The Los Angeles Department of Public Health (LACDPH) has confirmed three new cases of the new COVID-19 subvariant, named Arcturus, and warned that it may cause pink eye. Observational data suggests that people infected with the rapidly spreading Omicron strain XBB.1.16 have exhibited symptoms of conjunctivitis. However, the LACDPH has stated that it is still too early to determine whether XBB.1.16 is directly linked to a higher incidence of conjunctivitis, especially considering the ongoing allergy season in Southern California.
“Residents should be aware that itchy, watery or red eyes may be a sign of a COVID-19 infection and these symptoms should not be simply dismissed as a result of pollen or seasonal allergies,” continues the statement. “Especially if someone more vulnerable to severe illness could be exposed.”
The LACDPH said that since the new strain is a version of the Omicron variant — one of more than 600 — current vaccines “are highly likely to remain protective and able to ward off severe illness.”
“The fact that we are seeing new strains, with possibly new and different symptoms, tells us that COVID continues to evolve and the way we think about our protections should reflect what we know,” added the report.
The World Health Organization is monitoring Arcturus, a COVID-19 subvariant discovered in India in January, as a “variant of interest.” It has been found to be 1.2 times more infectious than the previous Kraken variant, which was mostly detected in the UK at the end of February.
As a response, the health ministry of India has been conducting mock drills to assess the preparedness of hospitals in handling a surge of COVID patients. Additionally, they have reintroduced mandates for wearing masks in public places.
“It’s been in circulation for a few months. We haven’t seen a change in severity in individuals or in populations, but that’s why we have these systems in place,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, said during a press conference.
“Systems to track the virus variants, global collaborations to assess transmissibility, immune escape, severity and the impact of any of our interventions including diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.”
The WHO also expressed its fear that Arcturus would become the dominant strain in the US in the near future.
“Due to its estimated growth advantage and immune escape characteristics, XBB.1.16 may spread globally and contribute to an increase in case incidence,” WHO announced in a new report. “However, at present, there is no early signal of an increase in severity.”
According to a tracker established by Rajendram Rajnarayanan, MSc, Ph.D., from the New York Institute of Technology, the Arcturus variant has emerged in several states, including California, Washington, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Texas.
The CDC has estimated that the new strain has caused a 9.6% increase in new infections this week, up from almost 6% last week and around 3% the previous week.
Scientists have warned that the variant’s ongoing mutations could make it challenging for the immune system to combat.
“The giant African land snail … is one of the most invasive pests on the planet, causing agricultural and environmental damage wherever it is found,” the report added. (U. S. Customs and Border Protection)
Did you know some snails can cause meningitis?
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) is warning Pasco County to beware of the giant African land snail (GALS) that can carry a rare rat lungworm called Angiostrongylus cantonensis, which may cause meningitis in humans, according to the state’s recent “Pest Alert.”
After receiving notice of a “possible” population of the snail in New Port Richey, Pasco County on June 21, FDACS said a property survey confirmed the presence of a white form of the giant African land snail two days later.
“The phenotype in Pasco County has a creamy white flesh as opposed to the grey-ish brown flesh of the phenotype that was eradicated in the Miami area,” said Erin M. Moffet, FDACS’s communications director.
Moffet told Fox News that Mellon, a mollusk detector dog, is actively surveying for the pest.
The department said on their website that they will treat properties with a specific snail bait that is a metaldehyde-based molluscicide labeled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for residential use.
Metaldehyde is a pesticide used to control snails that’s approved for use in many crops, fruit trees, avocado and citrus orchards, berry plants, banana plants and in limited residential areas, the department said on their website.
The pesticide interferes with the snail’s mucus production ability, thereby reducing their digestion and mobility, which makes them susceptible to dehydration, per the website.
After eating the metaldehyde, the GALS often seeks hiding places, then becomes inactive and begins to die within days, the department said.
“FDACS’s Division of Plant Industry has begun to survey the area, enacted a quarantine and will begin treatment for this detrimental pest on June 29, 2022,” the state department said.
“It is unlawful to move the giant African land snail or a regulated article, including but not limited to, plants, plants parts, plants in soil, soil, yard waste, debris, compost or building materials, within, through or from a quarantine area without a compliance agreement.”
The snail is popular in the pet trade in other countries, but it is a federally prohibited organism that cannot be legally sold or possessed in the United States, per the FDACS report.
The snail is popular in the pet trade in other countries, but it is a federally prohibited organism that cannot be legally sold or possessed in the United States, per the FDACS report. (U. S. Customs and Border Protection)
“The giant African land snail is one of the most damaging snails in the world and consumes at least 500 different types of plants. These snails could be devastating to Florida agriculture and natural areas as they cause extensive damage to tropical and subtropical environments,” FDACS said on their website.
The state first eradicated the pest in 1975 after detecting it in 1969 and most recently eradicated the pest in 2021 after detecting it in 2011 in Miami-Dade County, per the FDACS website.
The snail can cause a disease called Angiostrongliasis, or rat lungworm disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“An infected rat coughs up worms from the lungs into the throat where they are then swallowed by the rat. The worms are now in the rat’s digestive system and eventually end up in the rat’s poop,” the CDC said.
A snail gets infected two ways: by either accidently eating the rat’s poop or the worm penetrating the snail’s body.
“When a rat eats an infected slug or snail, the cycle begins again,” the CDC added.
Most cases of rat lungworm disease occur in parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands, but some have been in Caribbean, Africa and United States, like in Hawaii and Louisiana.
So why should humans worry about it?
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and FDACS will be holding a press conference on the recent GALS detection from FDACS’ Clearwater office, which will be livestreamed on the Department’s Facebook page. ( Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
People get the disease when they eat raw or undercooked snails that are infected with the worms as well as eating fruits or vegetables that have not been washed well that also contain the snails.
“People present with symptoms of bacterial meningitis, such as nausea, vomiting, neck stiffness, and headaches that are often global and severe,” the CDC said.
“Most infections of [Angiostrongylus cantonensis] resolve spontaneously over time without specific treatment because the parasite cannot survive for long in the human body. However, serious complications can rarely occur, leading to neurologic dysfunction or death.”
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and FDACS will be holding a press conference on the recent GALS detection from FDACS’ Clearwater office, which will be livestreamed on the department’s Facebook page.
An electron micrograph of a Listeria bacterium in tissue is seen in a 2002 image from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Reuters/Elizabeth White/CDC/Handout via Reuters)
Paul Best
A listeria outbreak that has sickened at least 23 people across 10 states may be linked to Florida, the CDC said this week.
Of the 22 people who health officials have been able to track down, 20 of them reported living in Florida or traveling to the state in the month before they got sick, but the CDC noted that “the significance of this is still under investigation.”
Listeria, a foodborne illness, is usually caused by contaminated dairy, produce, deli meats, or smoked fish.
Symptoms, which include fever, fatigue, and muscle aches, typically start within one to four weeks of eating food contaminated with listeria.
In the current outbreak, 22 people have been hospitalized and one person has died. Five of those who got infected were pregnant at the time, with one person reporting the loss of the fetus.
Vials of raw sheep’s milk are seen with bottles of substances used to check the milk for strains of Listeria and Salmonella before the milk is developed into roquefort cheese. (Pascal Pavani/AFP via Getty Images)
The true number of illnesses is likely much higher, according to the CDC, as some people recover before seeking medical attention.
Health officials are still trying to identify the food that is the source of this outbreak.
A listeria outbreak stemming from deli meats sickened at least 10 people and killed one in 2020. Another outbreak caused by precooked chicken put three people in the hospital and killed one last year.
Paul Best is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Paul.best@fox.com and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.
Virginia now has its first presumed case of monkeypox, the state’s Department of Health said today.
“Monkeypox is a very rare disease in the United States. The patient is currently isolating and does not pose a risk to the public,” said State Health Commissioner Dr. Colin M. Greene.
This 1997 image provided by the CDC during an investigation into an outbreak of monkeypox, which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, and depicts the dorsal surfaces of the hands of a monkeypox case patient, who was displaying the appearance of the characteristic rash during its recuperative stage. (CDC via AP)
“Transmission requires close contact with someone with symptomatic monkeypox, and this virus has not shown the ability to spread rapidly in the general population. [Virginia Department of Health] is monitoring national and international trends and has notified medical providers in Virginia to watch for monkeypox cases and report them to their local health district as soon as possible.”
The adult patient resides in the Northern region of Virginia with recent international travel to an African country where the disease is endemic, but she is not requiring hospitalization and is isolating at home.
The health department is monitoring close contacts and no additional cases have been detected at this time as the state awaits confirmation of the test results at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In these Centers for Disease Control and Prevention handout graphic, symptoms of one of the first known cases of the monkeypox virus are shown on a patient’s hand June 5, 2003. The CDC said the viral disease monkeypox, thought to be spread by prairie dogs, has been detected in the Americas for the first time with about 20 cases reported in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. (Courtesy of CDC/Getty Images)
“Some cases [worldwide] were reported among men who have sex with men. Some cases were also reported in people who live in the same household as an infected person,” the agency said.
The Virginia case is among the nine monkeypox cases that have had samplessent to the CDC for additional confirmatory testing and genomic investigation, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky noted in a recent briefing.
This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. Monkeypox, a disease that rarely appears outside Africa, has been identified by European and American health authorities in recent days. (Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP)
She said they are working to see how each contracted the infection, but some, but not all, have traveled to regions where they are active monkeypox outbreaks.
Virginia is now the seventh state with presumed monkeypox infections, including California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Utah, and Washington.
“We need to presume that there is some community spread, but there is active contact tracing that is happening right now to understand whether and how these cases might have been in contact with each other or with others in other countries,” Walensky said.
A flock of 246,000 chickens belonging to Tyson Foods in Kentucky, has become infected with a lethal form of bird flu, government officials confirmed on Monday.
The discovery intensifies an ongoing outbreak of bird flu in the U.S. involving poultry operations in Kentucky and Virgina, and follows the destruction of 29,000 turkeys in Indiana, that were detected on February 9..
The discovery of the H5N1 strain of highly infectious pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, last week in Dubois County, Indiana, was the first detection of the virus in commercial poultry in the United States since 2020 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said.
The USDA added that avian influenza does not present an immediate public health concern as a human case of these avian flu viruses has yet to be detected in the U.S.
In a statement released to Just Food earlier this week, Tyson Foods said, “We are actively working with state and federal officials to prevent the spread of the virus. Although the origin of the infection is not known, avian influenza has been found in migratory wild birds, which lay a significant role in spreading the disease.”
Tyson’s statement added, “We are prepared for situations like this, and we have robust plans in place, which we are now executing, including heightening biosecurity measures at other farms in the region, placing additional restrictions on outside visitors, and continuing our practice of testing all flocks for avian influenza before birds leave the farms.”
Tyson foods said in a statement to USA TODAY that they were working with Tennessee and Kentucky state officials, as well as federal officials, to prevent the spread.
Tyson continued, “Because the affected farm in Kentucky is only one of the thousands of farms that raise chickens for our company, the situation is not expected to impact our overall chicken production levels. Tyson Foods’ chicken products remain safe: the USDA confirms that avian influenza does not pose a food safety risk to consumers in poultry that is properly prepared and cooked.”
The USDA said in their statement to USA TODAY, “At this time, our goal is to continue to monitor the presence of ‘highly pathogenic avian influenza’ in wild bird populations, and to quick identify any instances where the virus spreads to commercial or backyard birds.”
Over the past week or so, the powers that be have begun changing the narrative on the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve come across probably a dozen articles in decidedly mainstream news sources that reflect an abrupt about-face on COVID.
Throughout the fall and even up until Christmas, the mainstream media was pitching the usual panic porn about COVID: clamoring for third and even fourth “boosters”, defending the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates and the layoffs and firings of the unvaccinated, cheering for New York’s and other cities’ vaccine “passport” requirements and, of course, echoing President Joe Biden’s apocalyptic prediction that the omicron variant was going to bring a “winter of severe illness and death” for the unvaccinated.
Then suddenly, everything started to change.
The first article I noticed was in SFGATE, an online San Francisco news source. On Dec. 28, writer Eric Ting published a story in which he noted that COVID-19 cases are “skyrocketing.” But that wasn’t the story’s hook. “Despite the case increase,” Ting wrote, “the city’s hospitalization numbers have remained mostly flat.” Ting quoted public health experts who said that infection rates and hospitalization rates are “definitely decoupling.” Epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford told Ting, “If this were like past waves, we’d have seen a bigger (hospitalization) increase by now.” Rutherford’s assessment was echoed by Dr. Robert Wachter, who ascribes the phenomenon to omicron being a less severe strain of the virus. “If we were mirroring Delta’s severity,” Wachter said, “we’d see a big impact on hospital numbers by now.”
An NBC article on Dec. 29 also pushed this new narrative, saying, “The Biden White House, to its credit, is attempting to shift public discourse surrounding COVID from a focus on the total number of cases … to a reporting of its resulting deaths and hospitalizations.”
On Jan. 2, Dr. Anthony Fauci was described in The Guardian as being among “a growing body of experts who say hospitalisation figures form a better guide to the severity of the Omicron coronavirus variant than the traditional case-count of new infections.”
This followed a Dec. 31 New York Times article heralding studies from South Africa and the U.K. showing that omicron was less likely to result in hospitalization.
Also on Jan. 2, a Wall Street Journal editorial posited that omicron may end up saving lives by pushing us toward real “herd immunity.”
On Jan. 3, Dr. Leana Wen (infamous for insisting that “life needs to be hard” for the unvaccinated) wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post titled, “Omicron is bad. But we don’t need to resort to lockdowns.”
Since when? Why the sudden shift?
Some writers think it’s because omicron has been breaking out in vaccinated people. (This despite Biden’s latest distortion that omicron is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”) Since it’s no longer possible to point the finger at the unvaccinated as (sole) disease vectors, it’s time to start softening the story.
I think the Biden administration, the powerbrokers and government functionaries propping him up behind the scenes now find themselves in a bind.
First, Biden ran on “shutting down the virus, not the country.” A year later, case numbers are exploding (This week, the U.S. hit a million new cases in one day. ), and he looks like a failure, even to his base. Now, it behooves him to explain that more cases don’t translate to more serious illness or death.
Second, Americans are fed up with government overreach and the never-ending “emergency” policies in response to the virus. Multiple federal courts have ruled that federal vaccine mandates are absurdly overbroad and unconstitutional. Increasing evidence shows that schools’ COVID policies (closures, social distancing, elimination of sports and activities, online classes and mask requirements) were probably never helpful and have done damage to children academically and emotionally. Businesses have been decimated. Prices and inflation have skyrocketed.
Third, the silencing of all dissent — including medical experts like Drs. Peter McCullough and Robert Malone — under the guise of “misinformation” has backfired badly. McCullough’s interview with podcast superstar Joe Rogan has had more than 40 million views. Malone’s will quite likely be even higher. Rogan’s podcast viewership now averages 11 million people, surpassing even media heavyweights like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. People with common sense see the truth: that the latest strain of the virus is weaker, has fewer symptoms and poses a far lower risk of serious illness or death. Americans are beginning to understand that they’ve been lied to for two years by the government and their propaganda peddlers in broadcast, print and social media.
Most importantly, the Democratic Party is getting reamed on this and other issues, with the 2022 midterm elections on the horizon. At this writing, 25 Democrats in the House of Representatives have announced that they will not seek reelection to Congress. Democrats currently control the House by only nine seats, and public sentiment in the polls is running strongly in favor of Republicans. That means the possibility of losing control of the House — and perhaps the Senate as well — is stronger than ever. If Republicans retake control of Congress, the left’s legislative agenda is dead in the water.
All of which makes the backpedaling on creating constant COVID crisis mode a mixed bag. On the one hand, ever-larger numbers of Americans can see through the hysterical rhetoric and are demanding accountability from the party they view as largely responsible.
On the other hand, in 2020 the left’s political powerbrokers were able to parlay their COVID panic pimping into voting procedure changes such as mandatory mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, ballot drop boxes and minimized poll-watching. Those procedures (and Mark Zuckerberg’s nearly half a billion Zuckerbucks) provided excellent cover for election manipulation, if not outright fraud. Without those procedures (and the public fear that fueled them), it’s almost certain Democrats are going to lose big in November.
Either way, a reckoning is coming.
To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.
“The View” was back to filming in studio for a short time and had strict vaccination requirements for all staff. But those measures weren’t enough to keep everyone healthy.
It was announced during the January 3 show that co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin both tested positive for COVID-19 over the holiday, which forced Goldberg to skip sitting on the panel completely. The rest of the women joined via teleconference rather than going back to the set. Joy Behar stepped in as moderator in Goldberg’s absence.
“Well, they say there’s no place like home for the holidays! And that’s exactly where we are today. So, happy New Year from all of our living rooms,” Behar quipped with a laugh.
“As you can see, we’re back in boxes and doing the show remotely. Hopefully for just a week. I’m praying that it’s just a week, but you never know, because this Omicron thing is all over the place.”
Next, Behar explained why she had to step in for the normal moderator.
“Why am I here instead of Whoopi? Well, Whoopi unfortunately tested positive over the break,” the panelist continued. “But she’ll be back, probably next week. Since she’s vaxxed and boosted, her symptoms have been very mild. We’re being super cautious here at ‘The View,’ and we’ll be checking with her soon, so you’ll see Whoopi too.”
The other co-hosts went on to document their own experiences with COVID-19 over the holidays. Sunny Hostin said she tested positive right before Christmas and had to spend the holiday alone. “I was isolated alone, I FaceTimed with my family for Christmas and New Year’s,” Hostin shared. “It was extremely difficult.”
Ana Navarro, who lost her mother recently, told the audience how her father had to miss his scheduled visit because of testing positive. “Since losing my mom wasn’t enough, and having Christmas 10 days later wasn’t enough, my father tested positive for COVID and wasn’t able to come for Christmas or my birthday,” Navarro said.
She continued, “I got stuck with rentals and linens for 20 people and a catered meal for 20 people that’s been exploding out of my refrigerator,” Navarro said. “Here’s the good news: my father finally tested negative for COVID and was able to fly in New Year’s Day.”
These infections of the vaccinated come weeks after “The View” hosts shut down Jedidiah Bila for saying that anyone can get or transmit COVID-19 regardless of vaccination status.
Bila was discussing how she disagreed with vaccine mandates and then said that the existing COVID-19 vaccine “does not prevent you from getting COVID and does not prevent you from transmitting COVID.”
“Oh my goodness!” Behar exclaimed. “No, that’s not so. You’ve been at Fox TV too long,” which made the audience applaud. After the appearance, Bila posted a clip of CDC director Rochelle Walensky acknowledging that “breakthrough infections” of COVID-19 for fully vaccinated people are possible.
“I’ve become convinced that we do have a situation that is essentially the growth and expansion of global tyranny that is harmonized, that is managed, that is aligned across nation states, and it appears to be aligned with the economic interests of a small cluster of investment funds that represents the bulk of global western capital.” —American scientist and researcher Dr. Robert Malone, 61, in a November 27 interview (full text published below)
Letter #172, 2021, Friday, December 10: Austria and Germany
In the debate over the present Covid health emergency and what would be the most effective and wise policies toward the greatest common good in response to the emergency, one voice has been notably calm, steady, and measured in assessing the evidence.
That voice belongs to Dr. Robert Malone.
Malone is the scientist who two decades ago did much of the breakthrough fundamental work connected with developing a technology called “mRNA technology” — the technology used in developing the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. (See this article, but see also this more skeptical article published by the liberal Atlantic magazine, link).
So Malone is a scientist with the needed credentials to discuss the pros and cons of the mRNA vaccines which have prompted such controversy in recent months — perhaps even the pre-eminent scientist in this regard.
That is, someone who ought to be heard on the same platform with, or even before listening to, the other doctors, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who have been publicly calling for various, and sometimes seemingly unwise, public health measures in the past two years.
***
Malone went to Rome in September to give a talk before the Italian Senate, and took time out to visit in the Vatican with Cardinal Peter Turkson, 73, a native of Ghana in West Africa, and the head since August 31, 2016, of the Vatican’s new Department for the Service of the Integral Human Development, created by Pope Francis to handle issues of social justice and peace around the world.
Malone and Turkson two met for about one hour and discussed both traditional and recently developed medicines for confronting epidemics and diseases, but it is not known whether Turkson reported some of the concerns Malone expressed about the new vaccines to Pope Francis.
Malone, who is not a Catholic, did relate to me that he had traveled to Rome hoping to find in the leadership of the Catholic Church that moral voice which might help concerned doctors to speak out on behalf of policies that do not over-step certain bounds of morality in the course of responding to the present health crisis.
***
At the end of November, Maike Hickson of Lifesitenews, who lives in the Shenandoah Valley, visited Malone and interviewed him.
Malone urged caution in dealing with a virus which is repeatedly mutating, and prudence in mandating experimental vaccines.
A report on that interview, and then the entire raw interview text, is published below.
***
I myself visited with Malone two days ago in his home. I spoke with him, and his wife, for several hours. I then summarized the essence of what Malone said to me to my own contacts in the Catholic world, as a group of us continues the delicate but essential process of gathering sufficient, accurate data to enable us to evaluate and then counter the evidently totalitarian measures now increasingly being implemented worldwide as the best and necessary response to this crisis.
***
The Resistance
This group is presently engaged in prayer to seek guidance from above in forming a type of pro-life, pro-children, from human dignity alternative program to the presently dominant global order, which is presenting increasingly worrisome proposals that seem to go against all previous religious and secular counsels for the wise and free ordering of human life.
This program will be based, of course, in the Catholic faith, but those preparing the program are fully open to collaboration with all men and women of good will.
One spur to the formation of this program is the evident willingness shown in recent governmental decisions around the world to set aside all traditional conceptions of human dignity and human rights.
We believe this is a tragic regression for human dignity and human freedom which must be engaged in faith and reason in order to head off great sorrows.
The Nuremburg Code, of course, agreed upon by all the nations of the world after the end of the Second World War, in 1947, said that it would be a crime against humanity to inject untested substances into human beings against their will.
Here is how one article sums up this situation: “The Code of Nuremburg laws explicitly state that ‘the voluntary consent of a person is absolutely essential,’ which means that a person can ‘exercise the free right of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deception, coercion, abuse or luring, other latent forms of coercion’ – for example, deprivation of your right to work if you are not vaccinated. The main reason for creating the Code was the nauseating Nazis performing medical experiments on objects without their consent. These procedures, usually performed under the direction of high-ranking officials such as Dr. Josef Mengele, were some of the worst and most abnormal procedures ever documented. Since then, full and proactive ongoing consent to any medical procedure is required by law in Western countries that recognize the Nuremberg Laws. The only way EU countries can avoid compulsory vaccinations against this mild virus, which is an extremely unethical and gruesome violation of human rights, is to repeal the Nuremberg laws or simply ignore them completely.” (link)
Dr. Robert Malone. He lives with his wife, Jill, in Virginia, not far from the Shenandoah Valley where I have been staying. I was able to speak with Dr. Malone for several hours in his home on the day before yesterday
Here is Maike Hickson‘s report on her late November talks with Dr. Malone, published yesterday, December 9, by Lifesitenews.
At the bottom is the entire 52-minute long raw transcript of the interview.
Austrian, German governments ‘have gone mad’ over COVID, says creator of mRNA vaccine technology (link)
Mask mandates, vaccine mandates and COVID lockdowns are part of a global totalitarianism, Dr. Robert Malone warned
By Maike Hickson
Thu Dec 9, 2021 – 7:01 pm EST
(LifeSiteNews) — Dr. Robert Malone, the original inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology, told LifeSite in a recent interview that he believes the Austrian and German governments – both of whom are pushing for a universal vaccine mandate — “have gone mad.”
He made it clear that the measures being implemented again this winter in the two countries – lockdowns, mask mandates and, in Austria, vaccine mandates – are not effective and on the contrary have grave negative effects on people. He is speaking of a “globalist totalitarianism,” undermining our democracies.
The full transcript of this interview can be viewed as a 52-minute video interview here.
Dr. Malone clearly rejected the idea or universal vaccination – calling it “insane” – and showed much sympathy for the Austrian people as well as the Germans: “So those people and also the Australians,” he told LifeSite on November 27, “are facing an intolerable situation where their governments are literally, in my opinion, have gone mad.”
Catholic activist Alexander Tschugguel has been calling for international help in his home country of Austria, with the impending vaccine mandates that are to start in the first months of 2022. He made it clear in a recent LifeSite interview that he will resist the COVID tyranny in Austria, and in a November 30 statement Kazakh Bishop Athanasius Schneider strongly encouraged Austrians to resist these unjust measures that are being implemented now.
There are many reasons for resisting, for example, the vaccine mandate.
Speaking about vaccine mandates, Dr. Malone stated that he believes in the “fundamental principle, in the logic, that people have freedom to choose and particularly over their own body in medical procedures,” and in this case, we are dealing with the question of “mandating individuals receiving a medical intervention with an unlicensed medical product that they may or may not wish to accept.”
Along with virologist Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, Dr. Malone fears that universal vaccination would promote the increase of vaccine resistant mutations of the corona virus. “My impression is with the Delta variant and now the Omicron variant that we are seeing evidence that’s consistent (…) We’re seeing data that are consistent with the hypotheses of Geert Vanden Bossche and others.” “It does appear,” Dr. Malone expounded, “that the pattern of mutations [such as with the Delta and Omicron variant] that we’re observing are entirely consistent with what Geert has predicted.”
In light of the current Austrian vaccine mandate, Dr. Malone also expressed concern about the possibility that these vaccines actually might enhance disease. “And the worry is that as you know, the worry, the chronic worry that many of us have had that think about these things and try to look carefully at the data and are aware of the prior data in coronavirus vaccine development in humans [that] has repeatedly encountered the problem of vaccine enhanced disease,” he stated, and wondered whether certain data are “an initial indicator of some deeper phenomena having to do with vaccine enhanced injury?”
Also, the other measures of the Austrian (and German) governments did not find Dr. Malone’s approval.
Asked by LifeSite about the mask mandates and whether they are efficient and helpful in fighting the coronavirus, the virologist answered that “there’s a number of papers that look at the effectiveness of masks.” Those studies, he continued, “show that the effectiveness of the masks that we’re using in general in the population at best is about 10 percent in terms of reducing the spread. And that’s consistent with what the CDC had in their calculations.”
Dr. Malone also stressed that there are many negative side effects of using masks. He explained that while wearing masks, “we have additional bacterial flora, and potentially viral, that we are repeatedly re-breathing. So it’s not just the effects on CO2 levels and those kinds of things. There’s also some infectious components to it.” Next to the health aspect, there is, in Dr. Malone’s eyes, also a psychological one, especially for children. “As you know,” he added, “children need to see faces. And this, the use of the mask, particularly in the context of schools – children interacting with other children – is really counterproductive.”
The immunologist also rejected the idea of lockdowns. Dr. Malone made it clear that the virus cannot be stopped by the lockdowns, that they are little effective but cause much harm:
“There are multiple reports out now and deep studies, economic studies, comprehensive studies that show that the overall impact of lockdowns is not to reduce deaths,” he said. “In many cases, you can show an increase in death that – whether or not it’s due to the virus itself – there’s a number of other things that these lockdowns impact on, including mental health of people. So suicide rates go up. People aren’t being fed as well.”
The overall impact in multiple assessments of the lockdowns, according to Dr. Malone, “is damaging. It’s worse than if they never impose that at all, in terms of the economy, people’s employment, people’s mental health, the rate of suicide.”
Dr. Malone added that many people also do not get their illnesses “detected as easily,” since they stay at home. There is a “whole cascade of other things.” “It’s this overly simplistic thought that with this simple intervention, we can have a beneficial effect on the spread of the virus. As you know, the truth is the virus will move through the population,” he concluded.
These policies are “kind of mindless,” Dr. Malone said, adding, “we have an epidemic of a virus. We have an epidemic of irrational fear and we have an epidemic of poor public policy. And I think that, unfortunately, the Austrian people are about to be getting a lesson in this. And I guess perhaps the German people, too.”
LifeSite asked Dr. Malone to comment on a recent statement by Bavarian Minister-President Markus Soeder, according to whom one can only can get rid of the coronavirus by mandatory vaccination. “Only vaccination can free us from the continuous loop of the coronavirus,” he said November 26.
“I would respond,” Dr. Malone answered, “that it’s grossly naive. How many times do we have to say: these vaccines are poorly effective at preventing infection, replication and spread? They are partially protective against disease. Natural immunity is significantly more protective against disease.”
He bemoaned the “logic” that is “driving so many of us to distraction: It’s not based in science.” And if it’s so obviously not based in science, Dr. Malone added, then what is driving this policy?
The physician explained that one of the reasons might be “that the leadership in the European Union and throughout the West, including the United States, has been captured functionally by the economic interests of some financial entity, of which the pharmaceutical industry is a component.”
Further describing the power of international financial groups that seems to be able to influence the world’s common response to the current corona crisis — to include the “insane push for universal vaccination” — Dr. Malone said:
“I’ve become convinced that we do have a situation that is essentially the growth and expansion of global tyranny that is harmonized, that is managed, that is aligned across nation states, and it appears to be aligned with the economic interests of a small cluster of investment funds that represents the bulk of global western capital,” he said. “And what I’m particularly alarmed about — me and many others, and apparently also the archbishop [Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò] — is that this pool of capital is so large now that it has more power than individual nation states do.” This capital has become so powerful that “it can dictate policy, economic policy and national policy in different nation states. And that capital has acquired all of the main media, all of the Big Tech and all of the major vaccine and pharmaceutical companies. And it’s all this is why it’s acting globally in an integrated fashion.”
It is because of this concern that Dr. Malone then explicitly endorsed Archbishop Viganò’s recent November 18 call for an anti-globalist alliance.
The full video of this interview can be viewed here.
Here is the raw transcript of the interview:
Fri Dec 10, 2021 – 9:21 am EST
(LifeSiteNews) — LifeSiteNews is pleased to publish below the full transcript of the recent interview between Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Maike Hickson. Dr. Hickson’s questions appear in bold, followed by Dr. Malone’s responses. This transcript includes additional important topics not mentioned in previous LifeSite articles on this interview.
MASK MANDATES
Dr. Malone, thank you so much for this short interview that we are conducting today on behalf of the truth in general about the corona crisis, but also for our Austrian friends that have asked for your advice, especially in their situation right now. And so I’m just going to ask you a couple of general questions, and in the end, we can go into the Austrian situation. Your recent interview mentioned a document that was leaked from the CDC that mentioned that masks might be actually not as effective as one thought in the beginning. Could you explain that to our audience?
Dr. Robert Malone: What I was referring to was the leaked documents to The Washington Post from about a month and a half ago when we first heard about Delta, it might have been two months ago now. And in those documents, it was quite clear there were projections, if you’ll recall, there were panels with colored lines that showed the projections of potential effectiveness in reducing spread should we have more vaccine uptake up to 100 percent, and whether or not we could stop the spread of coronavirus, with that, with or without masks. And in that, there were a series of assumptions about the effectiveness of masks, and it was clear that even if we had very good mask compliance, by the CDC own calculations, together with literally 100 percent uptake of vaccines, we still could only slow the spread of Delta — we could not stop it.
Then there’s a separate paper. There’s a number of papers that look at the effectiveness of masks, separate from that disclosure or leak, or whatever you want to call it. And those, in general, show that the effectiveness of the masks that we’re using, in general in the population, at best is about 10 percent in terms of reducing the spread. And that’s consistent with what the CDC had in their calculations. So the effectiveness… you’re probably referring to my quote from the Bannon show, where Steve asked me: “What’s your advice for people as they come together over Thanksgiving?” And I said: “Well, the most effective thing is to know each other and know whether or not you have symptoms and if a member of your family is starting to have symptoms they shouldn’t come to the table and spend time with each other. And there’s no real logic for using masks in this situation because their effectiveness is at the most, about 10 percent.
I’m very grateful for this because of our German and Austrian audience. I know from Germany they literally are forced in every place and every public space to wear masks, and we never really talk about the negative side effects of wearing these masks and reducing your own, you know, quality of what you breathe in.
Dr. Malone: Right, well, it’s not just that, it’s also that the normal bacterial flora that we all carry in our mouth and our pharynx and lungs is now getting filtered onto that mask and then we’re breathing it. So we’re basically setting up a situation where we have additional bacterial flora, and potentially viral, that we’re repeatedly breathing. So it’s not just the effects on CO2 levels and those kinds of things, there’s also some infectious components to it. And then, as you know with children, children need to see faces. And the use of the mask, particularly in the context of schools in children interacting with other children, is really counterproductive. So there’s there’s just a lot of things, like your Austrian friends are also very aware of the lockdown policies.
LOCKDOWNS
That would have been my second question: do lockdowns work?
Dr. Malone: So they’re there, and I used to have pinned a report from a high-quality think-tank that I put up there so that my Australian colleagues could access it. So there are multiple reports out now and deep studies, economic studies, comprehensive studies, that show that the overall impact of the lockdowns is not to reduce deaths. In many cases, you can show an increase in death, whether or not it’s due to the virus itself. There’s a number of other things that these lockdowns impact on, including the mental health of people. So suicide rates go up, people aren’t being fed as well. If they do have significant disease or need to get hospitalized, they’re not being detected as easily.
There’s a whole cascade of other things. It’s this overly simplistic thought that with this simple intervention, we can have a beneficial effect on the spread of the virus. As you know, the truth is the virus will move through the population. And you know, you can have some short-term impact on that in terms of public health behavior through lockdowns in terms of flattening the initial curve and not overloading your hospitals, et cetera. But the overall impact in multiple assessments is damaging, is worse than if they never impose that at all in terms of the economy, people’s employment, people’s mental health, the rate of suicide.
There’s a lot of other factors, and then, of course, the children that all go into that, and it seems kind of mindless. But what we’re suffering, I mean, we have an epidemic of a virus, we have an epidemic of irrational fear and we have an epidemic of poor public policy. And I think that unfortunately, the Austrian people are about to be getting a lesson in this. And I guess perhaps the German people.
FREEDOM AND GLOBAL TYRANNY
Exactly, one of the greatest side effects, so to speak of lockdowns, is the attack on freedoms. The idea that the state can just limit human traffic and just anything outside your own home to such an extent that you are literally a prisoner in your own home and, you know, the damage of that part of the lockdown. You recently also talked about the danger of global tyranny.
Dr. Malone: Yes, this is the “camel’s nose: is the metaphor that’s often used: once the camel’s nose gets in the tent, pretty soon the whole camel’s in the tent. We have this tendency in Western democracies. Frankly, I think Great Britain is particularly susceptible to this. The idea that we’re doing it for the common good, that we can do social engineering, we can have these interventions if it’s limited. It’s just for this thing, it’s just for that thing. And then we get this incrementalism. Well, if it was good for that, then it’s good for this. So that, you know, the obvious example is this Trusted News Initiative. That is a clear case where it started off for a noble cause, that is resisting incursion into our political system from offshore political interests. You know, they spoke about the Russians as the threat, but really any. And then that’s been weaponized against vaccine dissent.
Really, it comes down to dissent about the interpretation of facts and information. And now it’s we’re going to do the same thing with climate change, and who knows what the next social engineering objective is going to be? It just seems to be this chronic erosion of civil rights and liberties in the logic that countries and governments — that it’s OK to do social engineering through these various interventions. And I think that that is really worrisome.
FUSION OF STATE, CORPORATE INTERESTS INTO EVIL GLOBAL FASCISM; VIGANÒ; VATICAN
You recently also retweeted a statement from Archbishop Viganò where he spoke about the need for an anti-globalist alliance. Could you explain to us why you supported the statement from Archbishop Viganò?
Dr. Malone: So I’ve become convinced, as he has, that there’s something here that goes beyond just vaccines and public health, and I have not wanted to go there intellectually. And yet it is impossible to make sense out of what is transpiring in the world right now, just as an explanation of public health and vaccine policy, or antiviral policy. And I have become convinced that we’re in a situation in which we’re all having our rights eroded and that there is a larger force beyond this. I have colleagues who speak at length about evil. There is a growing sense by many people that there’s something fundamentally evil going on here.
I’ve become convinced that we do have a situation that is essentially the growth and expansion of global tyranny, there is harmonized that is managed, that is aligned across nation-states. And it appears to be aligned with the economic interests of a small cluster of investment funds that represents the bulk of global western capital. And what I’m particularly alarmed about, me and many others and apparently also the archbishop, is that this pool of capital is so large now that it has more power than individual nation states do. We’ve been warned about this for a long time. I used to be a political science student also, and I read about the rise of transnationalism in the New World Order back two decades ago. We now seem to be seeing it play out.
And personally, I’ve become convinced that one of the fundamental problems that have resulted in this disassociation within our society is fragmentation of our society. The sense that things don’t make sense, that we are no longer connected, is that we have elected to use the language of economics to describe the human condition. We, by our very language — language matters — by our very language we have reduced the human condition down to economic units, and that makes us all basically economic pawns in a process of growing wealth. We use that language. We’ve substituted the language of good and bad, and evil, and good works — in this kind of thinking — for the language of profit. And what I think I see is a growing world in which there is a large block of capital, which is decoupled from nation-states.
It used to be that the capital would stay connected to the geography and the people from whence it was derived, even if it was pooled in the top one percent, at least it was still linked to that nation-state. That’s no longer the case. The capital is decoupled, it will move wherever it wants to go, and it moves in response to one primary driver, which is return on investment. It has no moral compass, it has no moral component. It only responds to the opportunity to seek additional return on investment. And so we’re all reduced to economic units that can be exploited to generate more return on investment wherever that capital seeks to move. And the capital is now so large that it can dictate policy, economic policy and national policy in different nation-states. And that capital has acquired all of the main media, all of the Big Tech and all of the major vaccine and pharmaceutical companies. And it’s all acting globally in an integrated fashion.
So what do we call this? We have language for these things. And the language that we have chosen to use in the past to describe this fusion of the state and corporate interests, the word that we have chosen to describe that is fascism. But this is more than fascism because fascism is linked to a given nation-state. This is something bigger. This is something in which this fusion has occurred at a level that is decoupled from the nation-state. It is global. So when we talk about global totalitarianism, this is a descriptor. This isn’t just a political concept. This is trying to be technically precise in describing what’s being observed.
What’s observed is that we now have a situation in which it’s not just a fusion of the interests of corporatists and the nation-state. It’s a fusion of corporatists and this large pool of transnational capital that roams around looking for a return on investment. And it will act in whatever ways it needs to act in order to improve that return on investment in an amoral sense because it has no intrinsic morality.
This is why I originally tried, with your assistance, to reach out to the Vatican, because if there is one — in my space, I don’t have connections with the Muslim community — but at least I have some grounding in Christianity, that’s my core culture. And in my view, in the western world, if there is a remaining moral authority in the world, it is the Catholic Church as the dominant moral authority. And I was hoping that the Catholic Church would take a principled stand here and take a position that this is wrong, that this is fundamentally contrary to humanity, what we have believed as humanity. And this is why I supported the Archbishop because the Archbishop seems to also believe in these core concepts and uses extraordinarily strong language. I was very struck by the bravery of the Archbishop to speak so freely about these things. And also, I felt it a little bit validating that here’s somebody coming independently from a different discipline, in a different frame of reference, a different tradition, and yet had come to the same conclusions that I was coming to.
VACCINE MANDATES
And in this manner of depriving us of our freedoms, you would also include the vaccine mandates, right? And forcing of vaccines on people who have different reasons to object to them?
Dr. Malone: Absolutely, and by the way, one of the most potent legally in the United States is the religious objection. Now that apparently is going to be very difficult to overcome legally, one hopes. But I feel fundamentally, I believe there’s a fundamental principle in the logic that people have freedom to choose, and particularly over their own body in medical procedures. And what we’re talking about is mandating individuals receiving a medical intervention with an unlicensed medical product that they may or may not wish to accept it. In my opinion, if people wish to accept vaccine and they are well-informed about the risks and benefits of that vaccine, then they should have access to it. We shouldn’t forbid them from taking it. But we also shouldn’t mandate that they accept it, if they have objections
INFORMED CONSENT
And we shouldn’t suppress literature or studies coming out that are critical about the vaccines, either, because then we don’t give informed consent.
Dr. Malone: Absolutely. And this is fundamental, if there is an underlying fundamental logic behind what I’m trying to do with Twitter and social media in interviews like this, it’s to provide some access to information so that people can make their own decisions. I don’t want to tell people, “take the vaccine”, or “don’t take the vaccine.” Let me express my position as a physician as to whether or not there’s merit to taking the vaccine, but I believe strongly, fundamentally, it is against the principles that I’ve been taught for 30 years of bioethics that you should impose a medical procedure on an unwilling patient. [00:19:41][42.3]
VARIANTS, SUPPORT FOR GEERT VANDEN BOSSCHE PREDICTIONS
One of your early arguments against this mass vaccination was also that it would promote and provoke the increase of variants of the virus, as you have explained on numerous occasions, do you see this now coming? Do you see that there’s evidence, that compared to the, let’s say, first 18 months of the corona outbreak and what’s happening now under the massive vaccination programs?
Dr. Malone: From what I’m seeing, and it’s not my core competency to be carefully examining the evolutionary course in the specific point mutations of these different viruses, I could do that, [but] it’s not what I’ve been doing, other people are doing it very well. My impression is with the Delta variant and now the Omicron variant that we are seeing evidence that’s consistent. So I’m going to use scientific terminology.
We’re seeing data that are consistent with the hypotheses of Geert Vanden Bossche and others. I’ve been very influenced by his thinking, but I want to give him credit for his contribution. I didn’t come up with this, I was an early adopter and very influenced by it. But it does appear that the pattern of mutations that we’re observing is entirely consistent with what Geert has predicted. And here’s the one nuance, what Geert has been alerting us to is the risks of Merrick’s disease in chickens, which is a cancer DNA virus that, if you vaccinate against you will end up with worse disease than you get if you don’t vaccinate into an ongoing infection. And so his alarm has been not only that we would develop vaccine resistant mutants, but that they would be increasingly pathogenic. I think that the data are now really compelling.
We are selecting for vaccine-resistant mutants. Now what is not yet clear is are these mutants more pathogenic? And that is a difficult thing to sort out because the viruses as they move as a population, it’s not that we just flip a switch and everybody was on Beta and then suddenly became on Delta. And so you could see an abrupt transition, but rather it’s a blending of information. And now we’re going to probably see a blending from Delta into Omicron, or we won’t. But if the experience in Africa holds true, that’s what we might see.
And so what we’ll see is a gradual gradient of evidence that the vaccines are being less and less effective. And so the metaphor everybody keeps using is the one of the frog put into the pot of water, and then the heat is slowly turned on and it slowly comes to a boil and the frog never realizes and jumps out when it could outright. It just boils because it’s this incrementalism, and it is likely that what we will see is an incrementally increasing signal indicating a reduction in vaccine effectiveness, which is what we’ve seen with Delta. I mean, if you recall back in time, you’re a journalist you’re following these things, we had people saying “well, the vaccines are losing their efficacy,” and then we had all of this tussle over whether that’s true or not true. Now it’s widely accepted, you have even Bill Gates and Tony Fauci admitting it. But there’s been this period of time where we were all tussling over whether this is true or not. And then the data became more and more and more and more compelling as Delta moved into the population. This is what we’re likely to see with Omicron if it successfully competes with Delta.
INADEQUACY OF BOOSTER SHOTS
So we would need constant booster shots to adjust the vaccines the new variants?
Dr. Malone: So this is Ryan Cole, I think is of the people that I interact with, the one that really first made this very stark. The vaccines that we would be boosted with are designed against the initial strain, the Alpha strain. They are now grossly mismatched. He makes the appropriate point of the analogy to influenza vaccination. So with our influenza vaccines, we have seasonally adjusted in vaccine mixtures because of the drift and shift in influenza vaccines that occur globally. So this is the norm in vaccinating.
Remember, influenza is an RNA virus that causes upper respiratory disease. The parallels are fairly strong. Both of these RNA viruses mutate at high levels because their polymerases generate mutants. They are not able to air check like DNA viruses. Polymerase is able to do so. So we’re seeing the drifting in the genetics of the circulating strain, just like we do with flu. And what we would normally do with flu is we would adjust our vaccine formulation on an annual basis. And we’re not doing that. And for whatever reason now, the vaccine developers are saying, “Oh, well, good heavens, with Omicron if that really turns out to be that severe, then we can make our adjustments.”
Here’s the thing about that, when you make those sequence adjustments in the case of influenza, we have years and years and years of experience to say which ones of those adjustments are going to be OK and which ones do we need to do. Additional studies for the vaccine manufacturers seem to be saying that we want the latitude to deploy new vaccines in the same way that we do for seasonal influenza, without going through that period of learning. So once again, they want to rush the whole thing, and shortcut the safety assessment. So far, that hasn’t worked out so good.
POSSIBLE REASONS FOR CONTINUING TO DO WRONG THINGS ON VACCINES
Yeah, exactly. So one minister in Germany, from Bavaria, has now argued that only if we get the whole population vaccinated – so he argues that Germany should start by January 1st with a vaccine mandate – that only this way could we get rid of Coronavirus. How would you respond to the statement?
Dr. Malone: I would respond that it’s grossly naive. How many times do we have to say, these vaccines are poorly effective at preventing infection, replication and spread? They are partially protective against disease; natural immunity is significantly more protective against disease, that means hospitalization, for example. Both natural immunity and these vaccines currently are very protective against death. The vaccines are partially protective against severe disease compared to the unvaccinated.
The problem with that logic [proposing vaccine mandates] is the unvaccinated are an increasingly tiny population, not just because of vaccination, but because of natural infection. And they’re not really monitoring the fraction of the population that have been naturally infected and recovered. A lot of estimates show that certainly in the United States, while we have less than 60 percent vaccine uptake, we probably have 80 plus percent in the total population that have either been infected or vaccinated. OK, so this logic from the German minister, this is what is driving so many of us to distraction as it’s not based on science. And if it’s so obviously not based on science, what is driving that policy? There’s kind of two explanations that I’m comfortable with, well let’s say three.
One is that they’re just locked into a belief system, and they are so deep in it now that they can’t admit their failure and their flaws, and they feel like they just have to keep doing it. This is the ‘give a three-year-old a hammer and everything becomes a nail logic,’ right? They have a very powerful system. They think they can keep administering it and getting a response. But you know, there’s that quote from Einstein, I believe it’s attributed to. ‘If you keep doing the same thing and expect [different] results, this is the definition of madness,’ right? So that’s one answer: that they’re just so dug in, they feel they have no other options and they have to keep doing this because they can’t admit their prior failures and flaws.
Another one is [to do with] the economic or other external forces, which basically argues that the leadership in the European Union and throughout the West, including the United States, has been captured functionally by the economic interests of some financial entity, of which the pharmaceutical industry is a component. So there’s that argument.
‘MASS FORMATIONS PSYCHOSIS’ ARGUMENT OF MATTIAS DESMET GHENT
I personally really like the argument of Mattias Desmet, which is this mass formation psychosis argument, that fundamentally a significant fraction of the population [has] been hypnotized. It’s not [something] that they are conscious of. So the ‘they’re so dug in that they can’t back out argument,’ is founded on the belief that they’re actually aware, that they’re not experiencing cognitive dissonance because they’re aware that they’ve made a mistake.
But many wouldn’t.
Dr. Malone: Right? The mass formations psychosis argument of Mattias Desmet of Ghent argues that they are truly hypnotized, that a large fraction of the population has become hypnotized, much as happened to the German people during the 1930s and 1920s. And it has similar psychological roots in a lot of us, including myself. I’m just one of many who find the arguments of Dr Desmet very compelling. They seem to explain a lot of behaviors that are otherwise inexplicable, like this extreme level of aggression and venom that is vented against anyone who’s expressing anything such as you do at LifeSiteNews. Anything that is contrary to the dominant narrative they attack this in the most personal terms. It is their venomous, aggressive attacks that are not based in any data or information.
Exactly. For example, in Germany, since we just talked about Germany, the official data just came out which showed that in the age group, about 60-year-olds, 71 percent of the hospitalized are now fully vaccinated and 52 percent of those who died were fully vaccinated. So these data actually should be taken in, showing at least that the vaccines, as you always say, seem to be leaky. But at some point one also has to worry about why it’s little more than half who die are dying with the vaccines,whether the vaccines are truly doing what they are supposed to do.
Dr. Malone: And the worry is, as you know, the worry, the chronic worry that many of us have had – those of us that think about these things, and try to look carefully at the data, and are aware of the prior data in coronavirus vaccine development in humans which [have] repeatedly encountered the problem of vaccine enhanced disease – is this: Is this paradoxical signal that we’re seeing an initial indicator of some deeper phenomena having to do with vaccine enhanced injury?
This is coming out more and more in the data, in the press. What the infectious disease community and World Health Community and European Medicines Agency and U.S. CDC and Canadian National Health Service, et cetera, we could go on and on, have focused on is what they classify as vaccine-related injuries, which are things that are narrowly defined as meeting their preset criteria for what they consider to be a vaccine-related injury.
And the problem with that is that it’s all subject to various forms of biases, having to do with the reporting and the classification of the information is very subjective. It is subjective. That’s the best way to put it. That type of data analysis results in data that is contaminated with all kinds of confounding variables and subjectivity. So what can you do? Well, you have to start looking at all-cause mortality. When somebody dies, that’s a very clear signal. We kept good records on how often people die, and we can argue about whether or not this heart attack death was associated with vaccine or not associated with vaccine. But when we see all cause mortality going up..
Excess death…
Dr. Malone: Then that’s something to worry about. The problem is, how do you disambiguate all-cause mortality due increase due to vaccine, versus increase due to circulating virus? And that gets really hard. That’s the basis for the argument that many people make when they say, I’m part of the control group. That used to confuse me when people would say ‘I’m part of the control group,’ I’d say ‘what clinical trial?’ What they’re talking about is the idea that unless there’s some cohort that has not accepted the vaccine, then we can never disambiguate what is due to the vaccine, and what’s due to the virus. So without some really sophisticated and expensive immunology testing to figure out –because we can test and see whether or not you’ve just had the jab or whether you’ve been infected – it may be possible to see whether you’ve got both going on right now because of some immunologic characteristics. So they argue that they’re part of the control group, because if we lose that, if everybody is universally jabbed, then we can never do any comparison and sort out what’s due to the jab and what’s due to the infection. This is one of the arguments that’s made about why this insane push to universal vaccination is a way of covering your tracks if you happen to be a global biopharmaceutical company.
But I’m worried, as I know you are, about this push that seems irrational.
Just as a last question, what would be your message to the Austrians who are going to hear your message in translation? What is your message to the Austrians that are now essentially locked down and facing mandated vaccination within the next half a year, as well as to the Germans, where it’s lurking already around in the discussion? What is your message to these countries?
Dr. Malone: That’s a hard one. I try to always conclude my interviews with something positive. So those people, and also the Australians, are facing an intolerable situation, where their governments literally, in my opinion, have gone mad. And I think they’ve probably gone mad because of this mass formation psychosis of the desperate. But time will tell maybe, or maybe it will just get hidden.
I believe that the only recourse now that most of us have, is this idea of building local community. I really believe that we’re now in a situation, and again, I’m very influenced by Mattias Desmet’s analysis. He’s of the opinion, it’s quite dark, that this period of global totalitarianism will sweep over us. It’s now gained enough momentum and enough buy-in from enough nation states and political organizations, that it has a momentum of its own. And we are going to have to come to terms with that, while we also come to terms with the fact that the virus will have its way with us.
So to my mind, whether it’s Omicron, or Delta, or Delta Plus, or fill-in-the-blank variant, we are likely to have another wave this winter. I think it’s already kicking in pretty hard in Europe, and we may end up with kind of a bimodal wave. We may end up with a Delta wave with an Omicron wave superimposed on it later. OK, so in the face of a dysfunctional government and public health response, what can you do? I think there’s three things.
One is build connections within your local community. This is the fundamental sickness in our society that has given rise to the mass formation, if you listen to Mattias’ argument. So try to rebuild those connections, and that means in part, building contact lists, particularly for the elderly within your community. Whether your community is a church or a town hall, whatever your political and social structure is, try to build community, try to build contact list call lists, stay in touch with each other and in particular, try to stay in touch with the high risk groups, the elders, etc. They represent your wisdom and they’re at highest risk. And the biggest crime I think that’s going on is the feeble elder who encounters the virus, goes to the hospital, was taken to the hospital, gets told, ‘No, you’re not sick enough. Go home. Here’s an aspirin. Call us when you’re sick enough,’ and they go home. And there’s some complex physiology about blood oxygen levels that makes it so that the pulse oximeter appears to be underestimating your oxygenation problem. And so they go home and they die, and they die alone, and it is completely unnecessary because early treatment can help them. So number one, build community, stay in touch with people, watch over each other because the state isn’t going to do it for you. OK, the unfortunate situation is that our pharmaceutical hospital industrial complex is not helping us, right? It’s become incredibly dysfunctional, so we’re going to have to kind of do it ourselves. So build those lists, stay in touch with people, find physicians, if you can, who will administer early treatment.
What we’ve seen in multiple examples, particularly with the elderly that do not have access to internet or often or are challenged in getting access to digital media – we all think that we’ve all got laptops. That’s not true for a large cohort of the population, particularly the feeble and the elderly, – those people really appreciate having a document. There are a variety of sources of information and documents in English –the FLCCC’s protocol is one where they formatted these treatment protocols as PDFs, and you can just print them. Getting information into the hands of the feeble and the elderly and the disadvantaged has two advantages. Number one, it reassures them that it’s not hopeless. It reassures them that you can survive this virus. That it is not a death sentence if you get infected, and it shows them graphically that there are things, tangible things that can be done, OK? Those two things alone provide enormous relief. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it in people’s faces. The people, particularly the people that are in this zone where they are subject to the mass formation psychosis, but their minds are a little bit open, and when you give them a document saying, ‘Hey, this is not a death sentence, if you get this, there is hope,’ you can see the change in their expression and the relief that they get just from that one thing.
The release of stress, just from having a document, in your hands. So that’s number two, to get information out to people. There’s a variety of sources of information: help them know that this is not a death sentence.
The third thing is in building communities and identifying doctors. Over time, we’re going to start building clinics and treatment associations, et cetera. I mean, what I’ve seen, for instance, in Hawaii with Kirk and Kim Malone, Kirk is a pediatric cardiologist with expertize in vascular inflammation. Kim is a pediatric anesthesiologist. They’ve worked together. They’ve been kicked out of the only hospital in Oahu because they have been administering early treatment to patients. This is shocking when you think about it. Kirk is also a minister at a local congregation. Jill and I have been there to their meetings, there are a couple hundred people that come to his congregation, and he runs a food bank. This is a deeply, spiritually committed individual. Not from your denomination, but it doesn’t matter. He is fundamentally committed to good works, and he is setting up a clinic where he is treating people with these life saving drugs early on. Kim and Kurt together. So eventually, that’s going to grow into a community clinic.
Eventually, those community clinics are going to provide an alternative to this industrialized medicine model that we’re in the middle of right now. And that, I think, is the long range hope. How long is it going to take? How many decades? I have no idea. But it all starts with the idea of being globally aware of what’s going on, but acting locally within your community to start to build capabilities. And I think that is the way we break free of the mass psychosis. But this is Mattias’s point, is that if we can get people to realize that global totalitarianism is a bigger threat than the virus, and get them to break away from this mass psychosis, then they create a new kind of mass psychosis, which is their fear of global totalitarianism, fuzed to their anxiety and social disassociation. And so we still haven’t cured the underlying problem. The underlying problem is the sickness in our society, and we all know it’s there. We can all feel it. We’re aware that there’s something fundamentally wrong. Until we give humans as a community, a sense of belonging and responsibility for each other, and break free of this idea that we’re just economic units and whoever dies with the most toys wins, and instead we move to a space that is fundamentally a more spiritual space. It’s a space in which we acknowledge our interdependency with each other and our need for social connectivity. This is a fundamental.
And the antidote against the lie, against propaganda is human connectivity and exchange of reality, of things that happen and that undercuts propaganda. It is putting people together.
Dr. Malone: It’s the cure. Yeah, it is the real cure. It’s the cure of the disease that Mattias Desmet has diagnosed for us, which is this mass formation, psychosis, the madness of crowds.
And so we would in a literal sense and philosophically form an anti-globalist alliance, as Archbishop Viganò proposed.
Dr. Malone: I think he nailed it right on the head. I think he called it correctly now, and I think it showed great bravery and foresight. But you’ve taught me that he is a person who, for whatever reason, has had the courage to speak truth to power in the past. And I honor him for that.
And we honor you for doing the same in your field.
Dr. Malone: I’m trying! I’m going to share one of the other things that happened to me today. I received something in the mail, and it was a cease and desist letter from the lawyer representing a family. They were upset because I had retweeted a video montage of young athletes dying or having heart attacks. That video montage included a clip of their son who had died, but his death occurred before the outbreak, and whoever created that video montage had manipulated the information about his death and included him in the montage. And then I was being accused of having been the person that did this because I retweeted it, and it was very upsetting to get this.
A ‘nico,’ a threat.
Dr. Malone: Yeah, it was. But then I stepped back, and I mean, this goes to turn the other cheek and try to empathize, and I realized these are parents that are in pain. And they accused me of exploiting this to support an anti-vaccine agenda, which they were clearly very upset by, exploiting their son’s death. I have to say to myself, I empathize with their pain, and I can understand why they were upset, and I went and took that post down. But what it underscores… I have a colleague that I won’t name, who is a prolific writer about these things, you would recognize him, who made the case the other day that the other side is lying all the time and we have to be willing to lie too, and to make our point because it is a global fight. And I objected. I said, No, we can’t do that.
The end does not justify the means.
Dr. Malone: Right! But I think that when we’re in the thick of this confrontation, this truly epic battle, I think that’s not overstating it. We are in a truly epic battle. And I think that we have to try really hard to maintain our integrity and not follow into the behavior and the ethics of it.
Exactly.
Dr. Malone:Because, you know, if we want to talk about soul, that’s how we lose our soul. That’s how we become perverted ,and brought into that darkness that we seem to see our opponent as fallen into.
Exactly. And what really comes to me just in this whole conversation, when you speak about the economic powers today, when we talk in biblical terms, you know, our Lord always said, you cannot serve Mammon and God at the same time. So in a sense, you cannot in fighting Mammon, you shouldn’t adapt the methods of Mammon. You still should keep that ethical approach because finally, we stand before God and not before man.
Dr. Malone: I think that is a fundamental truth that transcends all theology. I believe there are universal ethical truths, which are the foundation for Western culture. I can’t speak to eastern culture as I don’t know it, but in my world there are fundamental, transcendent ethical truths. A lot of them stem from the idea that we have, as thinking beings, we have responsibility to each other and to the world around us and the animals around us. And you saw that today as we went out and saw the horses, et cetera. I think that if we lose that ability to empathize and our commitment to our fellow beings…
Then we lose our soul.
Dr. Malone:Completely.
Well, thank you so much, Dr. Malone, for this wonderful interview. And we hope we can do that again, and we can keep listening to your wisdom and good guidance in this very, very difficult time. Thank you so much.
Richard H. Ebright, an award-winning scientist and Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, responded to statements made by Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday by repeatedly calling Fauci a “serial liar.”
Ebright responded to each of the following comments made on social media by stating, “Serial liars–like Fauci–will be serial liars.”
#1: “Fauci is such a tool. The question posed to him in congress was whether he funded gain of function research. He either did or he didn’t. He said he didn’t. New evidence suggests he did. This isn’t a scientific question.”
#2: “Fauci: ‘I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying’ – POLITICO Anyone who’s been this wrong and misled people this much should not hide behind ‘science’ especially when he has so blatantly ignored or misunderstood the ‘science’ throughout.”
#3: “Fauci then implied that Senator Ted Cruz should be prosecuted for Jan. 6. ‘And I’m going to be saving lives, and they’re going to be lying,’ he added. He also proclaimed: ‘I represent science! … And if you damage science, you’re doing something very detrimental to society…’”
Ebright criticized Fauci earlier this year after The Intercept obtained hundreds of pages of previously undisclosed information from the NIH that allegedly showed that EcoHealth Alliance used federal grant money to fund dangerous bat coronavirus research in the Chinese labs.
Ebright said [emphasis added]:
The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present.
The materials confirm the grants supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.
The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (“humanized mice”).
The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses–one not been previously disclosed publicly–was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.
The materials further reveal that the the grants also supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric MERS-related coronaviruses that combined spike genes from one MERS-related coronavirus with genetic information from another MERS-related coronavirus.
The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.
Ebright later criticized remarks made by former Biden COVID-19 senior adviser Andy Slavitt, saying that Slavitt was an “empty head” and a “dolt.”
Empty suits will be empty suits. Empty heads will be empty heads. The mystery is why governments rely on empty suits and empty heads.
NewsPaul Sacca November 27, 2021 Alex Wong/Getty Images Like Blaze News? Get the news that matters most delivered directly to your inbox.
Previous tweets from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are igniting accusations of hypocrisy after the administration announced a travel ban in response to a new COVID-19 variant.
A World Health Organization panel convened on Friday to assess the potential of the SARS-CoV-2 variant “omicron,” formerly known as B.1.1.529. The WHO classified the latest variant as a “highly transmissible virus of concern,” which is also what the health agency previously named the delta variant as.
“We don’t know very much about this yet. What we do know is that this variant has a large number of mutations. And the concern is when you have so many mutations it can have an impact on how the virus behaves,” said Maria van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist and WHO technical lead on COVID-19. “This is one to watch, I would say we have concern. But I think you would want us to have concern. “
The Botswana government said there were four cases of the omicron variant reported on Nov. 22, and that all four patients were fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
Cases of the omicron variant have already been identified in Belgium, the U.K., Germany, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and Israel.
The WHO cautioned against countries implementing travel bans.
“At this point, implementing travel measures is being cautioned against,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said during a United Nations briefing in Geneva. “The WHO recommends that countries continue to apply a risk-based and scientific approach when implementing travel measures.”
Dr. Michael Ryan — the head of emergencies at the WHO — warned against “knee-jerk responses.”
“We’ve seen in the past, the minute there’s any kind of mention of any kind of variation and everyone is closing borders and restricting travel,” Ryan said. “It’s really important that we remain open, and stay focused.”
Despite the WHO recommendation, several countries implemented travel restrictions on African nations, including Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and all 27 member states of the European Union.
The South African foreign ministry reacted to the travel bans by saying the country was being punished for being one of the first nations to identify the new COVID-19 variant. South Africa first reported cases of B.1.1.529 to the WHO on Nov. 24.
“This latest round of travel bans is akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker,” the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement. “Excellent science should be applauded and not punished.”
The White House issued a statement on the travel ban, “The United States Government, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), within the Department of Health and Human Services, has reexamined its policies on international travel and concluded that further measures are required to protect the public health from travelers entering the United States.”
Biden’s travel ban goes into effect on Nov. 29, 2021.
The official Twitter account for President Biden issued a statement:
The @WHO has identified a new COVID variant which is spreading through Southern Africa. As a precautionary measure until we have more information, I am ordering air travel restrictions from South Africa and seven other countries. As we move forward, we will continue to be guided by what the science and my medical team advises. For now the best way to strengthen your protection if you’re already vaccinated is to get a booster shot, immediately. For those not yet fully vaccinated: get vaccinated today. For the world community: this news is a reminder that this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations. The U.S. has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined. It is time for other countries to match our speed and generosity.
The @WHO has identified a new COVID variant which is spreading through Southern Africa. As a precautionary measure until we have more information, I am ordering air travel restrictions from South Africa and seven other countries.
— President Biden (@President Biden) 1637955501 For the world community: this news is a reminder that this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations. The U.S. has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined. It is time for other countries to match our speed and generosity.
However, many commentators resurfaced old tweets by Biden that are deemed as hypocritical.
On Jan. 31, 2020, then-President Donald Trump declared a public health emergency in response to the global COVID-19 outbreak and temporarily suspended the entry of travelers from China. A day later, then-candidate Biden responded by saying Trump was xenophobic, “We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.” We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science \u2014 not Donald Trump\u2019s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.
On March 11, 2020, then-President Trump suspended travel from Europe in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus. The next day, Biden said travel bans would not stop the spread of COVID-19, “A wall will not stop the coronavirus. Banning all travel from Europe — or any other part of the world — will not stop it. This disease could impact every nation and any person on the planet — and we need a plan to combat it.” A wall will not stop the coronavirus.\n\nBanning all travel from Europe \u2014 or any other part of the world \u2014 will not stop it.\n\nThis disease could impact every nation and any person on the planet \u2014 and we need a plan to combat it.
In January 2020, when Trump added new immigration restrictions on six African and Asian countries — Nigeria, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, Sudan, and Tanzania — Democrats claimed the policy was “driven by hate.”
Biden tweeted, “Trump further diminished the U.S. in the eyes of the world by expanding his travel ban. This new ‘African Ban,’ is designed to make it harder for black and brown people to immigrate to the United States. It’s a disgrace, and we cannot let him succeed.” Trump further diminished the U.S. in the eyes of the world by expanding his travel ban. This new \u201cAfrican Ban,\u201d is designed to make it harder for black and brown people to immigrate to the United States. It\u2019s a disgrace, and we cannot let him succeed.https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/statement-from-vice-president-joe-biden-on-donald-trumps-expanded-travel-ban-17ac0ee039b9\u00a0\u2026
At the time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement, claiming Trump’s immigration policy “undermined our Constitution” and was “bigoted.”
The Trump Administration’s expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our values and the rule of law. The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy.
America’s strength has always been as a beacon of hope and opportunity for people around the world, whose dreams and aspirations have enriched our nation and made America more American. With this latest callous decision, the President has doubled down on his cruelty and further undermined our global leadership, our Constitution and our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants.
In the Congress and in the Courts, House Democrats will continue to oppose the Administration’s dangerous anti-immigrant agenda. In the coming weeks, the House Judiciary Committee will mark-up and bring to the Floor the NO BAN Act to prohibit religious discrimination in our immigration system and limit the President’s ability to impose such biased and bigoted restrictions. We will never allow hatred or bigotry to define our nation or destroy our values.
The South Africandoctor who first alerted authorities to the presence of the COVID-19 omicron variant reported that it presents “unusual but mild” symptoms.
Dr. Angelique Coetzee, a board member of the South African Medical Association, first noticed otherwise healthy patients demonstrating unusual symptoms on Nov. 18.
“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” Coetzee told The Telegraph.
FILE PHOTO: A child reacts while receiving a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at Smoketown Family Wellness Center in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., November 8, 2021. REUTERS/Jon Cherry/File Photo
“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well,” Coetzee explained. “So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer the loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home.”
Coetzee reported around two dozen of her patients that tested positive for the coronavirus and displayed these new symptoms. She alerted officials to the possibility of a new variant, which the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday designated the omicron variant.
People lineup to get on an overseas flight at OR Tambo’s airport in Johannesburg, South Africa’, Friday Nov. 26, 2021. A slew of nations moved to stop air travel from southern Africa on Friday in reaction to news of a new, potentially more transmissible COVID-19 variant that has been detected in South Africa. Scientists say it is a concern because of its high number of mutations and rapid spread among young people in Gauteng, the country’s most populous province. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Most of the patients were men who reported “feeling so tired,” and half of them were unvaccinated. The patients comprised a range of ages and ethnicities.
Coetzee started briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, discussing the variety of symptoms, such as “one very interesting case” of a six-year-old child with a fever and “very high pulse rate.”
“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” Coetzee said.
Coetzee’s advisement follows a report by Tulio de Oliveira, the director of South Africa’s Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation.
Oliveira told reporters the virus has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” most notably 10 variants on a key protein that helps the virus infect humans compared to the delta variant’s two mutations and the beta variant’s three mutations.
He criticized several countries – including the U.S., U.K., South Korea and various countries in Europe – for enacting travel restrictions on South Africa and several other African nations.
“The world should provide support to South Africa and Africa and not discriminate or isolate it!” Oliveira tweeted. “By protecting and supporting it, we will protect the world!”
The World Health Organization (WHO) identified on Friday the new South African strain as one of concern, as it is reported to carry a high number of mutations — 32 — which possibly makes it more transmissible and dangerous. The WHO has dubbed it Omicron, the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.
“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home,” Coetzee said The official noted that hospitals have not been overburdened by Omicron patients and that the new strain is not been detected in vaccinated persons. At the same time, the situation might be different for the unvaccinated. “We will only know this after two weeks. Yes, it is transmissible, but for now, as medical practitioners, we do not know why so much hype is being driven as we are still looking into it. We will only know after two to three weeks as there are some patients admitted and these are young people aged 40 and younger,” Coetzee added.
The chairwoman also criticized the decision by some countries to ban flights from South Africa is premature as there is not enough information on how dangerous it is. Following the reports about the new variant, the United States, the European Union, Canada, Israel, Australia and other countries have restricted travel from several southern African nations over the health concerns.
Early in 2001, an international corporation?s chief financial officer conducted a business-continuity appraisal of the entire business. All insurances were reviewed and brought up to date. The pension fund was audited to make sure it could meet its obligations. Health, safety and business-risk assessments of every kind were conducted.
The United States headquarters of the corporation were in a prominent New York skyscraper. The cautious finance officer decided that if one of the many totalitarian regimes worldwide that hate democracy and, therefore, have a particular loathing for the United States were to mount a terrorist attack, the building might be vulnerable. At some cost, he turned in the lease and, notwithstanding some grumbling from the board, moved the entire operation to somewhere less prominent.
The building was No. 1, World Trade Center.
The CFO was my brother-in-law, which is how I know the story. As…
This 15 April 2020 video from the USA says about itself:
How Navajo Nation’s water and health crisis is amplified by COVID-19
For the Navajo Nation, the COVID-19 crisis is compounding systemic issues on the reservation like lack of water and healthcare access that existed long before the outbreak.
“The Navajo Nation experiences some of the highest rates of water poverty in the United States,” which makes it difficult to take basic precautionary measures like washing your hands, says Navajo artist and activist Emma Robbins. Robbins is also director of the Navajo Water Project, a community-managed utility alternative that brings running water to homes without access to water or sewer lines. She says mutual aid efforts like these are crucial for community survival during this crisis, but adds that the government needs to step up.
“I’ve seen many Navajo women step up and fight for communities. … We are…
Coronavirus was detected in Massachusetts sewage at higher levels than expected, suggesting there are many more undiagnosed patients than previously known, according to a new study.
Researchers from biotech startup Biobot Analytics collected samples from a wastewater facility for an unnamed metropolitan area in late March, according to a report Tuesday on medRxiv.
Eric Alm, one of the authors of the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, stressed that the public is not at risk of contracting the virus from particles in the wastewater, but they may have the potential to indicate how widespread the virus has become, Newsweek reported.
“Even if those viral particles are no longer active or capable of infecting humans, they may still carry genetic material that can be detected using an approach called PCR (polymerase chain reaction,) which amplifies the genetic signal many orders of magnitude creating billions of copies of the genome for each starting virus,” Alm told the outlet.
The researchers, along with a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, analyzed the samples and found the number of coronavirus particles was on par with if there were 2,300 people infected with the virus.
But at the time of tests, there were only 446 confirmed cases in the region, according to the study.
“It was interesting that our estimation was definitely higher than the number of confirmed cases in the area,” said Mariana Matus, CEO and co-founder of Biobot, according to Stat News.
The researchers shared their findings with local health officials who said it was plausible there were hundreds of undetected cases.
“They could believe that [our] numbers could be correct and not out of the realm of possibility,” Matus told the outlet.
If someone in your home is sick—whether confirmed or suspected to be COVID-19—that doesn’t mean all members of the household will get sick. There are still things that everyone in a home can do that may help reduce risk of transmission. Anna C. Sick-Samuels and Raphael P. Viscidi, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine offered some guidance on the most important things to do—and how the equation changes if one of your family members is in a high-risk category.
3 Things to Know Risk-Reducing Behavior Matters Most often, the virus will spread through very close contacts with people who are sick with symptoms or from touching your face or mouth with contaminated hands. So, risk-reducing behaviors are the most important priority. That means encouraging more rigorous and frequent handwashing—especially when entering or leaving the house and after using the bathroom; avoiding touching faces; coughing or sneezing into our elbows; and throwing away used tissues.
Spring Cleaning Could Save Lives Regardless of whether or not anyone in the household is sick, everyone should be stepping up hygiene. It’s also a good idea to disinfect frequently touched surfaces like door knobs and light switches. A CDC how-to guide gives tips on how to clean everything from carpets to laundry, what solutions to use, and specific precautions to take.
If someone in the house is sick, give them a separate, lined trash can if possible, and use gloves or wash hands after handling the trash. Increasing ventilation by opening windows and adjusting air conditioning could help, too. A Little Distance Could Keep You Healthy People should try to keep some physical distance—ideally 6 feet apart—between a sick person and other household members, when feasible. If it’s possible to relocate a high-risk or sick person to a separate room or even another home, that could help. But that isn’t practical or possible for everyone. If you don’t live in a mansion—or can’t give someone their own room and bathroom—don’t despair. What’s really important are the behaviors. Remember, too, that if one member is in a high-risk category (e.g. older people and those with significant underlying conditions), that calls for heightened vigilance.
Healthy household members should behave as though they pose a significant risk to more vulnerable members even before anyone is sick, according to a CDC guide with infection control strategies tailored to a variety of settings and situations.
Anna C. Sick-Samuels, MD, MPH, is an instructor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and associate hospital epidemiologist for Johns Hopkins Hospital. Raphael P. Viscidi, MD, is a virologist and professor of pediatrics and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is on faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Breaking: Tony-Winning Playwright Terrence McNally Dies from Coronavirus-Related Complications at 81 BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that legendary Broadway playwright Terrence McNally passed away today, March 24, from complications due to coronavirus. Terrence was a lung cancer survivor who lived with chronic COPD. He was 81 years old. He is survived by his husband, producer Tom Kirdahy. McNally was a four-time Tony Award winner, and recipient of the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. His career has spanned six decades, and his plays, musicals, and operas are routinely performed all over the world. McNally was born November 3, 1938 in St. Petersburg, Florida, to Hubert and Dorothy (Rapp) McNally, two transplanted New Yorkers who ran a seaside bar and grill called The Pelican Club, but after a hurricane destroyed the establishment, the family briefly relocated to Port Chester, NY, then to Dallas, TX and finally to Corpus Christi, TX where he remained until McNally moved to New York City in 1956 to attend Columbia University. McNally celebrated his 80th birthday last year (2019) with his 25th Broadway production since 1965, following such highlights as: Anastasia (2017), Mothers and Sons (2014), Master Class (2011, 1995), Ragtime (2009, 1998), The Ritz (2007, 1983, 1975), Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2002), The Full Monty (2000), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), The Rink (1984) and And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1965). Surviving family includes: Brother Peter McNally and his wife Vicky McNally, their son Stephen McNally and his wife Carmen McNally and their daughter Kylie McNally; Mother-in-Law Joan Kirdahy, sister/brother-in-laws Carol Kirdahy, Kevin Kirdahy and his wife Patricia, James Kirdahy and his wife Nora, Kathleen Kirdahy Kay, Neil Kirdahy and his wife Sue. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to BC/EFA and the Dramatist Guild Foundation. Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski
Doctor in Italy says he and other physicians are no longer permitted to put coronavirus patients who are over 60 on ventilators Sarah Taylor 2-3 minutes An Israeli doctor in Italy said that he and other physicians have been directed to avoid giving over-60 patients ventilator treatment in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. What are the details? According to the the Jerusalem Post, Dr. Gai Peleg said that instructions in Parma, Italy, do not allow such treatments to patients over 60. Italy has seen at least 59,138 COVID-19 cases, and over 5,476 people in Italy have died as a result. There were 3,405 deaths as of Thursday. The Post reported, “Peleg said that, from what he sees and hears in the hospital, the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory machines to patients over 60 as such machines are limited in number.” Friday saw the distressing scene of an Italian hospital in Bergamo, which was packed full of COVID-19 patients. The video, which was first shared by Sky News, showed hospital staff furiously working to tend to gravely ill patients. Dr. Roberto Cosentini, head of emergency care at Bergamo’s Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital, said that the disease is far worse than influenza. “It’s a massive strain for every health system,” he said. “We see every day 50 to 60 patients who come to our emergency department with pneumonia, and most of them are so severe they need very high volumes of oxygen. And so we had to reorganize our emergency room and our hospital — three levels of intensive care.” What about bed availability? Lorenzo D’Antiga, director of the Pediatric Unit and Transplant Center, added, “We’ve saturated our bed availability, we are really in trouble, we have to send patients away to other hospitals, all the intensive care units in the regions are full so actually this is really a big big problem.” “The situation is really dramatic, the mood is really depressing,” he revealed. “Relatives can’t stay with patients during their admission and some others die without anyone around. It’s also forbidden to have funerals, so even the last prayer can’t be done properly.” On Monday, the New York Times reported that Italy has moved to stop all domestic travel. Watch BlazeTV live and on demand on any device, anywhere, anytime.
katzenworld.co.uk URGENT Advisory: Coronavirus and Companion Animals – Katzenworld Marc-André 3 minutes PETA Offers Tips on Caring for Cats and Dogs During COVID-19 Quarantines London – Although experts from the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and elsewhere agree that cats and dogs are not at risk of getting COVID-19 nor transmitting it to humans, PETA is offering information about the best ways to keep animal companions and their guardians safe and healthy during this unprecedented outbreak. Never put face masks on animals, as they can cause breathing difficulties. Allow animals to move about your home normally – don’t cage or crate them. People who are sick or under medical attention for COVID-19 should avoid close contact with animals and have another member of their household care for animals so as not to get the virus on their fur. The coronavirus can be left on animals’ fur, just as it can remain on a doorknob, a handrail, another human hand, or any other surface that an infected person has touched.
Don’t stockpile unnecessarily – as this could result in shortages for others – but do plan ahead and ensure you have adequate food and medicine, if needed, for your companion animals (approximately two to three weeks’ worth). Assist neighbours who may not be able to shop for their companion animals and donate companion-animal food to food banks. “Our dogs and cats rely on us to take care of them year-round, and especially during times of crisis,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “PETA is asking everyone to ensure that their animals are still getting healthy food, plenty of exercise, and lots of love.” PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk Don’t miss out! Subscribe To Newsletter Receive top cat news, competitions, tips and more! Give it a try. You can unsubscribe at any time. Click to purchase the sleepypod mobile pet bed. We regularly write about all things relating to cats on our Blog Katzenworld! My partner and I are owned by four cheeky cats that get up to all kind of mischief that of course, you’ll also be able to find out more about on our Blog If you are interested in joining us by becoming a regular contributor/guest author do drop me a message.
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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