Talk about a “mask off” moment for Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA). Today, an anonymous tipster passed along an exclusive photo to The Daily Wire of one of the most corrupt members of Congress not wearing a mask aboard a United flight heading from Dulles Airport to Los Angeles International — despite the FAA mask mandate in place requiring all passengers to wear one due to COVID-19 precautions.
To make matters worse for Aunty Maxine — as her fans call her — the senior Democratic representative bumped the tipster’s boyfriend from his seat next to her for reasons unexplained. Meanwhile, flight attendants hounded other passengers consistently for not wearing their masks, even in-between bites of food. Flight attendants only asked Waters to pull up her mask once the tipster pointed out the hypocrisy.
“Maxine had her mask off for at least an hour while she read her paper and took a nap,” the source told The Daily Wire. “Attendants brought her fresh coffee while she was napping and didn’t say a thing as three of them walked past and saw Maxine reading and then sleeping while she remained maskless.”
But, the source did not receive the same treatment from United Airlines.
“My nose had bled pretty early into the flight, so I later on pulled my mask down below my nose to get some cooler air,” she explained. “Within a few minutes, a flight attendant informed me I had to put my mask back on over my nose, the right way, immediately.”
The source says she pointed in the direction of Waters, indicating that she wasn’t wearing a mask as a form of protest.
The flight attendant looked at Waters and said to the woman, “Okay, but you need to put your mask on the right way.”
“I put the mask on ‘the right way’ after the flight attendant told Maxine to put her mask on,” The Daily Wire’s source added. “Maxine had been napping. She did put the mask on after the attendant interrupted her sleep and told her to do so. I think she was startled by the rude awakening.”
The source was able to snap a photo of Waters before she put her mask on:
The Daily Wire Exclusive Photo – Maxine Waters Maskless on United Flight
Readers should remember that Waters has been one of the longest and most vocal advocates of masking in public settings.
In April 2020, waters tweeted, “Take a chance. Remind an unmasked person to put on a mask & if they become angry, smile and say ‘6ft away’ & keep going.”
In May 2020, Waters took it a step further and said that not wearing a mask in public was a threat to public safety. She slammed then-President Donald Trump as being a bad role model for being seen in public without the face-covering.
“Trump is a dangerous example for children and those who tend to follow him. Not wearing a mask and not social distancing is dangerous,” she tweeted. “Do not follow his example. Protect yourself. Coronavirus kills! Maybe this ignoramus doesn’t care, but you should care about yourself!”
She doubled down on that message in June of 2020, tweeting, “Trump still refuses to wear a mask. Trump’s FAILED leadership & his unfortunate followers not wearing masks & not social distancing is responsible for the growing infections, death, & surge in #coronavirus cases.”
None of these statements were forgotten by The Daily Wire’s source, who slammed the congresswoman for her “rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me” attitude. The passenger also expressed her dissatisfaction with United’s customer service — or lack thereof.
“The injustice of being overlooked because we were not ‘important’ like Maxine, of being dismissed when my boyfriend tried to address the seat he paid for so that we could sit together, and then being roughly spoken to for having my own mask down a fraction of an inch when someone else, a well-known politician, just six feet away from me, was ‘breaking’ the required face masks on airlines was flabbergasting.”
“Flight attendants stay on you,” the source said. “If you don’t put your mask on in between bites of food or sips of drink, they will ask you to, they state so at the start of their safety guidelines before the flight.”
“But none of them once bothered Maxine when she was maskless,” she remarked. “A politician who believes in masks, but only when others wear them for her. It’s a double standard, but people seem to be blind to it.”
As for her boyfriend not getting to sit in his original seat, the source said they were able to sit near each other, but that Waters was able to sit without anybody next to her at all.
“She was in the window seat and in the middle seat was a sign that said the seat was ‘out of service’ and ‘sorry for the inconvenience.’ There was a young man in the aisle seat of that row who mid-flight agreed to switch seats with my boyfriend so the both of us could at least be across from each other.”
Recently, President Joe Biden extended the federal mask mandates for public transportation — such as airlines — into March of 2022.
The Daily Wire reached out to Waters’ office for comment but has not received one.
The Daily Wire is fighting Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate in federal court. Join us in this fight by signing our petition to OSHA, telling them that you will not comply with this mandate.
December 16, 20215:33 AM ESTLast Updated an hour ago 11 – 14 minutes
BRUSSELS/BANGKOK, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Tens of millions of migrants may be denied COVID-19 vaccines from a global programme because some major manufacturers are worried about legal risks from harmful side effects, according to officials and internal documents from Gavi, the charity operating the programme, reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly two years into a pandemic that has already killed more than 5 million people, only about 7% of people in low-income countries have received a dose. Vaccine deliveries worldwide have been delayed by production problems, hoarding by rich countries, export restrictions and red tape. Many programmes have also been hampered by hesitancy among the public read more .
The legal concerns are an additional hurdle for public health officials tackling the coronavirus – even as officials say unvaccinated people offer an ideal environment for it to mutate into new variants that threaten hard-won immunity around the world. Many COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have required that countries indemnify them for any adverse events suffered by individuals as a result of the vaccines, the United Nations says.
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Where governments are not in control, that is not possible.
The concerns affect people, such as those displaced by the Myanmar, Afghanistan and Ethiopian crises, who are beyond the reach of national governments’ vaccination schemes.
For refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as people afflicted by natural disasters or other events that put them out of reach of government help, the global programme known as COVAX created a Humanitarian Buffer – a last-resort reserve of shots to be administered by humanitarian groups. Gavi, the vaccine alliance, is a public-private partnership set up in 2000 to promote vaccination around the world.
But that buffer does not have any mechanism to offer compensation. Gavi, which operates COVAX with the World Health Organization (WHO), says that where those applying for doses, mainly NGOs, can’t bear legal risks, deliveries from that stockpile can only be made if vaccine-makers accept liability.
The companies that are willing to do so under these circumstances provide only a minority of the programme’s vaccines, according to people familiar with the matter and the documents, written by Gavi staff for a board meeting starting at the end of November.
More than two-thirds of COVAX doses have come from Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) and its partner BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), AstraZeneca PLC (AZN.L) and Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O), Gavi says. Moderna declined to comment. AstraZeneca and Pfizer said they were in talks with Gavi but declined to comment further. All three said they are committed to making doses available to poorer nations at relatively low prices. Pfizer said it was collaborating directly with governments in Jordan and Lebanon to donate doses for refugees.
Mainly because of the legal concerns, less than 2 million doses have so far been sent from the buffer, Gavi says. About 167 million people risk being excluded from national programmes, according to United Nations data cited in the documents.
Unless all the firms accept legal liability, “access to vaccines for some populations will remain a challenge,” the Gavi documents say, adding that new crises will generate additional demand to cover displaced populations.
The vaccine makers’ reluctance to take on the legal risks is “a major hurdle” in attempts to provide vaccines for the buffer, a spokesperson for Gavi told Reuters. Gavi did not comment on the details in the documents, but said applications for vaccines are confidential until the doses are delivered. In September, Gavi’s CEO, Seth Berkley, tweeted an appeal to drugmakers to waive their requirements for legal indemnity.
Three Chinese drugmakers have agreed to shoulder legal risks when their shots are delivered through the buffer: SinoVac Biotech Ltd (SVA.O), Sinopharm Group Co. Ltd (1099.HK), and Clover Biopharmaceuticals Co. Ltd, according to the Gavi document. The drugmakers did not respond to requests for comment.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) of the United States confirmed it would waive a requirement for indemnity for deliveries from the buffer: “We are proud to be part of this effort to protect the world’s most vulnerable people,” said Paul Stoffels, Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer. He did not elaborate.
However, less than one-third of COVAX supplies have come from these four firms, COVAX data shows: Clover’s shot has not yet been approved so is not in use.
The global industry association, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), said “no company has refused to consider” taking on the legal risk. However, in the case of shots delivered from the buffer, it said some firms felt they could not do so without full knowledge of where and how vaccines would be used.
It would be hard to continuously monitor vaccines for safety in refugee camps, and delivery is logistically very challenging and not suitable for all types, said the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), which represents large pharmaceutical companies in Europe.
People may blame vaccines for problems that emerge afterwards even if they are unrelated, it said.
“This could then lead to an increased number of litigation cases … during which the safety and efficacy of the vaccine would be publicly questioned,” it said in a statement to Reuters. That might lead to increased vaccine hesitancy and a slower recovery from the pandemic, it said.
So far there is scant information on COVID vaccine litigation, but claims made to out-of-court compensation programmes are one measure of the risk. A programme in the United States has so far not paid out anything, public data show; neither has one set up by the WHO for lower income countries, the WHO said. In Europe, a handful of compensation awards have been granted for undisclosed amounts of money, official data from Denmark, Germany, Norway and Switzerland show read more .
Globally there have been few reported COVID infections among refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers – testing is not always systematic and infections can generate only mild symptoms especially in younger people.
But cramped conditions and weak healthcare expose them to high infection risk. This, combined with low levels of vaccination in a mobile population could favour the emergence of new variants and be a vector for infection, said Mireille Lembwadio, Global Vaccination Coordinator at the International Organization of Migration (IOM), a U.N.-related body that advises governments and migrants.
“Leaving them unvaccinated could help spread the virus and its variants across the world,” she said.
WAITING FOR DOSES
Francois Nosten, a French professor who helps coordinate healthcare for people from Myanmar living on the border with Thailand, is one of those waiting for vaccines. In June, he put in a request from the Humanitarian Buffer for 70,000 doses – some for some of the 90,000 or so who are sheltering in camps along the border, but most for unregistered migrants in the border town of Mae Sot and nearby villages.
Nosten, whose main work is researching malaria, is expecting the doses – a fraction of the more than 8 billion administered worldwide – this month. He has been told they will come from Sinopharm, and he hopes they can help inoculate key at-risk groups in Thailand’s Tak province. Gavi said delivery arrangements are still being finalised.
About 20,000 doses will be given to people in the camps by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian group working with Nosten.
“At this point whatever vaccine we can secure we are grateful for,” said its Thailand Director, Darren Hertz. He added that the IRC believed the likelihood that a member of the refugee population would attempt to take legal action in case of side-effects was “extremely low.”
Hertz said the IRC has received a handful of ad hoc vaccine donations from the Thai government and is currently tackling significant outbreaks in five of nine camps on the border, where about 3,000 cases have been confirmed, including at least 26 deaths. A Thai foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed the government was working with the IRC on providing vaccinations in shelters along the border.
Nosten’s charity, Border Health Foundation (BHF), is one of eight organisations worldwide that have applied to distribute the shots from the Humanitarian Buffer and one of three to be approved, Gavi said.
Ann Burton, Chief of Public Health at the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said the liability issue was one reason agencies have been slow to apply. The programme has also been delayed by the general shortage of vaccines and administrative hurdles read more .
Organisations applying for supplies from the buffer may not choose which vaccines they receive. Working with displaced people, Nosten said it would be more convenient to give them Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which offers protection after a single dose instead of the two doses needed for Sinopharm’s.
But the Sinopharm version will be “better than nothing,” he said.
More than 100 national governments have promised to offer vaccines where possible to all the displaced people on their soil, according to the IOM. However, the U.N. group says migrants and refugees are often effectively excluded from such schemes because of administrative or cultural hurdles.
In cases where governments aren’t in charge or have not agreed to vaccinate migrants, COVAX’s Humanitarian Buffer is the only option. At least 40 countries have yet to include unauthorised migrants in their vaccination programmes, according to the IOM – it and the UNHCR declined to name the countries.
Gavi set up the buffer in March 2021, planning to reserve up to 5% of vaccine doses as they become available to COVAX, which would amount to roughly 70 million doses so far.
The only shots delivered from the buffer so far – just over 1.6 million Sinopharm doses – landed in Iran in November, where high numbers of displaced Afghans have arrived, UNICEF Iran said. That’s enough to inoculate about 800,000 people; more will likely be needed, UNICEF said.
NEED FOR SPEED
The vaccine makers’ legal concern is rooted in the unprecedented speed of the effort to develop the COVID shots, the EFPIA said.
In normal circumstances, drugmakers buy insurance to cover liability for vaccines’ potential adverse effects. But COVID forced them to develop drugs so quickly that some side effects – for instance, a rare blood-clotting condition in some of those who took the AstraZeneca vaccine – are emerging as shots go into people’s arms.
Many governments and international agencies have set up compensation schemes to reimburse victims and avoid lengthy litigation. An emergency law invoked by the U.S. government provides legal immunity for drug companies for side effects from their COVID-19 vaccines used in the country. The only exception is for instances of “wilful misconduct.”
For drug companies, accepting potential liability runs counter to standard practice.
“Vaccine manufacturers try to minimize legal risks in almost every setting,” said John T. Monahan, Professor at Georgetown University. “The gold standard is full immunity from lawsuits. If they accept carve-outs, it may become more difficult to reach that goal.”
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A rare fish was found washed ashore at a beach near San Diego earlier this month. Only about thirty samples of this particular species of fish have been found so far, making this a particularly interesting discovery.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego confirmed to Fox News that a football fish was found on at Swami’s Beach in Encinitas on Dec. 10. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego confirmed to Fox News that a football fish was found on Swami’s Beach in Encinitas, California on Dec. 10. The fish, a female, measured to about 13-inches-long and weighed 5.5 pounds.
According to Scripps, only 31 known specimens of this particular species of fish have been collected worldwide.
The football fish is a deep–sea creature and is part of the anglerfish family.
Ben Frable, Collection Manager of Marine Vertebrates at Scripps recovered the most recent football fish. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)
Several other deep-sea fish were discovered washed ashore in the area in recent weeks. A 4-foot-long lancetfish was found washed up on La Jolla Shores, which was also collected by researchers at the Scripps Institution.
Another football fish was photographed near Black Beach, but it was not recovered by researchers.
Ben Frable, Collection Manager of Marine Vertebrates at Scripps recovered the most recent football fish. The fish was X-rayed and tissue samples were collected for genetic analysis.
Several other deep-sea fish were discovered washed ashore in the area in recent weeks. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)
According to the Scripps Institution, researchers don’t have any theories as to why these fish have been washing ashore.
According to the post, “As seen in the animated film Finding Nemo, female anglerfish are easily recognized by their globular body shape, sharp teeth, distinctive dorsal spine or illicium (the “fishing pole”), and the fleshy phosphorescent bulb (or esca) used to lure prey. Footballfish are typically found at depths of 650 to 2,600 feet, but there is still much we don’t know about these creatures.”
The Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission has withdrawn a controversial guidance on race, which urged donors to offer a “sincere apology” and ask for forgiveness for white supremacy and white-dominated culture after its contents went viral. However, despite originally issuing the guidance, which urged donors to “lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed,” the charitable organization denies the word-for-word reports on the contents of the guide, describing them as “simply false.”
In a November 25 update titled, “The Salvation Army’s Response to False Claims on the Topic of Racism,” The Salvation Army reiterated that its primary goal is to “preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and meet human needs in His name without discrimination.”
“The beliefs that motivate our service are based solely on the Bible, and that will never change,” the organization said, accusing “some individuals and groups” of attempting to “mislabel our organization to serve their own agendas.”
“They have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that we have abandoned our Christian faith for one ideology or another,” it wrote.
“Those claims are simply false, and they distort the very goal of our work,” it claimed, emphasizing its belief that racism is “fundamentally incompatible with Christianity, and that we are called by God to work toward a world where all people are loved, accepted, and valued”: Our positional statement on racism makes this clear. These beliefs and goals are critically important because we know that racism exists, and we are determined to do everything the Bible asks of us to overcome it.”
The organization explained that it publishes internal study guides on “various complex topics to help foster positive conversations and grace-filled reflection among Salvationists,” which is where the controversial guide “Let’s Talk About Racism” comes into the picture.
The organization said the guidance was “issued as a voluntary resource” and continued to defend it, casting blame on “some” for ignoring “accurate information” it has provided.
“At the same time, International Headquarters realized that certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified. Consequently, for both reasons, the International Social Justice Commission has now withdrawn the guide for appropriate review,” The Salvation Army announced, claiming that it is not telling people how to think and reemphasizing that it is simply committed to the model set by Jesus.
However, the most controversial aspects of the guidance, which cited an “urgent need for Christians to evaluate racist attitudes and practices in light of our faith,” were not addressed in The Salvation Army’s pointed statement.
The guidance, developed by the organization’s International Social Justice Commission, listed goals in the guidance, urging donors to “understand and acknowledge the definitions of race and racism and how the social construct of race has affected society” and, ultimately, “lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed.”
The guide also instructed readers to “stop denying the existence of individual and systemic/institutional racism,” “stop denying that White privilege exists,” and “stop trying to be ‘colorblind’”:
While this might sound helpful, it actually ignores the God-given differences we all possess, as well as the beautiful cultures of our Black and Brown brothers and sisters. Instead of trying to be colorblind, try seeing the beauty in our differences, and welcome them into your homes churches and workplaces. Being colorblind also ignores the discrimination our Black and Brown brothers and sisters face and does not allow us to address racism properly.
It also asserted that individuals can perpetuate racism in “conscious and unconscious ways” and called for “repentance” and a “heartfelt apology,” as such is necessary, the guide suggested, to “move towards racial reconciliation”:
We recognize that it is a profound challenge to sit on the hot seat and listen with an open heart to the hurt and anger of the wounded. Yet, we are all hardwired to desire justice and fairness, so the need to receive a sincere apology is necessary. We are also imperfect human beings and prone to error and defensiveness, so the challenge of offering a heartfelt apology permeates almost every relationship.
Even if the individual feels as though they never acted in a racist manner, the guide suggested they “spend time repenting on behalf of the Church and asking for God to open hearts and minds to the issue of racism.”
“Perhaps God spoke to you during your time of lament, and you have an idea of what you need to repent and apologize for,” the now-pulled guide stated. “Please take time to write out or think about how you can repent and apologize.”
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "...truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity--it is simply true and that is the end of it" - Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” - Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Following in the spirit of Britain's Queen Boudica, Queen of the Iceni. A boudica.us site. I am an opinionator, do your own research, verification. Reposts, reblogs do not neccessarily reflect our views.
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