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Missouri v. Biden uncovered a ‘vast censorship enterprise’ throttling Americans’ ideas online at the behest of government officials.
Via The Guardian: Lockdowns and face masks ‘unequivocally’ cut spread of Covid, report finds. Excerpt:
Measures taken during the Covid pandemic such as social distancing and wearing face masks “unequivocally” reduced the spread of infections, a report has found.
Experts looked at the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – not drugs or vaccines – when applied in packages that combine a number of measures that complement one another.
“What do you say to those who have been affected [da lesioni da vaccino]?” Sievers asked Lauterbach, the German health minister, during an interview in ZDF’s “Heute Journal” on March 12
“What happened to these people is absolutely staggering, and any single case is one too many,” Lauterbach replied. “I honestly feel so sorry for these people. There are serious disabilities and some of them will be permanent.”
“It is true that under these EU contracts, the companies have been largely exempted from liability and that the liability, therefore, falls on the German state,” Lauterbach said.
However, despite this, the health minister noted that it would “definitely” be a good idea if biopharma companies “showed a willingness to help” people affected by vaccine adverse events, especially because of their “exorbitant” profits.
“So, it wouldn’t just be a good gesture, we should expect that,” he said.
The House Select Subcommittee on the pandemic on Wednesday held a hearing on “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19” to gather facts about the origination of the virus that has claimed nearly seven million lives globally, including more than one million in the United States.
Several witnesses explained how the science, facts, and evidence strongly point to a lab leak in Wuhan.
Yet The New York Times reported that the GOP-led subcommittee “underscored just how difficult it might be to turn up conclusive evidence” that COVID originated in a Chinese lab, not to mention the assertion by some that the ChiComs intentionally released the virus in an effort to destroy the economies of countries not named China. //
Hence the NYT’s headline:
Republicans Push Lab Leak Theory on Covid’s Origins, but Lack ‘Smoking Gun’
Tom Cotton
@TomCottonAR
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The Chinese Communist Party destroyed evidence so there may never be a "smoking gun."
But all the available evidence points to a lab leak.
There's a reason why the CCP covered this up.
10:01 AM · Mar 9, 2023 //
We’re talking about the very essence of science and scientific methodology. In October 2020, Scientific American observed:
[D]oubt in science is a feature, not a bug. Indeed, the paradox is that science, when properly functioning, questions accepted facts and yields both new knowledge and new questions—not certainty.
Doubt does not create trust, nor does it help public understanding. So why should people trust a process that seems to require a troublesome state of uncertainty without always providing solid solutions?
ConservativeInMinnesota
an hour ago
I had a look at the paper before I knew Fauci was the one who effectively ghost wrote it. It was used to shut down the lab investigation and censor anyone looking into the origins of Covid. Read it, the paper is a farce.
https://www.nature.com/arti...
The paper doesn't even claim to offer any evidence against the lab origin. All it does is offer 3 origin theories for Covid, before stating "it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here".
Theory 1 offers pangolins and bats as suspects and then says: "For a precursor virus to acquire both the polybasic cleavage site and mutations in the spike protein suitable for binding to human ACE2, an animal host would probably have to have a high population density."
Pangolins are endangered and live 150 miles from Wuhan in Northwest Hubei. The bats live in a cave in Yunnan province 900 miles Southwest of Wuhan. Even a wet market bat soup escapee fails the papers 'high population density' requirement.
Theory 2 offers up: "Estimates of the timing ... point to emergence ... in late November 2019 ... this scenario presumes a period of unrecognized transmission in humans." This scenario requires Covid spreading 900 miles from the bat cave to 200 yards from the biological weapons lab without anyone noticing and then instantly becoming super contagious and deadly. This theory is so absurd an 8 year can see through it.
The 3rd theory is the lab itself with no evidence offered against. This paper was cited over 2700 times, it should be retracted by Nature.
We identified a total of 65 studies from 19 different countries. Our meta-analyses showed that protection from past infection and any symptomatic disease was high for ancestral, alpha, beta, and delta variants, but was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant. Pooled effectiveness against re-infection by the omicron BA.1 variant was 45·3% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 17·3–76·1) and 44·0% (26·5–65·0) against omicron BA.1 symptomatic disease. Mean pooled effectiveness was greater than 78% against severe disease (hospitalisation and death) for all variants, including omicron BA.1. Protection from re-infection from ancestral, alpha, and delta variants declined over time but remained at 78·6% (49·8–93·6) at 40 weeks. Protection against re-infection by the omicron BA.1 variant declined more rapidly and was estimated at 36·1% (24·4–51·3) at 40 weeks. On the other hand, protection against severe disease remained high for all variants, with 90·2% (69·7–97·5) for ancestral, alpha, and delta variants, and 88·9% (84·7–90·9) for omicron BA.1 at 40 weeks.
Interpretation
Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks. Protection was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant and declined more rapidly over time than protection against previous variants. Protection from severe disease was high for all variants. The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.
Natural immunity acquired from a Covid infection may protect as well against severe illness as vaccines, according to science.
Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds
The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine. //
Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds
The immunity generated from an infection was found to be “at least as high, if not higher” than that provided by two doses of an mRNA vaccine.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02465-5/fulltext
"A positive test is almost always true," Colgrove says. "So in a person with an exposure or a person with suggestive symptoms, if they do a test and it's positive, you're done. You have your diagnosis."
It's a slightly different story if you are getting over COVID-19 and are testing to see whether you're still positive.
But a negative "does not rule out" a COVID-19 infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If someone tests negative, they're supposed to take another antigen test 48 hours later to see if it turns positive. And if that person has a known COVID exposure or symptoms, the FDA recommends a third test 48 hours after that.
90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness. //
We found that a staggering 90 percent of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive problems such as brain fog—or a combination of these—that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women have twice the risk of men and four times the risk of children for developing long COVID.
At least three studies have found that people infected with omicron still have virus levels high enough to be contagious more than five days after their symptoms began.
When the original version of the novel virus mushroomed out of Wuhan, China, the mean incubation period was 6.65 days, according to pooled data from 119 studies. But then, the incubation period got shorter as the variants evolved. The alpha variant had a mean incubation of 5 days, according to one study; beta, 4.5 days, according to another; delta had a mean of 4.41 days, according to pooled data from six studies; and now with omicron, the incubation period has shrunk to 3.42 days, according to data from five studies.
The current shortened incubation period now puts SARS-CoV-2 more in line with commonplace respiratory viruses, including the four human coronaviruses that circulate seasonally and cause mild infections similar to the common cold. Their incubation period is 3.2 days. Rhinovirus, the most common cause of the common cold, has a mean incubation period of 1.4 days. For influenza, it can range from 1.43 to 1.64 days, and parainfluenza has a mean of 2.6 days. //
But children, who are at relatively low risk of severe COVID-19, also tended to have relatively longer incubation periods with SARS-CoV-2. Their mean incubation period was 8.82 days, according to pooled data from eight studies. The authors speculate that this may be because symptoms in children are so mild that detection of COVID-19 symptoms can be delayed.
The two-dose, protein-subunit vaccine is intended for a primary series, not boosters.
A “study” finding that COVID mitigation efforts in schools, including forced masking, were highly effective in stopping disease spread — and cited by the CDC and most states as the scientific basis for school mask mandates — was authored by LA County Office of Education bureaucrats, including the daughter of the county’s Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
Although study authors are required to disclose any conflicts of interest — and Ferrer is given a shout-out in the acknowledgements — the study states that no conflicts of interest were disclosed. //
Like her mother, Kaitlin Barnes is not a medical doctor. Barnes does not even have a scientific background or a Ph.D. in any field. Her professional background is a combination of her parents’ professions; Kenneth Barnes has had a long career in urban planning and community organizing. //
The study, published in August 2021, concluded that students who went to school during the winter of 2020-21 tested positive for COVID at a much lower rate than their peers who did not attend LA County schools. The authors also concluded that, therefore, the protocols in place in LA County were responsible for this.
It may seem reassuring, but it still means a whole lot of people with long-term symptoms. //
"Far more people were infected first with omicron than with delta," Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said in a statement. "So even if the percentage of infected people who got long COVID during the two waves is on the scale that these researchers report—and it may well be—the actual numbers of people reporting long COVID after first being infected during omicron is still far larger than during delta."
Whether lab or market origin, anyone trying to cover for China should remember both scenarios are humiliating for the Chinese government.
The only Covid narrative that doesn’t directly aim to control people has to do with determining the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Discovering the origin of the virus should have been a top priority, but it was not. Why? Perhaps, instead of controlling people, the goal in this case was to cover for complicit behavior.
There are only two plausible competing virus origin hypotheses: “lab leak” and “wet market.” Instead of imploring scientists to work together and discover the truth, then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote in an email to presidential medical advisor Anthony Fauci early in the pandemic: “Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy [i.e., ‘lab leak’], with what seems to be growing momentum.”
Knowing that SARS-CoV-1 leaked from a Chinese lab on at least two occasions in the early 2000s, why would Collins and Fauci be so quick to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis? //
Either way, whether lab or market origin, anyone trying to cover for China apparently must be reminded that both scenarios are humiliating for the Chinese government. Both represent extremely careless and unhygienic behavior, especially considering that wet markets are places where endangered animals like pangolins are slaughtered for completely unscientific medicines.
The difference, of course, is that the lab scenario also implicates powerful interests in the United States. Thus, it’s not difficult to understand why stifling the lab leak would be important to those in power.
Covid caused those in power to react to events that they had little to no influence over with narratives designed to give the illusion of taking control of the situation. What makes this pandemic different are the tools available to control the narratives, namely the addition of Big Tech and their willingness to suppress debate.
Still, the truism noted by Aldous Huxley that “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored” remains. The challenge is to ensure that people in our society are never too intimidated to offer counter-narratives or debate the edicts from those with power. ///
If the origins were not a lab leak, would there not be more interest in confirming that it was not not? The amount of effort out into dismissing the lab leak origin suggests there is something there.
Francis Collins may very well be a believer and a good follower of Christ, but that does not mean that he is not a sinner and a flawed man, just like all of us. It also does not mean that he shares the same morals or morés as other Christians, including oneself. Without knowing someone personally and knowing something of their heart, "Christians" in positions of power should be treated with the same disinterested suspicion as any other politician.
How long after getting COVID can you be reinfected?
This is another complicated question — especially for sufferers of long COVID, who appear to harbor low, even undetectable levels of the virus for weeks and months. For mild to moderate cases, people who test positive for COVID can expect their infection to clear within five to 10 days after their symptoms arose, or since their confirmed test result.
Nascent research suggests that the average immune system can fend off COVID reinfection for three to five months after the previous bout. That’s why, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who had a confirmed infection within the previous 90 days are not expected to quarantine after coming in contact with another infected individual.
But all bets are off about six months later, when antibodies are known to start waning — regardless of vaccination
Virtually every person on the planet now recognizes that they are simply going to have to live with the coronavirus from now on, in the same way that we have learned to live with the seasonal flu. Even countries that clung to China’s mass containment model well into 2021, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany, are now abandoning it.
Yet the Chinese Communist Party continues to pursue the impossible dream of COVID Zero.
Now, you might say that no political organization likes to admit it was wrong. In fact, when asked recently why China refused to recognize that COVID was now endemic, a top official of the National Health Commission simply said, “If we stop all containment measures now, it means all the previous efforts are for nothing.”
But at an even deeper level, I see the Chinese Communist Party’s insistence on lockdowns as an expression of its drive for total control.
I am reminded of the CCP official who, in 1980, at the very beginning of the one-child policy, confidently proclaimed: “We are a socialist country. We can control reproduction in the same way we control production: under a state plan.”
Now Xi Jinping’s attitude seems to be: “We are a socialist country. We can control the replication of a virus in the same way we control production: under a state plan.”
The most vulnerable weren't vaccinated.
Selectively cherry-picking ‘The Science’ to suit a political narrative is not ‘Following the Science.’ It is malpractice and fraud.
According to a recent headline from The New York Times, “the CDC isn’t publishing large portions of the COVID data it collects.” That headline downplays what the article in fact reveals:
Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said. //
The article says when the Centers for Disease Control “published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65…it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots.”
“The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public,” according to the Times, “because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.” //
Every time these federal employees uttered the phrase “follow the science,” they actually meant, “Do what we say and don’t question it, or we’ll punish you.” True scientists don’t release partial data or hide their data. Yet after severe damage is done to government credibility and the country’s social fabric, now even The New York Times can’t deny that the CDC hid the truth about booster efficacy from Americans because it would contradict this administration’s political goals.
The CDC said the number was revised March 15 due to a “coding logic error,” according to a footnote on the agency’s COVID Data Tracker. Pediatric death counts were not the only ones to be lowered — total deaths were reduced by roughly 70,000.
“An adjustment was made to COVID Data Tracker’s mortality data on March 14 involving the removal of 72,277 — including 416 pediatric deaths — deaths previously reported across 26 states because CDC’s algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related,” Jasmine Reed, a spokesperson for the CDC, told the Washington Examiner. “Working with near real-time data in an emergency is critical to guide decision-making, but may also mean we often have incomplete information when data are first reported.”
According to the CDC’s weekly provisional data, only 921 children have died for reasons “involving COVID-19,” an even lower number than the official data tracker now presents. The provisional data reported by the CDC typically lags by some period of time. //
The CDC has encountered other issues with data reporting before. The agency was criticized in February after The New York Times reported that a large portion of the data being collected by the agency regarding COVID-19 was not being made available to the public. Earlier this year, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that hospitalization data for kids could also be misleading, as many of the children hospitalized with COVID-19 were there for reasons other than the virus.