Why Are They Asking This?

On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article about a new question the Red Cross is asking blood donors.

The article notes:

How curious then, that the Red Cross is not only screening applicants for their vax status but also requiring them to undergo additional scrutiny if they self-report COVID vaccination: “Have you EVER had a Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine? If you answer YES to the question, please call 1-800-RED CROSS… before coming in to donate to determine if this will affect your eligibility.”

The article includes the following screenshot:

There is a ‘context’ note added at the end of the Tweet. The context note says:

They ask this question to make sure you haven’t received a self-replicating vaccine; and if you have, there is a two-week wait.

Most Covid vaccines are not replicating, and do not require a waiting period.

Generally speaking, when you give blood, you are not asked about vaccines. Why is this vaccine different?

How Safe Is The Manufacturing Of The Vaccine?

On Sunday (updated Monday), The Epoch Times posted an article about manufacturing violations in the production of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.

The article reports:

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors uncovered problems at a Moderna plant used to manufacture a substance that is part of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to a newly released document.

Moderna failed to meet multiple requirements, including rules aimed at minimizing the potential for contamination, according to the document.

FDA inspectors performed inspections at the plant in Norwood, Massachusetts from, Sept. 11 to Sept. 21, visiting nine times in total.

They found that equipment used to manufacture the substance was not cleaned properly before usage, that a mock cleaning done for manufacturing did not adequately simulate the actual process, that written alarm procedures were not followed, and that neither the equipment nor the plant were designed in a way that would make contamination less likely.

Inspectors also learned that Moderna used materials beyond their expiration date.

“There are more than two thousand expired items stored in your … warehouse and cold storage at time of inspection,” Unnee Ranjan, the FDA’s lead investigator, wrote in a summary of the inspections.

The article concludes:

Another part of the FDA report, dated Sept. 21, described how the Norwood facility did not have adequately designed air handling systems to “assure appropriate air quality in the … cleanroom in which the mRNA drug substance is manufactured.”

Inspectors also said they found positive air pressure was not “consistently maintained” between cleanrooms and airlocks and that monitoring data showed the cleanroom pressure turned negative between January and September. That development was “not assessed for potential impact,” they said.

“At face value, it appears multiple controls designed to prevent contamination were deficient,” Mr. Lynn said.

Another recently released document, produced by the nonprofit Informed Consent Action Network on orders from a federal judge, showed the FDA detected in Andover, Massachusetts, issues with the manufacture of a substance used in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Pfizer said in response it had taken actions to correct the issues.

The government is still putting ads up on television encouraging Americans to take the vaccine, even after there have been numerous reports of serious side effects. Now we find out there are manufacturing problems also? It’s time for the Covid vaccine to go away.

 

 

How Safe Is The Covid Vaccine?

On \Wednesday, The American Thinker posted an article about the Covid vaccine and the incidence of heart disease among the people who have taken it.

The article reports:

On August 24, 2021, the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, issued a memorandum, directing the secretaries of the military departments to “immediately begin full vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces under Department of Defense.”

This mandate was pushed even though Doe v. Rumsfeld (2003) clearly prohibits the DOD from mandating an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) vaccine.

The Military Department leads, instead of doing their due diligence and looking out for their troops, blindly followed and carried out what was arguably an unconstitutional and unlawful order.

The Florida state surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a statement on October 23, 2023 recommending against the COVID-19 booster, based heavily on the risk of subclinical and clinical myocarditis and other cardiovascular conditions.

French study using nationwide hospital discharge and vaccine data has shown “strong evidence of an increased risk of myocarditis and of pericarditis in the week following vaccination against Covid-19 with mRNA vaccines in both males and females.”

The article notes:

This leads me to the 248th Marine Corps Birthday Ball on November 10, 2023.  This year at the Ball for the Marine Corps Reserve and Marine Corps Forces, South, the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Eric Smith, was scheduled to be the guest of honor.  However, due to cardiac arrest on October 29, 2023, and a scheduled surgery, his presence had to be canceled.  General Smith is 58, in terrific shape.  He eats well and doesn’t drink.  He is one of the least likely people to ever suffer from cardiac arrest.

…The narrative being pushed is that the commandant has a congenital issue.

We saw the same controlled narrative when actor Jamie Foxx collapsed and was hospitalized.  Damar Hamlin collapsed and was hospitalized.  Bronny James, the 18-year-old son of basketball icon LeBron James, collapsed due to cardiac arrest.  Coincidentally, it was blamed on congenital issues.

It is worth noting that before the COVID 19 “vaccines,” in the European Sports Leagues, there were 29 cardiac arrests a year.  Since the introduction of the “vaccine,” there have been 1,500 cardiac arrests a year, and two-thirds of them have been fatal.  

As I write this, fewer Americans are getting the vaccine or the boosters. Hopefully this trend will continue as there are some valid questions as to the safety of the Covid vaccines. Meanwhile, it would be nice if the healthcare community would be honest about the risks involved.

Unfortunately, The Government Spying On Americans Isn’t New

On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about our government spying on Americans. According to a whistleblower, this is not anything new.

The article reports:

The public-private efforts to restrict and suppress purported “mis-, dis- and malinformation” across tech platforms started almost immediately after the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016, ramped up a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, and included U.S. and U.K. military contractors and plans to cut off financial services to dissenters and sue them.

That’s according to a “highly credible whistleblower” who says they were recruited to participate in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) “through monthly cybersecurity meetings hosted by” the Department of Homeland Security, independent journalists who reviewed the Twitter Files at new owner Elon Musk’s invitation said Tuesday.

We are at a point that if an American says that two plus two equals four and the government wants it to equal five, the American is charged with spreading misinformation or disinformation. That is not a good place to be–particularly for a representative republic.

The article concludes:

Breuer (U.S. military contractor Pablo Breuer) told a podcast the duo’s work involved getting “nontraditional partners into one room,” such as social media companies, “special forces operators” and DHS employees, “to talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way.”

He explained how the “in-group and out-group messaging have to be often different” when trying to sell Americans on a domestic version of the “Great Firewall of China.”

While Chinese citizens believe this censorship is to “protect the citizenry,” Americans “would absolutely lose our minds” if the feds “tried to sell that narrative,” Breuer reportedly said.

The reporting trio said they would present the underlying documents from the whistleblower to congressional investigators in the coming weeks and “make public all of the documents we can while also protecting the identity of the whistleblower and other individuals who are not senior leaders or public figures.”

The FBI declined to comment on the report to Just the News, and DHS and CISA did not respond to queries. Neither did Terp (U.K. defense researcher Sara-Jayne Terp) and Breuer.

The Washington swamp is a danger to all free Americans.

Obvious Consequences

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the consequences of commuting the sentences of criminals rather than having them remain in jail. Commuting sentences was a common practice during the Covid-19 epidemic to prevent the disease from spreading through jails. However, to me it would have been more logical simply to limit the access of prisoners to people from the outside to avoid bringing in the virus.

The article reports:

Many of the criminals who Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear released under executive commutation during the COVID-19 pandemic went on to commit new crimes, a report from the state’s government showed.

The report examined the criminal records of the approximately 1,700 criminals that Beshear had released in April and August of 2020 to reduce the prison population during the pandemic. Of those released, roughly 70% went on to commit crimes, with 50% committing felonies within less than a year of their release. 

“I believe the last round of commutations was fairly successful at getting people back in society and making sure they are healthy, and we are looking for the same here,” Beshear said after releasing a second round of inmates in August 2020, according to ABC13 WBKO. “I wish each of those individuals a better life moving forward, one that is constructive, one that they can find purpose in, whether that be faith, family or a good job. Let’s help make sure we can work with these individuals and give second chances.”

…Crime spiked in 2021 following Beshear’s commutation order and remained above pre-pandemic levels until 2023, the report showed. Overall crime in April 2021, which marked the crime level peak in Kentucky, reached record levels which was higher than the previous record high by 36%, although the report noted that a relatively small number of released offenders contributed to the jump in crime.

Anyone who has raised children knows that if there are no serious consequences for bad behavior, that bad behavior will continue. There is really no reason to assume that if you let a criminal out of jail before he has completed his sentence, he will immediately become an upstanding citizen. It does happen, but it requires a lot of work by a lot of people who know what they are doing. Otherwise, it’s a disaster.

Some ?Good? News About Covid

On Saturday, The Epoch Times posted an article about some recent research results about the Covid virus.

The article reports:

The new study, published in the August issue of The Lancet’s Microbe journal, shows that people who are sick with COVID-19 but don’t show any symptoms have a limited ability to spread the virus to other people.

Participants in the British study, which was carried out by researchers at Imperial College London, were unvaccinated healthy adults aged 18-30 who were intentionally infected with COVID-19.

The subjects were monitored under controlled circumstances while self-reporting symptoms three times per day, and researchers collected nose and throat swabs from them daily, checking for the presence of the virus.

The researchers also tested the inside of masks worn by the participants, checked their hands, and examined the air and surfaces of rooms that the subjects were kept in for a minimum of 14 days.

Ultimately, the researchers found that less than 10 percent of the viral emissions from infected participants took place before the first symptoms emerged.

“Very few emissions occurred before the first reported symptom (7%) and hardly any before the first positive lateral flow antigen test (2%),” the authors of the study wrote.

The new study—which takes the form of a rigorous, controlled “challenge study” rather than the earlier modeling studies that relied on subjective inputs and assumptions of researchers—contradicts earlier research that set the tone for much of the prevailing narrative. That early research appears to have inflated the perceived threat of presymptomatic spread.

The latest study, suggesting that silent transmission is far less significant, comes amid a growing drumbeat of alarm as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are on the rise—along with calls in some circles for renewed restrictions.

By contrast, many are calling for cool heads to prevail—or are urging civil disobedience if lockdowns or other mandates are reimposed.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Covid has morphed into an annual flu and should be treated with respect, but not with panic. There will be a reliable Covid vaccine as soon as there is a cure for the common cold.

This Evidence May Become Useful In The Near Future

On Monday, The Epoch Times posted an article about documents recently obtained from the National Institutes of Health. It seems that masks were not really going to help limit the spread of the Covid virus.

The article reports:

In a recently obtained letter (pdf) sent in November 2021 to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), top epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and seven colleagues informed the agency it was promoting flawed data and excluding data that did not reinforce their narrative.

The letter warned the agency that misrepresenting data on trusted websites such as the CDC and the COVID-19 Real-Time Learning Network—jointly created by the CDC and Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)—would “damage the credibility of science,” endanger public trust by “misrepresenting the evidence,” and give the public “false expectations” masking would protect them from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

“We believe the information and recommendations as provided may actually put an individual at increased risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 and for them to experience a serious or even life-threatening infection,” Mr. Osterhom wrote.

The authors urged the IDSA to remove the suggestion that masking prevents severe disease from its website and asked the CDC to reconsider its statements about the “efficacy of masks and face coverings for preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”

Osterholm also noted a pattern of selectively choosing data that supported the desired narrative that masks prevent severe COVID-19 disease and transmission—claims he said are unsupported by the scientific evidence provided by the CDC and IDSA on their websites.

The IDSA “Masks and Face Coverings for the Public” webpage appears to “focus on the strengths of studies that support its conclusions while ignoring their shortcomings of study design,” Mr. Osterholm wrote. “Studies that do not support its perspective are similarly downplayed.”

Maybe we need to find out who owns stock in the mask companies.

The article concludes:

The letter was part of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by The Functional Government Initiative (FGI), an organization dedicated to “improving the American public’s awareness about the officials, decisions, and priorities of their government.”

“The story of official masking guidance should trouble the American public. Recall that Dr. Fauci at first said there was no need for masks. The cloth masks were all that stood between you and COVID. But as evidence against cloth masks appeared, the premiere scientific health organizations dug in their heels and refused to follow the science or listen to their trusted outside advisors,” FGI said in a statement (pdf).

“That Dr. Osterholm and his colleagues felt compelled to raise concerns about cherry-picked data and the danger it presented to the credibility of public health officials and the health of the public says that something was deeply dysfunctional in these agencies,” FGI stated.

The Epoch Times contacted the CDC for comment but did not receive a response.

At one point my husband and I were told by a pulmonary specialists that wearing a mask interferes with your body’s natural immunity building. He stated that after the masks come off, we could expect an increase in pneumonia cases because the masks had interfered with people’s natural immunity. Let’s not make this mistake again (I believe mask mandates are coming before the end of this year). This time, let’s just say “NO.”

It’s A Little Late

On Thursday, The Epoch Times reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now approved the use of Ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-19.

The article reports:

Doctors are free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19, a lawyer representing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said this week.

“FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the FDA, said during oral arguments on Aug. 8 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

The government is defending the FDA’s repeated exhortations to people to not take ivermectin for COVID-19, including a post that said “Stop it.”

The case was brought by three doctors who allege the FDA unlawfully interfered with their practice of medicine with the statements. A federal judge dismissed the case in 2022, prompting an appeal.

“The fundamental issue in this case is straightforward. After the FDA approves the human drug for sale, does it then have the authority to interfere with how that drug is used within the doctor-patient relationship? The answer is no,” Jared Kelson, representing the doctors, told the appeals court.

The FDA on Aug. 21, 2021, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” The post, which linked to an FDA page that says people shouldn’t use ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19, went viral.

In other statements, the FDA said that ivermectin “isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19” and “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”

The article concludes:

Dr. Marik has noted that a number of studies support using ivermectin against COVID-19, as the FDA itself has acknowledged. Some other studies show little to no effect.

Federal law enables the FDA to provide information, such as reports of adverse reactions to drugs, but not medical advice, Mr. Kelson said.

“This is something the FDA has never been able to do. And it’s a bright line,” he told the court, adding later: “The clearest examples of where they have gone over the line are when they say things like, ‘You are not a horse, you are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.’”

Judges indicated they agree that the FDA lacks the power to give medical advice; Judge Clement said, “You’re not authorized to give medical advice.”

But Ms. Honold said the government “isn’t conceding that in this case.”

She also argued that Congress has empowered the FDA to protect public health and make sure regulated products are safe and effective, giving it the “inherent authority to further its mission by communicating information to the public about safe uses of drugs.”

A ruling in favor of the doctors would prevent the FDA from reporting on consumers suffering after cooking chicken with NyQuil or that opioid addiction is a problem, she claimed.

Mr. Kelson said that wasn’t accurate. “It’s when they step beyond that [and] start telling people how they should or should not be using approved drugs,” he said.

Ms. Honold also said that the courts can’t hold agencies accountable when they provide false or misleading information: “The FDA is politically accountable, just like all other executive agencies.”

Check the statistics on Covid deaths in countries where people routinely take Ivermectin to prevent parasites. There are very few deaths in those countries.

Doctor of Death?

Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

In a recent article, I explained the reason blind reliance on so-called “experts” can not only be misleading but downright dangerous. Now that the China virus (Covid 19) pandemic has been declared to be over, it is time for an objective appraisal of how the pandemic was handled in this country. Since this may not be the only pandemic we have to face in our lifetimes, an assessment of what was done right and how we failed is critical to managing future pandemics successfully.

First of all, we have to commit ourselves to examining the truth ourselves and not rely on government agencies. Some facts are startling: the United States had one of the highest mortality rates as of October 2021 of 2,107 deaths per one million population; by comparison Germany had 1,126; Denmark 455; India 327; and Kenya 97. There must be a reason for these extreme variations. The purpose of this article is to suggest some possibilities and see where they lead. Remember one key fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the primary leader of our inadequate response to the pandemic.

Early on in the pandemic there was a denial from Fauci that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab in China. The evidence at time I am writing this article, is the direct opposite. Not only was he wrong but he had a vested interest in denying that the Wuhan lab was the source because the agency he ran had provided over $800,000 to that lab between 2014 and 2020; much of it in support of the absurd effort to alter a virus that did not affect humans into a deadly threat to mankind. I would deny it too!

Another decision he made was to oppose the use of two safe and potentially helpful medications namely Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin which could have been used as preventatives as was done in several other countries that experienced much lower fatality rates. Instead, he recommended quarantines, mask mandates, social distancing, and a shutdown of most of the economy in order to achieve what he called “herd immunity”. He stated that he was “science” and implied he should not be questioned which unfortunately most people went along with. He supported, (along with Bill Gates) the idea that the new, untested vaccine was the only hope to control the pandemic. Even going so far as to not only mandate the vaccine for older people, but for children who in reality had a very small to insignificant risk of serious complications from the virus. He also championed Remdesivir which could only be given in a hospital setting since it has to be administered intravenously. Subsequent studies have shown that this drug was ineffective. Fauci had a long history of working with the large drug companies by funding their research and advocating their drugs. The cost of a full course remdesivir was about $7,000; whereas hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin cost about $50 and could be administered on an outpatient basis. Follow the money!

It has been standard practice for years that physicians were able to prescribe medications for off-label diseases since the safety of the medication had been demonstrated. It was a decision between the doctor and patient. Fauci and other “experts” had this stopped for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. I had a personal experience with this. Early in the pandemic, I asked my personal physician for a prescription for ivermectin which he readily gave me. Three months later I went for a renewal and was told he was unable to do so based on federal policy. One can speculate that since President Trump advocated these two drugs whether Fauci and other members of the deep state were even more opposed. Who knows?

More to come in a future article.

 

Failing Upward

On Tuesday, The Conservative Review reported the following:

Fauci’s Next Act: COVID Czar To Teach at Georgetown

I don’t think I would send my child to Georgetown to study medicine.

The article reports:

Amid a growing consensus that COVID-19 likely emerged from a Chinese lab and past revelations that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded coronavirus research in one such lab, the former head of the agency, Anthony Fauci, has landed a professorship at Georgetown University.

Fauci, who was pulling a salary of over $400,000 a year while working for the federal government, told Georgetown that while he “could do more experiments in the lab and have my lab going,” he felt that he would be better suited to serve as an “inspiration to the younger generation of students.” It is unclear if Georgetown will be matching the compensation Fauci enjoyed as a public servant.

The former NIAID director’s career prospects do not appear to have been hampered by mistakes made during his advisory role throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci initially denied the possibility that the virus could have originated from a laboratory. All U.S. intelligence agencies see the lab leak as a possibility and a high profile report from the Department of Energy considers it the most likely explanation. Fauci is now open to the possibility of a lab-leak origin but won’t take a definitive stance.

If the virus did originate in a lab, that could reflect poorly on Fauci and the federal government. While Fauci was heading the agency, NIAID funneled $653,392 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab believed to be the origin of COVID-19, for coronavirus research.

In addition to his relationship to the origin of the virus, Fauci’s pandemic-era policy recommendations have also come under scrutiny.

The article notes that Dr. Fauci will be part of both the school of medicine and the school of public policy.

Ten Lies That Fueled The Covid Crisis

On March 6th, Newsweek posted an article by Scott W. Atlas, MD, the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Co-Director of the Global Liberty Institute, Founding Fellow of Hillsdale’s Academy for Science & Freedom. The article lists the ten lies that formed the basis for the American government’s response to Covid-19.

The article reports:

Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America’s public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:

1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude.

2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.

3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.

4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.

5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.

6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.

7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.

8. Teachers are at especially high risk.

9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.

10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The article concludes:

None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable. Personally, I remain highly skeptical that any government investigation or commission can avoid politicization. Regardless of their intention, all such government-run inquiries will at least be perceived as politically motivated and their conclusions will be rejected outright by many. Those investigations must proceed, though, if only to seek the truth, to teach our children that truth matters, and to remember G.K. Chesterton’s critical lesson that “Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it.”

Covid killed Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. We need to do better in responding to our next health crisis.

Will There Ever Be An Apology?

I really like Rand Paul. He is not afraid to say what he believes is truth regardless of the pushback. He was one of the more rational voices during the Covid pandemic and was ridiculed for the things he said (things that later turned out to be true). Will the Democrats and tech companies who maligned him ever apologize? Probably not.

The Washington Examiner posted an article on March 1st about Rand Paul and the information he provided on Covid during the pandemic.

The article reports:

The U.S. Energy Department and the FBI now agree that a lab leak is probably to blame for the spread of the COVID-19 virus, according to reports. The disclosure was made in “low confidence” earlier this week after the department received new intelligence on the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Energy Department oversees 17 national labs and research centers and was investigating the pandemic’s origins. Meanwhile, the Energy Department’s admission was just the latest in a recent string of evidence vindicating Paul. A new study released this month revealed that immunity from a natural COVID infection was “at least as high, if not higher” than receiving the vaccine. Paul said this last year but was dismissed by many on the Left as spreading misinformation.

The article concludes:

Paul was heavily criticized by those on the Left for saying the same thing the Energy Department just now concluded. He was censored by Big Tech and vilified by Democratic politicians who claimed Paul’s now-vindicated assertions were detrimental to the country. But it was Big Tech and the Democrats who were harming the country, not the Kentucky Republican.

“Trust the science” evolved into “trust the tyrants,” and the Left sought total compliance to its authoritarianism during the pandemic. Anyone objecting, such as Paul, was vilified as an ignorant conspiracy theorist and, in some cases, accomplice to murder. What happened to Paul should serve as a warning of left-wing, Democratic totalitarianism and why they can never be trusted to regulate speech or information. Liberals, Democrats, the Left, and Big Tech all owe Rand Paul an apology. Will they ever do so?

Will the political left ever be held accountable for their lies?

 

The End Of The Covid Health Emergency?

On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about President Biden’s plans to end the three-year COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11. House Republicans would like to see the emergency end as soon as February 1.

The article reports:

The newly constituted GOP-controlled House Rules Committee cleared four pandemic-related bills during four hours of hearings on Jan. 30, sending the proposals directly to House floor where they will be debated without committee review.

In a theme that would recur in deliberations on all four bills, Democrats—outnumbered 9-4 on the panel—argued that abruptly pulling the plug on a raft of COVID-19 emergency measure would cause massive disruptions across a range of health services, from telehealth to Medicaid to programs provided by the Veterans Administration.

“This decision is very, very disappointing,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member who chaired the committee for four years until this month, claiming that Republicans were hustling the bills to the House floor “for a soundbite” instead of allowing them to be vetted in committee review.

“To rush this to the floor, do a press release, and that’s it,” McGovern said, is irresponsible, noting there are plenty of other issues the new GOP leadership could rocket-docket. “Everybody needs to take a deep breath. I regret very much not taking that (committee) process.”

But Republicans insisted there is no need for the emergency measures to continue since even Biden himself admitted in September that the COVID-19 pandemic “is over.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said “it is long past time” for the administration to end an emergency “that no longer exists.”

It is time that America returned to normal. There is no need for vaccine mandates (in fact, the vaccine may have done considerable harm to some of the people who received it), and the current versions of the Covid virus seem more like the common cold. It’s time to get back to being America.

Investigating Government Policies On Covid-19

I seriously doubt that there was a perfect solution for handling Covid-19 when it appeared in 2020. However, I also wonder if the government actually got anything rights. An investigation into the government’s handling of the pandemic would be very useful in developing a template for handling future pandemics.

On January 19th, The Daily Signal posted a checklist for the House of Representatives committee that is investigating the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The article notes:

After three years, and more than 1 million deaths in the U.S. associated with COVID-19, a comprehensive, sober, and detailed investigation into the federal government’s response is a necessary precondition for restoring Americans’ trust in federal public health agencies.

Specifically, that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.  

A Heritage Foundation analysis of the federal public health performance identified 13 pandemic-related topics that deserve detailed congressional inquiry. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Here are some of the things that need to be investigated:

  • Why did the CDC, despite statutory requirements dating back to 2006, fail to modernize and upgrade its systems of data collection and dissemination? Dr. Deborah Birx, former coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under Trump, has already told Congress that “the No.1 public health issue in the United States today is that there is no comprehensive database or integration of data from laboratories, public health institutions, and clinics.”  
  • Why did federal public health authorities send out confusing messaging on the value of masks and mask mandates? Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams initially insisted, very publicly and sometimes vehemently, that masking was unnecessary or ineffective. Previous studies on masking indeed failed to provide strong support for cloth masking, let alone mask mandates. Between February and April 2020, however, top federal officials did a U-turn, and insisted on the value of a masking policy that they previously opposed. What was the new scientific evidence, then available in the professional literature, for such a dramatic policy reversal in that brief period? Congress should find out.
  • Why did federal officials attempt to impose a set of unprecedented vaccine mandates on tens of millions of Americans without weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination for different cohorts of the population, based on age, the acquisition of natural immunity, or an underlying vulnerability to the virus?  Young and healthy persons faced little danger of severe illness or death from COVID-19. Robust findings in the professional literature demonstrated the strength of natural immunity. Recent research on vaccine boosters for young adults concludes that potential harms outweigh the benefits of the vaccination.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. America is supposed to be a representative republic–our elected officials are supposed to represent us and answer to us–it’s time they did.

Good News For Covid Patients In California

On Thursday, Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about a recent ruling by US District Court Judge William Shubb on enforcement of AB 2098.

The article reports:

Can the state of California enforce its own idea of “scientific consensus” on doctors who treat patients for COVID-19? Not after last night, when US District Court Judge William Shubb slapped an injunction on enforcement of AB 2098. This undoubtedly sets up a showdown at the Ninth Circuit, but for the moment the gag rule on doctors has been shut down.

After reading Shubb’s opinion about how badly the state legislature crafted the law, however, Gavin Newsom might want to think twice about further exposure. In the first place, the law forces doctors to only convey the “scientific consensus” on COVID-19 rather than their own judgment, when no one — not the legislature or its attorneys — can provide a definition of that term in relation to COVID-19:

…Shubb agrees with the plaintiffs in this action, noting that the “scientific consensus” regarding a novel virus only under study for three years is at best an aspirational concept. In practice, as Shubb notes, the “consensus” — as defined by California’s reliance on public-health officials — has changed repeatedly in that time. That puts every doctor at risk for prosecution in California no matter what they might say in any given moment, a standard so unreliable as to practically embody the terms “arbitrary” and “capricious”:

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Physicians know their patients better than the government. A physician is much more able to look at a patient, understand the degree of risk that person will have in dealing with Covid. There doesn’t seem to be logic in the way different people react to Covid, and doctors should be allowed to do what they think is best for their patients. For example, the doctors at Frontline Doctors had a very high success rate in treating Covid patients, yet the government did everything possible to silence them and to prevent them from successfully treating patients.

Hopefully this case is the beginning of patients and doctors reclaiming the rights of Americans to good medical care.

Penalizing One Group Of People To Save Money For Another

There is a housing crisis in America. Housing prices have skyrocketed (although they have come down slightly and the real estate market has cooled as interest rates have increased). Rents are going up and inflation is making it difficult for people to pay their rents. This will eventually work itself out, but unfortunately, the government is planning to get involved.

On Wednesday, Hot Air posted the following headline, “First step towards national rent control? Biden admin to mandate “fairness”” Government “fairness” has a way of not being fair.

The article reports:

If you’ve been renting, especially a single-family house vice an apartment, you’ve been on pins and needles the entire time, not knowing if it would be sold out from under you if the owner decides to cash in on good times, vice continues to deal with tenants. Almost every aspect has been fraught with anxiety for all concerned.

A good portion of this is attributable to measures taken (with questionable authority) by the Centers for Disease Control. In an unprecedented order on 1 September 2020, the CDC brought an immediate – and “temporary” – halt in residential evictions to “prevent the further spread of COVID-19.” Congress and then the Biden administration extended that order through various incarnations for another year, claiming a surge in Delta variant infections justified it.

What is being overlooked here is that fact that even if t he renter cannot affort to pay his rent, the homeowner is still required to pay his mortgage.The renter may not be evicted, but the owner is in danger of foreclosure.

The article concludes:

Also, please note – there’s nothing about independent landlord protections. Who is going to want to rent their home to anyone and face not getting paid with the government’s stamp of approval? Here people were, hoping for rents to start easing off some and housing to open back up. ‘Tis to laugh.

The government’s going to sanction both non-payment of rent and pay for the scofflaw’s lawyers? As the landlord is also a taxpayer, you could look at it that he’s getting shafted twice in this deal.

Well, hello. There’s another house sold to Blackrock for cash.

We need to look at any government interference against the free market as an attack on our freedom and treat it as such.

Creating A New Pandemic

China is at it again. They are sending Covid-infected travelers around the world, spreading the disease again.

On Wednesday, Breitbart reported the following:

Italy’s decision to take extra precautions with Chinese travelers paid off on Wednesday as two flights from China landed in Milan and half of the passengers tested positive for Covid-19.

Italy was one of four countries that announced they would impose coronavirus restrictions on Chinese travelers because a massive wave of coronavirus infections is ripping across China, racking up millions of cases in a single day — but the tyrannical Chinese government decided to abandon almost all of its disease control protocols with almost no preparation for the consequences, loosen up travel restrictions, and begin handing out passports just in time for the Lunar New Year holiday.

According to ycharts, as of December 13, 2022, China has a Covid vaccination rate of 89.35 percent. If that is true, why are they having so much trouble containing the Coronavirus?

The article at Breitbart continues:

A massive spike in Chinese internet searches for travel reservations and vacation packages occurred on Tuesday as international travel suddenly became available after years of travel prohibitions and citywide lockdowns. 

Italy was one of four countries to correctly deduce that China would not do a very thorough job of screening its outbound passengers for the highly contagious, vaccine-resistant sub-variant of the Omicron strain that has been spreading like wildfire through the vast and vulnerable Chinese population. 

The article concludes:

“Travel services companies Trip.com and Qunar said international ticket bookings and searches for visa information on their websites rose five to eight times after the announcement. Top destinations included Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States, Britain and Australia,” Sky News reported, fearing a “haunting repeat” of the 2020 worldwide pandemic.

The United States became the fifth country to impose special restrictions on Chinese travelers on Wednesday night, requiring negative Covid test results for travelers two and older beginning on January 5. U.S. health officials cited the lack of reliable data from China as one of the reasons for its travel policy.

We need to start testing now–January 5 will be too late.

Setting Up Two Classes Of Citizens

On Sunday, Hot Air posted an article about Canada’s plan to tax those citizens who were not vaccinated against Covid-19. Public outcry caused the plan to be scrapped, but it is entirely possible that the plan will show up again, despite growing evidence of the ineffectiveness and dangers of the vaccine.

The article quotes the Canadian Medical Association Journal:

Quebec’s recent move to tax people who refuse COVID-19 vaccinations reopened debate about the merits of such penalties.

Premier François Legault said that choosing to remain unvaccinated has consequences for the health care system and not all Quebecers should foot the bill.

Roughly one in 10 adults in Quebec remain unvaccinated, yet they account for an outsized share of COVID-19 hospitalizations and about half of all intensive care patients.

With hospitals postponing surgeries and some 20 000 health workers sick with COVID-19, fining those who refuse vaccinations becomes “a question of fairness,” Legault said.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

But if Canada is really crazy enough to take a fresh look at this policy, what will they say to all of the people who resisted but were eventually forced to take the vaccines in light of more recent news? Keep in mind that many European nations have now stopped offering the vaccines to all but the oldest and the most at-risk. These nations include Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Others are considering similar policies as the dangerous side effects of the vaccines for some groups become more apparent. (And that news is finally being allowed to reach the public without immediately being censored.)

If you are fired from your job, you might find a new avenue of employment later. If the government takes some of your money, you may be able to make up for the loss in the future. But once you’ve been injected with these experimental vaccines, you can never be “unvaccinated.” And if you or one of your children suddenly develop a potentially fatal case of Myocarditis, your lives aren’t going to simply “go back to normal.” And it’s worth noting that even the American government is now finally admitting that the new mRNA vaccines will not prevent you from being infected or spreading the virus to others. They just reduce the worst effects of the disease for most people. (I finally caught it in September and managed to make it through to the other side, though I still don’t fully have my senses of taste and smell back.)

The virus is here to stay and it will likely keep morphing into new variants as the seasons go by. In that regard, it’s pretty much the same as the flu at this point. Let’s not return to the craziness of 2020 and 2021, shall we? Making mistakes when we are ignorant of all of the facts about something new is excusable. Continuing to do so after more facts are known is not.

I had the virus before it was fashionable (and before the vaccine). When I had my antibodies tested more than a year later, I still had them. I realize that the virus is dangerous for some people, but I still think the best defense is your own antibodies.

 

Playing Word Games With Americans’ Health

On Saturday, The Epoch Times posted the following headline:

FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID-19 Was Just a Recommendation

The article reports:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) telling people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation, government lawyers argued during a recent hearing.

“The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin,” Isaac Belfer, one of the lawyers, told the court during the Nov. 1 hearing in federal court in Texas.

“They use informal language, that is true,” he also said, adding that, “it’s conversational but not mandatory.”

The hearing was held in a case brought by three doctors who say the FDA illegally interfered with their ability to prescribe medicine to their patients when it issued statements on ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that has shown positive results in some trials against COVID-19.

Ivermectin is approved by the FDA but not for COVID-19. Drugs are commonly used for non-approved purposes in the United States; the practice is known as off-label treatment.

This is a link to a CDC Health Advisory put out on August 26, 2021. I suspect that as this case moves forward, this Advisory may disappear, so I will quote some of it here:

Recommendations for the Public
Be aware that currently, ivermectin has not been proven as a way to prevent or treat COVID19.

Do not swallow ivermectin products that should be used on skin (e.g., lotions and creams) or are
not meant for human use, such as veterinary ivermectin products.

Seek immediate medical attention or call the poison control center hotline (18002221222) for advice if you have taken ivermectin or a product that contains ivermectin and are having
symptoms. Signs and symptoms include gastrointestinal effects (nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea), headache, blurred vision, dizziness, fast heart rate, and low blood pressure.
Other severe nervous system effects have been reported, including tremors, seizures, hallucinations, confusion, loss of coordination and balance, decreased alertness, and coma.

Get vaccinated against COVID19. COVID19 vaccination is approved by FDA and is the safest and most effective way to prevent getting sick and protect against severe disease and death from SARSCoV2, the virus that causes COVID19, including the Delta variant.

Protect yourself and others from getting sick with COVID19. In addition to vaccination, wear masks in indoor public places, practice staying at least six feet from other people who don’t live in your household, avoid crowds and poorly ventilated spaces, and wash your hands often or use hand sanitizer that has at least 60 percent alcohol.

The article at The Epoch Times concludes:

“The government engaged in a singularly effective campaign here to malign a common drug that has been used for a very long time and has been dispensed in billions of doses. It’s one of the most famously safe drugs in the history of human medicine. And when people did exactly what the FDA said to ‘Stop it. Stop it with the ivermectin,’ I don’t understand how that would not be traceable back to the FDA,” Kelson said.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, said that he was most concerned about the social media statements because they did not include any qualifiers.

Belfer argued the statements were aimed at consumers and that the Twitter posts linked to one of the pages, which does include the qualifier.

“So it was predictable that if you include the link to the article, people will click on the link and will see the full article, which includes that disclaimer that if your doctor writes you a prescription, you should fill it exactly as prescribed,” he said.

“The plaintiffs, by their own admission, have continued to prescribe ivermectin. So they always had the authority. It may be that patients were not able to fill prescriptions, but the doctors themselves always had the authority,” he added later.

Brown said he appreciated the briefing from the parties and that he would rule “as quickly as we can for ya’ll.” As of Nov. 19, he has not issued a ruling.

The government did everything it could to prevent the use of Ivermectin. The problem with Ivermectin is that it is cheap and the pharmaceutical companies do not make a lot of money on it. The medical profession has sold its soul for money, and people around the world have did because of it. Accountability is in order.

This Is How Checks And Balances Are Supposed To Work

Despite what the mainstream media is telling you, the midterms were not a total disaster for the Republicans. The youth vote played a major role in the lack of success for Republicans–many gen X and millennials voted for student loan forgiveness and unfettered abortion rights. The student loan promise has already been taken from them. Possibly that might be a lesson for them. The popular vote was Republican, with certain Democrat strongholds preventing the Republican party from taking control of the Senate. There were some computer anomalies and ballot harvesting, but that has come to be part of elections in America. As I have previously stated, unless our voting paradigm changes, we will never see another Republican President.

Meanwhile, some of the Democrats have realized that the policies of the Biden administration are not popular with many Americans and have decided to protect their political future.

On Wednesday, Trending Politics posted the following headline:

13 Democrat Senators Revolt After Midterm Election, Deal Massive Blow to Biden’s Agenda

The article explains that thirteen Democrat Senators voted to to end the Covid “public health emergency” that the Biden administration had recently extended until April 2023.

The article reports:

While it is unclear if the House of Representatives will immediately take up the measure, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now on borrowed time. Her tenure at the top of Congressional leadership is set to come to an end on January 3, 2023 with the projected incoming Republican-led House.

12 Democrats joined in with the Republicans to put an end to the Covid public health emergency declaration: Sen. John Hickenlooper (CO), Sen. Tim Kaine (VA), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN), Sen. Joe Manchin (WV), Sen. Chris Murphy (CT), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Sen. Jon Tester (MT), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Sen. Mark Warner (VA), Sen. Cortez-Masto (NV), Sen. Jacky Rosen (NV) and Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY). Sen. Angus King (ME) is officially an Independent, but caucuses with Democrats.

The article notes:

Ending the declaration would weaken the federal government’s ability to respond to Covid-19 surges, the OMB claimed.

“Preserving our ability to respond is more important than ever as we head into the winter, when respiratory illnesses such as Covid-19 typically spread more easily,” the statement said. “Strengthened by the ongoing declaration of national emergency, the federal response to Covid-19 continues to save lives, improve health outcomes, and support the American economy.”

However, as the CDC earlier pointed out, over 95% of Americans have some form of protection to Covid-19. The currently predominant BA.4 and BA.5 variants are far less deadly than earlier strains, and an estimated 97% of Americans have natural immunity from prior infection, according to CDC data.

Ending the emergency would also impact the use of the vaccine, which is approved only for emergency use and would therefore end vaccine mandates.

What we saw during 2020 and 2022 was government tyranny. The government decided who could do business and who could not. The vaccine mandates created two classes of people. Many unvaccinated people were called ‘grandma murders’ despite the fact that they might have had natural immunity. Relatives were denied access to dying family members. In some states, Covid patients were sent into nursing homes to expose the most vulnerable to the disease. The government handled the Covid pandemic so badly that I sincerely question whether or not we should ever give them emergency powers again.

When Is An Emergency Not An Emergency?

On Friday, MSN reported that President Biden plans to renew the COVID-19 pandemic status as a public health emergency in January. The public health emergency was expected to expire in January. The article notes that the extension will provide free tests, vaccines and treatments. What the article does not mention is that fact that the Covid vaccine is only authorized under emergency use. If the emergency goes away, then any vaccine mandates that are still remaining will also have to go away.

The article reports:

The possibility of a winter surge in COVID cases and the need for more time to transition out of the public health emergency to a private market were two factors that contributed to the decision, the official said.

The public health emergency was initially declared in January 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began, and has been renewed each quarter since. But the government in August began signaling it planned to let it expire in Jan.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has promised to give states 60 days notice before letting the emergency expire, which would have been on Friday if it did not plan on renewing it again in January.

Doesn’t it make more sense to declare an emergency when there actually is one instead of when there might be a possibility of one? It should also be noted that many of those in government are enjoying the extra authority the public health emergency gives them. That is another reason we need to end the emergency.

Is Accountability Coming?

On September 30, Yahoo News posted the following headline:

The FDA Misled the Public About Ivermectin and Should Be Accountable in Court, Argues the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

Wow. I have no idea what the motive of the FDA was (although I could make some educated guesses), but people died because of their actions. They do need to be held accountable.

The article reports:

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) filed its motion and amicus brief Thursday evening with the federal district court in Galveston urging it to allow the lawsuit to proceed against the FDA for its misleading statements against ivermectin. In Apter v. HHS, a group of physicians sued to hold the Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency within the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), accountable for its interference with physicians’ ability to treat Covid-19.

“Defendant FDA has improperly exploited misunderstandings about the legality and prevalence of off-label uses of medication, in order to mislead courts, state medical boards, and the public into thinking there is anything improper about off-label prescribing,” AAPS writes in its amicus brief to the court. “Not only is off-label prescribing fully proper, legal, and commonplace, but it is also absolutely necessary in order to give effective care to patients.”

Yet the FDA published multiple statements and sent letters to influential organizations to falsely disparage ivermectin, implying that it was not approved for treating Covid-19. Many, including courts and state medical boards, were misled by the FDA into thinking that its lack of approval for this treatment meant that ivermectin should not be used to treat Covid-19.

“It has never been proper for the FDA to interfere with that essential part of the practice of medicine, and the FDA knows it,” AAPS informed the court. The FDA “insisted and continues to insist on interfering with the prescription of this safe medication by physicians in treating Covid-19,” AAPS added.

The article notes that AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly stated that once the FDA approves a medication as safe, then physicians have full authority to prescribe it to treat any illness.

People died because of the actions of the FDA.

Florida, Again, Takes The Lead

On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted the following headline:

Florida: Covid Vaccines Are Dangerous to Young Men

The article reports:

Yesterday, Florida’s Surgeon General issued a new guidance regarding mRNA vaccines: he said that young men between the ages of 18 and 39 should not be given such vaccines for covid:

This analysis found that there is an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group. Non-mRNA vaccines were not found to have these increased risks.

As such, the State Surgeon General recommends against males aged 18 to 39 from receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

An 84% increase in cardiac-related death is stunning, although in this age group the numbers would be low. As I understand it, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are mRNA, while the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines are not.

…Given the tiny risk that covid poses to young men, it seems reasonable for young men to avoid covid vaccines altogether, pending further information.

I don’t know whether the findings of the Florida study will hold up, or how the debate over the risks and benefits of various types of vaccines will ultimately be resolved (assuming it is resolved at all). But what should be blindingly obvious is that it was outrageous for the Centers for Disease Control, the federal government generally, and the government’s social media minions to try to suppress discussion of the need for, efficacy of, and risks associated with, covid vaccines. The idea that the public health establishment knew all there was to know about covid vaccines in a flash of revelation, and that any dissenting opinion or any pointing to contrary data constituted “misinformation,” is an affront to the scientific method. This is also a valuable reminder of why free speech is so important.

It is time to remove vaccine mandates and to caution people about the dangers of the vaccine. A friend of mine recently developed Bell’s Palsey after getting her booster shot. Her doctor advised her not to get any more boosters. No kidding.

Because the information on the dangers of this vaccine has been suppressed, we all need to do our own research. Too many people have had serious health complications from the vaccine. It’s time to assess the risk of the vaccine as well as the risk from the disease.

The Cure?

On Saturday, The Conservative Review posted an article about a peer-reviewed study on the effectiveness of Ivermectin in treating the Covid virus.

The article reports:

A new peer-reviewed study found that regular use of ivermectin reduced the risk of dying from COVID-19 by 92%.

The large study was conducted by Flávio A. Cadegiani, MD, MSc, PhD. Cadegiani is a board-certified endocrinologist with a master’s degree and doctorate degree in clinical endocrinology.

The peer-reviewed study was published on Wednesday by the online medical journal Cureus. The study was conducted on a strictly controlled population of 88,012 people from the city of Itajaí in Brazil.

Individuals who used ivermectin as prophylaxis or took the medication before being infected by COVID experienced significant reductions in death and hospitalization.

The article concludes:

The study defined regular users as those who used more than 30 tablets of ivermectin over five months. The dosage of ivermectin was determined by body weight, but “most of the population used between two and three tablets daily for two days, every 15 days.”

“Non-use of ivermectin was associated with a 12.5-fold increase in mortality rate and a seven-fold increased risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to the regular use of ivermectin,” the study read. “This dose-response efficacy reinforces the prophylactic effects of ivermectin against COVID-19.”

Cadegiani believes the study showed a “dose-response effect” – which means that increasing levels of ivermectin decreased the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

Cadegiani wrote on Twitter, “An observational study with the size and level of analysis as ours is hardly achieved and infeasible to be conducted as a randomised clinical trial. Conclusions are hard to be refuted. Data is data, regardless of your beliefs.”

It’s interesting to me that those in the study took the Ivermectin before they contracted Covid.

In December 2020, The National Library of Medicine posted a report about the low death rate from Covid in African countries where Ivermectin was being used to control Onchocerciasis.

The article reports:

Results: After controlling for different factors, including the Human Development Index (HDI), APOC (African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control) countries (vs. non-APOC), show 28% lower mortality (0.72; 95% CI: 0.67-0.78) and 8% lower rate of infection (0.92; 95% CI: 0.91-0.93) due to COVID-19.

Conclusions: The incidence in mortality rates and number of cases is significantly lower among the APOC countries compared to non-APOC countries. That a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use is an attractive hypothesis. Additional studies are needed to confirm it.

I strongly suspect that had the pharmaceutical companies not been involved, we might have looked for a cure rather than a vaccine.

 

Can We Just Admit We Don’t Have The Answer Yet?

On Friday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the effectiveness of the Covid-19 booster shots.

The article reports:

The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine booster doses dropped well under 50 percent after four months against subvariants of the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines provided just 51 percent protection against emergency department visits, urgent care encounters, and hospitalizations related to COVID-19 during the time BA.2 and BA.2.12.1, subvariants of the Omicron virus variant, were predominant in the United States, CDC researchers found.

Both vaccines are administered in two-dose primary series.

After 150-plus days, the effectiveness dropped to just 12 percent.

A first booster upped the protection to 56 percent, but the effectiveness went down to 26 percent after four months, according to the study, which drew numbers from a network of hospitals funded by the CDC across 10 states called the VISION Network.

The subvariant was predominant between late March and mid-June.

The article also notes:

Underlining the waning effectiveness against severe illness, the majority of patients admitted to the hospitals between December 2021 and June 2022 had received at least two doses of the vaccines.

Further, the percentage of unvaccinated patients dropped during the later period, going from 41.6 percent to 28.6 percent (hospitalized patients) and from 41.4 percent to 31 percent (emergency department and urgent care patients), researchers found.

The researchers, some of whom work for the CDC, theorized that the protection—known as natural immunity—many unvaccinated people enjoy from having had COVID-19 could be a factor in the drop in effectiveness of the vaccines, even though adults with documented prior infection were excluded from the study.

“If unvaccinated persons were more likely to have experienced recent infection, and infection-induced immunity provides some protection against re-infection, this could result in lower VE observed during the BA.2/BA.2.12.1 period,” they wrote. VE stands for vaccine effectiveness.

“Although adults with documented past SARS-CoV-2 infection were excluded, infections are likely to be significantly underascertained because of lack of testing or increased at-home testing. In addition, although time since receipt of the second or third vaccine dose was stratified by time intervals, on average the time since vaccination was longer during the BA.2/BA.2.12.1 period,” they added.

Although the medical community recommends flu shots every year, they also admit that predicting the particular variant of the flu that will be present during that flu season is something of a crap shoot. It seems that we are having the same problem with Covid-19, also a virus. I suspect coming up with a truly effective vaccine against Covid infections is probably about as likely as coming up with a vaccine for the common cold. I think we still have a lot to learn.