of whether the cases were transmitted in the school, in other words, the study tells you absolutely nothing about actual transmission in schools.  The major statistical trick here is that they tried to eliminate schools which had a mask mandate enacted after the school year started from the analysis.  Why?  Because if you include them 52% of schools with a mask mandate had an outbreak versus 48% of schools that didn’t.

I don’t know why I bother reviewing these CDC studies when other people do a fantastic job.  Here is a beautiful explanation of how bad these studies are.  (Prasad Review)   In a normal world that actually believed in science, they would never pass peer review, in fact they would be laughed at.

WIND: junk science from the CDC is now the norm. But that is too much praise for what is really outright scientific fraud.

Sebastian Rushworth MD: 'COVID: Everything on the table'

re: Sebastian Rushworth MD

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

See the above line.

Sebastian Rushworth MD: 'COVID: Everything on the table'

, 2021-10-02

A group of German celebrities have started the campaign “alles auf den tisch”, which literally means “everything on the table”. It’s a reaction to the shocking lack of indepence and critical oversight that has been exhibited by journalists ever since the pandemic began. The purpose of the campaign is to break through the blinkered media narrative that exists in relation to covid, and allow a wider range of thoughts and opinions to get out.

In order to accomplish this, the celebrities have interviewed a large number of doctors and scientists who have thus far been sidelined by the mainstream media, and put the interviews up on their site allesaufdentisch.tv. The campaign appears to have been pretty effective so far, since the site crashed on launch due to the massive amount of traffic it was getting. Luckily it’s up and running again now. As a part of the campaign, I was interviewed by violinist Linus Roth. We talked about happenings in Sweden, the COVID death rate, and lockdowns. The interview is short but sweet, only around twenty minutes long. You can watch it here.

...

WIND: as time goes on, we will have more and more open discussion (or so I hope).

The medical profession and so-called experts and especially the politicized Pravda outlets of the CDC/FDA/NIH have so damaged their credibility that it will not heal in my lifetime. I will never trust them again. It would take a real leader to start the process of unf*cking those institutions.

Leaders like the the hysterical Dr Rochelle 'Hot Mess' Walensky of the CDC, now unable to define what a woman is (“pregnant people”), and similar perversions of science and medicine and reality now entering mainstream medicine and science.

Office Air Quality May Affect Employees’ Cognition, Productivity

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

I always disliked the air in office buildings, which I worked in for many years.

If this finding holds, then obviously outdoor air is far more of a problem at times.

See also: Clean air matters for a healthy brain and Nature-based activities can improve mood and reduce anxiety

Office Air Quality May Affect Employees’ Cognition, Productivity

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2021-09-09

The air quality within an office can have significant impacts on employees' cognitive function, including response times and ability to focus, and it may also affect their productivity, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The one-year study, which included participants in offices across six countries working in a variety of fields, including engineering, real estate investment, architecture, and technology, found that increased concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and lower ventilation rates (measured using carbon dioxide (CO2) levels as a proxy) were associated with slower response times and reduced accuracy on a series of cognitive tests. The researchers noted that they observed impaired cognitive function at concentrations of PM2.5 and CO2 that are common within indoor environments.

...

WIND: if air quality is poor and there are “lower ventilation rates”, I’d bet this is a factor in the spread of COVID-19, at the least in degrading health, if not in allowing the virus to travel on fine particulate matter. So I’d bet that PM2.5 bad air + COVID is a really bad idea.

N95 masks filter out PM2.5 by 95% when properly fitted (shave off that beard!). N100/P100 particulate respirators are 20X better (99.75% filtration vs 95%). I strongly recommend valved masks, because the non-valved ones are too hard to breath through when exercising (and for some, even not exercising).

Now if an office worker sitting around a chair with low respiratory and cardiac rate is affected, what happens when excercising with vastly higher respiratory rate and volume and far higher cardiac output? I guess I was on to something when I first started excercising with a mask in bad conditions.

The Epoch Times: 'US State With Highest Vaccination Rate Hit by Virus Surge'

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Fodder for news bites to mislead with bad logic and bad analysis. Perfect for those who wish to make a case against the Trump vaccines (count me out on that one). But it has some significance.

No matter what: eat well, exercise every day, get beneficial sunlight every day, and get off Facebook and Instragram and their ilk and the “news”—terrible for your mental health.

The Epoch Times: 'US State With Highest Vaccination Rate Hit by Virus Surge'

By Ivan Pentchoukov, 2021-10-05

Vermont, the state with the highest vaccination rate in the United States, is experiencing a CCP virus surge at levels not seen since the pandemic’s peak last winter.

The number of cases in Vermont is at a record level, hospitalizations are close to the records made last winter, and the state recorded the deadliest day and the second deadliest month of the pandemic in September.

...More than 69 percent of Vermont’s population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Sept. 24, according to the CDC, far above the national rate of 56 percent.

The state recorded the highest rate of hospitalizations per 100,000 residents on Sept. 30, breaching a record set on Jan. 31, 2020. Eight people reportedly died of the CCP virus in Vermont on Sept. 13, the highest total recorded in the state so far.

In late August, four of ten cases of COVID-19 in Vermont were among vaccinated people, according to a letter signed by 90 employees of the Vermont Health Department, including state Epidemiologist Patsy Kelso.

...

WIND: those numbers say that on average, the vaccinated are MORE likely to be infected (69% vaccinated yet a whopping 40% of the cases)*. But it doesn’t tell you all sorts of critically informative context: health status, age, medical conditions, time since vaccination, severity of disease, where the infections are occurring, etc. So it is fake news that is also true.

The data doesn’t tell us how many people with natural immunity are reinfected vs those that are vaccinated. This is public health authority malfeasance, presumably not done because it would hurt the propaganda narrative. But more likely it is just insitutional incompetence.

We have a pandemic of the vaccinated in certain segments of the population. But the feckless public health authorities do not give us any real insight, and work hard to provide manure-grade GIGO data that would flunk a 1st-year medical student for sloppy work. The quality and stratification and analysis of the data has all the intellectual and olfactory appeal of hurricane over a pig-farm fecal lagoon. Any anyone who denies that is either a jackass or a propagandist. Medical experts come to mind.

What is likely going on is that the most at risk and thus those vaccinated early and least likely to respond with a robust immune response are getting hit hard. Some (many?) vaccinated people drop their guard, become infected spreaders of COVID, get hospitalized from COVID, and die from COVID. And infect other vaccinated and non-vaccinated people alike. By now it really does look like a pandemic of the vaccinated, as the numbers in the article strongly suggest.

If only aholes like your author were all vaccinated (I have presumed natural immunity), all this would stop, right?! Only medical experts and idiots believe that one. Let’s go Brandon.

The Trump vaccines never had any chance of stopping COVID. That was a fool’s idea for the gullible turned into propaganda. Bu to be clear: high-risk people should still get vaccinated, because the risk assessment looks strongly in favor of it. Everyone else—lots of shit kills people, including prescription drugs being the 3rd leading cause of death. Get over it! (the single-minded focus on single-cause mortality with policies about it causing all other sorts of major health problems and deaths).

* We would hope for near-zero infections among the vaccinated, were the vaccines more than short-term prophylactics. But as a though problem: assuming the vaccinated gain no immunity (false), then just by simple math we’d expect that 69/100 cases would be vaccinated and 31/100 cases would be the unvaxxed. Of course in the real work, people who are vaxxed drop precautions and go get infected and become spreaders. And the elderly/infirm in shared living facilities can all infect each other, what with masking (as actually done in practice) being nearly worthless.

What is your Oppressed Intersectional Identity?

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Dang, I have to start licking myself. I just learned that I am a Many-Fingered Gender-Neutral Armenian With Honey Glaze! Aw heck. Coulda been worse.

So find out now where you stand (or sit, or lie, or float, or WTF).

The Babylon Bee : What is your Oppressed Intersectional Identity?

Humans are varied. Some are old, some are fat, some are from Kentucky, and others are from Kenya. Some can touch the tip of their nose with their tongue, and others can flatulate on command. We all have intersections of privileges and disadvantages. The point is not to see each of us as unique individuals, but to parse all of humanity into groups based on these obscure and often meaningless attributes so that a new minority group can be created.

So, to solve the problem of who’s an innocent victim and who’s a perpetrator of evil white supremacy, we came up with the intersectionality matrix. You want to land on as many intersections of oppression as possible.

So what's your oppressed identity? Use this handy chart to find out!

Science Daily: N95 respirators could offer robust protection from wildfire smoke

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The COVID terrorists have made it darn hard to buy N95 or N100 particulate respirators.

An N100/P100 particulate respirator blocks 20X more than an N95. Both types must be fitted snugly to prevent leakage, and an N100 makes this much easier (at least the 3M ones I use). Valved masks are terrific for forest fire smoke.

Science Daily: N95 respirators could offer robust protection from wildfire smoke

2021-09-27

N95 respirators offer the best protection against wildfire smoke and other types of air pollution, performing better than synthetic, cotton and surgical masks.

Researchers performed lab experiments to investigate the ability of different face masks and respirators to filter out particles in a range of sizes found in smoke and air pollution. They placed the different mask materials over a pipe that "breathes" in air and particles inside a plastic box.

N95s were so effective in the lab experiments that the researchers estimate their widespread use could reduce hospital visits attributable to wildfire smoke by 22% to 39%. The study's findings can provide evidence-based recommendations to help people protect themselves during wildfire season.

...

They found that N95s offer the best protection against wildfire smoke, reducing a person's exposure by a factor of 16. Synthetic and cotton masks do a poor job of filtering out the particle sizes found in wildfire smoke, and only reduced exposure by a factor of 2.2 and 1.4, respectively. Surgical masks filter more than 90% of the particles but previous research has shown they let about 50% of the air leak around the mask, making them only about as effective as the synthetic and cotton options.

N95s also worked best against larger dust particles and urban air pollution, which contains particles from car exhaust that are even smaller than particles from wildfire smoke.

...

Kodros emphasizes that these mask recommendations are specific to air pollution and do not apply to the coronavirus. "For COVID-19, you're wearing a mask to protect yourself and also to reduce your own emitted droplets," he said. Fabric masks have been shown to be effective for public health during the current crisis and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the use of masks with two or more layers of fabric that fit snugly over the nose and mouth.

WIND: if they work this well, and surgical masks and cotton masks work so poorly, then I’d bet this explains why masks for COVID as commonly worn do absolutely nothing to stop community spread (zero credible studies showing so).

The last paragraph is about avoiding criticism (up is down and down is up when it comes to COVID), and cites non-credible bullshit positions taken by the CDC based on non-science that repudiates decades of scientific literature.

Maybe a Lot More Sun Exposure is a GOOD thing?

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

My own body tells me that in mid-day in the summer, about 45 minutes to an hour is about right, conservatively half an hour minimum. When lightly tanned. In fall/winter, much more. I have fair skin that browns somewhat with exposure, so cut that in half if I were untanned. BTW, am I less White when I am tan, since racist simpletons these days judge by skin color?

For a long time now, I must admit that I’ve had a disdain for dermatologists who see skin cancer as something that should be dealt with by avoiding sun exposure as much as possible—as if sunlight were devoid of benefits. With COVID at its worst, I saw plenty of people completely covered up in sunlight as before—starving their bodies of what is surely a health benefit.

The truth as I predict/assert it is that science will get to someday is that not only do we need sunlight for Vitamin D, sunlight has many other beneficial effects including how infrared influences mitochondria. The body has several types photo receptors and photo biomodulation is a 'thing'.

Of course, a body weakened by nutrient deficiencies and stress is not going to be able to fend of cancers of any kind. Skin cancer and other cancers IMO frequently a disease of poor healt in general that dos not allow the body to deal with the cancer. As with all things, there is just bad luck too.

Science Daily: Sunlight Exposure Guidelines May Need to Be Revised

2021-09-27

Previously published solar exposure guidelines for optimal vitamin D synthesis based on a study of skin samples may need to be revised, according to new research published today in PNAS.

A study by researchers from King's College London, with support from the NIHR Guy's and St Thomas' Biomedical Research Centre, has tested the optimum ultraviolet radiation (UVR) wavelengths for human skin production of vitamin D in sunlight.

UVR from sunlight can cause sunburn and skin cancer, however, it is the most important source of vitamin D that is essential for healthy bone development and maintenance.

Public health advice on sunlight exposure takes both risk and benefits into account. Calculating the potential risks and benefits from sunlight exposure is not simple because the health outcomes from UVR exposure vary considerably with wavelength within the sun's UVR spectrum. For example, the sun's UVR contains less than 5% short wavelength UVB radiation but this is responsible for over 80% of the sunburn response. Each health outcome from solar exposure has its own unique wavelength dependency.

...

Professor Antony Young said: "Our study shows that risk versus benefit calculations from solar exposure may need to be re-evaluated. The results from the study are timely because the global technical committee, Commission internationale de l'éclairage, that sets UVR standards will be able to discuss the findings of this paper to re-evaluate the wavelength dependency of vitamin D. Further research from our group will determine the risk/benefit calculations."

WIND: I’d bet based on the vague statements that sunlight is much more beneficial that thought, and that the risk assessment will shift sharply to more sunlight. Any other finding seems totally nonsensical. Still, all studies should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Scott Atlas on Vaccine Mandates for Children, Natural Immunity, and Florida’s COVID-19 Surge”

re: Dr Scott Atlas

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The very best reporting I have yet seen on the vaccines. Highly objective, and it might even persuade you to get the Trump COVID vaccine if you are an at-risk person. But as for children... parents should open there ears if you care about your children, based on objective risk assessment.

And find out what really transpired with COVID policy—order A Plague Upon Our House @AMAZON, by Dr Scott Atlas.

Scott Atlas on Vaccine Mandates for Children, Natural Immunity, and Florida’s COVID-19 Surge

Sebastian Rushworth MD: “A reflection on covid mania”

re: Overdiagnosis is Damaging Health and Happiness America
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: Do drug trials underestimate side effects?
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: Is COVID a danger to children?
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: Does it make sense to vaccinate those who have had COVID?
re: Peer Review of Medical/Scientific Papers has become a Farce Driven by Political and Financial Concerns
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Prelude — If anything, I have been “pro vaccine”, since I have all of the usual vaccines and some more besides, as does my family. Even recently I got my 2nd dose of Shingles vaccine. But as to the Trump COVID vaccines, I am not vaccinated and do not plan to be (for multiple reasons, including presumed natural immunity and auto-immune issues) nor are two of my daughters, but my wife and one daughter are. It might therefore occur to readers that a “mixed” family doesn’t match up to the narrative of “ignorant anti-vax assholes to be shunned”, but actually involves well-reasoned personal decisions based on science and evidence. Which all medical decisions should be, as that is a fundamental human right.

...

It takes courage for an MD to speak out against the narrative. But before you brush off Sebastian Rushworth as some kind of fringe thinker, at least read How to understand scientific studies in health and medicine. Ask yourself if that kind of evidence-based thinking is being used by the politicians and “experts” controlling the COVID narrative! IMO, Rushworth is far more credible*.

* Being credible rests on demanding quality evidence, asking uncomfortable questions, being willing to change a viewpoint if the evidence changes, and speaking freely in spite of strong pressures to not do so. It does not mean being right about everything, as everyone is wrong on some things.

Sebastian Rushworth MD: A reflection on covid mania

by Sebastian Rushworth M.D.., 23 September 2021. Emphasis added.

At the beginning of this year I wrote about how the governments of the world had created a collective state of hysteria so intense that the only way they could dig themselves out of the hole they had made was with a magic bullet. That magic bullet was, of course, the vaccines. I wrote that it didn’t really matter how effective the vaccines were in the real world, or whether they prevented transmission. All that mattered was getting every single person on the planet to take the vaccine, after which the politicians would be able to declare victory.

It’s now eight months later, and we can conclude that the prediction has come to pass. In many western countries, 70+ percent of the adult population is now vaccinated. In the early part of this year, hospitalizations and deaths started to drop, and they stayed low all summer. The convenient explanation at the time was that this was thanks to the vaccines, even though the drop started at a time when very few people were vaccinated – the reduction was clearly driven by something else. My guess is that it was due to the onset of herd immunity to the original COVID strain....

...In the official narrative, the increase in cases and deaths is blamed on the unvaccinated, who are supposedly driving the development of vaccine resistant variants. It’s true that the unvaccinated are more likely to end up in hospital with covid than the vaccinated – the vaccine does offer protection against covid, after all. But it isn’t true that the unvaccinated are driving vaccine resistance.

It seems that the  doctors and ”experts” who appear on tv and who drive public policy have completely forgotten how evolution works. Let’s take bacteria as an analogy. Bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics when we use antibiotics too generously. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics puts evolutionary pressure on bacteria to develop resistance, since that’s the only way they can survive in the antibiotic saturated environment. Yet, now, we are supposed to believe that the opposite is true for viruses – they apparently develop resistance when we underuse vaccines! We’re suddenly supposed to believe that up is down and down is up.

Just like with bacteria and antibiotics, vaccine resistance will develop in a situation where the vaccines are being overused – if you vaccinate large numbers of healthy young people who don’t really need to be vaccinated then you put strong evolutionary pressure on the virus to become vaccine resistant. Maybe this could be avoided in an imaginary scenario where you can vaccinate every single person on the planet on the same day, thereby stopping the virus in its tracks. But that’s no realistic. It’s taken six months or more to get to 70% vaccinated in most countries, which has given the virus plenty of time to mutate in response to the evolutionary pressure from the vaccines. If we had stuck with only vaccinating the elderly and other risk groups, then we wouldn’t have put as much evolutionary pressure on the virus to develop resistance to the vaccines, and the vaccines might have been more effective for longer.

After a year of massive fear mongering by governments and the media, it would have been impossible not to offer the vaccine to everyone who wanted it. Even those not at risk believed they were in danger and demanded the vaccine. There was thus always going to be a massive vaccine uptake. But that wasn’t enough. Because it couldn’t be. The logic created by the “deadly pandemic” narrative demands that every single person alive be vaccinated. That is why there is no recognition of the effects of seasonality or of the fact that prior infection provides a level of protection to new infection that is at least as good as that provided by vaccination.

We now see an obsession with vaccinating everyone that can only be described as pathological. The tone taken towards those people who have so far chosen not to be vaccinated is derogatory and dehumanizing to the extreme. They are portrayed as ”anti-vaxxers”, tin foil hat wearing loons, and irresponsible “granny killers”. No effort is made to listen to their real arguments, such as that the vaccine has not been shown to be less risky than the disease for healthy young people, or that it’s hard to trust data from pharmacetical companies and drug regulators when they’ve repeatedly been caught lying and hiding data in the past, or that the vaccine is still only a year old and there is no long term follow-up data. These very valid arguments are portrayed as ridiculous, outlandish, and dumb, when they are anything but.

Peter Goetzche argued in his book, “Deadly medicines and organized crime”, that no-one should take a new drug that’s been on the market for less than seven years, in light of the fact that it often takes that long for dangers to become known and dangerous drugs to be pulled off the market. In recent months, we’ve learned that the Astra-Zeneca vaccine can cause deadly blood clots in the brain, and we’ve learned that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can cause myocarditis. The authorities say that these events are extremely rare, based on the number of events that are reported to the authorities. But this ignores the fact that most adverse events don’t get reported.

In recent weeks, I’ve personally seen multiple cases of myocarditis that occurred days after vaccination. When I’ve suggested to colleagues that we should report them to the authorities as possible vaccine side effects, the response I’ve been met with has been roughly this: “oh, yeah, maybe that’s a good idea… I don’t know how to do that”. I’ve reported the cases I’ve handled personally, but my guess, based on this reaction, is that most other cases have not been reported. Obviously, if you believe that what actually gets reported is an accurate estimate of the reality, then you will grossly underestimate the case rate.

It’s hard to maintain faith in science when it is so wilfully distorted to accord with a political agenda, and when many doctors and scientists so happily go along with what is handed down from on high. I recently learned that an excellent study on the covid vaccines, carried out at a prestigious institution, has spent months trying to get published in a peer-reviewed journal, but has been denied again and again, because its results don’t align with the official dogma. Clearly, the journals are engaging in politically motivated censorship. When this is the case, peer-review becomes a harmful process, whose only purpose is to determine the political acceptability of research, not it’s quality or usefulness. It becomes impossible for the lay person, and even for doctors and scientists, to know what the truth is, because uncomfortable truths remain buried or remain at the pre-print stage, which makes it all too easy to dismiss them – “Oh, that’s just a pre-print, it hasn’t been peer-reviewed”. That is the world we live in.

I will end on a positive note though. The delta variant ravaged through India in a few months in spring, and the population went from 20% to 70% with antibodies. 50% of the population was infected over a two month period. That’s not the positive part, this is: Since then case rates have remained low, even as autumn has arrived. That is in spite of the fact that only around 15% of the population has currently been vaccinated. It would appear that the country has reached the point of herd immunity. And it only took a few months to get there, due to the incredible infectiousness of the delta variant. 

The idea that herd immunity can only be reached with vaccines is perhaps the most laughable idea to be heavily promulgated during the pandemic, at least to everyone with even a little knowledge of immunology and history. Eighteen months in to the pandemic, most countries are at or on the cusp of herd immunity, regardless of how effective they have been at vaccinating their populations. There is no need to force the remaining 15-30% of the population to take a vaccine they don’t want. The end of the pandemic is in sight.

...

WIND: spot-on.

I can personally attest to the fact that doctors are uninterested in and/or do not have time to report even very serious side effects. In my case, a damaging peripheral neuropathy caused by the antibiotic Metronidazole took me two years to recover from and to this day has lingering effects. The doctor could not be bothered to follow up (never heard back), and the nurse was an idiot.

That myocarditis from COVID vaccines is far more prevalent than claimed is a near-certainty. It hurts young men especially. Society does not value young men, and it is OK to fuck them over in the name of beating COVID. No one in charge cares whether the risk exceeds the benefit.

What are the odds that a physician would personally see multiple cases of a “rare” side effect? That doctor should buy lottery tickets!

What are the odds that my own personal physician as of May 2021 had already had five patients develop severe reactions to the COVID vaccines that took a month or longer to recover from, with one requiring hospitalization? He should buy lottery tickets!

Why in this politically-charged climate of COVID terrorism would a doctor report side effects? It is all downside: it takes time and effort s/he doesn’t have, and might get him/her reprimanded or fired by the institution if done too often. So much easier to shrug it off. Next patient please!

COVID “vaccines” ===> Immune-Stimulating Prophylactic Therapeutics?

re: ethics in medicine
re: What is a “Vaccine”? Redefining it for COVID

I reject the effort to redefine longstanding terminology so as to facilitate public messaging (propaganda), because it undermines debate and ends up turning everything into fruitless quarreling. This is what has happened in politics, numerous examples abound there. So now it is being done in medicine.

Isn’t it time to call the Trump vaccines what they really are? That is, immune-stimulating prophylactic therapeutics (ISPT’s). With demonstrated benefits, but benefits that seemingly age about as well as last autumn’s filberts.

Of course the public needs something simpler than “immune-stimulating prophylactic therapeutics” or even ISPT’s. But the medical establishment loves such mumbo-jumbo (helps keep the unwashed impressed with their superior wisdom), so let 'em have it, or something similar.

Why?

The difference between a vaccine and ISPT is very important for public messaging, should any of our public officials ever want to do so honestly.

Because you do not acquire immunity from COVID with the “vaccine”. Rather you acquire some varying level of immune response against COVID, one that decreases quickly with time.

Compare that to infection-acquired natural immunity. Even that might fade with time (or in weak individuals), but all signs say it is superior to COVID ISPT’s—the body generates multiple responses to the virus.

Given more and more deaths from COVID among the vaccinated (especially in high-risk groups), some messaging points come to mind to help protect the public by helping them understand the risks:

• The vaccinated need to understand that they are not immune, retaining some level of risk that progressively and fairly rapidly declines. Precautions should be taken for high-risk folks since their immune-response starting point might be low to begin with.
• Those with natural immunity appear to be far better protected (longer lasting), an idea avoided in public discussion in favor of the “vaccination” mantra. Those with it can unload some of the psychological burden.
• It might be wise to let healthy people acquire natural immunity with low risk (after an ISPT).
• Similarly, it might be wise to determine the peak of resistance for “vaccinated” people at low risk to acquire natural immunity with low risk (after an ISPT).

What is a “Vaccine”? Redefining it for COVID Messaging

re: ethics in medicine

The Trump COVID vaccines have surely saved a lot of lives. Maybe a short-term win, since allegedly rare breakthrough infections are surging and hospitalizing/killing people. And we must hope that aside from protecting high-risk groups that mass vaccination is not a Pandora’s Box that will cause far greater harm.

Meanwhile, the unvaccinated (with superior natural immunity or not) are being set up for persecution as scapegoats, in case something Bad does come to pass.

See also: People Think COVID is 81x More Dangerous Than it Actually Is

The Daily Bell: COVID Propaganda Roundup: The ‘Safe and Effective’ Narrative Implodes

by Ben Bartee, 2021-09-15

CDC’s old “vaccine” definition:

“a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease”

CDC’s new “vaccine” defiinition:

“a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases”

Likewise, Merriam-Webster’s old “vaccine” definition:

“a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease”

Merriam-Webster’s new “vaccine” definition:

“a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious disease”

WIND: by the first definition, Vitamin D is a vaccine, stress hormones are vaccines, foods are vaccines, and so on. Without the pathogen there can be no specific reaction so fault me for that claim if you like but all of the aforementioned influene the immune system strongly. Even the second definition leaves open wide-ranging possibilities.

Science.org: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta —  “Vaccines Work, but not well enough”

re: ethics in medicine
re: What is a “Vaccine”? Redefining it for COVID

Are the Trump vaccines* not “working”? Poor data analysis/stratification coupled to worse reporting is a public health disaster. See discussion below.

Science.org: A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

by MEREDITH WADMAN, 2021-09-16

COVID surge in Israel, September 2021

With early vaccination and outstanding data, country is the world’s real-life COVID-19 lab.

...Israel has among the world’s highest levels of vaccination for COVID-19, with 78% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. More than half are in fully vaccinated people, underscoring the extraordinary transmissibility of the Delta variant and stoking concerns that the benefits of vaccination ebb over time.

...“I watch [Israeli data] very, very closely because it is some of the absolutely best data coming out anywhere in the world,” says David O’Connor, a viral sequencing expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Israel is the model,” agrees Eric Topol, a physician-scientist at Scripps Research. “It’s pure mRNA [messenger RNA] vaccines. It’s out there early. It’s got a very high level population [uptake]. It’s a working experimental lab for us to learn from.”

...People vaccinated in January had a 2.26 times greater risk for a breakthrough infection than those vaccinated in April. (Potential confounders include the fact that the very oldest Israelis, with the weakest immune systems, were vaccinated first.)

At the same time, cases in the country, which were scarcely registering at the start of summer, have been doubling every week to 10 days since then, with the Delta variant responsible for most of them. They have now soared to their highest level since mid-February, with hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions beginning to follow. How much of the current surge is due to waning immunity versus the power of the Delta variant to spread like wildfire is uncertain.

...What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older. “There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” says Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) who has consulted on COVID-19 for the government. “One of the big stories from Israel [is]: ‘Vaccines work, but not well enough.’”

...

Yet boosters are unlikely to tame a Delta surge on their own, says Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at Technion. In Israel, the current surge is so steep that “even if you get two-thirds of those 60-plus [boosted], it’s just gonna give us another week, maybe 2 weeks until our hospitals are flooded.”... Aran’s message for the United States and other wealthier nations considering boosters is stark: “Do not think that the boosters are the solution.”

WIND: reports like this could easily becomes sound-bite nuggets for anti-vaxxers*, as in “the vaccines don’t work, so why bother”. But at-risk groups need to understand two things which are not contradictory: (1) vaccination so far greatly reduces mortality and hospitalization, and (2) the protection fades quickly, and risk rises again.

Consider who is most likely to be infected by COVID: (1) the elderly/weak/obese, and (2) the unvaccinated (presumably on average mostly young/healthy).

In general, the elderly/weak fail to mount strong immune response with any vaccine (COVID or other). Yet these most-at-risk people were the first to be vaccinated, and so now their resistance to COVID has declined substantially. And it might have been nil or weak even after vaccination.

So it is to be expected that a significant number of the elderly/weak will become infected even after “vaccination”, and that many will die. But if it is just the elderly/weak/earliest vaccinated, how to explain the steep surge?

The surges in Israel and elsewhere imply that the vaccines are allowing orders of magnitude more breakthrough infections—if they were “rare”, COVID would have long since died down. So it feels like we are being lied to, it feels like a psyops campaign, and it feels like the government is setting us up for a disaster, while scapegoating the unvaccinated.

The argument for booster shots is based on the presumption that there was some immunie system response initially, and a booster will greatly strengthen that. But will boosters do much for those who responded poorly to begin with, those most at risk? At this date, the evidence is poor that boosters are the right approach.

The non-stratified (hence incompetent) data reporting is not explaining which cohort(s) are being infected with bad outcomes. Perhaps the data stratification insights exist, but it’s not discussed as it ought. Could it be that something truly scary being hidden from the public, such as vaccinated people across stratifications are all being hit? Or is it just experts and reporters incompetent at data analysis and/or communication?

We need competent stratified data show what the “vaccines” are actually accomplishing across all cohorts. The data must be stratified by age and morbidities and reported accurately in a timely manner so that meaningful insights can be had. Otherwise, we cannot know if the surge in severe outcomes in vaccinated people is a problem in high-risk cohorts, or a general cross-sectional issue, which would be a terrible prospect.

First, public health experts must prove with stratified data that breakthrough infections are limited in scope. At this point, I find that very hard to believe, but there is a lot to be learned around who is at risk. Is it just the high-risk groups, or is something more insidious going on?

The prophylactic therapeutics commonly referred to as vaccines offer partial protection and fade quickly over time. High-risk individuals should assume protection fades over time, and take precautions accordingly.

* I am neither pro nor anti-vax, speaking in terms of some viciuos “hammer down the nail that stands up” policy. I am for personal choice that evaluates the specific individual’s medical situation. And vaccines might prove to be our undoing.

Israel Sees Record-High Daily Infections, Hints Fourth Vaccine Dose

re: The Epoch Times
re: ethics in medicine

What the heck is going on with vaccinations vs infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world?

The Epoch Times: Israel Sees Record-High Daily Infections, Hints Fourth Vaccine Dose

by Lorenz Duchamps, 2021-09-15

Highly vaccinated Israel recorded the highest number of daily CCP virus infections per capita this week as the country’s health ministry announced that on average, more than 10,700 new COVID-19 cases are being reported each day.

Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash said during a video call on Sept. 14 that the new figures are “a record that did not exist in the previous waves,” The Times of Israel reported.

...Although positive cases are on the rise again, people who fell seriously ill from COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, declined compared to the numbers of previous weeks. Ash noted that on average, people who fell seriously ill increased daily by around 70 to 80 new patients.

...“Vaccines fade over time, and after six months, they significantly decline while people become infected even after two vaccines,” Ash said, answering a question on the possibility of a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose. “We don’t know when the vaccine will be approved, I very much hope it will not be within half a year like this, but the third vaccine will last longer. We are starting to prepare so that we have stockpiles of vaccines if necessary,” he continued.

...

WIND: a FOURTH vaccine dose? Really makes me wonder if the vaccinated are spreading COVID far more than public health authorities will admit to, making this a pandemic of the vaccinated, albeit with far fewer severe consequences for them.

And I wonder how many children will be harmed relative to how many helped. The bodies of children are not like adults, and they are being robbed of the chance for far superior natural immunity at nil risk. My bet is more harm than good.

The country began offering COVID-19 booster shots to children as young as 12 on Aug. 29, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said a campaign that began in July among seniors has slowed a rise in severe illness caused by the Delta variant. Currently, about 2.7 million Israelis have accepted the booster vaccine.

Clearly vaccines are not—they are short-term therapeutics, with all sorts of negative outcomes that no one has discovered yet—that is the way the world works everywhere—unforeseen consequences. I would love to see some objective scientific objective debate that is free of the rotten stench of the propaganda narrative. What might be the repurcussions a year or two from now and could they be quite serious?

Why Mass Vaccinations Prolong & Make Epidemics Deadlier: Vaccines Expert Calls Out Governments

Reuters: Israel Lowers Age of Eligibility for COVID-19 Vaccine Booster to 30: Health Ministry

by Reuters, 2021--8-25

Israel expanded its COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to those over 30 years old on Tuesday, broadening its booster campaign amid a surge in the Delta variant.

A statement from the Health Ministry said its decision to lower the age of eligibility for a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine from 40 to 30 followed a recommendation of its advising experts and its epidemiology task-force and vaccines committee. Boosters are administered to people who have received their second dose at least five months ago.

Evidence has emerged showing that the vaccine’s protection diminishes with time. But there is no consensus among scientists and agencies that a third dose is necessary.

...

DIGLLOYD: vaccines are working so well, that Israel is already talking about a 4th booster shot.

A sign of stupidity is to keep repeating what doesn’t work. But at least in reducing mortality the therapeutics falsely described as vaccines do seem to be working for a short-term win. Long term, who knows what bad effects are building.

Study Suggests that COVID Hospitalizations and Deaths are up to 50% Bogus

No, this is no is not a Babylon Bee post.

When the zero-credibility far-Left The Atlantic questions COVID hospitalization statistics, maybe a sea change is coming? Or maybe someone over there had a concussion and came to their senses.

The Atlantic: Our Most Reliable Pandemic Number Is Losing Meaning

by David Zweig, 2021-09-13

A new study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases.

...The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.

...might inflate the true numbers by a factor of two. “As we look to shift from cases to hospitalizations as a metric to drive policy and assess level of risk to a community or state or country,” Doron told me, referring to decisions about school closures, business restrictions, mask requirements, and so on, “we should refine the definition of hospitalization. Those patients who are there with rather than from COVID don’t belong in the metric.”

WIND: can someone tell me how a number that might be wrong by 50% ever was a “reliable pandemic number”? Anyone honest will admit it never was. But how wrong we will probably never know, due to slipshod practices of the medical establishment.

It’s not hard to discount COVID deaths and hospitalizations by at least 25% over the course of the pandemic, due to medical malfeasance in assigning cause. But I had never thought that it might be as high as 50%. And maybe it’s not, but it’s far away from zero. And that’s how we are still making public policy.

Babylon Bee: New IPhone 13 Will Require Vaccination To Unlock Screen

re: The Babylon Bee

Never say never.

Babylon Bee: New IPhone 13 Will Require Vaccination To Unlock Screen

2021-09-14

CUPERTINO, CA—During the much-anticipated unveiling of the new iPhone 13 at this year's Apple Event, CEO Tim Cook revealed that the newest model and iOS will ask users to confirm vaccination status before unlocking the screen.

"We here at Apple are doing our part to keep you safe by keeping our sacred products out of the hands of the filthy unvaccinated," said Cook as he paced the stage. "That's why starting with the iPhone 13, all Apple users will be required to scan their vaccination card in order to unlock their iPhones."

... Tim Cook confirmed he has software engineers and Chinese Uyghur slaves working overtime to ensure the "vax-verify" technology is ready for primetime.

...

WIND: I hope the 1/3 of the population that has trouble with humor gets this one.

Peer Review of Medical/Scientific Papers has become a Farce Driven by Political and Financial Concerns

re:COVID

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Does peer review of medical/scientific papers mean much any more?

Surely it has some value in stopping obviously bad papers from being published. But most scientific and medical studies are bullshit anyway! And the number of retractions is absurdly high. We live in a world awash with garbage “science”.

Now let’s add in politics, money, and status. What exactly does  “peer” review mean? Which peers?Those that agree with the narrative, of course! What are the chances of contrarian opposing viewpoints having any role in reviewing a paper for publication? Nil.

For example, do you think that John Ioannidis would have let the garbage science in the Bangladesh mask study be published on his watch? Almost certainly not, but who is ever going to ask a world-class thinker like him to review such a laughable study?

More problematic for decades now: are the chances of a high-grade study showing a prescription drug does more harm than good? Big Pharma’s minions would never let that happen. Companies like Pfizer have paid big penalties for falsifying data and lying about their products—look it up. The pressures from these entities including the direct personal attacks on study authors, getting them fired, etc.

Taking this to the other side, what are the chances of an unpopular viewpoint getting past GroupThink peer review committees? About zero. How many studies opposing the orthodoxy get published... I’d guess few to none. And then, if you want to stay in the field, you had better toe the line and not come up with anything that challenges the orthodoxy.

Peer review sounds good, but in today’s world, but it’s an idea built on premises that today have no foundation.

Here’s an MD’s viewpoint.

Sebastian Rushworth MD: A reflection on covid mania

by Sebastian Rushworth M.D.., 23 September 2021. Emphasis added.

...

It’s hard to maintain faith in science when it is so wilfully distorted to accord with a political agenda, and when many doctors and scientists so happily go along with what is handed down from on high. I recently learned that an excellent study on the covid vaccines, carried out at a prestigious institution, has spent months trying to get published in a peer-reviewed journal, but has been denied again and again, because its results don’t align with the official dogma. Clearly, the journals are engaging in politically motivated censorship.

When this is the case, peer-review becomes a harmful process, whose only purpose is to determine the political acceptability of research, not it’s quality or usefulness. It becomes impossible for the lay person, and even for doctors and scientists, to know what the truth is, because uncomfortable truths remain buried or remain at the pre-print stage, which makes it all too easy to dismiss them – “Oh, that’s just a pre-print, it hasn’t been peer-reviewed”. That is the world we live in.

...

WIND: “follow the science” ===> “follow the officially approved science”!

Why Mass Vaccinations Prolong & Make Epidemics Deadlier: Vaccines Expert Calls Out Governments

re:COVID

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

I am not “anti vax”. Indeed I have had many vaccinations over my lifetime, including for Shingles last year. Rather, I am for personal medical choices appropriate for each individual, as decided by that person in consultation with those they trust. Some of my family members are vaccinated and some are not, each for our own reasons. Those that insist that there is no choice and no decision to be made on vaccination via personal risk assessment are irrational and vicious usurpers. They do not belong in the discussion.

Below, the powers that be are already trying to discredit Vanden Bossche by calling him a veterinarian—but read the first paragraph on his wide-ranging qualifications and decide for yourself (click the title to see the full article).

The COVID vaccines are more akin a prophylactic therapeutic, designed to reduce hospitalization and death. They do not stop COVID—witness the large numbers of vaccinated people getting COVID in spite of being vaccinated and the calls for booster shots in less than a year. Those at risk are at far lower risk after vaccination, but that is only one consideration, as Vanden Bossche discusses.

Why Mass Vaccinations Prolong & Make Epidemics Deadlier: Vaccines Expert Calls Out Governments

by Robin Monotti Graziadei, 2021-09-13

...

“Mass vaccination campaigns may have a beneficial short-time effect in that they reduce viral spread and protect vulnerable people from disease (e.g., elderly people and those with underlying disease), but will eventually drive the propagation of more infectious variants. Dominant circulation of the latter will lead to a resurgence of viral infectious pressure, thereby eroding the innate immune defense of the unvaccinated (i.e., mostly younger age groups including children) and thus making them more susceptible to contracting Covid-19 disease. This already explains why mass vaccination campaigns conducted in the middle of a pandemic will only cause Sars-CoV-2 to engender more disease and claim more human lives. Because of this mass vaccination program, waves of morbidity will continue for much longer, as more (recovery from) disease cases will be required to compensate for the erosion of the population’s innate immunity and, therefore, to make up for the latter’s deficient contribution to HI. [Herd Immunity].

...There should be no doubt that non-transmission-blocking vaccines (i.e., so-called ‘leaky’ or ‘imperfect’ vaccines) can never ever control a pandemic, even though they may temporarily protect against disease. Only temporarily? Yes, indeed. Given the globally increasing immune pressure and concomitant infectious viral pressure, genomic epidemiologists have no doubt that this pandemic roller coaster will not stop before it takes us over the cliff into the abyss of complete viral resistance to anti-spike (S) antibodies. That is where all runaway trains of the different ongoing pandemics of highly infectious variants will be coming together and converge into a big whirl where they can no longer be distinguished from one another. The first stages of this evolution is what we now begin to see in countries which have already massively vaccinated their population (e.g., Israel). There is no doubt that other countries like the United Kingdom and the United States will soon go down the same path. Due to increasing resistance to neutralizing anti-S antibodies (Abs), these countries are now even beginning to shift from a primarily beneficial (i.e., less susceptible to severe disease) to a primarily detrimental effect (more susceptible to severe disease) in the vaccinated as compared to the unvaccinated (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201).

Conclusively, mass vaccination campaigns during a pandemic of highly infectious variants fail to control viral transmission. Instead of contributing to building HI, they dramatically delay natural establishment of HI (Vanden Bossche, August 2021). This is why the ongoing universal vaccination campaigns are absolutely detrimental to public and global health.

People, no matter their names and reputation, who are not knowledgeable in the fields of immunology, virology, vaccinology and evolutionary biology/ epidemiology are, therefore, not a good source for information or advice. This particularly applies to politicians. The vast majority of them are not only scientifically illiterate but they are typically also unable or unwilling to work in a mid- or long-term perspective. Because they have no understanding whatsoever of the evolutionary dynamics of this pandemic, they simply do not understand that the rise in cases of disease currently observed in a number of European countries as well as in the US is due to enhanced circulation of more infectious variants that enjoy exceptional training as mass vaccination only increases the immune pressure exerted by the overall population.  Their simplistic reasoning make them conclude that vaccinating the unvaccinated (i.e., younger age groups and children) is going to solve the problem, whereas each and every independent (!) knowledgeable expert understands that this is only going to further raise the population-level immune pressure on viral infectiousness and, therefore, promote the adaptation of additional mutations that will eventually enable full neutralization escape of circulating, highly infectious variants (Vanden Bossche, June 2021).

Initially, people were told that ‘the more you vaccinate, the more you will prevent mutants from being generated and the less more infectious variants will spread’. This mantra proved miserably wrong as not only viral spread has increased in a number of countries despite very high vaccine coverage rates but it has now also become clear that the vaccinated spread the virus as much as the unvaccinated do (whereas it is even highly likely that vaccinees are a more important source of transmission of naturally selected, highly infectious variants (3)). Sadly enough, even a number of MDs have joined the club of fact checkers and have been taking advantage of their titles and reputation to divulgate simplistic and erroneous interpretations of the effect of mass vaccination campaigns. I cannot emphasize enough that, although none of them combine sufficient knowledge of virology, immunology, vaccinology and evolutionary biology to be able to understand what is driving the evolution of these pandemics towards a disastrous outcome, they have engaged in vilifying attacks that excelled in arrogance but were never built on solid scientific grounds. As if none of this were sufficient, TV channels and MSM have blindly supported the destructive rhetoric...

...

Conclusion

The mass vaccination hype will undoubtedly enter history as the most reckless experiment in the history of medicine. It will be cited as the unequivocal proof of how overuse or misuse of man-made antimicrobials leads to antimicrobial resistance, regardless of whether the antimicrobial is an antibiotic or an antibody administered through passive immunization or elicited via active immunization. Mass vaccination campaigns conducted in the middle of a viral pandemic will, for generations to come, become the most sobering example of the boundaries of human intervention in nature in general and of the boundaries of conventional vaccinology in particular. This irrational experiment will unambiguously highlight the clear-cut limitations of conventional vaccine approaches. It will convincingly illustrate that – unlike natural acute self-limiting infection or disease – ‘modern’ technologies alone do not suffice to develop vaccines that are capable of preventing viral transmission or immune escape...

While the word ‘vaccine’ may be banned, the word ‘fact checker’ will only gain traction as a general term used for any scientifically illiterate person who uses arrogance to vilify those who speak the truth and promotes – in exchange for dirty money – a narrative and groupthink mentality that are merely inspired by the interests of the stakeholders they blindly support.

For lack of insight, international and public health authorities will continue to blame lack of success on the more infectious variants and propose (impose?) boosters as a never-ending strategy to chasing new emerging variants...

WIND: this is precisely the kind of viewpoint that the propagandists over at Stanford ought to be debating.

I revisit my assertions from more than a year ago: we should protect those at risk, and not worry too much about the rest of the population. We should focus on treatment. This virus has to make its way through the population like any other before we get to a better place. Even the experts are now saying it will become endemic. Perhaps because of vaccines?

I don’t see anything in the foregoing that contradicts what is happening today. That doesn’t make it true, but the concerns seem credible. Consider:

• Herd immunity (HI) is elusive; it is delayed precisely as Vanden Bossche states (“Instead of contributing to building HI, they dramatically delay natural establishment of HI”).
• Vaccinations do reduce hospitalizations and deaths. Short term benefit, as Vanden Bossche states.
• Large numbers of the vaccinated are being infected. Some are dying. (“shift to... primarily detrimental effect (more susceptible to severe disease) in the vaccinated”).
• Boosters are already being touted as important. Perhaps because “this pandemic roller coaster will not stop before it takes us over the cliff into the abyss of complete viral resistance to anti-spike (S) antibodies”.
• Follow the money—vaccines are worth $100B or more to Big Pharma. The Science doesn’t matter now.
• With rare exceptions, doctors just follow guidelines; few have training even outside their own silo, making them unqualified to weigh in: “MDs have joined the club of fact checkers and have been taking advantage of their titles and reputation to divulgate simplistic and erroneous interpretations”.

Let’s look at one quote again, about medical doctors (MDs):

...Sadly enough, even a number of MDs have joined the club of fact checkers and have been taking advantage of their titles and reputation to divulgate simplistic and erroneous interpretations of the effect of mass vaccination campaigns. I cannot emphasize enough that, although none of them combine sufficient knowledge of virology, immunology, vaccinology and evolutionary biology to be able to understand what is driving the evolution of these pandemics towards a disastrous outcome, they have engaged in vilifying attacks that excelled in arrogance but were never built on solid scientific grounds...

My own personal experience, and one widely acknowledged by MD’s themselves it that MD’s have strictly limited knowledge outside their own medical siloes. That should be painfully obviuos to anyone who has ever needed to see a specialist, let alone ask about nutrition! MD’s are totally unqualified to weigh in on this debate.

CDC Says COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalance is 83%, 2.1 Infections per Case Estimated

re:COVID

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Things are looking up.

City Journal: Delta is Dying

by Joel Zinberg, 2021-09-10

...The CDC looked for evidence of prior infection or vaccination in the blood of approximately 1.5 million blood donors from around the country between July 2020 and May 2021. Based on the antibodies found in the specimens, they were able to distinguish between those who had been vaccinated and those with antibodies resulting from infection. As of the end of May, the combined vaccine and infection seroprevalence (indicating the proportion of the population with antibodies and some level of immune protection) was 83 percent for those 16 and older (children under 16 can’t donate blood). Over 20 percent had antibodies indicating an earlier infection and recovery. Based on the infection-induced seroprevalence, the researchers estimated that there were actually 2.1 infections per reported Covid-19 case.

Now, following the surge from the Delta variant, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases (all ages) is over 40 million, or 8 million more than on May 31. Applying the 2.1 multiple from the blood donation study to the entire population results in a real number of cases and people with natural immunity of 84 million, or 25 percent of the population. In addition, 177 million people are fully vaccinated, which is 53 percent of the total population and 34 million more than at the end of May. An additional 10 percent of the population has received a single dose, which provides some protection, albeit less than the full two doses.

...While there is overlap because some previously infected people have been vaccinated, roughly 80 percent of the country has vaccine or natural immunity. Both types of immunity provide effective protection against Covid-19. The risk of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated is small, and when they occur, the vaccines continue to be effective in preventing serious illness, even for the Delta variant. The CDC also acknowledges that reinfection of recovered Covid-19 patients is rare.

...

WIND: there are weaknesses in the study—it only was done with those donating blood, so that cohort might differ from the general population (e.g., the elderly could be far less likey to donate blood). Real figures could be notably higher, but presumably not lower since COVID is well-known to be asymptomatic in many.

Why are politicians demonizing the unvaccinated, including those with natural immunity?

If you want to make the personal choice of risking COVID (smart or stupid for your own personal situation), do so. If you have natural immunity, you not only don’t need the vaccine, it likely carries risks of more severe reactions (think risk assessment).

And if you want to be vaccinated... do so ASAP and then shut the hell up about the unvaccinated, since the CDC data implies that 83% of adults should already have immunity.

BTW, how can we not have herd immunity at 83% seroprevalance? These “experts” seem to be know-nothings when it comes to epidemiology.

COVID Natural Immunity Gaining a Wee Bit of Traction?

re: natural immunity

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Demanding vaccination without taking into account natural immunity is propaganda.

Jonathan Turley: California Medical Ethics Expert Sues University Over Vaccine Mandate

by Jonathan Turley, 2021-09-10

We recently discussed the lawsuit filed by a George Mason University professor who refused to get the Covid vaccine upon the recommendation of his doctors and due to his natural antibodies after recovering from the virus. GMU later relented and gave him an exception. However, now a University of California professor has sued on the same ground. Aaron Kheriaty, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California at Irvine, is the latest effort to force review of the issue of natural antibodies as a protection from Covid. 

Kheriaty is suing the Board of Regents and the University president due to his antibodies from a case of Covid-19 in July 2020. He told SBG“[i]f my immunity is as good, indeed, very likely better, than that conferred by the vaccine, there doesn’t seem to be any rational basis for discriminating against my form of immunity and requiring me to get a different form of immunity.”

What is most interesting about the case is that Kheriaty serves as director of UCI’s Medical Ethics Program and is a member of the UC Office of the President Critical Care Bioethics Working Group. Kheriaty has complained that it is now verboten to even raise natural antibodies despite studies showing that they may be even more effective than vaccines.  A study (often cited by the CDC) suggests the opposite.

...This case however presents the natural antibody case in its strongest and most direct terms. The odds are in favor of the university but it could be a case with potential for the Supreme Court.

WIND: this case ought to be expedited.

The Epoch Times: Previous COVID-19 Infection Protects Against Delta Variant Better Than Pfizer Vaccine: Study

By Mimi Nguyen Ly, 2021-08-27

People who have previously recovered from COVID-19 have been observed to have better protection against the Delta variant of the CCP virus compared to those who received the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine, according to a study from Israel.

“This analysis demonstrated that natural immunity affords longer-lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease, and hospitalization due to the Delta variant,” researchers from Maccabi Healthcare and Tel Aviv University said.

“This is the largest real-world observational study comparing natural immunity, gained through previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, to vaccine-induced immunity, afforded by the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine.”

Natural immunity refers to the immunity a person retains after having recovered from a virus, in this case, the CCP virus, also known as the novel coronavirus.

...

WIND: I predict that more and more studies are going to show this, and that over time, those with natural immunity will do far better as a group than the vaccinated.

Michigan Health Care System Says Workers With Natural Immunity Don't Need Vaccine

by TYLER DURDEN, 2021-09-13

Late last month, we first reported on a groundbreaking new study that appeared to "end the debate" on the subject of natural vs. vaccine-induced immunity. The study found that, when it comes to preventing serious infection with the delta variant, natural infection with a prior strain of COVID was as much as 13x more effective at preventing future infection than being fully vaccinated.

Dr. Fauci's response: "I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that."

Well, if he doesn't have a good justification, then he's going to have to find one soon. Because as the Biden Administration ups the pressure on employers to force their workers to choose between their jobs and the vaccine, Spectrum Health, an extensive hospital system in Western Michigan, has just declared that prior employees (including nurses, doctors, etc.) won't be required to get the vaccine if they have already been infected.

The decision, which was made by the hospital system's medical exemption committee, was first reported by the Detroit News. Individuals with a positive PCR or antigen test plus a positive antibody test from within the past thre emonths can claim the exemption. 

... The CDC has said it's "uncommon" for those infected with COVID to become reinfected within 90 days. But nobody really knows for sure. "Experts don’t know for sure how long this protection lasts, and the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 far outweighs any benefits of natural immunity," the CDC says.

What they don't want you to realize is the same is true for the vaccines.

WIND: Dr Fauci is a political hack who never has answers for anything that might undermine the narrative.

WSJ: Hearing too Much in a Noisy World

re: Glenn Greenwald

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

This one hit home for me—my #1 stressor is the inescapable noise at my home, which most would perceive as a quiet neighborhood. I was always noise-sensitive (HSP), but after my concussion it became torture for a while*; now it’s “just” a daily stressor that makes me want to travel away from home to the mountains.

* Post-concussion for months, noise was unbearable, the visual equivalent of having someone shine a flashlight into my eyes. For up to a year, I could not tune out sounds and would be conscious of half a dozen irritating noises from all directions, such as in a grocery store. Things have greatly improved, but it’s still something that can destroy my concentration and disable me, if too loud/long.

Hearing Too Much in a Noisy World

by Nina Kraus, 2021-09-14

Even ordinary levels of background din can drown out the meaning our brains seek from sound

When the pandemic struck in March of 2020, the human world went quiet. During what some are now calling the anthropause, highways and byways emptied of cars while shops and services locked their doors for weeks and months. Using sensitive sound level analyzers, scientists from every continent confirmed a reduction in human-created sound levels, in some cities by as much as seven decibels, which translates to about one-fifth as loud as before.

...Few people realize that there are two types of dangerous noise. Everyone knows about the danger of loud sounds...

The sounds of human activity generally don’t reach that accepted threshold of “unsafe.” Most people would consider the day-to-day sounds of urban life or a bustling workplace “background noise.” We think we shrug it off and tune it out. But we are not really tuning it out so much as we are adapting our lives to a constant state of alarm.

...Chronic exposure to meaningless noise requires our brains to sustain an exhausting state of alertness and ultimately dulls our perceptions...

If you live in a city or labor in a noisy workplace, you may ace the hearing-threshold test when your ears are tested, but you are less able than your peers who are accustomed to quiet environments to detect sounds in noise or to pick up on subtle timing cues in sounds. A 2004 study in Psychophysiology of noise-exposed workers with otherwise clinically “normal” hearing found that they showed diminished responses to subtle changes in otherwise predictable acoustic patterns. They also were excessively distracted by irrelevant sounds, which interfered with their ability to perform tasks. Such weakened aural processing is exactly the sort that we associate with old age.

...Noise can have a pernicious effect not only on our hearing, but on all our senses. When there was background noise, subjects in the 2004 Psychophysiology study performed worse on visual-motor tasks, such as tracking a moving target on a computer screen with a mouse pointer. Road traffic noise has even been convincingly correlated with heart disease. Indeed, chronic noise exposure increases both the levels of stress people report and the measurable level of the stress hormone cortisol.

...Some medical scientists have grown concerned that the lifesaving medical equipment in neonatal ICUs could have the unintended consequence of funneling a jumble of potentially damaging noise into the brains of fragile newborns during their developmentally critical first few days of life... “auditory trauma” may compromise the linguistic and cognitive development of infants.

...Having our hearing always “on” is fatiguing for the brain, especially when the background noise is unimportant but unrelenting... Reading scores of children in classrooms on the noisy side of the school lagged behind those of their peers on the quiet side by up to 11 months. Mitigation efforts, including rubber rail padding and noise abatement materials in the affected classrooms, erased the learning gap.

...Another study, in 2005 in The Lancet, found that chronic exposure to aircraft noise negatively affected cognition and reading comprehension among children... according to a 2013 study in The Journal of Neuroscience, children raised in such environments often have a high level of neural noise in their brains, meaning that their auditory neurons are active even when the external world is quiet.

...

WIND: at my home at 5 AM the roar of the distant freeway starts. Revving engines miles away are heard at all hours (miles away), the train in Menlo Park 8 miles away is plainly audible, airplanes fly overhead regularly and are so loud they drown-out everything.

I have come to loathe many of my neighbor because of the all-day-long activities: leaf blowers, lawn mowers, shredders, septic-tank pump trucks, the unending construction jobs (never fewer than 5 within 1/2 mile), etc. Worst of all are next-door pool pumps, which run for hours and pollute my backyard with humming eletrical noise much of the day. I want to hear the birds and the wind, not some pool pump needed for the atrocity of a pool in a drought-stricken area. These neighbors of course locate their pumps as close as possible to the property line, so they have to hear it less.

Ear plugs and noise-canceling headphones you say? Then the rest of the world is cut-off, and irritation in the ears develops too. Those are non-solutions proposed by the oblivious. There is no real solution except to go elsewhere.

I do have some escape: when I travel in the mountains, I usually can sleep in places that are so quiet the ears (brain) strain to ear so much that phantom sounds can occur (low bass for me). At most it’s wind or owls or coyotes or some such.

In the past couple of years, I’ve also developed a faint hissing in my ears at most times. It seems to worsen when I’m stressed. I assume it is some form of tinnitus and I’ve long assumed it is due to nervous system damage (brain or nerves from ears), perhaps caused by my concussion or infectious trauma, not sure.

Glenn Greenwald: The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace

re: Glenn Greenwald

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Worth reading Glenn Greenwald because he is in a handful of journalists that still calls it like he sees it, ignoring sacred cows.

Glenn Greenwald: The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace

by Glenn Greenwald, 2021-09-14

While AOC's revolutionary and subversive socialist gown generated buzz, the normalization of maskless elites attended to by faceless servants is grotesque.

From the start of the pandemic, political elites have been repeatedly caught exempting themselves from the restrictive rules they impose on the lives of those over whom they rule. Governors, mayors, ministers and Speakers of the House have been filmed violating their own COVID protocols in order to dine with their closest lobbyist-friends, enjoy a coddled hair styling in chic salons, or unwind after signing new lockdown and quarantine orders by sneaking away for a weekend getaway with the family. The trend became so widespread that ABC News gathered all the examples under the headline “Elected officials slammed for hypocrisy for not following own COVID-19 advice,” while Business Insider in May updated the reporting with this: “14 prominent Democrats stand accused of hypocrisy for ignoring COVID-19 restrictions they're urging their constituents to obey."

...But as is so often the case, the most disturbing aspects of elite behavior are found not in what they have prohibited but rather in what they have decided is permissible. When it comes to mask mandates, it is now commonplace to see two distinct classes of people: those who remain maskless as they are served, and those they employ as their servants who must have their faces covered at all times. Prior to the COVID pandemic, it was difficult to imagine how the enormous chasm between the lives of cultural and political elites and everyone else could be made any larger, yet the pandemic generated a new form of crude cultural segregation: a series of protocols which ensure that maskless elites need not ever cast eyes upon the faces of their servant class.

...Similar scenes were visible at the even more opulent birthday bash which former President Barack Obama threw for himself to commemorate his 60 years on the planet... New York Times reporter Annie Karni explained that while some of the former president's neighbors found the party objectionable on the grounds of health and/or optics, many adamantly argued that such concerns were applicable only to ordinary people, not the more advanced and evolved species likely to be invited to such an extravagant and exclusive liberal party...

An avalanche of similarly repugnant imagery poured forth on Monday night at the most gluttonous and opulent royal court spectacle of them all: the annual Met Gala held by long-time Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour... Following Pelosi and Obama's examples, a long list of America's most glittering stars bravely risked exposure to a deadly virus by appearing without masks, all to ensure that Americans would never again be deprived of such a richly gratifying moment for them.

...

Even with all of this deceit and manipulation, there is something uniquely disturbing — creepy even — about becoming accustomed to seeing political and cultural elites wallowing in luxury without masks, while those paid small wages to serve them in various ways are forced to keep cloth over their faces. It is a powerful symbol of the growing rot at the core of America's cultural and social balkanization: a maskless elite attended to by a permanently faceless servant class. The country's workers have long been faceless in a figurative sense, and now, thanks to extremely selective application of decisively unscientific COVID restrictions, that condition has become literal.

WIND: no credible scientific evidence shows that masks stop community transmission of COVID. Garbage science on masks dominates. Mask up! (unless you are one of the elites)

City Journal: Delta is Dying

re:COVID

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Things are looking up.

City Journal: Delta is Dying

by Joel Zinberg, 2021-09-10

New CDC findings show that we’re closer than ever to the end of the pandemic.

Despite media claims that “We Can’t Turn the Corner on Covid,” the numbers of Covid-19 cases, new hospitalizations, and deaths nationwide peaked and started to decline around the beginning of September. The combination of this milestone, new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing widespread levels of vaccination and natural immunity, and improved availability of treatments suggests that, outside of isolated pockets, Covid-19 is likely to become a diminishing health risk in the United States.

... A new study from Israel confirms that natural immunity to Covid-19 is superior to vaccine-induced immunity, even with the Delta variant. Between June 1 and August 14, when Delta was dominant in Israel, the risk of infections was 13 times higher for vaccinated people than for previously infected, unvaccinated people when either the infection or vaccination had occurred between four and seven months before

...

WIND: within a few months COVID terrorism should taper off, but powerful forces aim to maintain the fears and demonize the unvaccinated, even those with natural immunity.

Stanford Medicine: Garbage Studies Masquerading as Science

re: Dr Scott Atlas
re: Dr. John Ionnadis
re: Sebastian Rushworth MD: How to understand scientific studies (in health and medicine)
re: Ioannidis: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

This Bangladesh study is such low-grade “science” with so many flaws and statistical lies that it is a dumpster fire of scientific incompetence. It ought to be used as a case study how not to do scientific studies. Yet Stanford is promoting it as evidence that masks work.

It is not surprising—I have read the output of Stanford University research for years, and I have watched it become more and more woke and politicized whenever controversial subjects are involved.

Surgical masks reduce COVID-19 spread, large-scale study shows

A large, randomized trial led by researchers at Stanford Medicine and Yale University has found that wearing a surgical face mask over the mouth and nose is an effective way to reduce the occurrence of COVID-19 in community settings...

...“We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford. “This is the gold standard for evaluating public health interventions. Importantly, this approach was designed be scalable in lower- and middle-income countries struggling to get or distribute vaccines against the virus.”

...

WIND: the “gold standard”? This study is full of methodological problems of many kinds. Its “randomization” is a joke, nor were there any real controls. It should be used as a case study of scientific incompetence. See the debunk, below.

How to Lie With Statistics and Bad Study Design, Mask Version

by Kevin Roche, 2021-09-02

This new study supposedly showing benefits of community masking has been touted for showing mask efficacy and pilloried by true scientists for its abysmal design and statistical methods...

First, note the bizarre organization that published the “study”.  That is a head-scratcher.  Couldn’t get Medrxiv to take it?   Second, note the corresponding authors.  They are not infectious disease researchers or epidemiologists.  As far as I can tell they are economists.  Now economists do a lot of good research, but you gotta believe there is an agenda at work here.  Third, just look at the primary description of the results, look at carefully by age group.  That is all I needed to see to know this is garbage.  Apparently CV-19 is so smart that it can tell how old a person wearing a mask is and decide whether or not to infect them based on age.  When you see that difference in effect by age group, you know some very serious confounding variable is at work.  Fourth, look at the confidence intervals, always a dead give away about how good a study’s results are.  Not just wide, but Pacific Ocean wide.

And now we get to the really fun part–the very selective cherrypicking of supposed results.  Reporting of symptoms was almost indistinguishable in the groups.  First of all, a very small number of the total villagers involved in the study were even reached.  Out of those 7.62% in the intervention group and 8.62% in the control group reported symptoms.  Statistically indistinguishable...

...My favorite is the fact that the intervention showed absolutely no impact on those under 50 years of age and only the most marginal effect on older groups.  There is no possible explanation for this other than an extremely discerning virus, capable of intuiting the age of various mask and non-mask wearers...

...

WIND: I recommend reading, for starters, How to understand scientific studies (in health and medicine) and Ioannidis: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.

Stanford Medicine today is polluted with anti-science anti-reason “experts” who refuse to debate issues, but instead shovel out bad science to support the narrative. This is the groupthink trash-talking crowd who engaged in the ad-hominem attack on Dr Scott Atlas, while ignoring world-class experts like epidemiologist Martin Kulldorf, Professor Sunetra Gupta, epidemiologist John Ionnadis and anyone with an objective viewpoint that doesn’t toe the line on the narrative about COVID.

Below, what makes this particularly “rich”, is that this is the same intellectual crooks in the medical establishment that refuse to engage in debate of the issues.

How misinformation, medical mistrust fuel vaccine hesitancy

Public trust in government agencies and health professionals; access to vaccines and treatments; and accurate, clear, nonjudgmental information about COVID-19 are key to counteracting misinformation about the disease.

...Not all health care workers on social media are reliable sources, however. “We have to have accountability for medical professionals who distribute harmful information,” said Vin Gupta, MD, a pulmonary critical care physician at the University of Washington...

WIND: no discussion of engaging alternative viewpoints. No discussion of natural immunity! This article serves propaganda purposes, avoiding serious discussion (or even mention) of why the distrust is there.

It apparently does not dawn on these morons that the source of the distrust is not misinformation about vaccines, but about end of science as we know it, in which dissenting views are canceled/suppressed, along with demonizing anyone who does not toe the line on the favored narrative.

Glenn Greenwald: The ACLU, Prior to COVID, Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures to Fight Pandemics

re: The Bizarre Refusal to Apply Cost-Benefit Analysis to COVID Debates
re: Big Tech Censorship of COVID-19 Discussion (Glenn Greenwald)
re: Glenn Greenwald

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

The ACLU stopped being an organization worth supporting years ago, having abandonded its objectivity and original mission.

Glenn Greenwald: The ACLU, Prior to COVID, Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures to Fight Pandemics

by Glenn Greenwald, 2021-09-07

In a New York Times op-ed this week, the group completely reversed its views, arguing vaccine mandates help civil liberties and bodily autonomy "is not absolute."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised even many of its harshest critics this week when it strongly defended coercive programs and other mandates from the state in the name of fighting COVID. “Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties,” its Twitter account announced, adding that “vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public."

If you were surprised to see the ACLU heralding the civil liberties imperatives of "vaccine mandates” and "vaccine requirements” — whereby the government coerces adults to inject medicine into their own bodies that they do not want — the New York Times op-ed which the group promoted, written by two of its senior lawyers, was even more extreme. The article begins with this rhetorical question: “Do vaccine mandates violate civil liberties?” Noting that "some who have refused vaccination claim as much,” the ACLU lawyers say: “we disagree.” The op-ed then examines various civil liberties objections to mandates and state coercion — little things like, you know, bodily autonomy and freedom to choose — and the ACLU officials then invoke one authoritarian cliche after the next (“these rights are not absolute") to sweep aside such civil liberties concerns:

[W]hen it comes to Covid-19, all considerations point in the same direction. . . . In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. . . . . 

[Many claim that] vaccines are a justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity. That may sound ominous, because we all have the fundamental right to bodily integrity and to make our own health care decisions. But these rights are not absolute. They do not include the right to inflict harm on others. . . . While vaccine mandates are not always permissible, they rarely run afoul of civil liberties when they involve highly infectious and devastating diseases like Covid-19. . . . 

While limited exceptions are necessary, most people can be required to be vaccinated. . . . . Where a vaccine is not medically contraindicated, however, avoiding a deadly threat to the public health typically outweighs personal autonomy and individual freedom.

The op-ed sounds like it was written by an NSA official justifying the need for mass surveillance (yes, fine, your privacy is important but it is not absolute; your privacy rights are outweighed by public safety; we are spying on you for your own good). And the op-ed appropriately ends with this perfect Orwellian flourish: “We care deeply about civil liberties and civil rights for all — which is precisely why we support vaccine mandates.”

... [ACLU, 2008]: “The law enforcement approach to public health offers a rationale for the endless suspension of civil liberties,” they explained. Using post-9/11 expansions of state power as its framework, the group explained that “the ‘Global War on Terror' may go on for a generation, but the war on disease will continue until the end of the human race. There will always be a new disease, always the threat of a new pandemic. If that fear justifies the suspension of liberties and the institution of an emergency state, then freedom and the rule of law will be permanently suspended.”

...

WIND: the ACLU stopped being an organization worth supporting years ago, having abandonded its objectivity and original mission of fighting for constitutional and civil rights.

Now we’re living with public acceptance of the idea that your right to work, travel, eat, shop can all be shut down by the government for just about any reason.

Matt Taibbi: Moral Majority Media Strikes Again (Ivermectin Fake News)

re: “Why Has "Ivermectin" Become a Dirty Word?”
re: Matt Taibbi

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

What else is new?

Matt Taibbi: Moral Majority Media Strikes Again

by Matt Taibbi, 2021-09-07

When Rachel Maddow, Rolling Stone, and others jumped on a dubious report of ivermectin overdoses, it was just the latest in a string of moral mania mishaps

Citing a report of Oklahoma emergency rooms so overwhelmed by ivermectin overdoses that gunshot victims were going untreated, MSNBC anchor Joy Ann Reid Sunday proposed sticking the swallowers of “horse paste” at the back of the line in order to prioritize the more deserving, “rather than allowing the ivermectin people” — she spoke the words as if holding a vile wriggling thing with tweezers — to “take up all the beds”: <video> 

This was a network anchor despising a group of people so much that she itched to deny them medical care, not only despite having never met them, but despite the fact that they may not even exist. The “overwhelmed Oklahoma E.R.” tale later seemed to go sideways, the latest in a line of crackups by media lost in the throes of a moral panic.

...The problem lay in the reason the error spread, which happens to be the same reason underlying innumerable other media shipwrecks in the last five years. These include everything from wrong reports of Russians hacking a Vermont energy grid, to tales of Michael Cohen in Prague, to the pee tape, to Julie Swetnick’s rape accusation, to the Covington high school fiasco, to Russian oligarchs co-signing a Deutsche Bank loan application for Donald Trump, to Bountygate, to the “mass hysterectomies” story, and dozens beyond: the media business has become a machine for generating error-ridden moral panics.

News has become a corporatized version of the “Two Minutes Hate,” in which the goal of every broadcast is an anxiety-ridden audience provoked to the point of fury by the un-policed infamy of whatever wreckers are said to be threatening civilization this week: the unvaccinated ,... look at Maddow leaving her tweet up — so long as they feel stories are directionally right, i.e. aimed at deserving targets. 

I never thought this could happen, but people like Maddow, Reid, and the editors of the New York Times opinion page have taken over the role once occupied by Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority...

...

WIND: media violence is the norm these days; it is the business model. It should repulse anyone with a shred of decency. And watching “the news” these days can only lead to mental illness and physical illness over time. Journalism is all but dead.

Of course, Twitter, Facebook, etc do nothing for this kind of misinformation, let alone suspending sociopath Rachel Maddow.

BTW, anyone (including MDs) calling Ivermectin “horse paste” has ZERO credibility and should be ignored as the jackass they are. Whether or not Ivermectin is an effective anti-COVID agent is the core of the debate being avoided (I don’t have a view on it either way). But Ivermectin has been used for over 35 years as an anti-parasitic with great success, has an excellent safety profile. There is tremendous financial incentive for it to be shown ineffective against COVID, so count on studies designed up-front to show what. And please don’t ingest the horse version of Ivermectin ("horse paste")—that’s a really bad idea for both dosage and contamination reasons.

The end of rational debate and the end of science are upon us, courtesy if the perfect storm of politics + COVID. How long can the USA survive before crumbling into an unworkable mess?