In an April 29, 2021, opinion piece published by Newsday,1 Arthur Caplan and Dorit Reiss, Ph.D., argue for the implementation of vaccine passports as a strategy to regain our freedom to travel and the “safe” reopening of schools and businesses.
Caplan is the director of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Reiss is a law professor at UC Hastings College of the Law and a member2 of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices of Vaccines.
Caplan is also co-chair of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy, a group formed specifically to address “key policy challenges associated with the testing and distribution of vaccines intended to prevent COVID-19 transmission in the United States,” and Reiss is a member of the board.3
Part of their argument is that vaccinations have “always” been “necessary for travel,” which is patently false. Proof of vaccination requirements are rare, and strictly limited to travel to certain destinations where the risk of contracting a disease and bringing it back to a population with nonexistent immunity against it is high. You’ve never had to show proof of vaccination when flying to Paris, France, for example.
Arguing for Unconstitutional Practices
Caplan and Reiss also argue that prohibiting businesses from requiring vaccine passports, which some state governors are now doing, is “unusual and irrational,” as private businesses have the right to make their business more attractive by increasing the safety for its staff and patrons.
The problem with that argument is that it is the government’s job to protect the Constitutional rights of all Americans. Allowing or encouraging businesses to create a two-tier society where unvaccinated people are barred from participating in civic society is unconstitutional on its face.
What’s more, proof of vaccination against COVID-19 will not ensure safety. It won’t even remotely promote it, as the so-called vaccines are designed to merely reduce symptoms of the infection. They don’t make you immune. You can still contract the virus and spread it to others. The only one who might benefit from the jab is the one getting it.
Of course, Caplan and Reiss make no mention of this crucial point, but since the vaccinated person is the only one getting any protection, no one needs to know your vaccination status, as it doesn’t affect them either way. A COVID-19 vaccinated individual poses the same risk to the community as an unvaccinated one.
So, the only reason for a vaccine passport is a control-related one, and Reiss and Caplan are keeping busy, trying to convince you otherwise. In a February 2021 Barron’s article,4 they argued for letting employers mandate vaccines for their employees, using the same lame arguments.
What’s happening here is that the U.S. federal government recognizes that it cannot legally mandate vaccine passports. It would be unconstitutional, as it would create a two-tier society built on medical discrimination. So, government is depending on private businesses to push through this measure. Reiss and Caplan’s efforts are part of this strategic subversion of Constitutional rights.
Caplan and Reiss also paired up for an opinion piece published April 27, 2021, by The Hour,5 in which they sank to typical propagandist lows, bashing parents of vaccine damaged children who fought against the removal of religious exemption to vaccination in Connecticut.6
The Threat of Utilitarianism
Caplan’s and Reiss’ one-sided obsession with utilitarianism, where risks to the individual are ignored and the idea of self-determination and personal choice is ridiculed, is clearly spelled out in an article published in the January/June 2020 issue of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences:7
“There is a large literature about school mandates, and a somewhat more limited literature on adult mandates, but there is less principled discussion of when is it appropriate to mandate a specific vaccine. Field and Caplan suggested an ethical framework to consider when school mandates ought to apply …
Their framework explains that autonomy, beneficence, utilitarianism, justice, and non-maleficence are the values affected by immunization mandates. Applying the framework here provides important insights on the suitability of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate …
[U]tilitarianism — acting for the benefit of the greatest number for society as a whole — supports a COVID-19 mandate, as it supports other vaccine mandates … The current pandemic is causing harms in lives and suffering, and also economic harms as preventing loss of more life requires measures like sheltering at home, closing businesses, and the closing of public spaces. Preventing these staggering costs is a huge social benefit.
Once a vaccine is available, the justification for measures like shelter at home will decrease, but preventing harms will depend on vaccine use. A mandate will increase use, boost herd immunity and reduce costs. The only caveat is that the balance of costs and benefits depends on the safety of the vaccine.”
Utilitarianism is a discredited pseudo-ethic that has repeatedly been used to justify horrific human rights abuses. By now, we can accurately predict what the outcome will be if we allow it to be used to justify vaccine passports and mandatory COVID vaccinations.
In short, utilitarianism is based on a mathematical equation that some individuals can be sacrificed for the greater good of the majority. In other words, if some people are harmed by vaccines, it’s an acceptable loss because society as a whole may or will reap gains.
Caplan and Reiss express this as “acting for the benefit of the greatest number.” The flip-side is that a smaller number — it could be 49 out of 100 — may be harmed and that’s acceptable, because the people harmed is still a smaller number than the majority.
More Than 11,000 COVID Vaccine Deaths Logged
The latest data on COVID-19 vaccine side effects suggest governments are already operating under this horrific utilitarian ideology.
How else do you explain the fact that the European Union’s vaccine injury reporting system had logged 330,218 adverse event reports, including 7,766 deaths, as of April 17, 2021,8 and the U.S. reporting system had logged 118,902 adverse event reports as of April 23, including 3,544 deaths and 12,618 serious injuries,9 yet all of these injuries and deaths are simply ignored and the call for everyone to get their jab continues unabated — all while bashing vaccine hesitancy as a mental illness, intellectual deficit or act of domestic terrorism?!
In a utilitarian system, you cease to be an individual with rights to autonomous decision-making and become a tool of the government, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. Government has apparently decided that some people — quite a few people, apparently — are expendable, which is the exact converse of what they’re telling us publicly.
They say we all must get vaccinated to save lives, especially the elderly. Yet lives are being taken, and these are not people who already have one foot in the grave. While COVID-19 kills the elderly and the seriously ill, these gene therapy injections are stealing the lives of younger, healthy individuals who are in the prime of their lives. How can you even compare those two scenarios and come to the conclusion that mass vaccination is the greater good?
While utilitarianism was a popular ideology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it went out of fashion in the mid-20th century, after the Third Reich employed the utilitarian rationale as an excuse to demonize and eliminate minorities judged to be a threat to the health, security and well-being of the State.10 Its abhorrent and unethical nature was clearly recognized and clarified during the Nuremberg trials.
Although we may disagree about the quality and quantity of the scientific evidence used by doctors and governments to declare COVID-19 “vaccines” safe, at our peril do we fail to agree that, while government may have the power, it does not have the moral authority to dictate that individuals born with certain genes and biological susceptibilities give up their lives without their consent for what the ruling majority deems is the greater good.
Having everyone conform to a normal weight and not having insulin resistance issues would be for the greater good of society. Does that mean government should have the power to send everyone above a certain BMI to a forced internment camp where they are exercised and underfed until they no longer pose an increased health care cost risk?
We really ought to think long and hard before we jump on the utilitarian wagon and start pumping our fists in the air in endorsement of the “greater good” narrative.
Most people in the U.S. are engaging in lifestyle practices that put them at a seriously increased risk of being a financial burden on society and the health care system, so don’t fall for the baseless idea that unvaccinated people, specifically, will end up costing more because they’ll end up with more serious cases of COVID-19. There’s no data at all to back that up.
Conspiracies Blamed for Growing Sensibility
As more and more people are starting to realize the perilous road we’re on and where it’s taking us, the mainstream propagandists are turning up the heat, blaming vaccine hesitancy on one “conspiracy theory” after another. They simply refuse to admit that people can, and most want, to make their own decisions.
Rising anti-vaccination sentiment is being blamed on everything from Russian bots and trolls spreading misinformation online and making a tiny minority appear larger than what it actually is,11 to rebranding “harmful anti-vaccine views” as a civil liberties issue or a part of some other conspiracy theory involving the drug industry or Bill Gates.12
The fact is, the vaccine mandate pushers have nothing but foul language and mockery at their disposal. They have no facts with which to prove that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, or that mass vaccination will save lives. They cannot disprove the financial incentives and ties that exist between Gates, the World Health Organization, vaccine makers and government.
Gates is one of the largest funders of the WHO, which has been responsible for the global response to the pandemic, while simultaneously being heavily invested in COVID-19 vaccines and funding censorship of vaccine information.13
The WHO is also promoting global censorship of vaccine information, in part through its “Stop the Spread” campaign14 aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19 “misinformation,” and a coalition of groups is calling on the Biden Administration to put together a disinformation task force.15
Showing just how ludicrous this suggestion is, the task force would “explore ways to crack down on deliberate disinformation campaigns in ways that don’t unduly limit free expression.” In other words, they’re to figure out how to censor people without making it a clear breach of the First Amendment.
Well, we already know one way in which they’re doing that, and that is by calling on private companies like Twitter and Facebook to censor for them. It’s still a violation of the First Amendment, though; it’s just harder to see.
Vaccine mandate pushers also cannot disprove that the pandemic is being used to roll out the Great Reset and global “build back better” plans that will decimate the U.S. Constitution and rob the working class of its wealth and autonomy. In short, they have no counter-arguments. All they can do is paint people who question their flimsy utilitarian narrative as crackpots of one sort or another.
If the vaccines were truly fantastic, word of their miraculous nature would spread like wildfire, just as reports of horrendous vaccine side effects now are, and people would flock to get them even in the absence of advertising and celebrity promotion.
The fact that name-calling and smear tactics are employed en masse to paint dissenters as crackpots and terrorists rather than presenting actual data and evidence that supports their pro-vaccine stance is proof positive that there’s something strange afoot.
Utilitarian Extremism Is on the Rise
I’ve previously written about the sudden influence wielded by a group called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive cancel-culture leader with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as a national security threat.
The CCDH has published two reports16,17 naming me as one of the top 12 individuals responsible for 65% of vaccine “disinformation” on social media, and in true utilitarian fashion, CCDH founder Imran Ahmed is calling on all platforms to silence me for the public good.
Ahmed has also published an article18 in the journal Nature Medicine, calling for the “dismantling” of the entire “anti-vaccine industry.” In it, he repeats the lie that he “attended and recorded a private, three-day meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when, in fact, what he’s referring to was a public online conference open to an international audience.
All attendants have access to the recordings as part of their attendance fee, so unless he illegally hacked his way into the conference, he didn’t have to record a thing. We gave it to him. When you lie about something that stupid, it really puts your credibility about larger issues in question.
The CCDH is partnered with Anti-Vax Watch, which held a demonstration outside the halls of Congress in this bizarre getup. While the CCDH claims to be fighting the good fight against dangerous crackpots and extremists, they work with people who look like they epitomize those terms.19
This is hardly the look of people standing on higher moral and ethical ground. This is pure theatre, which makes sense, seeing how they don’t have facts and data with which to make their point.
Gates-Funded Doctor Demands Terrorist Experts Attack Me
Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute,20 recently cited the CCDH in a Nature article in which he goes so far as to call for cyberwarfare experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people who are “vaccine hesitant.”
“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies,” Hotez writes.21
“The United Nations and the highest levels of government must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures.
The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive.”
This appears to be part of the campaign to pressure the White House administration into creating an information warfare task force, as mentioned earlier. Not surprisingly, the Sabin Vaccine Institute has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.22,23,24,25 Most recently, funds from the Gates foundation were used to create a report called “Meeting the Challenge of Vaccine Hesitancy.”26,27
A Well-Informed Humanity United Is the Answer
Even while censorship and utilitarian-driven extremism heats up, we must never stop seeking out and sharing information that impacts our health and freedom. Informed consent demands transparency of the bad along with the good. Right now, all people are given free access to is the supposed benefit, while all potential harms are whitewashed and scrubbed from the internet.
Nothing good can come of this. As noted in Kennedy’s October 24, 2020, online speech,28 “International Message of Hope for Humanity” — which kicked off a day of protest against the coup d’état by the technocratic elite — we must shed our imaginary fears, reject media fearmongering, insist on freedom of speech and engage in the democratic process.
“The only way we can win it is with democracy,” he said. “We need to fight to get our democracy back, to reclaim our democracy from these villains who are stealing it from us. Notice the people who are getting richest from this quarantine are the same people who are censoring criticism of the quarantine.”
The same is true for vaccines and vaccine passports. Kennedy also stressed another crucial point, namely the need to unify. We must put aside our quibbles over nonessential things like race, religion and political affiliations, and stay laser-focused on the real enemy.
“What the Big Tech villains … want us to do is fight with each other. They want Blacks fighting against Whites. They want republicans fighting against democrats. They want everybody polarized. They want everybody fragmented because they know that if we all get together, we’re going to start asking questions and those are questions they can’t answer …
Stop identifying yourself. The enemy is Big Tech, Big Data, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the medical cartel, the government totalitarian elements that are trying to oppress us, that are trying to rob us of our liberties, of our democracy, of our freedom of thought, of our freedom of expression, of our freedom of assembly and all of the freedoms that give dignity to humanity …
The free-flow of information, the cauldron of debate, is the only thing that allows governments to develop rational policies in which self-governance will actually work and triumph.
You are on the front lines of the most important battle in history — the battle to save democracy, freedom, human liberty and human dignity from this totalitarian cartel that is trying to rob us, simultaneously, in every nation in the world, of the rights that every human being is born with …
And I pledge to you: I will go down dying with my boots on, fighting side-by-side with all of you to make sure that we return these rights and preserve them for our children.”
I too will continue fighting for human rights, free speech and medical freedom. Without these, what are we? What is life reduced to? What’s the point of preventing a few COVID-19 cases and deaths if the entire global population — including the billions who are at no risk from this virus — must gamble their health in the process?
The Rise of Utilitarian Extremism, and How to Recognize It | Mercola
Skip The Scoop | Seek Understanding
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Explains How Anthony Fauci Has Been Manipulating Science | Video: 14 Minutes 38 Seconds
Twitter Censors a Content From a Respected Medical Conference That Americans Deserve to Know
On Nov. 8, 2021, the American Heart Association (AHA) journals published the abstracts that researchers and clinicians would present during online scientific sessions beginning on Nov.13. The scientific sessions are rigorous events, and content must be submitted and selected. One of the abstracts published in the journal Circulation dealt with mRNA vaccines and cardiac health. When Twitter users tried to share the information in the abstract, people interested in reading it encountered a warning that it could be an unsafe link.
Astonishingly, Twitter content moderators feel emboldened to censor information published in a journal maintained by a well-respected, mainstream professional association. Further, the data appeared in a rigorous online conference for medical professionals. It also seems to provide a signal for potential vaccine side effects that are not terribly surprising and reasonably strong.
Dr. Steven R. Gundry of the International Heart and Lung Institute wrote an abstract that raised a concern about mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 potentially raising the inflammatory markers in the blood. Gundry’s group has been conducting a long-term study of the risk for a new Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS). Patients in the clinic have received a clinically validated measurement of multiple blood protein biomarkers called the PULS score every 3-6 months for eight years. The study began before the pandemic and has accumulated a significant history for participants. But Twitter decided the information that the group found is dangerous.
[PJ Media]
New Twitter CEO: ‘Why Should I Distinguish Between White People and Racists’
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down on November 29, 2021, only to be replaced by a new chief who immediately found himself in hot water for, of all things, an inflammatory tweet.
“‘If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists,’” Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal said in a 2010 tweet.
“If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists.”
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) October 26, 2010
Agrawal is the company’s former CTO.
The tweet is missing some context. The message was tweeted inside quotation marks, indicated that it might not be originally written by Agrawal.
The Tennessee Star asked Twitter for clarification, but none was given. The micro-blogging site also ignored The Star when asked whether Agrawal’s tweet violated its terms of service.
Agrawal is also facing scrutiny for comments during a 2020 speech, which was also during the height of Twitter’s many censorship scandals. Twitter has banned prominent conservatives all the way up to former President Donald J. Trump, using often-ambiguous “terms of service violations” to justify its actions.
“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment…focus[ing] less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed,” Agrawal reportedly said at the time.
Dorsey fully endorsed his successor while stepping down.
“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” he said in an email to staff that he later posted publicly. “My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational,” he added of his successor. “I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead.”
Dorsey said he was “really sad but really happy” to be leaving the company he founded.
He also quipped that “there aren’t many founders who choose their company over their own ego.”
Shares of Twitter stock soared 11 percent pre-market on the rumor that Dorsey was leaving his post, and surged even further when the news was official. NASDAQ briefly paused trading on Twitter stock during that time.
– – –
Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to dabroscareports@gmail.com.
The post New Twitter CEO: ‘Why Should I Distinguish Between White People and Racists’ appeared first on The Georgia Star News.
“China is Laughing at Us:” Twitter Suspends Rep. Jim Banks and Censors Marjorie Taylor Greene for Pointing Out That “The First-Ever Female 4 Star Admiral,” Rachel Levine, is a MAN
The week of October 13, 2021, Twitter cracked down on two sitting US House Representatives for factually acknowledging that Biden’s assistant health secretary of the HHS – Rachel Levine – was a man for almost 50 years, and shouldn’t be labeled as the “first female anything.” She lived the majority of his entire life as a man before transitioning in her late 40’s.
Levine was sworn in to her new position earlier this week and was promptly labeled “the first-ever female” four-star admiral to serve in the US government.
Reps Banks (R-IN) and Greene (R-GA) took a stand for women when they sent their tweets, pointing out that attributing the title of the first female anything to Levine would be a hindrance to furthering equal rights for women. Even for old white men, if they meet the qualifications, so the Twitter speech police quickly sprung into action to censor the lawmaker’s statements.
Rep. Greene wrote on Twitter that “A dude who lived the first 50 years of his life as a man isn’t the first female anything” and followed it up by pointing out the fact that, thanks to all of this woke BS, Communist China is laughing at us.
Twitter immediately censored the tweet but allowed it to stay up. Likes, retweets, and comments are no longer allowed on the post and the platform added a banner that reads “This tweet violated the Twitter rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
A dude who lived the first 50 years of his life as a man isn’t the first female anything.
China is laughing at us. pic.twitter.com/aevoytoOHf
— Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@mtgreenee) October 20, 2021
The Tweet was censored instead of removed because the congress member’s post falls under the platform’s policy regarding public figures, which allows tweets to remain up even if it violates other policies if the account is held by a “current or potential member of a local, state, national, or supra-national governmental or legislative body.”
Apparently, this ‘public figure’ policy only applies to hand-picked cases. As we saw with President Trump when he was still in office. The selective nature of their policy was proven once again this week when Rep. Banks sent out a similar tweet to Greene’s, but instead of being censored, the lawmaker was locked out of his Twitter account and cannot get back in unless he deletes his tweet about Rachel Levine.
Banks’ Tweets simply pointed out that “the title of first female four-star officer goes to a man” and explained that calling Levine such is “an insult to every little girl who dreams of breaking glass ceilings one day.”
NEW: Twitter has censored @RepJimBanks for calling HHS’ Rachel Levine a man. He will be locked out of his account until he deletes the tweet, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.” pic.twitter.com/6wdDqJ36kH
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 23, 2021
Here is the other tweet that he posted:
It’s unclear why Banks had more severe repercussions for posting almost the exact same tweet as Greene.
Libby Emmons, a writer with the Post-Millennial perfectly encapsulated the lunacy of the entire situation in just one paragraph.
“For many, Levine, who spent the majority of her life as a white, biological male, with all of the privileges thereto, is not diverse at all, but more of the same. Levine’s new achievement of “first female” is a hard pill for many to swallow, who are told not to trust their eyes, or science, but to simply believe what they are told by officials who specialize in double-speak.”
This whole “first female” fiasco has solidified the fact that we are officially living in clown world.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is right, Communist China is laughing its way to more power.
The post “China is Laughing at Us:” Twitter Suspends Rep. Jim Banks and Censors Marjorie Taylor Greene for Pointing Out That “The First-Ever Female 4 Star Admiral,” Rachel Levine, is a MAN appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
NICKI MINAJ: ‘Open Your F**king Eyes’ to COVID Censorship, Twitter Ban is ‘Making Me Think’ That ‘There’s Something Bigger’ Going On
After being temporarily suspended from Twitter on September 15, 2021, for questioning the COVID vaccine, pop star Nicki Minaj encouraged Americans to “open your f**king eyes” to the censorship currently happening in the West, adding that her ban made her think that “there’s something bigger” going on.
Minaj, the Trinidadian-born pop star, had made global news in recent days, for tweeting in support of medical freedom, explaining that someone she knows became “impotent” after taking one of the controversial COVID vaccines and then urging her followers to pray and weigh the benefits of getting vaccinated. In response, globalist media outlets became enraged at the star, with only Tucker Carlson and other pro-freedom outlets defending her. On Wednesday evening, Minaj even tweeted out a clip of Carlson defending her, causing an even greater backlash from pro-vaccine defenders. . . .
In what may not be a surprise to some, Minaj added that many other musical artists feel the same way as her, “but they’re afraid to speak up” for fear of the same backlash happening to them. “I will never use Twitter again,” she added, noting that her ban from Twitter was making her think “that there’s something bigger” happening with censorship in general around the COVID vaccine:
I kept on seeing all these people with all these conspiracy theories I was like, oh what, please. But what in the world scared y’all that much that made you disable my f**king Twitter? I have not put out anything that I said was a fact about anything. I simply said we should be able to ask questions and speak. It’s scary when they start telling you that you can’t ask questions about anything… Listen to me. Please. Open your fucking eyes. Open your eyes! That’s all.
American Booksellers Association ‘Protects’ Twitter Account After Censorship Backlash
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has “protected” its Twitter account — hiding its tweets from public view — in the wake of a controversy last week over its effort to censor a book that is critical of transgenderism among girls.
Last week, the ABA apologized for including the book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, written by Abigail Shrier, in a newsletter, referring to its own article about the book as a “violent incident.”
As Breitbart News reported:
The ABA tweeted, “An anti-trans book was included in our July mailing to members. This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s ends policies, values, and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.”
…
The New York-based ABA describes itself as “a national not-for-profit trade organization that works to help independently owned bookstores grow and succeed.”
Criticism of the ABA’s censorship began to pour in, with some likening it to medieval book-burning. The Wall Street Journal noted:
Ms. Shrier supports medical gender transitions for adults and opposes discrimination against trans individuals. Her justifiable concern is with adolescent girls who have shown no childhood history of gender dysphoria, and who might later regret a decision that alters their bodies in fundamental ways.
…
The woke left doesn’t want anyone questioning its dogma on transgender identity. But there’s much that the scientific, psychological and medical communities do not know about gender, and novel fields of study in particular rely on free and open inquiry. The left’s impulse to silence skeptics and dissenters on this and so many other subjects should be unacceptable in a free society.
In response to the controversy, the ABA — rather than defending its censorship — has censored itself. Its Twitter account has been “protected” . . .
(READ) Congressman demands Twitter release evidence of political collusion on tweet censorship
On the heels of a lawsuit alleging political collusion between Twitter and California politicians, U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz (FL-R) issued a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The letter calls on the platform to release all documents and communications showing censorship of political tweets at the behest of California Democrats:
Twitter, California Sued for Cooperating on Censorship
A conservative influencer filed a lawsuit against Twitter, a former California secretary of state, and others on June 17, 2021, alleging that they colluded to censor election-related content, violating the plaintiff’s rights to free speech, equal protection, and due process.
The lawsuit (pdf) cites emails and documents from California’s Office of Elections Cybersecurity, which show that state employees flagged Twitter posts because they purportedly contained misinformation. Twitter subsequently removed many of the flagged posts, including those written by attorney Rogan O’Handley, the plaintiff.
Twitter went on to permanently suspend O’Handley for a post that said “most votes in American history,” alongside a photo of the U.S. Capitol surrounded by barbed wire in the wake of the Jan. 6 breach.
“The actions of then-California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, his agents, and Twitter are outrageous. Government cannot censor speech on the basis of viewpoint, but that is exactly what happened here,” the Center for American Liberty, which is representing O’Handley, said in a statement.
LAWSUIT: Twitter Conspired With Democrats on ‘Orwellian’ Censorship of Election Concerns
On June 17, 2021, a former lawyer and conservative commentator sued Twitter, former California Secretary of State (and current U.S. Senator) Alex Padilla, and others, alleging that these people conspired to suppress free speech and discriminate against conservative critics of Padilla in the name of fighting “misinformation” about the 2020 presidential election. Rogan O’Handley, the commentator in question, amassed 440,000 followers on Twitter as he shared his concerns about the 2020 election, but Twitter permanently booted him from the platform.
[PJ Media]
Democrats Push for More Censorship at Facebook, Google, Twitter Hearing
Democrats urged Big Tech to step up online censorship or face government regulation during a March 25, 2021 congressional hearing with the chief executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter. The lawmakers portrayed the platforms as rife with “disinformation and extremism” that the platforms are unwilling to purge. “Our nation is drowning in disinformation driven by social […]
The post Democrats Push for More Censorship at Facebook, Google, Twitter Hearing appeared first on NTD.
Diversity Darling Finds Out Her Black Ancestor Owned Slaves | Paul Joseph Watson
Alex Scott, one of The faces of the BBC’s new diversity drive, was shocked to discover that her ancestor owned slaves. A historian had to explain to Alex that it wasn’t unusual for black people to own slaves. Fact is, virtually every empire and ethnicity throughout history owned slaves, but kids are brainwashed to think that only white people were to blame.
Fully ‘Vaccinated’ and Now He’s Dead | Colin Powell Dead At 84 | New York Post
Colin Powell, former general and secretary of state, dead at 84
Colin Powell’s Facebook Page Announcement Sums Up Everything That’s Wrong with Political Ruling Class Today
Former Secretary of State and General Colin Powell died today at age 84 from complications of the coronavirus.
Powell was fully vaccinated.
Colin Powell Dies at 84 from COVID Complications — He Was Fully Vaccinated
His death announcement on Facebook sums up everything that is wrong with the political-elitist class in America today.
Despite being vaccinated, Powell succumbed to the virus. But this does not stop the elites from pushing their dangerous experimental vaccines on the American public. Even the notice posted on Powell’s Facebook page promotes the oversold injections.
You’ve gotta love those tyrants on Facebook!
We even have video on the extraordinary ineffectiveness of the COVID vaccines today.
At what point will the ruling class admit they were wrong and take a step back to reevaluate?
A video showing the shifting narrative in vaccine efficacy. A
science world of the left. pic.twitter.com/BieFB1p4hy
— Americanka
(@Americanka4) October 12, 2021
The post Colin Powell’s Facebook Page Announcement Sums Up Everything That’s Wrong with Political Ruling Class Today appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Never Forget | “How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler” | Glenn Greenwald
Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want. If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.
The founders of Parler heard that suggestion and tried. In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants.
Over the last year, Parler encountered immense success. Millions of people who objected to increasing repression of speech on the largest platforms or who had themselves been banned signed up for the new social media company.
As Silicon Valley censorship radically escalated over the past several months — banning pre-election reporting by The New York Post about the Biden family, denouncing and deleting multiple posts from the U.S. President and then terminating his access altogether, mass-removal of right-wing accounts — so many people migrated to Parler that it was catapulted to the number one spot on the list of most-downloaded apps on the Apple Play Store, the sole and exclusive means which iPhone users have to download apps. “Overall, the app was the 10th most downloaded social media app in 2020 with 8.1 million new installs,” reported TechCrunch.
It looked as if Parler had proven critics of Silicon Valley monopolistic power wrong. Their success showed that it was possible after all to create a new social media platform to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And they did so by doing exactly what Silicon Valley defenders long insisted should be done: if you don’t like the rules imposed by tech giants, go create your own platform with different rules.
But today, if you want to download, sign up for, or use Parler, you will be unable to do so. That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country.
If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
The united Silicon Valley attack began on January 8, when Apple emailed Parler and gave them 24 hours to prove they had changed their moderation practices or else face removal from their App Store. The letter claimed: “We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property.” It ended with this warning:
To ensure there is no interruption of the availability of your app on the App Store, please submit an update and the requested moderation improvement plan within 24 hours of the date of this message. If we do not receive an update compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines and the requested moderation improvement plan in writing within 24 hours, your app will be removed from the App Store.
The 24-hour letter was an obvious pretext and purely performative. Removal was a fait accompli no matter what Parler did. To begin with, the letter was immediately leaked to Buzzfeed, which published it in full. A Parler executive detailed the company’s unsuccessful attempts to communicate with Apple. “They basically ghosted us,” he told me. The next day, Apple notified Parler of its removal from App Store. “We won’t distribute apps that present dangerous and harmful content,” said the world’s richest company, and thus: “We have now rejected your app for the App Store.”
It is hard to overstate the harm to a platform from being removed from the App Store. Users of iPhones are barred from downloading apps onto their devices from the internet. If an app is not on the App Store, it cannot be used on the iPhone. Even iPhone users who have already downloaded Parler will lose the ability to receive updates, which will shortly render the platform both unmanageable and unsafe.
In October, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law issued a 425-page report concluding that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all possess monopoly power and are using that power anti-competitively. For Apple, they emphasized the company’s control over iPhones through its control of access to the App Store. As Ars Technica put it when highlighting the report’s key findings:
Apple controls about 45 percent of the US smartphone market and 20 percent of the global smartphone market, the committee found, and is projected to sell its 2 billionth iPhone in 2021. It is correct that, in the smartphone handset market, Apple is not a monopoly. Instead, iOS and Android hold an effective duopoly in mobile operating systems.
However, the report concludes, Apple does have a monopolistic hold over what you can do with an iPhone. You can only put apps on your phone through the Apple App Store, and Apple has total gatekeeper control over that App Store—that’s what Epic is suing the company over. . . .
The committee found internal documents showing that company leadership, including former CEO Steve Jobs, “acknowledged that IAP requirement would stifle competition and limit the apps available to Apple’s customers.” The report concludes that Apple has also unfairly used its control over APIs, search rankings, and default apps to limit competitors’ access to iPhone users.
Shortly thereafter, Parler learned that Google, without warning, had also “suspended” it from its Play Store, severely limiting the ability of users to download Parler onto Android phones. Google’s actions also meant that those using Parler on their Android phones would no longer receive necessary functionality and security updates.
It was precisely Google’s abuse of its power to control its app device that was at issue “when the European Commission deemed Google LLC as the dominant undertaking in the app stores for the Android mobile operating system (i.e. Google Play Store) and hit the online search and advertisement giant with €4.34 billion for its anti-competitive practices to strengthen its position in various of other markets through its dominance in the app store market.”
The day after a united Apple and Google acted against Parler, Amazon delivered the fatal blow. The company founded and run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, used virtually identical language as Apple to inform Parler that its web hosting service (AWS) was terminating Parler’s ability to have AWS host its site: “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.” Because Amazon is such a dominant force in web hosting, Parler has thus far not found a hosting service for its platform, which is why it has disappeared not only from app stores and phones but also from the internet.
On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.
With virtual unanimity, leading U.S. liberals celebrated this use of Silicon Valley monopoly power to shut down Parler, just as they overwhelmingly cheered the prior two extraordinary assertions of tech power to control U.S. political discourse: censorship of The New York Post’s reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the banning of the U.S. President from major platforms. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a single national liberal-left politician even expressing concerns about any of this, let alone opposing it.
Not only did leading left-wing politicians not object but some of them were the ones who pleaded with Silicon Valley to use their power this way. After the internet-policing site Sleeping Giants flagged several Parler posts that called for violence, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked: “What are @Apple and @GooglePlay doing about this?” Once Apple responded by removing Parler from its App Store — a move that House Democrats just three months earlier warned was dangerous anti-trust behavior — she praised Apple and then demanded to know: “Good to see this development from @Apple. @GooglePlay what are you going to do about apps being used to organize violence on your platform?”
The liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg pronounced herself “disturbed by just how awesome [tech giants’] power is” and added that “it’s dangerous to have a handful of callow young tech titans in charge of who has a megaphone and who does not.” She nonetheless praised these “young tech titans” for using their “dangerous” power to ban Trump and destroy Parler. In other words, liberals like Goldberg are concerned only that Silicon Valley censorship powers might one day be used against people like them, but are perfectly happy as long as it is their adversaries being deplatformed and silenced (Facebook and other platforms have for years banned marginalized people like Palestinians at Israel’s behest, but that is of no concern to U.S. liberals).
That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism. Liberals now want to use the force of corporate power to silence those with different ideologies. They are eager for tech monopolies not just to ban accounts they dislike but to remove entire platforms from the internet. They want to imprison people they believe helped their party lose elections, such as Julian Assange, even if it means creating precedents to criminalize journalism.
World leaders have vocally condemned the power Silicon Valley has amassed to police political discourse, and were particularly indignant over the banning of the U.S. President. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, various French ministers, and especially Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador all denounced the banning of Trump and other acts of censorship by tech monopolies on the ground that they were anointing themselves “a world media power.” The warnings from López Obrador were particularly eloquent:
Even the ACLU — which has rapidly transformed from a civil liberties organization into a liberal activist group since Trump’s election — found the assertion of Silicon Valley’s power to destroy Parler deeply alarming. One of that organization’s most stalwart defenders of civil liberties, lawyer Ben Wizner, told The New York Times that the destruction of Parler was more “troubling” than the deletion of posts or whole accounts: “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.”
Yet American liberals swoon for this authoritarianism. And they are now calling for the use of the most repressive War on Terror measures against their domestic opponents. On Tuesday, House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) urged that GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley “be put on the no-fly list,” while The Wall Street Journal reported that “Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.”
So much of this liberal support for the attempted destruction of Parler is based in utter ignorance about that platform, and about basic principles of free speech. I’d be very surprised if more than a tiny fraction of liberals cheering Parler’s removal from the internet have ever used the platform or know anything about it other than the snippets they have been shown by those seeking to justify its destruction and to depict it as some neo-Nazi stronghold.
Parler was not founded, nor is it run, by pro-Trump, MAGA supporters. The platform was created based in libertarian values of privacy, anti-surveillance, anti-data collection, and free speech. Most of the key executives are more associated with the politics of Ron Paul and the CATO Institute than Steve Bannon or the Trump family. One is a Never Trump Republican, while another is the former campaign manager of Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Among the few MAGA-affiliated figures is Dan Bongino, an investor. One of the key original investors was Rebekah Mercer.
The platform’s design is intended to foster privacy and free speech, not a particular ideology. They minimize the amount of data they collect on users to prevent advertiser monetization or algorithmic targeting. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, they do not assess a user’s preferences in order to decide what they should see. And they were principally borne out of a reaction to increasingly restrictive rules on the major Silicon Valley platforms regarding what could and could not be said.
Of course large numbers of Trump supporters ended up on Parler. That’s not because Parler is a pro-Trump outlet, but because those are among the people who were censored by the tech monopolies or who were angered enough by that censorship to seek refuge elsewhere.
It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube. As Recode reported, while some protesters participated in both Parler and Gab, many of the calls to attend the Capitol were from YouTube videos, while many of the key planners “have continued to use mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.” The article quoted Fadi Quran, campaign director at the human rights group Avaaz, as saying: “In DC, we saw QAnon conspiracists and other militias that would never have grown to this size without being turbo-charged by Facebook and Twitter.”
And that’s to say nothing of the endless number of hypocrisies with Silicon Valley giants feigning opposition to violent rhetoric or political extremism. Amazon, for instance, is one of the CIA’s most profitable partners, with a $600 million contract to provide services to the agency, and it is constantly bidding for more. On Facebook and Twitter, one finds official accounts from the most repressive and violent regimes on earth, including Saudi Arabia, and pages devoted to propaganda on behalf of the Egyptian regime. Does anyone think these tech giants have a genuine concern about violence and extremism?
So why did Democratic politicians and journalists focus on Parler rather than Facebook and YouTube? Why did Amazon, Google and Apple make a flamboyant showing of removing Parler from the internet while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis?
In part it is because these Silicon Valley giants — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple — donate enormous sums of money to the Democratic Party and their leaders, so of course Democrats will cheer them rather than call for punishment or their removal from the internet. Part of it is because Parler is an upstart, a much easier target to try to destroy than Facebook or Google. And in part it is because the Democrats are about to control the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress, leaving Silicon Valley giants eager to please them by silencing their adversaries. This corrupt motive was made expressly clear by long-time Clinton operative Jennifer Palmieri:
It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.
The nature of monopolistic power is that anti-competitive entities engage in anti-trust illegalities to destroy rising competitors. Parler is associated with the wrong political ideology. It is a small and new enough platform such that it can be made an example of. Its head can be placed on a pike to make clear that no attempt to compete with existing Silicon Valley monopolies is possible. And its destruction preserves the unchallengeable power of a tiny handful of tech oligarchs over the political discourse not just of the United States but democracies worldwide (which is why Germany, France and Mexico are raising their voices in protest).
No authoritarians believe they are authoritarians. No matter how repressive are the measures they support — censorship, monopoly power, no-fly lists for American citizens without due process — they tell themselves that those they are silencing and attacking are so evil, are terrorists, that anything done against them is noble and benevolent, not despotic and repressive. That is how American liberals currently think, as they fortify the control of Silicon Valley monopolies over our political lives, exemplified by the overnight destruction of a new and popular competitor.
Vaccine Adverse Story Of 12 Year Old Participant | Video: 6 Minutes
They believe in vaccines and voluntarily wanted to help end the Covid-19 pandemic. The nightmare for 12 year old Maddie de Gray and her family started after the second Pfizer ‘vaccine’ shot. She is only one of hundreds of thousands of cases. “On January 20 Maddie received her second does of the Pfizer Covid vaccine as a participant in the clinical trial for 12 to 15 year olds. All three of our kids who volunteered were excited to participate in the trial as a way to help us all return to normal life. My husband works in the medical field and I have a degree in electrical engineering. We are pro-vaccine and pro-science which is why we agreed to let Maddie and our two other children volunteer for the trial. Before Maddie got her final does of the vaccine she was a healthy 12 year old. . . . upon receiving the second shot Maddie immediately felt pain at the injection site and over the next 24 hours she developed severe chest and abdominal pain . . in the discharge papers from the children’s hospital ER that she went to the diagnosis stated adverse effect of vaccine initial encounter. . . Over the next two and a half months her abdominal, muscle and nerve pain became unbearable. She developed additional symptoms that included gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure and heart rate, memory loss, she mixes up words, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, she fell and hit her head, and then seizures. She had developed verbal and motor ticks, had loss of feeling from the waist down and muscle weakness, drastic changes in her vision, urinary retention and loss of bladder control, severely irregular and heavy menstrual cycles and eventually she had to have an NG tube to get nutrition. . . . what I want to ask Maddie volunteered for the Pfizer trial. Why aren’t they researching in order to figure out why this happened so other people don’t have to go through this? Instead, they’re just saying it’s just mental. . . . she did the right thing trying to help everyone else and they are not helping her.”
So We’ve Known All Along That Coronavirus Vaccines Are Very Dangerous | “Immunization With SARS Coronavirus Vaccines Leads To Pulmonary Immunopathology On Challenge With The SARS Virus” | NIH
Researchers:
Background:Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in China in 2002 and spread to other countries before brought under control. Because of a concern for reemergence or a deliberate release of the SARS coronavirus, vaccine development was initiated. Evaluations of an inactivated whole virus vaccine in ferrets and nonhuman primates and a virus-like-particle vaccine in mice induced protection against infection but challenged animals exhibited an immunopathologic-type lung disease.
Conclusion: These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced. Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.
The Covid-19 ‘Vaccine’ Is Ruining So Many Lives | “Jeremy Chardy: I Regret Getting Vaccinated, I Have Series Of Problems Now” | Tennis World
Former world No. 25 Jeremy Chardy says he has a “series of problems” after taking the COVID-19 vaccine and his 2021 season is over. This summer, 34-year-old Chardy decided to get vaccinated and it didn’t work out well for him.
Chardy, now ranked at No. 73 in the world, claims he is unable to train and play. “Since I got my vaccine [between the Olympics and the US Open], I have a problem, I have a series of problems. As a result, I can’t train, I can’t play.
[…] I prefer to take more time to heal myself and be sure that, in the future, I won’t have any problems,” Chardy told L’Equipe.
During FDA Hearings On Covid-19 Booster Shots, Dr. Jessica Rose Demonstrates Israeli Data May Show Covid ‘Vaccinated’ Driving Variants
Israel, the most Covid-19 ‘vaccinated’ country in the world is demonstrating that the mRNA shot has been a dismal failure. Not only are we having record adverse effects, it appears mass mRNA rollouts are causing more virulent and deadly Covid-19 mutants.
The FDA Advisory Board Overwhelmingly Rejected Booster Vaccine Authorization For Those Under 65 | “CDC’s Walensky Defends Overruling Vaccine Advisory Panel on Boosters”
Vinay Prasad, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was among the critics of what unfolded.
“The CDC director, a political appointee, siding with the President, & his pre-ordained plan, against the advice of the ACIP advisors, with 0 [random controlled trials] measuring clinical outcomes & no idea of adverse events is not ‘doing one’s job’ it is politics [over] science, precisely what we feared,” he wrote on Twitter.
Geoff Porges, an analyst at SVB Leerink, wrote in a note that he expects several resignations from the advisory panel as a result of Walensky’s action.
Officials and panel members were united in supporting boosters for seniors. They say they’re needed because the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against severe disease and hospitalization is dropping among that population. . . .
FDA Hearings On mRNA ‘Vaccine’ | “Dr. Jessica Rose Discusses Adverse Effects And Death Due To Covid-19 ‘Vaccine'” l Video: 1 Minute 54 Seconds
The Covid-19 ‘Vaccine’ Has Created A Silent & New Killing Field | Jodi O’Malley, R.N., U.S. Department Of Health Whistleblower | Video 7 Minutes 12 Seconds
Killing Fields refer to places where mass killings have occurred either during war or even by serial killers. With more deaths being reported to VAERS from the Covid-19 ‘vaccine’ than all other vaccines in the last thirty years combined, it has become clear we have created a medical killing field. What’s worse, it is known that systems like VAERS only capture about 1% of the adverse effects actually being experienced in the general public. In this video, Dr. Robert Malone, Inventor Of The mRNA ‘Vaccine’ Technology, Dr. Maria Gonzales, U.S. Department of Health & Jodi O’Malley, R.N., U.S. Department of Health discuss and comment on the Covid-19 ‘vaccine’ adverse effects.
Role Of Ivermectin In The Prevention Of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Healthcare Workers In India: A Matched Case-Control Study | NIH
Researchers:
Background: Ivermectin is one among several potential drugs explored for its therapeutic and preventive role in SARS-CoV-2 infection. The study was aimed to explore the association between ivermectin prophylaxis and the development of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers.
Conclusion: Two-dose ivermectin prophylaxis at a dose of 300 μg/kg with a gap of 72 hours was associated with a 73% reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers for the following month. Chemoprophylaxis has relevance in the containment of pandemic.
The Whole World Has Known How To Treat And Conquer Covid-19 Since It’s Inception – Politics Has Kept Us In Chains | “Ivermectin prophylaxis leads to 73 per cent reduction in Covid infection: AIIMS-Bhubaneswar Study”
Published: 05th November 2020 12:55 AM | Last Updated: 05th November 2020 12:55 AM
BHUBANESWAR: In a significant finding, two-dose Ivermectin prophylaxis has led to 73 per cent
reduction in COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers (HCWs), who are more likely to contract the virus given their nature of job.
“Earlier, at least 20 to 25 HCWs were getting infected with the virus daily. After the workers started taking Ivermectin, the number of infection has come down to one or two per day,” Dr Batmanabane said.
“Considering the fact that Ivermectin had been shown to have diverse mechanisms by which it successfully attacks the SARS-CoV-2, we decided to use it. The Ivermectin has a proven safety profile as a safe drug which has been used for many decades. The encouraging results of a study from Egypt prompted us to explore its role as prophylaxis for HCWs,” she said. . . .
FDA Panel Overwhelmingly Rejects Pfizer Booster for 16 and Older
Following an intense daylong public discussion, a panel of scientific advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today voted 16 to 2 against recommending a third shot of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for people 16 and older.
The Biden administration has been hoping the FDA would approve a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine in time to begin rolling out boosters for Pfizer recipients next week, the New York Times reported.
The vote came after a sharp debate in which many of the panel’s independent experts, including infectious disease doctors and statisticians, challenged whether the data justified a broad rollout of extra shots when the vaccines appear to still offer robust protection against severe COVID-19 disease and hospitalization, at least in the U.S.
“It’s unclear that everyone needs to be boosted, other than a subset of the population that clearly would be at high risk for serious disease,” said Dr. Michael G. Kurilla, a committee member and official at the National Institutes of Health.
The issue of whether or not to approve boosters has become increasingly contentious, dividing scientists, both outside and inside the FDA, including two scientists who recently announced they are leaving the agency because of pressure from the Biden administration to approve boosters, citing the lack of data to support a third shot.
“It’s a welcome sight to see actual deliberations in meetings about vaccine booster shots at the FDA,” said Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense. “It’s encouraging that a panel of experts stood up to political and corporate pressure based on the lack of convincing data for safety and efficacy of boosters.”
Holland added:
“One can only hope the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panels will continue to engage in vigorous debate about vaccine science and medicine.”
As The Hill reported, the advisory panel’s vote is not binding, so the FDA doesn’t have to accept the results. But if the agency doesn’t, it will raise significant questions of political interference and pit agency scientists against political officials who signed off on the booster plan.
In an unusual move last month, Biden and top health officials, including Surgeon General Vicek Murthy, acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock and CDC Director Dr, Rochelle Walensky, publicly announced a booster shot program would begin the week of Sept. 20, well before the FDA and CDC examined the evidence.
On Thursday, FDA scientists had expressed skepticism about the need for Pfizer COVID vaccine booster shots in a report released Wednesday.
In 23-page report, FDA officials said, based on their analysis of data submitted by Pfizer and BioNTech, they could not yet take a stance on whether to recommend COVID boosters for the general public.
SIGN UP #TheDefender: https://t.co/zL66Edfiw5https://t.co/dvbbGv87R2
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 16, 2021
The 23-page report analyzed data submitted by Pfizer and BioNTech as part of the drugmakers’ request for authorization for their vaccine to be given as a booster shot in people 16 years and older.
FDA says it does not buy fetal tissue — any more
Mary Margaret Olohan, DCNF 
- The Food and Drug Administration assured the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday that it has not entered into any contracts “for the purchase of human fetal tissue” since 2018.
- The FDA’s response follows news that it procured fetal organs, tissue, and heads for research that involved “humanized mice,” documents obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch show.
- “There are few Americans who would support chopping up the remains of unborn human beings for scientific research, using their organs, selling their heads for whatever Frankenstein experiments, the FDA and their researchers want to cook up,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Friday. “It’s barbarism.”
The Food and Drug Administration assured the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday that it has not entered into any contracts “for the purchase of human fetal tissue” since 2018.
The agency’s response follows the release of documentation obtained by Judicial Watch showing that the FDA procured fetal organs, tissue, and heads for research that involved “humanized mice.” Previous documents uncovered by Judicial Watch found that the FDA requested “fresh and never frozen” fetal organs. . . .
Dr. Malone Explains How The Covid-19 Treatment Protocol Is Making People Desperate | Video: 1 Minute 5 Seconds
As of September 2021, the standard protocol for Covid-19 patients is still to be sent home and when their lips turn blue from low oxygen, they are hospitalized. Knowing they’re at risk of being hospitalized Americans are desperately seeking for some sort of treatment.
Dr. Malone, mRNA ‘Vaccine’ Inventor, Discusses Ivermectin Misinformation | Video: 2 Minute 59 Seconds
Dr. Malone discusses the bizarre amount of misinformation that is being spread about perfectly safe and useful medications, such as the Nobel Prize winning drug for human use, Ivermectin.
Dr. Malone, mRNA ‘Vaccine’ Inventor, Speaks About The War Against Covid-19 Therapeutics | Video: 1 Minute 30 Seconds
What ever happened to the Liberal cry that government should not come between a patient and her doctor?
Ironic: Sweden Condemned By The Left For Not Locking Down, Yet Did Better Than Most Nations Combating Covid | “Sweden Bans Travelers From Israel, One of the Most Vaccinated Nations”
Sweden became the second European Union country to ban Israeli residents from entry due to a rise in COVID-19 cases in Israel, despite the country being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.
Portugal on Wednesday became the first EU country to ban travel from Israel due to a rise in cases. Both countries are following the EU’s recommendation to remove Israel from its list of green countries.
Sweden also banned the entry of citizens from the United States, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.
Interior Minister Mikael Damberg told news outlets that the sharp increases in COVID-19 cases in Israel, the United States, and other countries are the reason why they were removed from Sweden’s travel ban exemption. Despite Israel’s mass vaccination campaign, the virus has continued to spread, Damberg said.
According to a news release from the Swedish government, it will reintroduce a travel ban on Israel, the U.S., and other countries starting from Sept. 6.
“Regarding foreign citizens travelling to Sweden from the US, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia as of 6 September, only those covered by another exemption from the entry ban may enter Sweden,” said the release. “This could concern foreign citizens who have residence permits in Sweden, have particularly urgent needs or are to carry out essential functions, and who can also present a negative COVID-19 test. The negative COVID-19 test result may not be older than 48 hours. This requirement applies to foreign citizens aged 18 and older, with certain exemptions.”
The Swedish government said it is following the EU’s guidelines on removing those countries from its safe travel list, and it said the directive will be revisited at a later date.
Several Israeli politicians criticized the EU’s directive and Portugal’s mandate. . . .
Who’s Really Being Hospitalized? | “Breakthrough cases reach majority levels in some jurisdictions but numbers elude CDC.”
Breakthrough cases reach majority levels in some jurisdictions but numbers elude CDC.
“I’m not going to arm wrestle with the administration about where to put you,” Dr. C., a highly skilled gastroenterologist, said gently to my friend who was in bed in a triage room in the ER. “We just want to get you into a bed so we can figure out what’s wrong and get you treated.”
We were at our small town’s hospital. No one was sure why, but my friend had not been able to keep anything more than a handful of raspberries down since a complicated surgery for a chronic health condition three weeks before. Dehydrated and unable to eat, my friend had been violently vomiting after taking just a sip of water or sucking on an ice chip, and had lost nearly twenty-five pounds.
I was by my husband’s side when he had a gallbladder attack so severe that it left his hands shaking. I’ve had three unmedicated childbirths and attended many more, both as a journalist and a patient advocate. Still, I’ve never seen a human in so much pain.
Diagnosed with a Pancreas Disorder, Admitted as a COVID Patient
After a battery of testing, my friend was diagnosed with pancreatitis. But it was easier for the hospital bureaucracy to register the admission as a COVID case.
Let me explain. This patient had none of the classic symptoms of COVID: No shortness of breath, no fever, no chills, no congestion, no loss of sense of smell or taste, no neurological issues. The only COVID symptoms my friend had were nausea and fatigue, which could also be explained by the surgery. However, nearly three weeks earlier, a COVID test had come back positive.
The mainstream media is reporting that severe COVID cases are mainly among unvaccinated people. An Associated Press headline from June 29 reads: “Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated.” Another, from the same date: “Vast majority of ICU patients with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, ABC News survey finds.”
Is that what’s really going on? It’s certainly not the case in Israel, the first country to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against the virus. Now it has one of the highest daily infection rates and the majority of people catching the virus (77 percent to 83 percent, depending on age) are already vaccinated, according to data collected by the Israeli government.
After carefully reviewing the available data, including the safety and efficacy profiles of the mRNA vaccines, my friend had taken a cautious approach. Though a medical doctor who gives vaccines in the office every day, my friend opted to wait and see. According to WebMD, a “huge number” of frontline hospital workers have also chosen not to get the vaccine. Indeed, various news reports, from California to New York, confirm that up to 40 percent of health care workers have decided the risks of the vaccines do not outweigh the benefits.
After admission, I spoke to the nurse on the COVID ward. She was suited up in a plastic yellow disposable gown, teal gloves, and two masks underneath a recirculating personal respiratory system that buzzed so loudly she could barely hear. The nurse told me that she had gotten both vaccines but she was feeling worried: “Two thirds of my patients are fully vaccinated,” she said.
We’ve Known For So Long | “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19” | NIH
Published online 2021 Apr 22.
Title: Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
Researchers: Pierre Kory, MD,1,* Gianfranco Umberto Meduri, MD,2 Joseph Varon, MD,3Jose Iglesias, DO,4 and Paul E. Marik, MD5
Conclusions: Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.
Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave, When First We Practise To Deceive! | “In 2015, the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, in its only award for treatments of infectious diseases since six decades prior, honoured the discovery of ivermectin (IVM)” | There Was A 74% Reduction In Covid-19 Deaths In 30 Days Using Ivermectin | NIH
So the FDA warns against using Hydroxychloroquine and Zinc, Fauci reluctantly says Vitamin D3 may help and now the FDA and Medical Boards are lined up against Ivermectin. Perhaps it’s because they reduce death and disease without an mRNA ‘vaccine’ as published at the National Institutes of Health.
Published online 2021 Aug 3.
Title: Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19
Researchers: A.D. Santin,1 D.E. Scheim,2,∗ P.A. McCullough,3 M. Yagisawa,4 and T.J. Borody5
Abstract, Partial, Paragraph 1 : “Since March 2020, when IVM was first used against a new global scourge, COVID-19, more than 20 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have tracked such inpatient and outpatient treatments. Six of seven meta-analyses of IVM treatment RCTs reporting in 2021 found notable reductions in COVID-19 fatalities, with a mean 31% relative risk of mortality vs. controls. During mass IVM treatments in Peru, excess deaths fell by a mean of 74% over 30 days in its ten states with the most extensive treatments.”
Dr. Malone Discusses How Long Covid Symptoms & mRNA Adverse Symptoms Match Up | Video: 3 Minutes 21 Seconds
In a very telling interview, Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA ‘vaccine’ technology, explains that governments have been denying that there are any issues with the mRNA ‘vaccine’, how long Covid symptoms match up with mRNA adverse reaction symptoms, and finally, how ‘masking’ causes mRNA adverse reactions to be missed by doctors and researchers.
If You’ve Come To Think That You’re Being Lied To About Covid-19, You’re Not Alone | “Federal Judge Allows NIH Ivermectin Deception Case to Proceed” That The “NIH deceived the nation on a treatment for COVID-19.”
Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite.
On August 25, NIH appeared in conference in federal court in the District of New Jersey. The purpose of the appearance was for resolution of Jin-Pyong Peter Yim v National Institutes of Health and for scheduling of “motion practice”, if necessary. I am the plaintiff in the case. Beneath the legal formalities, the case could reveal that NIH deceived the nation on a treatment for COVID-19.
NIH is alleged to have violated the Freedom of Information Act. NIH failed to respond to a document request made on January 28, 2021:
“All updates to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines that were endorsed by a vote of the Panel. (Date Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2021 To 01/28/2021)”
The purpose of the FOIA request was not to obtain the document. Rather, it was to know if a vote was held to endorse the NIH recommendation on ivermectin. NIH violated FOIA because it did not respond within the time defined by statute. A complaint was filed against the NIH on March 26, 2021 to appeal the non-response. NIH answered the complaint on June 30. The answer included an exhibit and testimony.
NIH was represented by Margaret Ann Mahoney. She stated that NIH had responded to the FOIA request. She was referring to the NIH FOIA response from April 23:
“You requested all updates to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines that were endorsed by a vote of the Panel (Date range for record search from 01/01/2021 to 01/28/2021). All approved updates to the guidelines are posted online and can be found here. The documents posted on this website respond to your request in full.”
I requested a change to the NIH response. The NIH response is ambiguous as to whether the requested document exists. I provided a URL that refers to a single document. I requested that that URL be given in the NIH FOIA response if that recommendation was endorsed by a vote.
The conference was presided over by Judge Lois H. Goodman. She gave her opinion following discussion between the plaintiff and defendant. She expressed skepticism of the legal basis for the complaint. However, she urged further negotiation and allowed for “motion practice” if no agreement was reached. Her concluding remarks are here.
Following the conference, Judge Goodman also issued the following order:
“TEXT ORDER directing parties to confer to attempt resolution to this dispute. Parties to report to the Court as to the results of those efforts to resolve by 9/8/2021. If, matter cannot be resolved, dispositive motions to be filed by 9/24/2021 and to be returnable on 10/18/2021. Ms. Mahoney is directed to provide pro se plaintiff with a copy of this text order. So Ordered by Magistrate Judge Lois H. Goodman on 8/26/2021 .”
You Didn’t Actually Believe The Talking Heads From The CDC & NIH, Like Fauci, Did You? | Now It’s Not Just Hydroxychloroquine & Zinc, Vitamin D3 & A Host Of AntiInflammatories In Our Arsenal, Invermectin Has Been Shown To Reduce Illness & Death As Published By The NIH
Title: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines
Researchers: Andrew Bryant, MSc,1,* Theresa A. Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD,2Therese Dowswell, PhD,2 Edmund J. Fordham, PhD,2 Scott Mitchell, MBChB, MRCS,3 Sarah R. Hill, PhD,1 and Tony C. Tham, MD, FRCP4
Conclusion: Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.
The Saddest Covid-19 ‘Vaccine’ Deaths Are From Those Who Strongly Advocated Taking Them | “Lisa Shaw: Presenter’s death due to complications of Covid vaccine”
IMAGE SOURCE: FAMILY HANDOUTA radio presenter died due to complications from the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, a coroner has found.
Lisa Shaw, who worked for BBC Radio Newcastle, died at the age of 44 in Mayafter developing headaches a week after getting her first dose of the vaccine.
Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks heard Ms Shaw suffered blood clots in the brain which ultimately led to her death.
The inquest heard the condition linked to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was very rare.
The coroner said: “Lisa died due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination.”
Ms Dilks said Ms Shaw was previously fit and well but concluded that it was “clearly established” that her death was due to a very rare “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia”, a condition which leads to swelling and bleeding of the brain.
[The BBC]
Dr. Malone On Ivermectin and The Whole Plethora Of Therapeutics Available For Covid-19 | Video: 3 Minutes 44 Seconds
Once again, Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA ‘vaccine’ technology hits the nail on the head. Not only is there Ivermectin, there is a whole host of therapeutics going unused for treating Covid-19 to reduce death and disease.
When It Comes To Combating Covid-19 . . . First, Hydroxychloroquine & Zinc Was Demonized | Then, Vitamin D3 Was Trivialized | Now, The Smear Campaign Is Against Ivermectin, So Safe & Effective Researchers Call It The ‘Wonder Drug’ As Published By The National Institutes Of Health
“Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found. This paper looks in depth at the events surrounding ivermectin’s passage from being a huge success in Animal Health into its widespread use in humans, a development which has led many to describe it as a “wonder” drug.” (Introduction To: Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective)
[Full Article On US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health]
Mayo Clinic-Trained Pathologist Tells RFK, Jr.: Early Treatment Is Key to Fighting Delta Variant
When Dr. Ryan Cole decided to become a physician, he took an oath to protect his patients and to treat them to the best of his ability.
Cole, CEO of Cole Diagnostics and a board-certified dermatopathologist trained at the Mayo Clinic, said he has a motto when it comes to the coronavirus: Test and treat — and treat earlier with the Delta variant.
Cole told Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” that while the Delta variant is spreading “like a wildfire right now,” data show it’s less deadly.
Cole, who reviews the lab tests of about 30,000 patients a year at his independent lab in Boise, Idaho, said he uses a multi-drug approach when treating patients for COVID.
Some of the drugs he’s found effective include ivermectin — an antiparasitic drug proven beneficial for treating SARS-CoV-2 — hydroxychloroquine, steroids, and the cholesterol drug fenofibrate and fluvoxamine for patients with neural symptoms.
Monoclonal antibodies are a good treatment, too, said Cole.
Treatments using monoclonal antibodies are “parked in infusion centers and emergency rooms around the country,” said Cole. “But there are crickets about this drug that decreases death and hospitalization by 50%.”
Cole told Kennedy his first COVID patient was his brother, who was considered “high risk” for the virus due to his weight. He was on the way to the emergency room when I told him, “No, you’re going to the pharmacy,” said Cole.
Cole said his brother had chest pains on a nine out of 10 level before he called in a prescription for ivermectin. Six hours later, his pain was down to a two, and by the next morning, his oxygen levels had risen from 80 to 98.
Ivermectin saved my brother’s life, said Cole.
Cole, who also treated his 78-year-old mother and 83-year-old father, said out of the hundreds of patients he’s treated, zero have gone to the hospital.
“Test and treat early,” said Cole. “Not treating early is doing harm. It’s a sin of omission by not treating.”
Cole said if you do get COVID, finding a good doctor to treat you is key. He pointed to several websites that provide tele-health services including Frontline MDs, My Free Doctor and America’s Frontline Doctors.
Viruses aren’t “politically red, blue or even purple,” said Cole. “This is about humanity” and doing the “proper thing by our fellow citizens.”
Listen to the interview:
130+ UK Doctors: Failed COVID Policies Caused ‘Massive’ Harm, Especially to Children
A letter this week to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other UK government officials, signed by more than 130 UK medical professionals, accused the government of mishandling its response to the COVID pandemic, resulting in “massive, permanent and unnecessary harm” to the country.
The letter, “Our Grave Concerns About the Handling of the COVID Pandemic by Governments of the Nations of the UK,” outlined 10 ways in which the authors argued UK government policies not only failed to protect citizens, but in many cases caused additional, unnecessary harm.
The letter’s 10 lead authors wrote:
“We write as concerned doctors, nurses and other allied healthcare professionals with no vested interest in doing so. To the contrary, we face personal risk in relation to our employment for doing so and / or the risk of being personally ‘smeared’ by those who inevitably will not like us speaking out.”
The authors accused government officials of failing to measure the harms of lockdown policies, of exaggerating the virus’ threat and of improper mass testing of children.
They wrote:
“Repeated testing of children to find asymptomatic cases who are unlikely to spread virus, and treating them like some sort of biohazard is harmful, serves no public health purpose and must stop.”
The letter also called out officials for actively suppressing discussion of early treatment using protocols being successfully deployed elsewhere, and said vaccination of the entire adult population should never have been a prerequisite for ending restrictions.
The authors concluded:
“The UK’s approach to COVID has palpably failed. In the apparent desire to protect one vulnerable group — the elderly — the implemented policies have caused widespread collateral and disproportionate harm to many other vulnerable groups, especially children.”
In addition to Johnson, the letter was addressed to Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister for Scotland; Mark Drakeford, First Minister for Wales; Paul Givan, First Minister for Northern Ireland; Sajid Javid, Health Secretary; Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer; and Dr. Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Officer.
Read the full letter:
22 August 2021
Dear Sirs and Madam,
Our grave concerns about the handling of the COVID pandemic by Governments of the Nations of the UK.
We write as concerned doctors, nurses, and other allied healthcare professionals with no vested interest in doing so. To the contrary, we face personal risk in relation to our employment for doing so and / or the risk of being personally “smeared” by those who inevitably will not like us speaking out.
We are taking the step of writing this public letter because it has become apparent to us that:
- The Government (by which we mean the UK government and three devolved governments/administrations and associated government advisors and agencies such as the CMOs, CSA, SAGE, MHRA, JCVI, Public Health services, Ofcom etc, hereinafter “you” or the “Government”) have based the handling of the COVID pandemic on flawed assumptions.
- These have been pointed out to you by numerous individuals and organisations.
- You have failed to engage in dialogue and show no signs of doing so. You have removed from people fundamental rights and altered the fabric of society with little debate in Parliament. No minister responsible for policy has ever appeared in a proper debate with anyone with opposing views on any mainstream media channel.
- Despite being aware of alternative medical and scientific viewpoints you have failed to ensure an open and full discussion of the pros and cons of alternative ways of managing the pandemic.
- The pandemic response policies implemented have caused massive, permanent and unnecessary harm to our nation, and must never be repeated.
- Only by revealing the complete lack of widespread approval among healthcare professionals of your policies will a wider debate be demanded by the public.
In relation to the above, we wish to draw attention to the following points. Supporting references can be provided upon request.
1. No attempt to measure the harms of lockdown policies
The evidence of disastrous effects of lockdowns on the physical and mental health of the population is there for all to see. The harms are massive, widespread, and long lasting. In particular, the psychological impact on a generation of developing children could be lifelong.
It is for this reason that lockdown policies were never part of any pandemic
preparedness plans prior to 2020. In fact, they were expressly not recommended in WHO documents, even for severe respiratory viral pathogens and for that matter neither were border closures, face coverings, and testing of asymptomatic individuals. There has been such an inexplicable absence of consideration of the harms caused by lockdown policy it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that this is willful avoidance.
The introduction of such policies was never accompanied by any sort of risk/benefit analysis. As bad as that is, it is even worse that after the event when plenty of data became available by which the harms could be measured, only perfunctory attention to this aspect of pandemic planning has been afforded. Eminent professionals have repeatedly called for discourse on these health impacts in press-conferences but have been universally ignored.
What is so odd, is that the policies being pursued before mid-March 2020 (self-isolation of the ill and protection of the vulnerable, while otherwise society continued close to normality) were balanced, sensible and reflected the approach established by consensus prior to 2020. No cogent reason was given then for the abrupt change of direction from mid-March 2020 and strikingly none has been put forward at any time since.
2. Institutional nature of COVID
It was actually clear early on from Italian data that COVID (the disease, as opposed to SARS-Cov-2 infection or exposure) was largely a disease of institutions. Care home residents comprised around half of all deaths, despite making up less than 1% of the population. Hospital infections are the major driver of transmission rates as was the case for both SARS1 and MERS.
Transmission was associated with hospital contact in up to 40% of cases in the first wave in Spring 2020 and in 64% in winter 2020/2021.
Severe illness among healthy people below 70 years old did occur (as seen with flu pandemics) but was extremely rare.
Despite this, no early, aggressive and targeted measures were taken to protect care homes; to the contrary, patients were discharged without testing to homes where staff had inadequate PPE, training and information. Many unnecessary deaths were caused as a result.
Preparations for this coming winter, including ensuring sufficient capacity and preventative measures such as ventilation solutions, have not been prioritised.
3. The exaggerated nature of the threat
Policy appears to have been directed at systematic exaggeration of the number of deaths which can be attributed to COVID. Testing was designed to find every possible ‘case’ rather than focusing on clinically diagnosed infections and the resulting exaggerated case numbers fed through to the death data with large numbers of people dying ‘with COVID’ and not ‘of COVID’ where the disease was the underlying cause of death.
The policy of publishing a daily death figure meant the figure was based entirely on the PCR test result with no input from treating clinicians. By including all deaths within a time period after a positive test, incidental deaths, with but not due to COVID, were not excluded thereby exaggerating the nature of the threat.
Moreover, in headlines reporting the number of deaths, a categorisation by age was not included. The average age of a COVID-labelled death is 81 for men and 84 for women, higher than the average life expectancy when these people were born.
This is a highly relevant fact in assessing the societal impact of the pandemic. Death in old age is a natural phenomenon. It cannot be said that a disease primarily affecting the elderly is the same as one which affects all ages, and yet the government’s messaging appears designed to make the public think that everyone is at equal risk.
Doctors were asked to complete death certificates in the knowledge that the deceased’s death had already been recorded as a COVID death by the Government. Since it would be virtually impossible to find evidence categorically ruling out COVID as a contributory factor to death, once recorded as a “COVID death” by the government, it was inevitable that it would be included as a cause on the death certificate.
Diagnosing the cause of death is always difficult and the reduction in post mortems will have inevitably resulted in increased inaccuracy. The fact that deaths due to non-COVID causes actually moved into a substantial deficit (compared to average) as COVID-labelled deaths rose (and this was reversed as COVID-labelled deaths fell) is striking evidence of over-attribution of deaths to COVID.
The overall all-cause mortality rate from 2015-2019 was unusually low and yet these figures have been used to compare to 2020 and 2021 mortality figures which has made the increased mortality appear unprecedented. Comparisons with data from earlier years would have demonstrated that the 2020 mortality rate was exceeded in every year prior to 2003 and is unexceptional as a result.
Even now COVID cases and deaths continue to be added to the existing total without proper rigour such that overall totals grow ever larger and exaggerate the threat. No effort has been made to count totals in each winter season separately which is standard practice for every other disease.
You have continued to adopt high-frequency advertising through publishing and broadcast media outlets to add to the impact of “fear messaging”. The cost of this has not been widely published, but government procurement websites reveal it to be immense — hundreds of millions of pounds.
The media and government rhetoric is now moving onto the idea that “Long Covid” is going to cause major morbidity in all age groups including children, without having a discussion of the normality of postviral fatigue which lasts upwards of 6 months. This adds to the public fear of the disease, encouraging vaccination amongst those who are highly unlikely to suffer any adverse effects from COVID.
4. Active suppression of discussion of early treatment using protocols being successfully deployed elsewhere
The harm caused by COVID and our response to it should have meant that advances in prophylaxis and therapeutics for COVID were embraced. However, evidence on successful treatments has been ignored or even actively suppressed.
For example, a study in Oxford published in February 2021 demonstrated that inhaled Budesonide could reduce hospitalisations by 90% in low risk patients and a publication in April 2021 showed that recovery was faster for high risk patients too. However, this important intervention has not been promoted.
Dr. Tess Lawrie, of the Evidence Based Medical Consultancy in Bath, presented a thorough analysis of the prophylactic and therapeutic benefits of Ivermectin to the government in January 2021. More than 24 randomised trials with 3,400 people have demonstrated a 79-91% reduction in infections and a 27-81% reduction in deaths with Ivermectin.
Many doctors are understandably cautious about possible over-interpretation of the available data for the drugs mentioned above and other treatments, although it is to be noted that no such caution seems to have been applied in relation to the treatment of data around the government’s interventions (eg the effectiveness of lockdowns or masks) when used in support of the government’s agenda.
Whatever one’s view on the merits of these repurposed drugs, it is totally unacceptable that doctors who have attempted to merely open discussion about the potential benefits of early treatments for COVID have been heavily and inexplicably censored. Knowing that early treatments which could reduce the risk of requiring hospitalisation might be available would alter the entire view held by many professionals and lay people alike about the threat posed by COVID, and therefore the risk / benefit ratio for vaccination, especially in younger groups.
5. Inappropriate and unethical use of behavioural science to generate unwarranted fear
Propagation of a deliberate fear narrative (confirmed through publicly accessible government documentation) has been disproportionate, harmful and counterproductive. We request that it should cease forthwith.
To give just one example, the government’s face covering policies seem to have been driven by behavioural psychology advice in relation to generating a level of fear necessary for compliance with other policies.
Those policies do not appear to have been driven by reason of infection control, because there is no robust evidence showing that wearing a face covering (particularly cloth or standard surgical masks) is effective against transmission of airborne respiratory pathogens such as SARS-Cov-2.
Several high profile institutions and individuals are aware of this and have advocated against face coverings during this pandemic only inexplicably to reverse their advice on the basis of no scientific justification of which we are aware. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence suggesting that mask wearing can cause multiple harms, both physical and mental.
This has been particularly distressing for the nation’s school children who have been encouraged by government policy and their schools to wear masks for long periods at school.
Finally, the use of face coverings is highly symbolic and thus counterproductive in making people feel safe. Prolonged wearing risks becoming an ingrained safety behaviour, actually preventing people from getting back to normal because they erroneously attribute their safety to the act of mask wearing rather than to the remote risk, for the vast majority of healthy people under 70 years old, of catching the virus and becoming seriously unwell with COVID.
6. Misunderstanding of the ubiquitous nature of mutations of newly emergent viruses
The mutation of any novel virus into newer strains — especially when under selection pressure from abnormal restrictions on mixing and vaccination — is normal, unavoidable and not something to be concerned about. Hundreds of thousands of mutations of the original Wuhan strain have already been identified.
Chasing down every new emergent variant is counterproductive, harmful and totally unnecessary and there is no convincing evidence that any newly identified variant is any more deadly than the original strain.
Mutant strains appear simultaneously in different countries (by way of ‘convergent evolution’) and the closing of national borders in attempts to prevent variants travelling from one country to another serves no significant infection control purpose and should be abandoned.
7. Misunderstanding of asymptomatic spread and its use to promote public compliance with restrictions
It is well-established that asymptomatic spread has never been a major driver of a respiratory disease pandemic and we object to your constant messaging implying this, which should cease forthwith.
Never before have we perverted the centuries-old practice of isolating the ill by instead isolating the healthy. Repeated mandates to healthy, asymptomatic people to self-isolate, especially school children, serves no useful purpose and has only contributed to the widespread harms of such policies.
In the vast majority of cases healthy people are healthy and cannot transmit the virus and only sick people with symptoms should be isolated.
The government’s claim that one in three people could have the virus has been shown to be mutually inconsistent with the ONS data on prevalence of disease in society, and the sole effect of this messaging appears to have been to generate fear and promote compliance with government restrictions.
The government’s messaging to ‘act as if you have the virus’ has also been unnecessarily fear-inducing given that healthy people are extremely unlikely to transmit the virus to others.
The PCR test, widely used to determine the existence of ‘cases’, is now indisputably acknowledged to be unable reliably to detect infectiousness. The test cannot discriminate between those in whom the presence of fragments of genetic material partially matching the virus is either incidental (perhaps because of past infection), or is representative of active infection, or is indicative of infectiousness.
Yet, it has been used almost universally without qualification or clinical diagnosis to justify lockdown policies and to quarantine millions of people needlessly at enormous cost to health and well-being and to the country’s economy.
Countries that have removed community restrictions have seen no negative consequences which can be attributed to the easing. Empirical data from many countries demonstrates that the rise and fall in infections is seasonal and not due to restrictions or face coverings.
The reason for reduced impact of each successive wave is that: (1) most people have some level of immunity either through prior immunity or immunity acquired through exposure; (2) as is usual with emergent new viruses, mutation of the virus towards strains causing milder disease appears to have occurred.
Vaccination may also contribute to this although its durability and level of protection against variants is unclear.
The government appears to be talking of “learning to live with COVID” while apparently practicing by stealth a “zero COVID” strategy which is futile and ultimately net-harmful.
8. Mass testing of healthy children
Repeated testing of children to find asymptomatic cases who are unlikely to spread virus, and treating them like some sort of biohazard is harmful, serves no public health purpose and must stop.
During Easter term, an amount equivalent to the cost of building one District General Hospital was spent weekly on testing schoolchildren to find a few thousand positive ‘cases’, none of which was serious as far as we are aware.
Lockdowns are in fact a far greater contributor to child health problems, with record levels of mental illness and soaring levels of non-COVID infections being seen, which some experts consider to be a result of distancing resulting in deconditioning of the immune system.
9. Vaccination of the entire adult population should never have been a prerequisite for ending restrictions
Based merely on early “promising” vaccine data, it is clear that the Government decided in summer 2020 to pursue a policy of viral suppression within the entire population until vaccination was available (which was initially stated to be for the vulnerable only, then later changed — without proper debate or rigorous analysis — to the entire adult population).
This decision was taken despite massive harms consequent to continued lockdowns which were either known to you or ought to have been ascertained so as to be considered in the decision making process.
Moreover, a number of principles of good medical practice and previously unimpeachable ethical standards have been breached in relation to the vaccination campaign, meaning that in most cases, whether the consent obtained can be truly regarded as “fully informed” must be in serious doubt:
- The use of coercion supported by an unprecedented media campaign to persuade the public to be vaccinated, including threats of discrimination, either supported by the law or encouraged socially, for example in co-operation with social media platforms and dating apps.
- The omission of information permitting individuals to make a fully informed choice, especially in relation to the experimental nature of the vaccine agents, extremely low background COVID risk for most people, known occurrence of short-term side-effects and unknown long-term effects.
Finally, we note that the Government is seriously considering the possibility that these vaccines — which have no associated long-term safety data — could be administered to children on the basis that this might provide some degree of protection to adults. We find that notion an appalling and unethical inversion of the long-accepted duty falling on adults to protect children.
10. Over-reliance on modeling while ignoring real-world data
Throughout the pandemic, decisions seem to have been taken utilising unvalidated models produced by groups who have what can only be described as a woeful track record, massively overestimating the impact of several previous pandemics.
The decision-making teams appear to have very little clinical input and, as far as is ascertainable, no clinical immunology expertise.
Moreover, the assumptions underlying the modeling have never been adjusted to take into account real-world observations in the UK and other countries.
It is an astonishing admission that, when asked whether collateral harms had been considered by SAGE, the answer given was that it was not in their remit — they were simply asked to minimise COVID impact. That might be forgivable if some other advisory group was constantly studying the harms side of the ledger, yet this seems not to have been the case.
Conclusions
The UK’s approach to COVID has palpably failed. In the apparent desire to protect one vulnerable group — the elderly — the implemented policies have caused widespread collateral and disproportionate harm to many other vulnerable groups, especially children.
Moreover your policies have failed in any event to prevent the UK from notching up one of the highest reported death rates from COVID in the world.
Now, despite very high vaccination rates and the currently very low COVID death and hospitalisation rates, policy continues to be aimed at maintaining a population handicapped by extreme fear with restrictions on everyday life prolonging and deepening the policy-derived harms.
To give just one example, NHS waiting lists now stand at 5.1m officially, with — according to the previous Health Secretary — a likely further 7m who will require treatment not yet presented. This is unacceptable and must be addressed urgently.
In short, there needs to be a sea change within the Government which must now pay proper attention to those esteemed experts outside its inner circle who are sounding these alarms.
As those involved with healthcare, we are committed to our oath to “first do no harm”, and we can no longer stand by in silence observing policies which have imposed a series of supposed “cures” which are in fact far worse than the disease they are supposed to address.
The signatories of this letter call on you, in Government, without further delay to widen the debate over policy, consult openly with groups of scientists, doctors, psychologists and others who share crucial, scientifically-valid and evidence-based alternative views and to do everything in your power to return the country as rapidly as possible to normality with the minimum of further damage to society.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Jonathan Engler, MB ChB LLB (Hons) DipPharmMed
Professor John A Fairclough, BM BS B Med Sci FRCS FFSEM, Consultant Surgeon, ran vaccination program for a Polio Outbreak, Past President BOSTA, for Orthopaedic Surgeons, Faculty member FFSEM
Mr. Tony Hinton, MB ChB, FRCS, FRCS(Oto), Consultant Surgeon
Dr. Renee Hoenderkamp, BSc (Hons) MBBS MRCGP, General Practitioner
Dr. Ros Jones, MBBS, MD, FRCPCH, retired consultant paediatrician
Mr. Malcolm Loudon, MB ChB MD FRCSEd FRCS (Gen Surg) MIHM VR
Dr. Geoffrey Maidment, MBBS, MD, FRCP, retired consultant physician
Dr. Alan Mordue, MB ChB, FFPH (ret), Retired Consultant in Public Health Medicine
Mr. Colin Natali, BSc(Hons), MBBS FRCS FRCS(Orth), Consultant Spine Surgeon
Dr. Helen Westwood, MBChB MRCGP DCH DRCOG, General Practitioner
Click here, for the complete list of signatories.