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Saturday, January 01, 2022

Links - 1st January 2022 (2 - Biden-Harris)

White CIS Jen Psaki flashing the white supremacist “ok” sign multiple times during today’s press conference : AntiHateCommunities

Biden secretly flying underage migrants into NY in dead of night - "The charter flights originate in Texas, where the ongoing border crisis has overwhelmed local immigration officials, and have been underway since at least August, according to sources familiar with the matter."

Reuters runs INSANE fact check asserting Biden did not use 'white power' gesture during CNN town hall | The Post Millennial - ""He made the hand gesture while saying corporations pay 'zero cents', in response to a question about tax rates," Reuters tweeted, linking the "fact check."... "Ridiculous from this historically great wire service," commented independent jouranlist Ky Chow, after Reuters embedded the viral Thursday night tweet of Washington Times columnist Tim Young's. "The users they quote are clearly being facetious and either the Fact Check team didn't bother checking out the accounts, or they wilfully ignored it to make this seem real," Chow added. "Biden flashed the white power sign while a black man was asking him a question. I’m literally shaking," jested Libs of TikTok, a comical Twitter account that exposes the insanity and nonsensical rhetoric of liberal TikTok videos... The myth that the "OK" gesture is a symbol of "white supremacy" is a long-running one on the left, and its signing has been weaponized against many prominent figures, including and especially ex-President Donald Trump. Take this article by none other than Forbes, for example. Or this article by the Rolling Stone.  The mainstream media appears to have no problem pointing out instances when individuals have used the "OK" symbol when they're Republicans, calling it emblematic of white supremacy. At no time had Reuters or other fact-checking mamoths ever fact-checked one of these far-fetched incidents.  In fact, the Washington Post infamously said in this 2019 article that the hand sign should, in fact, be considered a "real hate symbol." The Post, however, has, as of yet, not seen it fit to pronounce on Biden's recent usage of it. Biden stumbled several times, playing the fool at the CNN clown show.  When asked about his plans for the federal government to foot the bill for community college tuition, Biden veered into early childhood education before the moderator redirected the conversation. And for a while, Biden just awkwardly stood there on stage with his fists clenched, leading to a trove of memes."
It's only a white supremacist gesture when a non-liberal uses it

Biden/Fauci COVID Comms Advisor Locks Twitter Account Following Exposé of Anti-Asian, Anti-White Tweets. - "Following a National Pulse exposè revealing racist tweets from Clarke Humphrey, President Biden’s Deputy Digital Director for his COVID-19 Response team, she locked her Twitter account.
Among the anti-white tweets exposed by The National Pulse were calls to “ban white people,” instructing people to “don’t get in a car with white ppl,” and insisting “we truly do gotta get white men all the way outta here.”Additionally, National Pulse Investigative Reporter Natalie Winters shared two old posts from Humphrey referencing Asians on Twitter... The self-avowed “greatest online fundraiser in american history” has been involved in Democratic politics since 2014, beginning at the DNC before working for the Hillary Clinton campaign, then bouncing back to the DNC before departing for the Biden campaign."
Criticising black racism is "anti-blackness"

Psaki cuts off reporter when pressed on Biden's 'racism' culpability - "The Post asked Psaki at her daily press briefing about Biden’s own role in establishing federal laws in the 1980s and ’90s that disproportionately jailed minorities... Biden described the US as systemically racist in an address to the nation Tuesday night after the Chauvin verdict...   Activist and then-Harvard University professor Cornel West said during the presidential campaign, “Biden is going to have to take responsibility and acknowledge the contribution he made to something that was not a force for good.”  West said that Biden’s 1994 crime law in particular contributed to mass incarceration and that he was upset Biden chose to deny it. “When he says it didn’t contribute to mass incarceration, I tell him he has to get off his symbolic crack pipe”...   Psaki also declined to say at the Wednesday briefing if Biden will honor his campaign-trail pledge to release “everyone” in prison for marijuana.  Although Biden can do so unilaterally by granting clemency, Psaki told The Post, “What you’re asking me is a legal question. I point you to the Department of Justice.”"

FLASHBACK: Kamala Harris called for police reform after refusing to debate police reform bill | The Post Millennial - "Vice President Kamala Harris' speech calling for the Senate to pass a bill on policing in the wake of the Chauvin trial has many pointing out her past refusal to pass a policing act when serving as Senator... not even a year ago Harris voted to kill a bill that would work on reforming law enforcement...     Not only did Kamala Harris vote to block police reform last year, she voted to block DEBATING it. "

Uncovering The Truth on Twitter - "@MeidasTouch Can I get a FUCK DONALD TRUMP?????"
Uncovering The Truth on Twitter - "A Southwest Airline pilot said “Let’s go Brandon” on the airplane’s public speaker. Very unsettling to have a MAGA lunatic flying an aircraft with people’s lives at stake. A pilot cursing the President of the United States is borderline terrorism. Southwest, please fire this man."
"Terrorism" is meaningless nowadays

Meme - Cassandra - Peta Kills Animals: "I don't think I ever saw whole stadium chant "fuck trump" - just saying."

Meme - Palmer Report @PalmerReport: "Thanks Biden. Thanks Obama. Fuck Trump."
Palmer Report @PalmerReport: "The "F Joe Biden" crowd is pure garbage."

Meme - "All these tRump supporters saying they're leaving the country. #youlostgetoverit. #Election2020"
"How the fuck am I going to work?? I drive my car for a living #gasshortage"

THIS IS REAL: Georgia Dem Asks ‘How the Hell Does a Coyote Bring a Whole Human Across the Border?’ - "Comments by Georgia State Representative Dar’shun Kendrick went viral on social media during the final presidential debate Thursday night after the Democrat asked how a Coyote “could bring a whole human being across the border?”  The President was commenting on human trafficking when he mentioned “Coyotes,” a widely acknowledged term for a person paid by illegal immigrants to safely guide them across the US-Mexico border. “Did @realDonaldTrump just say 545 kids they can’t find their parents for came over through ‘cartels and coyotes’?! How the hell does a coyote bring a whole human across the border?! Lord—–stop talking,” posted the Georgia Democrat. “Chief Deputy Whip of Georgia House Democrats”"
The press will just go on about Marjorie Taylor Greene

Meme - Angela Beleamino: "He's the worst president* EVER! Who agrees? #WhylDontLikeTrump Fuck Trump."
Angela Beleamino: "Dudes chanting "F Joe Biden" definitely haven't gotten laid in a long, long, time."

Garry Kasparov on Twitter - "I supported Biden over Trump without reservations in 2020. He had the chance to set America back on the path of standing for good, for the values of its founding. Instead, he is charting a course for the most defeatist and defeated US foreign policy in memory."

Biden says there would 'not be another foot' of border wall built under his administration - August 2020
The Biden administration says it may restart construction of the border wall to fill 'gaps' left by Trump - "The Biden administration may restart building some of the wall along the United States' southern border, despite President Joe Biden pledging to cease all construction of former President Donald Trump's keystone project. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week told colleagues that some construction may be resumed along the border wall in order to plug some "gaps" in the barrier between Mexico and the United States" - April 2021

Kamala Harris Finally Visits the Border—800 Miles From Where the Action Is - "In her first five months in office, Vice President Kamala Harris has learned at least one important lesson about immigration: You can run to the border, but you can’t run from the border.  That’s because sooner or later the border will find you. That’s especially true when you’re a U.S. elected official in 2021, whether you’re pandering to white nativists who want to keep out Central American refugees, or Latino activists who want to let more of them in.  This week, the border found Harris. The California Democrat — who never showed much interest in immigration while representing a border state in the U.S. Senate — finally made it to the U.S.-Mexico border... What Harris seemed to understand intuitively was that no good could come from an awkward photo-op of the Vice President of the United States standing, with a clueless expression on her face, in front of a storage containers holding dozens of refugee kids.  That’s the scene this likely future Democratic presidential candidate was desperate to avoid. That’s what took Harris so long to get to the border, and why her aides have tried frantically over the last few months to change the subject. Team Harris has been desperate to spin her migration assignment as residing south of the border in faraway countries like Guatemala. They argued that that’s where she needed to tackle the “root causes” of the migration crisis. Yes, because Harris’ recent foray there went so well, didn’t it?  Root causes, huh? For many Guatamalans — who have already suffered plenty due to violent gangs, hurricanes, poverty and corruption — having Harris show up recently only to instruct the desperate people down there to “not come” to the United States was probably as painful as a root canal...  in another way, Harris’ great border stall worked out pretty well. It gave the Department of Homeland Security — which was never equipped to run day-care centers for thousands of migrant youth — enough time to get out of the business of housing the nearly 20,000 unaccompanied minors who have been apprehended at the border in the first half of this year. Several weeks ago, DHS passed that hot potato over to The Department of Health and Human Services, which has dispersed the minors to makeshift holding facilities across the Southwest. So, by the time Harris arrived for her tour of the U.S.-Mexico this week — with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in tow — there was nary a minor in sight. Mission accomplished... The main reason that the Border Patrol facility in El Paso was so safe, secure, and sanitized, was because it was the wrong Border Patrol facility. The real action is 800 miles away in the Rio Grande Valley. If Harris had been politically brave enough to visit the U.S.-Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas — where you find the agents who act as the first responders to the migration crisis — she would have gotten a first-hand look and left with a whole different perspective."

Kamala Harris calls LGBTQ violence 'root cause' of immigrants fleeing Guatemala

Joe Biden, Who Called Trump a 'Xenophobe' for China Travel Ban, Bans Travel from India but Leaves U.S.-Mexico Border Wide Open - "Between the border, the COVID vaccine, fiscal policy, and now travel policy, Joe Biden has managed to totally discredit his own policies in the span of just 100 days. It’s a remarkable achievement.  The border is a massive and dangerous mess, and Biden is abetting crimes there every single day including human trafficking, trespassing, grand theft auto, and more.  Joe Biden undermined millions of Americans’ confidence in the COVID vaccine when it was politically expedient for him, but has since taken the vaccine and claimed it’s a policy victory for him.  On fiscal policy? Well, inflation is on the way and Biden has already jettisoned his unbelievable promise not to tax anyone making less than $400,000."

Unbiased America - Posts | Facebook - "DHS: 172,000 MIGRANTS CROSSED THE BORDER ILLEGALLY IN MARCH, THE MOST IN 20 YEARS, INCLUDING 19,000 UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN, THE MOST IN HISTORY.. Only about a third of migrant parents and children traveling together were expelled, according the Reuters, “undercutting a claim by President Joe Biden that most families are being sent back to Mexico.”  The other two-thirds were allowed to stay and placed in U.S. immigration proceedings. On March 25th, Biden falsely claimed that “We’re sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming.”"

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "The influx of illegal immigrants is the highest this century. This is happening during the hot days of summer when illegal immigration is usually down from spring highs."

Facebook - "Not covered by mainstream media. Isn't it obvious that if your administration signals that it won't be as hard on illegal immigrants as the Trump one, all you're doing is encourage more to try? The correct approach is signaling a hard line, but quietly being humane behind the scenes."
They wanted to virtue signal to liberals, but illegal immigrants got the message too

Politico orders staff not to call the Biden border crisis a ‘crisis'/a> - "reporters got President Joe Biden to describe the US - Mexico situation as a “crisis that ended up on the border with young people.” A gaffe that left White House officials needing to play janitor... Biden wasn’t the only one to slip-up. Back in March, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the situation at the US - Mexico border a “crisis” seemingly on accident. After a reporter pointed that out to her, Psaki backtracked."

Texas border facility expands in size in under two weeks - "James O’ Keefe and Project Veritas today published a new video showing the massive construction feat completed by border officials in Texas."

WATCH: Psaki admits that the Biden admin is dropping off migrant kids in cities without notifying officials - "Lee accused the Biden administration of cutting off transparency and emboldening "one of the worst human trafficking crises we’ve seen at our border in the last 20 years," after officials demanded answers. "Tennesseans deserve to know who is coming into our state""

Revealed: Biden administration holding tens of thousands of migrant children - "The Biden administration is holding tens of thousands of asylum-seeking children in an opaque network of some 200 facilities that the Associated Press has learned spans two dozen states and includes five shelters with more than 1,000 children packed inside.  Confidential data obtained by the AP shows the number of migrant children in government custody more than doubled in the past two months, and this week the federal government was housing around 21,000 kids, from toddlers to teens... Attorneys say sometimes, even parents cannot figure out where their children are... HHS declined to say whether there are any legally enforceable standards for caring for children housed at the emergency sites or how they are being monitored. The Biden administration has allowed very limited access to news media once children are brought into facilities, citing the coronavirus pandemic and privacy restrictions... One reason so many children are now arriving without their parents dates back to a 2020 Trump administration emergency order that essentially closed the US-Mexico border to all migrants, citing public health concerns about spreading Covid-19.  That emergency order still applies to adults, but the Biden administration has begun allowing children traveling without their parents to stay and seek asylum if they enter the country. As a result, some parents are sending their kids across the border by themselves."
Naturally "cage" doesn't appear in the article, much less "kids in cages"
So much for the liberal view that people don't respond to incentives

Meme - 2019: ""We can disagree and still be friends" means liking a different kind of ice cream, not if it's ok or not to put kids in cages!"
2021: "First of all, they're called immigration overflow facilities. And I really don't have time for this. I'm going clubbing tonight and need to hit the tanning booth."

DATA: Joe Biden is Detaining 18,000 Minors. Trump's Peak Number Was Just 2,600. - "The most recent data dump means the Biden regime is detaining nearly seven times as many unaccompanied minors as the Trump administration.  The unearthed numbers also undercut President Biden’s narrative that the current border surge is part of a seasonal migration pattern.  Meanwhile, AOC and her ilk are still silent"

Joe Biden Settles into Hiding After Build Back Better Dies - "President Joe Biden settled back into hiding at the White House on Monday as he cleared his schedule of any public events.

Analysis: VP Harris Less Popular than Pence, Biden, Cheney, Gore - " In the Times’ latest average, Biden’s favorable rating is 46 percent, and his unfavorable rating is 51 percent — “a positive net of about -5 percentage points.” “That puts Harris’s rating under Biden’s by -4 percentage points”... The Times tries to blame others for the decline, including an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt where Harris was pressed about not visiting the border where hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have come over the U.S. southern border with Mexico since the 2020 election. The Times also tries to tie Harris’s low numbers to sexism by claiming, like other female politicians, she is the target of online abuse."

Report: Dems Strategize How to Escape Biden's Poor Polling Numbers

Texas keeps beating the Biden administration in court on immigration - "The Biden administration has lost another court battle to Texas over immigration, this time over its decision to end the Remain in Mexico program, or the Migrant Protection Protocols. It’s a losing streak that stretches back months."

Biden Moves to Destroy Religious-Based Childcare - "To hear the Biden administration talk about it, there’s something for literally everybody in the 2,000-plus pages of the $1.8 trillion Build Back Better spending packages. After all, you’ll get tax breaks if you want to buy an electric bike, and there will be federal money available to you if you work as a doula, as my PJ Media colleague Rick Moran pointed out recently... We’ve moved past “bake the cake, bigot” to “we’re going to withhold federal funds from you unless you play by all of our rules, bigot.” The left has made the LGBTQ agenda a sacred cow, and as a result, they’ve doubled down on promoting it through culture, higher education, and K-12 schools. Now they want to use the power and purse strings of the federal government to ensure that they can push their sexual agenda to American preschoolers."

‘Time for Grandpa’s nap’: Anger over Biden avoiding media questions - YouTube

'Saturday Night Live' Mocks Joe Biden as No Longer 'Lucid' in Cold Open

Why the Chinese love Peppa Pig


卤水猪耳 (stewed pig's ear)
红油猪耳 (pig's ear in chili oil)
烤脑花 (barbecued pig's brain)
香辣猪头肉 (spicy pig's head)
猪肚鸡煲 (pig stomach and chicken soup)
酸菜大肠 (large intestines with pickled vegetables)
老妈蹄花 (pig's trotter)
烤猪蹄 (barbecued pig's trotter)
猪肺炖汤 (pig lung slow boiled soup)
麻辣猪心 (numbing spicy [mala] pig heart)
碳烤猪颈肉 (charcoal barbecued pork neck)
京拌猪舌 (Beijing style pig tongue)
猪拱嘴 (pig snout)

This was probably made by someone from Sichuan.

Addendum: Oops. Posted this before.

Links - 1st January 2022 (1 - Covid-19)

Experts: CDC’s Summer-Camp Rules Are ‘Cruel,’ ‘Irrational’ - "Masks must be worn at all times, even outdoors, by everyone, including vaccinated adults and children as young as 2 years old. The exceptions are for eating and swimming. (The guidance helpfully notes that if a person is having trouble breathing or is unconscious, no mask need be worn.) Campers must remain three feet apart from each other at all times including, again, outdoors. Six feet of distance must be maintained during meals and between campers and staff. If you need to sneeze and you don’t have a tissue, do it into your mask. (Children presumably are expected to carry a cache of spares.) Campers and staff should be cohorted, and any interaction with a person outside the cohort must be conducted at a distance of six feet. Art supplies, toys, books, and games are not to be shared. The notion that children should wear masks outdoors all day in the heat of July, or that they can’t play any sport that involves physical contact, or put an arm around a friend strikes many experts in infectious diseases, pediatrics, epidemiology, and psychiatry as impractical, of dubious benefit, and punishing in its effects on children. It has been well documented that kids are at exceedingly low risk of serious illness from COVID-19...   While the specific statistics differ from study to study, the evidence is unequivocal that outdoor transmission is rare... the guidance recommends staggering the use of shared playground equipment. Yet fomite transmission – that is, viral spread through surfaces – outdoors has proved to be almost non-existent. One laboratory study showed that SARS-CoV-2 was inactivated within minutes when in direct sunlight... Dr. Christakis said, “We’ve consistently deprioritized the essential needs of human childhood. Keeping kids out of school, enforcing social distance on them.” We have to learn to tolerate some level of risk, he said. It’s clear that children’s well-being is not the priority in these guidelines, he said, and “we have to try as best we can to give children their lives back.” Mark Gorelik, the pediatric immunologist, said, “Irrational recommendations will do no good, could in this case do harm, and really discredit federal agencies.”"

Dr. Eli David on Twitter - "Today Israeli government decided: 1. Third Covid shot will be available immediately for entire population aged 12+ 2. Covid passport ("green pass") will be revoked for those without third shot, i.e., vaccinated with 2 shots = unvaccinated Coming soon to your country 🐑"

Civil liberties watchdogs say stay-at-home order opens door to ‘return to carding’ - "The new police powers were immediately criticized by lawyers and anti-racism advocates as unconstitutional, arbitrary and likely to lead to further over-policing of racialized individuals, particularly young Black and Indigenous men... He added that it is unclear if or how police will retain the information they collect during such stops.  “It is an invitation for the police to potentially return to carding the most marginalized members of our community and will breed distrust of the police within these communities”"
It's telling they didn't get upset over the general population being oppressed - only "minorities"

Toronto neighbourhoods with highest numbers of racialized people have lowest vaccination rates: research
Only white conservatives get demonised for being vaccine-hesitant, of course. Minorities being vaccine-hesitant is of course the fault of racism

Zinc supplements ‘may cut how long respiratory infections last’ - "Taking a zinc supplement may cut how long respiratory infections last, while also easing symptoms, a review of limited evidence suggests.  The new study of 28 existing studies involving almost 5,500 people found that taking zinc by mouth or as a nasal spray could ward off infection and may make people feel better more quickly.  Respiratory tract infections (RTIs) can affect the sinuses, throat, airways or lungs, but most get better without treatment."
It's only fake news till it's not

Lauren Boebert on Twitter - "When they introduced federal income tax, they said it was temporary. When they introduced the Patriot Act, they said it was temporary. Now they’re introducing vaccine passports and saying they’re temporary. Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

Should schoolchildren still have to self-isolate? - "More than a quarter of a million children are absent from school in the UK because of coronavirus, prompting calls for a different approach to testing and quarantining of pupils that puts children's needs first.  With children at extremely low risk from the virus and more than three out of every five UK adults now fully vaccinated, is it time for a change in policy?... missing school will have a detrimental effect on children's mental and physical development, particularly those with learning disabilities or from poorer families.  The most vulnerable have missed out on much-needed support and socialising, as well as their education, which has "set them back hugely", he says.  "We are at a different stage in the epidemic now - there needs to be an alternative to isolating contacts of positive cases"... in England alone, 2.7% of primary and 4.2% of secondary schoolchildren are absent because of Covid... health officials say spread of the virus in schools has always been low and there is no evidence schools are causing outbreaks. Instead, they appear to be reflecting levels of the virus in their local communities."

Forcing children to self-isolate was ‘needless’ - "Forcing hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to self-isolate because a classmate had Covid was unnecessary as daily testing would have been as effective, an official study suggests...   There is growing unease about the number of people being asked to self-isolate, with shops running out of food, rubbish collections missed and businesses forced to close because of a lack of staff."

Woman denies VACCINATED grandmother's visit with grandchildren over COVID fear | The Post Millennial - "Pamela Zimmer from Brookfield, Wisconsin, had received both of her vaccinations, and called her daughter eager to finally see her grandchildren Hank, 6, and Lena, 3, who live in Silver Spring, Maryland with their mother. Zimmer hadn't seen them since October.  Despite being fully vaccinated, and CDC rules allowing vaccinated people to travel freely, Zimmer's daughter Natalie said that wasn't the best idea. Why? Because the kids haven't been vaccinated, even though the CDC hasn't authorized any vaccines yet for use among children and children are not high vectors of the disease."

Foo Fighters ‘Vaccinated Only’ Concert Canceled After Band Member Gets COVID as Breakthrough Cases on the Rise
Looks like life can never go back to normal despite vaccines. So what's the point of vaccines?

Charles Lewis: Governments need to stop using COVID as an excuse to treat us like children - "We now find ourselves living in a world where personal freedom must be given based on the whims of politicians. We have decided that we can put our freedoms on hold because the state knows best. To object is to be labelled a right-wing extremist, an anti-masker or an anti-vaxxer. It’s a form of social bullying.   In Toronto, where I live, we somehow became the most locked-down city in North America. Over the weekend, roughly 5,000 citizens demonstrated against the latest lockdown rules. It is a sign that many of us are sick of the government trying to run our lives... American teams have been safely allowing socially distanced, mask-wearing fans into their stadiums, but in Canada, this is seen as completely inconceivable.  All this despite the fact that the chances of transmitting COVID outdoors in minuscule (less than 0.1 per cent, by one estimate)."
Political incentives.

EmilyJo on Twitter - "I’m a teacher with a few science degrees. All three of my kiddos will be vaccinated as soon as they are able."
EmilyJo on Twitter - "My fourteen year old got his first COVID vaccine today. We are so thankful 💉"
EmilyJo on Twitter - "1/ My son was one of the “unlucky” ones and he developed myocarditis after his second dose. He was monitored in the hospital for 3 days. I am not making light of it and I can’t pretend to know what pain he felt. However, I asked him if he is still happy to be vaccinated."
EmilyJo on Twitter - "Okay, I’m not an expert. As a parent, I don’t think that the risk of myocarditis and it’s severity is being adequately conveyed. I had no idea that “mild” meant 4 days in the hospital and cardiology visits for the indefinite future. Different issue, I guess."
EmilyJo on Twitter - "I have to pay for my son’s hospital bill and endless cardiology follow ups because he got post vaccine myocarditis. That’s not free."
EmilyJo on Twitter - "Twitter is brutal. From the beginning, I have advocated for vaccination as I believe it’s a way to control this pandemic. However, when I share that my son got myocarditis from his vaccine, I get blocked. I’m sorry my son’s AE doesn’t fit your agenda. 😓"
EmilyJo on Twitter - "🧵 1/ My son’s hospital bills are starting to roll in from his vaccine induced myocarditis. This is just the first of many and only one of his consults. I imagine we will owe thousands just dealing with the Acute phase of myocarditis"
EmilyJo on Twitter - "My son’s new shirt: Came for immunity and all I got was myocarditis and a mask 💉"
EmilyJo on Twitter - "I used to shame people for not getting vaccinated until my son was hospitalized with vaccine induced myocarditis. Life has a way of humbling you."
The liberal moral panic over vaccinated young children, who are at virtually no risk from covid, is not going to turn out well. Of course they'll find some way to blame other people (or, as we can see in this example, pretend that no problems exist)

Study: Number of Kids Hospitalized for COVID Is Overcounted - "pediatric hospitalizations for COVID-19 were overcounted by at least 40 percent, carrying potential implications for nationwide figures. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, and Amy Beck, an associate professor of pediatrics, also at UCSF, wrote a commentary for Hospital Pediatrics that accompanied the two studies. They wrote, “Taken together, these studies underscore the importance of clearly distinguishing between children hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 found on universal testing versus those hospitalized for COVID-19 disease.” The studies demonstrate, they said, that reported hospitalization rates “greatly overestimate the true burden of COVID-19 disease in children.” Gandhi told Intelligencer that while the studies were both conducted with data from California hospitals, “there is no reason to think these findings would be exclusive to California. This sort of retrospective chart review will likely reveal the same findings across the country.” The implications of the findings of these two studies are enormously important, as reports of pediatric hospitalizations have regularly made headlines over the past year, greatly affecting public perceptions about risks to children. Untold numbers of parents have kept children home from school or limited playdates and other activities out of fear their children would be infected and fall seriously ill. The hospitalization numbers for children were already extremely low relative to adults — at the pandemic’s peak this winter, it was roughly ten times lower than for 18-to-49-year-olds and 77 times lower than those age 65 and up. But cutting the pediatric numbers by nearly half is a striking difference, making the actual rates vanishingly small. Pediatric hospitalization figures for COVID-19 also influence policy on school openings and guidelines, camp recommendations, and other political decisions. Gandhi and Beck’s commentary noted, “Children have suffered tremendously due to policies that have kept schools and recreational facilities closed to them, and the burden has been greatest on children who are low-income and English-language learners.”... Stefan Baral, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist and physician at Johns Hopkins, wrote in the British Medical Journal about the risk-benefit calculus of vaccinating children against a disease that poses a “very low likelihood of severe outcomes” to them, which, he argued, means it does not meet the definition of an “emergency.” These studies weigh the scales even further toward that conclusion. The findings, Baral told Intelligencer, “reinforce the importance of going through a meaningful process to understand the risks to children.” Explaining why the official tallies were found to be so far off, Baral said the electronic databases that hospitals use are administrative in purpose, meant for billing, resource management, et cetera. “They were not designed to infer the prevalence and severity of an infectious virus.” We have a desire for instant, accurate data, he said, but validation takes time."
Covid hystericists will claim that this can't be extrapolated, so we cannot say that covid cases in children (much less in general) are being exaggerated. Either that or claim the studies are outdated and we must still panic

Not enough data on kids and COVID vaccines, Canadian expert cautions | Toronto Sun - "A Canadian vaccine expert is voicing his concerns about the current push to get children vaccinated against COVID-19, noting that there is currently not enough data to conclude that the benefits outweigh the risks in younger age cohorts. “When you get down to the low end of the spectrum, the cost-benefit analysis changes completely,” says Dr. Byram Bridle, an Associate Professor of Viral Immunology at the University of Guelph. “If the risk associated with the treatment is less than the risk associated with the disease, of course you apply the treatment.”  But Bridle — whose lab research into vaccines has been supported by the Canadian government, among other bodies — says while this is definitely the case in elderly persons, when it comes to children there has been very little research that actually shows the risk of rare adverse effects from vaccines are less than the risk of the disease. Earlier in May, Health Canada authorized the use of the Pfizer vaccine for youth aged 12 to 15, based on a trial that involved 2,260 participants in that age group. However, the number of participants in Pfizer’s adult trial was more than 40,000...   While many experts maintain that the current approach of approving COVID-19 vaccines before the traditional clinical study timeline has concluded makes sense for older persons and those at high-risk of contracting COVID-19, many pediatricians have noted that data shows the virus is less severe than influenza in kids.  Article content  “That’s not how this is supposed to work, our kids should not be the guinea pigs,” Bridle says.  “Stop using our children as shields in this battle that is an adult battle.”   He’s not the only one voicing such concerns. “Rare adverse events really could prove to be the most durable public health legacy of [emergency authorization] for child COVID-19 vaccines,” warns a recent article on the subject written by a trio of experts, including Dr. Stefan Baral, an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who also does work in Canada and Dr. Vinay Prasad, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of California San Francisco... “A wide rollout of child COVID-19 vaccines should follow the standard regulatory process as for most children, unlike adults, COVID-19 vaccination is not addressing an emergency.” Dr. Neil Rau, an infectious diseases physician in the GTA, sees it in similar terms.  “Once you get younger, because the disease risk is so low in the adolescent group, you do have to be vigilant about safety signals,” Rau explains."
The media is going to label them dangerous anti-vaxxers

Many Parents Won’t Vaccinate Their Kids. Here’s Why. - The Atlantic - "The announcement that the Pfizer vaccine appears to work in children ages 5 to 11 is welcome news for many families across the United States. Parents who expect their children’s classrooms to soon be full of vaccinated students shouldn’t be overly optimistic, though. Many moms and dads will wait to get their kids immunized, if they do at all—and that includes those who are vaccinated themselves... Parents tend to be skeptical of new vaccines. Whenever one is introduced, many of them are initially hesitant to adopt it. Take the varicella vaccine, for instance. Approved by the FDA in 1995, it protects against the virus that causes chickenpox, an extremely contagious, common, and unpleasant childhood infection. Even though the vaccine was highly effective and showed few side effects, uptake levels were initially low, with only 34 percent of eligible adolescents fully immunized by 2008. In my experience with my own patients, parents were concerned about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy, and weren’t convinced that chickenpox was a serious enough illness to warrant a vaccination. Immunization rates did improve over time. By 2018, about 90 percent of children had been vaccinated. But if history repeats itself, people hoping for parents’ speedy uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines may need to reset their expectations... We need to communicate the value of vaccination to parents before the vaccines are authorized for their younger kids, because immunizing children benefits not just them, but everyone around them too."
And just like that, liberals get a new monster under the bed to blame in their covid hysteria and why the world can never go back to normal again, and the ranks of the "anti-vaxxers" grow once again
Is it ethical to forcibly vaccinate kids to supposedly protect others?

What does the science say about whether children should get the Covid vaccine? - "As recommendations go, it was lukewarm, to say the least.  On Monday, Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, told the nation that “on balance” children aged 12 to 15 should be vaccinated, before providing only vague reasons to back up the decision.   The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has already ruled that the benefits are so marginal for schoolchildren that the jabs were not worth the risk.  However, after 10 days of mulling over the wider advantages to education and mental health, the chief medical officers of the four nations decided to approve a rollout...   A study by University College London (UCL) published in July found that just 25 under-18s died in the first 12 months of the pandemic, yet their worlds have been turned upside down by lockdowns, school closures and the bubble system which saw hundreds of thousands of children forced to isolate at home.  At the end of July, a study by the University of Oxford found that 98.4 per cent of children who were sent home for 10 days under the bubble system never went on to develop Covid.  On a longer-term level, studies have shown that education is one of the strongest determinants of health and longevity and there is strong evidence that school closures increase isolation, reduce physical activity, and cut off children from peers and social support.  A study by UCL of 20 countries which had experienced school closures found that between 18 and 60 per cent of youngsters scored above risk thresholds for distress, particularly anxiety and depressive symptoms...   There also appears to be little science backing up claims that the vaccinations will limit spread in schools"

Friday, December 31, 2021

Links - 31st December 2021 (2)

Facebook
Collection of Channel 8 drama screenshots on taking your medicine

Left-wing candidate who threatened to blow up school bus endorsed by bus-riders union - "Ubax Gardheere, the embattled progressive county council candidate, who threatened to blow up a school bus filled with children, has been endorsed by a radical activist transit union whose logo is ironically, a bus. The Transit Riders Union (TRU) is well known in Seattle for being activist foot soldiers for radical causes and Marxist candidates like Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant... Democrat State Senator Rebecca Saldana said in her endorsement of Gardheere, "I will follow Ubax anywhere." Former radical Seattle City Council Member and activist Mike O'Brien called Gardheere "An amazing leader." Ghardeere's campaign has been boosted on social media by Riall Johnson and Prism Washington, both of which have a history of representing and promoting activist socialist candidates such as socialist Seattle City Council Member Tammy Morales, who advocated for riots during last summer's unrest. Morales, even after the original story regarding Ghardeer went viral, still endorsed the candidate, as did another local progressive Varisha Khan of the Redmond City Council. Gardheere received additional prominent left-wing support even after the story came to light recently from the local SEIU and The Urbanist, a local activist outlet... In a recent interview with the South Seattle Emerald, Gardheere revised her own history and claimed that when she threatened school children with a bomb on a bus she was being criminalized for mental health issues... This conflicts not only with the court documents and police reports of the incident, but also with her own statements years earlier to The Seattle Weekly... Gardheere posted a video from an event that was held in Seattle which she appears to have attended, lamenting the failure of the attempted genocide of Jews in the Middle East. In her position at the City of Seattle, Ghardeere recently co-wrote a letter which referred to ultra-progressive Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan as a "dictator" and again referenced her "mental health."... Additionally, Ghardeere said she is an advocate for the radical Green New Deal and that rather than terrorism or a pandemic, "Climate change and growing inequality are among the greatest threats to our nation and County.""

Meme - "Translation: "I started a friendship with August" = I started to cheat on you with August behind your back.
"I got into entanglement" = I cheated on you every single day and didn't even care that you knew.
"The only person who can give a permission is myself" = I don't really respect you as my husband and I'm so selfish that I can cheat on you anytime I want and not feel a little bad about it.
"I was going through the process of healing" = I know I probably should feel bad about cheating on my husband who I have been with for over two decades and who is the father of my children, but I really don't, so I'm just gonna talk nonsense here and because I'm a woman, everyone will be on my side anyway."
On Jada Pinkett

Video shows woman duct-taped to seat after trying to open airplane door on American Airlines flight

Meme - "Companies shouldn't get mad at me for "pirating" content, would just never watch it otherwise. this way i might at east talk about it, thereby giving it Exposure"

Meme - "Wine and cheese pair well together because they are both the expired byproducts of other foods. Enjoy your trash snack, everyone!"

Meme - "Liberals: "McCarthyism was so bad and oppressive in the 1950's hundreds of Americans were falsely accused of being Commies and their entire lives were ruined based on little to no evidence."
Also Liberals: "FASCIST! NAZI! HE'S A NAZI FOR NOT SHARING MY BELIEFS, DOX HIM FOR BEING A FUCKING NAZI FACIST"

Uncle Bumpy Knuckles on Twitter - "Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism. Visit https://go.usa.gov/x6mjf to learn how to spot suspicious behaviors and report them to the #FBI. #NatSec"
"Hello, FBI. I'd like to report Portland. You're welcome"
Weird. We're told that under Communism family members were encouraged to report on each other, and that this was bad
Of course someone claimed everyone in Portland was an FBI agent

Dear Girls, We Love You For Your Brains, Not Your Bodies.Sincerely Zombies

Meme - "Why Calling a Person of Means a "B******AIRE" is Toxic Class Reductionism."
Meme - "CAPITALISM IS INTERSECTIONAL. The free market inclusively allows for the open expression and commodification of ALL identities. People of Means should be celebrated for the inherently wide-ranging diversity of those their income has been made in collaboration with."
Apparently it's third party satire, but this is a good jibe at leftists

Meme - Teen Vogue: "Fidel Castro has died at age 90"
Teen Vogue: "Accused war criminal and torture defender dead at 88" *Donald Rumsfeld*

Meme - Man with trans-Muslim flag, mask, "Black lives matter", "CNN", Google logo, Hammer and Sickle, Female symbol with fit, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr logos and more: "they brainwashed you"
Man with MAGA hat, Crucifix, American flag: "really?""

Meme - ""normalize--" NO. normalize nothing. everything you do is weird now. you're free"

Sheriffs hold celebration for Elsie Eiler, the lone resident of Monowi, NE - "In Nebraska, there is a small town called Monowi. It's the smallest incorporated town in the entire United States.  But Monowi wasn't always so small. It used to have a population of two, consisting of Elsie Eiler and her husband Rudy.  When Rudy died in 2004 Elsie became the town's sole resident.  The town has two attractions, a library which was run by Elsie's late husband Rudy, and a bar that's still operated by Elsie.  Elsie is the cook. She's also the town's mayor, granting herself a liquor license."

Tom Gara on Twitter - "Randomly on this subject, my (Egyptian) wife had never heard of Stonehenge when I mentioned it recently, so I showed her photos of it, assuming she’d recognize the look but not the name etc, and she was just like, this is pathetic, your ancestors were small and weak"

Many Middle-Class Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck - The Atlantic - "either a sizable minority or a slim majority of Americans are on thin ice financially. How thin? A 2014 Bankrate survey, echoing the Fed’s data, found that only 38 percent of Americans would cover a $1,000 emergency-room visit or $500 car repair with money they’d saved. Two reports published last year by the Pew Charitable Trusts found, respectively, that 55 percent of households didn’t have enough liquid savings to replace a month’s worth of lost income, and that of the 56 percent of people who said they’d worried about their finances in the previous year, 71 percent were concerned about having enough money to cover everyday expenses. A similar study conducted by Annamaria Lusardi of George Washington University, Peter Tufano of Oxford, and Daniel Schneider, then of Princeton, asked individuals whether they could “come up with” $2,000 within 30 days for an unanticipated expense. They found that slightly more than one-quarter could not, and another 19 percent could do so only if they pawned possessions or took out payday loans. The conclusion: Nearly half of American adults are “financially fragile” and “living very close to the financial edge.” Yet another analysis, this one led by Jacob Hacker of Yale, measured the number of households that had lost a quarter or more of their “available income” in a given year—income minus medical expenses and interest on debt—and found that in each year from 2001 to 2012, at least one in five had suffered such a loss and couldn’t compensate by digging into savings. You could think of this as a liquidity problem: Maybe people just don’t have enough ready cash in their checking or savings accounts to meet an unexpected expense. In that case, you might reckon you’d find greater stability by looking at net worth—the sum of people’s assets, including their retirement accounts and their home equity. That is precisely what Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University and the author of a forthcoming book on the history of wealth in America, did. Here’s what he found: There isn’t much net worth to draw on. Median net worth has declined steeply in the past generation—down 85.3 percent from 1983 to 2013 for the bottom income quintile, down 63.5 percent for the second-lowest quintile, and down 25.8 percent for the third, or middle, quintile. According to research funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth of the typical household, one at the median point of wealth distribution, was $87,992 in 2003. By 2013, it had declined to $54,500, a 38 percent drop. And though the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008 certainly contributed to the drop, the decline for the lower quintiles began long before the recession—as early as the mid-1980s, Wolff says... Financial impotence is an equal-opportunity malady, striking across every demographic divide. The Bankrate survey reported that nearly half of college graduates would not cover that car repair or emergency-room visit through savings, and the study by Lusardi, Tufano, and Schneider found that nearly one-quarter of households making $100,000 to $150,000 a year claim not to be able to raise $2,000 in a month... If you ask economists to explain this state of affairs, they are likely to finger credit-card debt as a main culprit. Long before the Great Recession, many say, Americans got themselves into credit trouble... Part of the reason credit began to surge in the ’80s and ’90s is that it was available in a way it had never been available to previous generations. William R. Emmons, an assistant vice president and economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, traces the surge to a 1978 Supreme Court decision, Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp. The Court ruled that state usury laws, which put limits on credit-card interest, did not apply to nationally chartered banks doing business in those states. That effectively let big national banks issue credit cards everywhere at whatever interest rates they wanted to charge, and it gave the banks a huge incentive to target vulnerable consumers just the way, Emmons believes, vulnerable homeowners were targeted by subprime-mortgage lenders years later. By the mid-’80s, credit debt in America was already soaring. What followed was the so-called Great Moderation, a generation-long period during which recessions were rare and mild, and the risks of carrying all that debt seemed low. Both developments affected savings. With the rise of credit, in particular, many Americans didn’t feel as much need to save. And put simply, when debt goes up, savings go down... Not that Americans—or at least those born after World War II—had ever been especially thrifty. The personal savings rate peaked at 13.3 percent in 1971 before falling to 2.6 percent in 2005. As of last year, the figure stood at 5.1 percent, and according to McClary, nearly 30 percent of American adults don’t save any of their income for retirement. When you combine high debt with low savings, what you get is a large swath of the population that can’t afford a financial emergency. So who is at fault? Some economists say that although banks may have been pushing credit, people nonetheless chose to run up debt; to save too little; to leave no cushion for emergencies, much less retirement... It is ironic that as financial products have become increasingly sophisticated, theoretically giving individuals more options to smooth out the bumps in their lives, something like the opposite seems to have happened, at least for many. Indeed, Annamaria Lusardi and her colleagues found that, in general, the more sophisticated a country’s credit and financial markets, the worse the problem of financial insecurity for its citizens. Why? Lusardi argues that as the financial world has grown more complex, our knowledge of finances has not kept pace. Basically, a good many Americans are “financially illiterate,” and this illiteracy correlates highly with financial distress... Real hourly wages—that is, wage rates adjusted for inflation—peaked in 1972; since then, the average hourly wage has essentially been flat. (These figures do not include the value of benefits, which has increased.)"
I was told that billionaires were not well-positioned for success by their own rich families but their talent and hard work, and that the fact that the average startup needs $30k in investment was nothing and anyone could do it, because the US was not Haiti and $30,000 wasn't a lot of money, and that in the US everybody has a family member or friend who can lend them money, or one can just take a business loan. The same person also acknowledged most businesses fail. So apparently if you don't want to risk going bankrupt you don't deserve a shot at becoming a billionaire. I then got accused of being a Marxist/Communist

2019 National Teacher of the Year apologizes for tweet he has since called ‘bad joke’ - "The 2019 National Teacher of the Year, Richmond’s own Rodney Robinson, is apologizing after sending a tweet calling for the attack of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  The tweet has since been deleted, but read, quote “who are Mitch McConnell’s neighbors? I’m just saying Rand Paul’s neighbor did what a true Kentucky hero should do. iI’s your turn to step up.”  The attack on Rand Paul left the senator with serious injuries three years ago.  In an apology posted this morning on Medium, Robinson said he was unaware the attack was that serious and said he was “100-percent wrong” for posting what he called a “bad joke.”"
Imagine if the "joke" had been targeted at the left

Neoliberal on Twitter - ""What will be your job after the revolution" is one of my favorite tweet genres"
Meme - "whats your job on the leftist commune?? im gonna be leading discussion on theory some days, making clothes from scraps other days, and making lattes whenever needed."
"I'm reading tarot, birth charts and transits, while providing trauma- informed supportive counseling groups and teach-ins on topics for the next generations and those sharing our information outside the community"
"I'd be the neighborhood herbalist who teaches anarchist theory with an intersectional lens and shares their love of breath work and the healing/ transformative power of movement/ dance."

When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes - The Atlantic - "doctors perceive disease-screening tests and found that they tend to underestimate the potential harms of screening and overestimate the potential benefits; an editorial in American Family Physician, co-written by one of the journal’s editors, noted that a “striking feature” of recent research is how much of it contradicts traditional medical opinion...  A 2007 Journal of the American Medical Association paper co-authored by John Ioannidis—a Stanford University medical researcher and statistician who rose to prominence exposing poor-quality medical science—found that it took 10 years for large swaths of the medical community to stop referencing popular practices after their efficacy was unequivocally vanquished by science.  According to Vinay Prasad, an oncologist and one of the authors of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings paper, medicine is quick to adopt practices based on shaky evidence but slow to drop them once they’ve been blown up by solid proof."
"Experts" can believe false things - or disbelieve the greater experts (expert experts, if you like)

Women's urinal six times quicker to use, creators says - "Amber Probyn and Hazel McShane designed the hands-free Peequal because they were fed up with long queues for the ladies toilets at festivals.  "No funnels are involved and it's semi-private, you can't see anything from the waist down""

Half of U.S. hospitality workers won’t return to those jobs, survey says - "  More than half of U.S. hospitality workers wouldn’t go back to their old jobs and over a third aren’t even considering reentering the industry, according to a survey that underscores hiring challenges for restaurants, bars and hotels.  No pay increase or incentive would make these workers return to their previous workplace, according to a poll of about 13,000 job seekers during the second quarter from Joblist, an employment-search engine. These former hospitality employees cited wanting higher pay, a less physically demanding workplace and better benefits, the survey finds."

Ben & Jerry's to stop sales in Israeli settlements in occupied territories
Naturally, they are still available in China and Hong Kong

After 21 Yrs: Ben & Jerry’s Graphic Designer Quits Over Israel Boycott - "Ben & Jerry’s long-time graphic designer, Susannah Levin, quit her job last week after 21 years of working for the company in the wake of its boycott on Israel.  “Effective immediately, I have quit my job of 21 years at Ben & Jerry’s, over the statement on Israel”"

Vivian Bercovici: Ben & Jerry's support for anti-Semitic BDS campaign isn't about social justice - "When Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 the deal also included a franchisee who produced Ben & Jerry’s products in Israel under license. By all accounts, he did very well, until several days ago, when Unilever issued a weird statement advising that Ben & Jerry’s would no longer be sold in the “Occupied Territories” of Israel.  Unilever’s statement carried on to confirm that it will still allow its products to be sold within the 1967 borders of Israel. This position, apparently, was not cleared with the independent board of the actual ice cream company, chaired by Anuradha Mittal, a prominent California-based activist. In a recent interview with NBC news, Mittal indicated that the whole kerfuffle was about board independence, not Israel. However, NBC reported that the board had wanted to send a different statement that did not mention Ben & Jerry’s continued presence in Israel, suggesting the board may want to pull out of the country altogether, a move which Unilever does not support. It’s no secret that during and after the the war in May, in which Hamas barraged Israeli civilian areas with thousands of rockets over a two week period, BDS activists turned up the heat. Ben & Jerry’s was attacked relentlessly, causing them to de-activate their social media accounts. For Mittal to suggest that this dustup has nothing to do with Israel, or  BDS, is disingenuous, at best...   I am neither a big fan of the Jewish settlement enterprise nor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. However, I do have a thing for logic, consistency and honesty. And I have significant problems with anti semites who tart up their hatred in the language of social justice to demonize Israel and Jews. I’m certain that the C-suite at Unilever HQ now realizes that they’ve stepped on a hornet’s nest. They’re surely poring over maps and have retained the best communications and strategic risk advice available. Perhaps they’ve even added a middle east expert or two to the team.  What is clear is that they have a royal mess on their hands. For a start, if even one of the  35 American states that have pledged to ban commercial activity of any enterprise that supports BDS actually does so, that will be a big wallop. Ben & Jerry’s does not want to be banned anywhere, especially in the U.S.   I’ll bet that more than a few of the 35 will announce in coming days that they are “assessing” the issue.  That will be the signal for Unilever to get their act together, sort out their social justice warriors in Ben & Jerry’s, and negotiate a smooth license transfer directly with the owner of the Israeli franchise. This would be an elegant solution to the zeal of BDSers, obsessed as they are with demonizing and isolating Israel. The movement targets no other state in the world. No other country merits the constant diplomatic and commercial harassment...   Ben & Jerry’s has not advocated a boycott of any other country, or part thereof, in the world. Ever.  But we’re suppose to believe this is about principle and social justice. And not Israel. My stars."

Opinion: Ben & Jerry’s serves up a scoop of hypocrisy - The Globe and Mail - "  The antisemitism summit was followed the next day by another devoted to tackling Islamophobia. Why, you might ask, in a country that prides itself on tolerance, couldn’t the Trudeau government just hold a single event to discuss strategies to combat racism and hate? Well, because that would have defeated the political purpose of holding separate summits.  The antisemitism and Islamophobia summits targeted separate political constituencies. Some of the same people and groups leading campaigns against Islamophobia are accused by supporters of Israel of disseminating antisemitism. For politicians, this can be a tricky minefield to navigate... Hypocrisy abounds as politicians court progressive voters for whom there exists a hierarchy of hate that deems racism against BIPOC minorities to be a greater evil than antisemitism, to the point of harbouring antisemites within their own ranks... pandering to progressive groups that demonize Israel as a serial oppressor of disenfranchised minorities feeds into the very stereotypes that Wednesday’s summit on antisemitism sought to debunk."

Ben & Jerry's gives Unilever an ice cream headache

Parents of children called Alexa challenge Amazon - "Parents of children called Alexa say their daughters are being bullied because it is the same name that Amazon uses for its virtual assistant.  Some have even changed their child's name because they say the barrage of Alexa jokes is "relentless".  They are calling on Amazon to change the default wake word for its devices to a non-human name... Since Amazon's Alexa devices were introduced in the UK in 2016, the popularity of the name has dramatically fallen. Then it was the 167th most popular baby name in England and Wales, but by 2019 it was 920th... One adult called Siri, resident in the UK, has previously told the BBC that she received quite a lot of jokes from people about her name, including one from an Apple helpdesk employee."

Immigrant children twice as likely to graduate than white peers – but they still struggle for a job - "Children of immigrants from deprived backgrounds are up to twice as likely to have a degree compared to their white peers, but this doesn’t translate into greater employment prospects, research has found.  Second-generation ethnic minorities are “substantially” more likely to achieve higher education qualifications, compared to the white majority, according to a report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS).  Over 50 per cent of Indians and 35 per cent of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have degree-level or equivalent qualifications, compared to 26 per cent of the white majority... Pakistani women – across all education levels – have a three percentage point lower chance of being employed compared to their white counterparts, while Caribbean women have a two percentage point lower chance.
One wonders why, according to liberal logic, schools don't discriminate but employers do
This can have nothing to do with Pakistani culture where women stay at home

KTV or Condo - "Can you tell Singapore's KTVs from our Condos just by the name? Put your skills to the test in this quiz!"
I got 60%

Reddit Ridiculousness - Posts | Facebook - "The entire #colby2012 story"
"I think my teenage son may have sodomized our dog. I'm not sure what to do. Help me Reddit"
"I am the father and redditor whose son sodomized our dog with a hairbrush 2 months ago. He's done it again and don't know what to do, please help"

Adopt quotas for female MPs or face extinction - John Hewson, 2018

John Hewson on Twitter - "Sad Nine terminated my regular SMH/Age column this week. Neither Morrison Govt nor MSM actually believe in free press(noun) not controlled or restricted by govt or their sycophantic mates censorship in political or ideological matters" - John Hewson, 2021
Lisa Davies on Twitter - "Thank you for your contributions to debate over a number of years John, our readers have valued your insights. However we are committed to refreshing and diversifying our rotation of columnists, especially in line with our pledge for 50/50 gender balance."

Meme - "DANGER: NOT ONLY WILL THIS KILL YOU IT WILL HURT THE WHOLE TIME YOU'RE DYING
My Electrcian Son's Boss Put This Warning Label Up After the Code Inspector Said His Warning Labels Were Not Clear Enough"

‘My daughter’s killers are like my children’ - "“They drive me absolutely mad,” Linda Biehl roars with frustrated laughter.  We’re in a comfortable hotel room in central Cape Town and Biehl is talking about Ntobeko Peni and Easy Nofemela – two of the four men who, in August 1993, stabbed and stoned her daughter, Amy, to death... Amy Biehl was 26 when she was murdered in Gugulethu less than a year before South Africa’s first democratic elections.  She was living in Cape Town as a Fulbright scholar, studying the role of women and gender rights during South Africa’s transition... After a long conversation, I still find it hard to understand her decision to befriend her daughter’s killers.  “We had a choice. We didn’t have to come and learn about this place. But we knew Amy. We know what legacy she wanted to leave: one of peace, restorative justice and harmony. She would not have been happy if we had become bitter, ugly, unhappy people. That would have been a huge disappointment to her.”"
Her parents must be feminists too

PNW Selina 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "Imagine a Senate majority that believes in science."
"Imagine a Senate majority that treats science like some sort of mystical belief system that cannot be questioned"
Some people still say scientism is a myth and that faith in science is not like religious faith

QUEEN VIVIAN on Twitter - "Men if DNA confirms the baby is not yours, it doesn't change the fact that You must take responsibility of the baby... Women go through alot in Marriages and women deserve better."

Image of pilot hanging out window captures heroic story 30 years on - "Flight 5390 is one of the most storied and remarkable near-misses in British Airway's history. Most remarkable perhaps is how all those onboard the flight in June 1990, lived to tell the tale: It was 27 minutes into the flight from Birmingham to Malaga, Spain, somewhere over the English Midlands two of the cockpit windows smashed, depressurising the cabin.
Captain Tim Lancaster who was at the controls was instantly sucked out of the cockpit. In interviews with the cabin crew, they described the chaos that followed. Exposed to the rushing wind and pressure difference at 7000m altitude the cockpit door was ripped off its hinges.  Remarkably one quick thinking flight attendant, Nigel Ogden, was able to grab his captain's ankles, before he disappeared out the window... Without his quick reactions the pilot likely would have been lost out the window and, a greater danger still, they avoided the grim risk of the captain being caught by the engines – causing the entire plane to be lost."

If you lose one sense, your other senses are enhanced and this is why people with no sense of humor, have a heightened sense of self-importance. : oneliners

Tempa on TwitterHow US Activists Are Trying to Halt the Killing of Kangaroos in Australia - The New York Times - "These critics, he said, just don’t understand how life actually works here in the middle of Australia. Kangaroos have been hunted on the continent for thousands of years, “and there are still more of them than people”... He insisted that Australia’s commercial kangaroo industry isn’t like a John Wayne western with guns blazing. It’s a regulated business that works with the government. Hunters must pass a sharpshooting course to ensure a humane kill, and kangaroo numbers are closely monitored by state and federal officials, who set quotas to ensure sustainable populations.  Most important, said Mr. White, 58, a third-generation full-time shooter who goes by “Whitey,” kangaroos produce healthy meat, strong leather and the jobs that keep small towns whole... In 1971, California banned the import of kangaroo parts. Three years later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did the same for three commercially shot kangaroo species — all based on concerns about declining kangaroo populations, concerns that many Australians did not share.  George Wilson, a professor at the Australian National University who has spent 50 years in wildlife management, recalled telling a worried American biologist who visited in the mid-70s that there was a reason so many trucks in Australia had metal bars on the front.  “It’s in case they hit a kangaroo,” he said. “That’s how abundant they are.”... Seeing the animals starving and hit by cars — or worse, seeing farmers massacre them to preserve feed for cows and sheep, a culling that happens outside the formal kangaroo industry, and often illegally — has made most of Surat believe that commercial shooters are helping kangaroos by minimizing the suffering of the outback’s boom-and-bust cycles... while distance can deliver perspective, it can also overlook facts and oversimplify complicated truths.  The fires that sparked calls for regulation last year, for example, were concentrated in New South Wales, hundreds of miles from where Mr. White hunts. In his state, Queensland, survey data earlier this year put the kangaroo population for the three species that are harvested at 16.7 million — a far cry from endangered... kangaroos from Surat were mostly used for meat. The animals are increasingly seen as a more ethical alternative to beef and lamb because kangaroos do not contribute to climate change by belching out methane, and because they are harvested in their habitat. The industry’s critics, Mr. Mickelbourgh said, “don’t understand our country.”"
When life is too good, you invent bullshit to bitch about

The Sperm Count Culture War

The Sperm Count Culture War

"Hotly debated issues such as climate change, biotechnology/genetic engineering (GMOs), carcinogens in our food and the environment, 5G wireless communications, vaccines, stem cell research, abortion, and nuclear power show that conformity with a powerful political or religious position can impede a nuanced discussion of complex, highly technical questions. Although no longer wielded principally by a powerful religious body or the state, present-day forms of ideological influence are more subtle, varied, and pervasive in contemporary societies, and, therefore, more difficult to hold up for critical evaluation...

A group of feminist academics from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology waded into the longstanding controversy over declining sperm counts and what, if anything, this phenomenon portends for the future of humanity. Evidence of declining male fertility first emerged in studies dating to the 1970s. The decline was found to be particularly acute in the most industrialized West, North America and Europe. This finding touched off a debate that has raged in recent decades over its causes and consequences.

Declining sperm count is more than just a medical issue; falling male sperm concentrations could have profound societal impacts by reducing fertility rates. If the observed trends are accurate, addressing the causes is critical. But determining those causes requires a level of scientific dispassion that is disappearing from some social-science-focused research centers, as ideology has crept into science...

The latest entry in the sperm count debate comes from a Harvard-MIT research team led by philosophy professors Marion Boulicault and Sarah Richardson. They recently published a paper in the journal Human Fertility entitled “The Future of Sperm Variability for Understanding Global Sperm Count Trends.” They also published an article in Slate summarizing their findings for a lay audience. While the scientific paper is dense and difficult to navigate, the Slate article gets straight to the point with its title: “The Doomsday Sperm Theory Embraced by the Far Right.” Its subheading elaborates: “The idea that male fertility is on the decline is an old myth dressed up as science.”...

The authors all but ignore the science to focus on what they believe is more important—the ideological framing of the issue in socio-cultural discourse. Their article is a response to what is widely considered to be the most definitive research on science of sperm count decline, a 2017 meta-analysis of worldwide sperm count trends by Hagai Levine, Shanna Swan, and colleagues. The study, which reviewed more than 50 years of research, documented evidence of declining sperm counts in different countries.

The authors analyzed 244 estimates between 1973 and 2011 grouped into “Western” countries (US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) and “Other/non-Western” countries (including Asia, Africa, and South America). They found that total sperm count had declined by more than 52 percent among Western men between 1973 and 2011, whereas no significant decline was seen in “Other” countries...

Before deconstructing their argument, it’s helpful to understand the political and ideological prism through which the Harvard-MIT team views this issue in particular, and science in general. Neither Boulicault nor Richardson is a scientist. Both are philosophers, who openly proclaim their fealty to feminist scholarship—the focus of the GenderSci Lab, a cooperative started by Richardson in 2018.

GSL focuses its scholarship on “the intersectional study of gender in the biomedical and allied sciences” and “specializes in analyzing bias and hype in the sciences of sex, gender, and reproduction and in the intersectional study of race, gender, and science.”...

Boulicault et al. propose an alternative hypothesis, not for its intrinsic scientific merit, but because they recoil at the effects on the public discourse unleashed by the scientific findings in the Levine review of a half-century of data. In opposition to what they see as the implicitly racist and Eurocentric view of what they say is Levine’s “sperm count decline hypothesis,” they offer their alternative perspective, which they call the “sperm count biovariability hypothesis.”

To the extent that they frame their own hypothesis as an alternative to Levine’s, they are making a mistake because their central claim that low sperm counts have no implications for reduced fertility is simply wrong. Their second mistake is to restrict their attention to the offending Levine meta-analysis, which itself addresses just one narrow question. By doing so, they fail to consider a number of crucial phenomena.

Compared to other animals, humans have poor fertility. That is, the chances of a male impregnating a female are much lower...

It is incorrect that a low sperm count has no implications for fertility. Above a certain level—40 million/ml—there is no further improvement in fertility. However, when it comes to the lower range, there is a big difference between having a sperm count above 20 million/ml and having one below this level. In the former case, the chances of fathering a pregnancy are 65 percent—in the latter case 36 percent. As Richard Sharpe, a reproductive expert in the UK’s Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Science Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland, has concluded, “[H]aving a low sperm count makes you less fertile, although it does not exclude the possibility that you will impregnate your partner over a span of time.”

In addition, Boulicault et al. barely mention that low sperm count is associated with reduced sperm quality. Nor do they mention that only a minority of human sperm (five to 15 percent) are morphologically normal even in fertile men, in contrast to the situation in animals, where 90 percent or more of sperm are normal. This difference between human male fertility and that of other animals has profound implications.

They also fail to note that reduced sperm count is associated with higher mortality: the lower your sperm count, the greater your chances of dying. Sperm count is associated with other reproductive pathologies in males, including testicular dysgenesis syndrome, cryptorchidism, hypospadias, and testicular germ cell cancer. There is solid evidence that rates of testicular germ cell cancer have been increasing in recent decades, and it is a disease predominantly of young men in the prime of their life. And they fail to contextualize the issue. In advanced industrial countries, as in Europe, where fertility is declining and fecundity is below the replacement level, and where women tend to have children at an older age, the fertility of couples is further reduced when the male has the added burden of a low sperm count.

Although most evident in European countries and Japan, a trend toward an aging population, smaller family size, and a shrinking work force is discernible wherever prosperity is increasing. These trends will have profound effects on society’s economic base and the allocation of resources. The Chinese government’s recent decision to allow families to have three children—a further unwinding of its “one-child policy”—is a response to these trends. For people who are concerned about the impact of biology on society, it is curious that the authors ignore this salient phenomenon.

Boulicault et al. rightly question the hype about “endocrine-disrupting chemicals” as a favored hypothesis to explain declining sperm counts, but they neglect to mention recent, high-quality work that suggests exposures early in life may affect reproductive health. Specifically, in utero exposure of the fetus to pharmaceutical products taken by the mother deserves careful study. In addition, a study examining cases of cryptorchidism requiring surgical correction in France over a 13-year period revealed 24 hotspots, suggesting that fetal exposure to industrial pollutants, including metals, coupled with socioeconomic deprivation could be contributing to this condition.

Although Boulicault et al. charge Levine with being a prisoner of “culturally-determined categories,” they are so caught up in their own ideological narrative that they feel no obligation to check it against the empirical data. The result is dismaying. A telling error is their strenuous objection to the grouping of populations into “Western” and “other/non-Western,” which they seem to think is evidence of some kind of Eurocentric intellectual imperialist bias. But this decision was simply motivated by the relative dearth of studies from other parts of the world.

Their programmatic approach is further illustrated by a hyper-focus on the societal impact of the “falling sperm counts narrative” and the anxieties it has provoked, particularly among men’s rights activist groups on the political Right, who are responding to what they see as a crisis of masculinity. The problem is that the authors start from a set of sociological and political concerns regarding women’s roles, healthcare, colonialism, and racism, while not bothering to delve into the science regarding human fertility. Rather than being interested in learning and integrating the best information relating to the question, they frame it as a culture war issue.

Expertise does matter. None of the seven authors on the paper has published on male reproductive pathology. And while they indicate that they received input from andrologists, none is named. These consultations clearly did nothing to correct the inadequate picture the authors paint of male fertility, and many of the papers they cite reach conclusions at odds with their claims. This raises a serious question about how the paper could have passed peer review.

I was struck by the authors’ failure to cite work by Richard Sharpe, who has probed this topic for over four decades and has written about the urgent need to remedy our extensive ignorance about normal male reproductive development in order to understand where it can go wrong. When I wrote to Professor Sharpe asking his opinion of the Boulicault article, he wrote back, “In my opinion you are right to be sceptical about the Boulicault et al. hypothesis—it shows what happens when you let folk who are not reproductive experts loose on reproductive data!”...

None of the news stories, however, so much as remarked on the inflammatory rhetoric of the Boulicault paper, which will appear to the fair-minded reader as an activist manifesto masquerading as a scientific hypothesis...

It is difficult to explain the deference paid to the Harvard paper by various commentators. Perhaps we are in a time in which even trained scientists are reluctant to call out an uninformed but ideologically fashionable treatment of a high-profile issue. Or perhaps when the rhetoric and packaging are artful enough, the lack of substance isn’t even noticed...

As Professor Sharpe remarked to me, “It continues to amaze me how gender/PC issues have begun to distort our views on society—I presume it’s the age-old pendulum effect. A neglected area which once dragged into the spotlight then begins to veer towards the ridiculous, of which we have all too many examples at present … Whatever happened to common sense and a balanced perspective?”...

As a recent article in the Economist asked apropos of another gender theory dispute, “How did an ideology that brooks no dissent become so entrenched in institutions supposedly dedicated to fostering independent thinking?”"

Links - 31st December 2021 (1 - Covid-19)

Facebook - "So, a 90% effective Covid vaccine has been developed. One week too late for his administration. Operation Warp Speed was a risky deal - to fund the production of vaccines before they are even proven effective, accepting the risk of millions of wasted doses being thrown away.  Yes, yes, I'm probably being dumb. No one wants to risk association with a loser these days, getting called a whole bunch of names in the process ranging from racist to sexist just for the crime of holding on to one's ethics. But here on my page, I give credit where it is due, and before it is written out by the media and winners of history. [Additional note: For avoidance of doubt, Pfizer was not funded by Operation Warp Speed in the development of their vaccine. However, Pfizer did have the assurance of having their vaccine pre-ordered. I am of the opinion that such confirmed orders have the effect of mitigating Pfizer's risk.]"
Facebook - "Moderna has a vaccine too, and this time, it has unquestionably taken R&D funds from Operation Warp Speed. But fear not, for history has already been rewritten in the last two days.
*Wikipedia screenshots on Operation Warp Speed, with edits to no longer mention Trump*"

China finds coronavirus on packaging of Brazilian beef - "The Chinese city of Wuhan said on Friday (Nov 13) it had detected the novel coronavirus on the packaging of a batch of Brazilian beef, as it ramped up testing of frozen foods this week as part of a nationwide campaign."
We already know that fomite transmission is insignificant, so you have to be a China shill to believe this
"China punishes Brazil for halting Chinese vaccine trials. This is the same shit with Australia - making up charges to suspend exports from Australia."

Jabs do not reduce risk of passing Covid within household, study suggests - "People who are fully vaccinated against Covid yet catch the virus are just as infectious to others in their household as infected unvaccinated people, research suggests."
Vaxholes will still pretend that the unvaccinated are super dangerous and harming others, since they equate unvaccinated to infected and vaccinated to uninfected

Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study - "Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts."
The paper referred to above. Vaxholes will then pivot to claiming that since the vaccinated are less likely to be infected, vaccines still reduce transmission - while at the same time claiming that the fact that most covid cases are in the vaccinated doesn't mean anything, since the vaccines were never intended to reduce infection, only serious disease

Ontario doctor critical of COVID-19 response ordered to halt practice - "An Ontario doctor and outspoken critic of the pandemic response who was previously banned from offering COVID-19 vaccine and mask exemptions has now been suspended... The CPSO has directed that physicians have a professional responsibility to not communicate “anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown statements and/or (promote) unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19.”  Kilian, of Owen Sound, has been vocal in her criticism of COVID-19 vaccines, and how the medical community and governments have responded to the pandemic."
Of course, this doesn't mean there's a "consensus" because medical and scientific professionals are afraid of losing their jobs

New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly - WSJ - "Prior to Covid-19, lockdowns weren’t part of the standard epidemic tool kit, which was primarily designed with flu in mind.  During the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, some American cities closed schools, churches and theaters, banned large gatherings and funerals and restricted store hours. But none imposed stay-at-home orders or closed all nonessential businesses. No such measures were imposed during the 1957 flu pandemic, the next-deadliest one; even schools stayed open.  Lockdowns weren’t part of the contemporary playbook, either. Canada’s pandemic guidelines concluded that restrictions on movement were “impractical, if not impossible.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its 2017 community mitigation guidelines for pandemic flu, didn’t recommend stay-at-home orders or closing nonessential businesses even for a flu as severe as the one a century ago.  So when China locked down Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province in January, and Italy imposed blanket stay-at-home orders in March, many epidemiologists elsewhere thought the steps were unnecessarily harmful and potentially ineffective.  By late March, they had changed their minds. The sight of hospitals in Italy overwhelmed with dying patients shocked people in other countries.
And yet past flus were more deadly than covid. Delaying herd immunity just prolongs the pain

China locks down 13 million people in Xi’an after detecting 127 Covid cases - "The snap lockdown on Thursday comes little over a month before Beijing is set to host the Winter Olympics. All residents in Xi’an are barred from leaving their houses except to buy living necessities every other day or for emergencies, while travel to and from the city is suspended save for in exceptional circumstances requiring official approval. All non-essential businesses have also been closed... The lockdown has separated family members with no notice."
The price of covid "success". Good luck for the Olympics. At least as of now, they are not going to quarantine the vaccinated on arrival, so there's going to be an explosion of cases, plus the exemption will not be politically popular. Even if they do quarantine the vaccinated, there will most probably still be an outbreak. But then probably no one is going to go to the Olympics. Tokyo didnt require a quarantine, and covid spreads more in the winter

Beijing Olympics: China to Ease Covid Guidelines for Athletes in Bubble - The New York Times - "Currently, all overseas arrivals to China must undergo quarantine."

Quarantine laws in China could kill NHL participation in Olympics: report - "“If an athlete tests positive, you cannot leave China until cleared by local health authorities. Maximum quarantine could be 3-5 weeks.” Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek reported on Saturday night’s Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. “If an athlete does test positive and is symptomatic, to get out of quarantine, [they] need to be symptom-free and pass two COVID tests within 24 hours. If asymptomatic, they can be allowed out of quarantine with two negative tests at 24 hours apart.”"
They pulled out after that

China Sticks to Covid-Zero Policies, Despite Rising Pressure to Ease Restrictions - WSJ - "China is adhering to its playbook of neighborhood lockdowns, location tracking, weekslong quarantines and indefinitely delayed visas, in an effort to eradicate every single case of the virus. The country was again carrying out mass testing and imposing domestic travel restrictions this week in some areas, including Beijing, to stem the spread of an outbreak after a retired couple from Shanghai who were on a cross-country trip tested positive for the virus on Oct. 17. Chinese authorities reported 43 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Monday, in which 29 were locally transmitted. Officials have yet to say when their strategies might shift, even with about 76% of the population fully vaccinated. While the policies have been successful at largely keeping Covid-19 out for most of the pandemic, the travel restrictions are beginning to wear on foreign workers and businesses, who argue that adhering to the strict policies will carry mounting costs for China’s economic growth, which is already slowing.   “It’s not an issue, it’s the issue,” said Ker Gibbs, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, who cited one of the business group’s recent surveys where 45.1% of respondents said Covid-19 restrictions had hurt operations. Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association, the industry group in Hong Kong, said in its open letter to the government that 48% of firms they surveyed are contemplating moving staff or functions out of Hong Kong due to these operational challenges caused by the uncertainty over when quarantine restrictions will be lifted. The group, which counts as members more than 150 companies in the financial services industry—including some of the largest Wall Street and Chinese banks—said 73% reported experiencing difficulties attracting and retaining talent in Hong Kong, a third of whom rated the difficulties as “significant.”... the day after the financial industry group called on Hong Kong to provide an exit strategy for its zero-Covid-19 policies, the Hong Kong government said it would be removing most quarantine exemptions, which had previously been extended to diplomats and senior executives. It will further require patients who had recovered from Covid-19 and tested negative to spend an additional two weeks in hospitals, bringing the policies into closer alignment with the mainland...   “International travel is important, international business is important, but by comparison the mainland is more important,” the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said earlier this month, referring to a more open border with the mainland. Visitors from Hong Kong currently need to quarantine when they enter the mainland.  Mainland China has been even more strict in some ways. Many foreign executives have had their dependent visas delayed, keeping many people from seeing their families...   The policies are also rippling outward. Ships have routinely been held up in ports such as Shanghai as crews are tested for the virus, for example, creating supply-chain disruptions...   The restrictions have also meant that tourists from the mainland have been grounded, which has been particularly devastating for economies in the region such as Thailand that rely heavily on them... But Chinese officials have so far offered no hint that they are deterred by the potential for further economic damage...   “This policy is also still very popular in China and receives strong public support: People are very proud of how well state leaders have controlled the virus,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York... clinical trials showed vaccines made by Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and Sinopharm to be less effective overall than the mRNA vaccines made by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, although the Chinese vaccines have been shown to be effective at preventing severe cases of the disease. The World Health Organization has recommended a booster shot for those over 60 who have received Sinovac or Sinopharm.  Major events set for next year give China additional incentives to keep the virus under wraps. China is hosting the Winter Olympics, which are scheduled to open on Feb. 4. China will hold its 20th Party Congress next fall, when Mr. Xi is expected to secure an unprecedented third-term as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.  “The approach helps bolster party legitimacy ahead of that,” said Mr. Huang. “Abandoning ‘Zero Covid’ now is tantamount to admitting the former approach doesn’t work.”"

Why China Is the World’s Last ‘Zero Covid’ Holdout - The New York Times - "The rest of the world is reopening, including New Zealand and Australia, which also once embraced zero tolerance. China is now the only country still chasing full eradication of the virus... The government’s strict strategy is the product of a uniquely Chinese set of calculations. Its thriving exports have helped to keep the economy afloat. The ruling Communist Party’s tight grip on power enables lockdowns and testing to be carried out with astonishing efficiency. Beijing is set to host the Winter Olympics in February.  For many Chinese, the low case numbers have become a source of national pride. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has repeatedly pointed to the country’s success in containment as proof of the superiority of its governance model. But experts — both in China and abroad — have warned that the approach is unsustainable. China may find itself increasingly isolated, diplomatically and economically, at a time when global public opinion is hardening against it... When Zhang Wenhong, a prominent infectious disease expert from Shanghai, suggested this summer that China learn to live with the virus, he was attacked viciously online as a lackey of foreigners. A former Chinese health minister called such a mindset reckless. Professor Ong said the government was afraid of any challenge to its narrative of pandemic triumph.  “Outbreaks have become so commonplace that it’s really a non-event,” she said. “But the Chinese authorities want to control any small potential source of instability.”... China’s economic growth is slowing, and domestic travel during a weeklong holiday earlier this month fell below last year’s levels, as a cluster of new cases spooked tourists. Retail sales have proven fitful, recovering and ebbing with waves of the virus.  The country may also suffer diplomatically. Mr. Xi has not left China or received foreign visitors since early 2020, even as other world leaders prepare to gather in Rome for a Group of 20 summit and Glasgow for climate talks... roughly 10,000 tourists are trapped in Ejin Banner, a region of Inner Mongolia, after the emergence of cases led to a lockdown. As consolation, the local tourism association has promised them free entry to three popular tourist attractions, redeemable within the next three years."
Perhaps this is by design, since Xi wants China to be insular and reject the rest of the world and its ideas

China doubles down on COVID-zero strategy - "An expansive compound of buildings covering the equivalent of 46 football pitches was recently erected on the outskirts of Guangzhou, China’s bustling southern metropolis.  The sprawling complex of three-storey buildings contains some 5,000 rooms and is the first of what is expected to be a chain of quarantine centres built by the Chinese government to house people arriving from overseas as it forges ahead with its zero-tolerance approach to COVID... the appearance of the quarantine centre nearly two years after the trauma of Wuhan has left some wondering why China is not relaxing its virus strategy now that the vast majority of its one billion people have been fully vaccinated...   “It’s been almost two years since I last saw my parents, but the ridiculously expensive flight ticket and the prolonged quarantine time are making it difficult for me to return home,” Yang lamented of his failed efforts to try to go back to China... the government banned people from transiting in a third country to return to China if there was a direct flight from their original departure place. Coupled with a notorious flight arrangement policy that allows one airline to operate only one flight per week from any specific country that is aimed at controlling the number of international arrivals, the moves have driven up the cost of air travel. “Flight tickets used to cost about $150 to fly from Bangkok to Chengdu,” a Chinese national who has been stuck in Bangkok for more than two years and is from the southwestern city told Al Jazeera.  “Now I’d call myself lucky if I manage to find a ticket for less than $3,000.” Different destinations in China also apply different quarantine measures: the shortest quarantine is 21 days, in cities such as Shanghai, where arrivals are put under 14 days of centralised quarantine followed by seven days of home isolation. Cities such as Beijing require a further seven days of “health monitoring” on top of the 21-day quarantine.  Additionally, in countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, the Chinese embassies, which are in charge of distributing the green code, have instructed passengers to self-quarantine for 14 days before departure. That means some travellers could end up spending nearly a month and a half in some form of quarantine.   Apart from restricting international arrivals, the government is also determined to prevent its citizens from travelling abroad. The immigration authority issued a “do not travel unless it is necessary and urgent” guidance earlier this year, with the interpretation of “necessity and urgency” varying at different border control points. Under the guidance, the government stopped issuing passports to people without “urgent and necessary reasons” to leave the country; and those who try to leave the country “without urgent and necessary reasons” are also being barred from departing.  Beijing’s doubling down of the strategy has inevitably brought havoc to many – not just Chinese nationals, but to members of the international business community who might live in China or do business there.  A similarly punishing regime in the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong has drawn warnings that it could undermine the territory’s status as a global financial hub. It has not deterred the government there; it insists its focus is to be able to reopen its border with the mainland and on Wednesday removed almost all exemptions on Beijing’s recommendation...  if every other country moves to ease its approach to COVID-19 and allow more international travel, while China maintains its highly risk-averse approach it would appear an outlier, says CFR’s Yanzhong Huang. The strategy that was once a demonstration of the superiority of the Chinese model would just “show its inferiority to the more realistic alternative""
When you know your vaccines don't work

UK economy to grow faster than China’s for first time since Mao - "China was the first big economy to rebound to its pre-Covid GDP, but now Beijing’s iron-fisted zero Covid policy is expected to hold the country back as the nation’s factories and ports are routinely forced to shut by new outbreaks.   A crunch in the property market, centred around troubled developer Evergrande, will also remove a key driver of growth. Meanwhile, enforced limits on energy-intensive aluminium smelters intended to conserve scarce power resources have hit output, something the investment bank expects to continue or intensify.  Such low growth will pile pressure on China’s leaders, BNP Paribas warns, particularly with the crucial 20th party congress on its way and a reshuffle of top officials - excluding President Xi - expected."
Covid hystericists will still claim lockdowns work and China is proof

Communist Party culture of fear makes China the last redoubt for 'zero-Covid' lockdowns - "As winter sets in yet again, China has clocked more than 600 cases, pushing authorities into renewed frenzy. Beijing has refused to lift border controls and continues to enforce its Covid-19 containment strategy – centralised quarantine, mass testing, contact tracing, local lockdowns, mandatory masks – despite achieving a 75 per cent vaccination rate in the country of 1.4 billion people. "Most governments in the world have had the underlying principle that public health measures that disrupt the community, whether it’s lockdown or other kinds of social distancing, are needed to buy time until vaccines can be offered to everybody,” said Ben Cowling, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong.  “But in China, there is a different perspective; they’re going to keep it at zero.”... authorities stopped two high-speed trains travelling to Beijing, because a single passenger on each was considered a close contact of a confirmed case.   All 350 train travellers were shuttled into centralised quarantine, even though none were confirmed to be at risk or positive...   Local officials have gone so far as to chain people into their homes during lockdowns and anyone found to be non-compliant have been arrested and thrown in detention.  Pharmacies are also required to report individuals coming into buy over-the-counter cold and flu medicines as those symptoms could potentially indicate coronavirus; those failing to do so have been shut down...   Authorities are taking no chances – partly because their careers are on the line; if cases are found in their patch, they’ve almost always been sacked as punishment.   There’s little indication that Chinese authorities will relax coronavirus controls anytime soon given a spate of upcoming high-profile events... The government has also built permanent quarantine facilities in cities like Guangzhou for overseas arrivals – often Chinese nationals returning home given the border closures – to fulfill requirements to isolate for as long as 28 days...   Propaganda – and officials – have gone so far as to scoff at what they perceive as the lax measures used by Western governments, accusing leaders elsewhere for simply letting their people die.   “Australia has recently announced a new policy of ‘living with the virus,’” boasted state media. “This allows for infections and deaths to occur rapidly.”...   For now, the government has been able to engineer continued public buy-in but it’s unclear how long that could last especially as the disruptive measures have started to hit economic growth.    China's economy has seesawed all year, posting a stunning 18.3 per cent growth in the first quarter compared to last year, and moderating to 7.9 per cent in the next quarter before slumping to a new low of 4.9 per cent in the most recent quarter.   Politically speaking, China is also growing increasingly isolated at a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise. Mr Xi, for instance, chose not to attend the recent G20 meeting in Rome and the Cop26 international climate talks ongoing in Glasgow"
Covid hystericists claim that lockdowns work if they are enforced. Apparently China is not brutal enough, apparently

Thousands of guests locked in Shanghai Disneyland after woman tests COVID-19 positive - "A small county in eastern China’s Jiangxi province turned all its traffic lights to red after one case was detected, breaking the province’s 610-day Covid-free track record. The move, which local authorities said was an emergency measure aimed at reducing mobility, was decried on Chinese social media, where dissent is typically censored. It was soon repealed and the lights resumed... In Beijing, the escalating restrictions are having farcical consequences. Some residents who leave the capital have reported not being able to come back because they are recorded as recently being in the city, parts of which are currently classed as high risk because of a small outbreak. Stranded at airports and train stations around China, many have taken to social media to ask for help and to criticize the rules.   Perhaps nowhere is the full force — and increasing absurdity — of China’s devotion to Covid Zero evident than in the small southeastern city of Ruili, on the remote border with Myanmar. People there have been locked down four times in the past seven months alone. The 268,000 residents are largely barred from leaving as the virus keeps creeping over from Myanmar, where it is rampant...  Local media over the weekend reported about a baby who had been tested as many as 74 times for Covid since September last year, with mass testing of entire cities and populations a key part of China’s toolkit."
China is going to be cut off from the rest of the world for the rest of time

Singapore Falls Down Covid Resilience Ranking Due to Slow Travel Recovery - Bloomberg - "Singapore now occupies the lowest spot ever in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking for a former No. 1 as the city-state confronts a trail-blazing, but polarizing, shift to living with the virus.   Ranked in pole position in April and never lower than 19th until now, Singapore has tumbled 20 places in the past month to No. 39 on October’s lineup as it sees record cases and deaths. While vaccination coverage is one of the highest in the world and overall death toll one of the lowest, it scores poorly in most other indicators: strict domestic curbs have crimped mobility and stringency metrics, while a slow travel reopening and flight capacity recovery is still far behind that of Europe and the U.S. This worst-of-both-worlds situation is likely to be temporary transition pains, as Singapore forges an unprecedented path to being among first Covid-Zero countries to pivot to treating the virus as endemic. If it succeeds, it will have the distinction of being one of the only places in the world to normalize without waves of death."

Fully Vaccinated 35-Year-Old Heather Greeley Dies of Coronavirus Waiting for Last-Ditch ECMO Treatment - “Heather did everything right, she did everything she was supposed to do and is now suffering because people didn’t do their part.”
Since the media likes to obsess over stories of unvaccinated people dying...
As usual, vaxholes don't believe the vaccines work

Flu deaths could hit 60,000 in worst winter for 50 years, say experts - "Flu deaths could be the worst for 50 years because of lockdowns and social distancing, health chiefs have warned, as the NHS launches the biggest ever flu vaccination drive.  More than 35 million people will be offered flu jabs this winter, amid concern that prolonged restrictions on social contact have left Britain with little immunity.  Officials fear that this winter could see up to 60,000 flu deaths – the worst figure in Britain since the 1968 Hong Kong Flu pandemic – without strong uptake of vaccines.   There is also concern about the effectiveness of this year’s jabs, because the lack of flu last year made it harder for scientists to sample the virus and predict the dominant strains.   Health chiefs said the measures introduced over the past 18 months to protect the country against coronavirus would now put the public at greater risk of flu."
Clearly the solution is to lockdown again! Every life is precious!

Covid may no longer be the most 'significant' threat to health, Dr Jenny Harries says - "Covid may no longer be the most “significant” threat to health, Dr Jenny Harries has said.   The chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency said today that Covid was possibly no more dangerous than flu, as she warned that there would be a lower immunity to the illness this year.   She said: “It is important to remember that for an average flu season it's about 11,000 deaths a year, it’s somewhere between four (thousand) to 22,000 over the last four to five years.   “So we are starting to move to a situation where, perhaps Covid is not the most significant element, and many of those individuals affected will of course have other comorbidities, which will make them vulnerable to serious illness but other reasons as well.”"

We risk being frightened back into lockdown - "England can lay claim to being one of the most liberal Covid societies on earth, save for the few that have removed restrictions altogether. Here, it sits in refreshing contrast to much of the West. Italy, the first European country to impose a national lockdown, crossed another unhappy Rubicon last week. Its legislators enacted far-reaching laws requiring vaccine passports or a negative Covid test for the entire national workforce, both public and private, if they wish to earn a living. President Biden has announced a similar wave of vaccine mandates in the US, requiring all employees of the state and of larger private firms to be either vaccinated or tested regularly.   French citizens must show a health pass to take a long-distance train, or even to enter a restaurant, while police patrol outdoor cafes carrying out random vaccine passport checks. In "liberal" Canada, Justin Trudeau has banned unvaccinated children as young as 12 from travelling. With its curfews, draconian bans on protest and travel restrictions, Zero-Covid Australia has descended into a nightmarish police state.  Even within the UK, Wales and Scotland are notably more restrictive (Scottish children over the age of 12, for instance, must wear masks at school). In England, those rules which do remain, such as mask-wearing on public transport, are in practice largely voluntary.  Recent findings from the consultancy Kekst CNC by the pollster James Johnson suggest a corresponding sea change in public opinion. Far fewer of us now believe that controlling the virus at all costs should be the country’s top priority while a greater share than ever favour the once-heretical belief that protecting the economy matters more. Given the UK’s widespread vaccine uptake, and a “vaccination dividend” thought to be disrupting the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths by as much as 90 per cent, this seems logical. The end of furlough, rising inflation and a cost-of-living crisis has certainly fixed minds, while each day brings new reminders of the collateral health damage of lockdown. There’s doubtless an overall sense of “Covid fatigue”, too, just as Britons eventually tired of talking about Brexit all the time. But it’s also due to a decided shift in government rhetoric. The public generally followed the advice of politicians and official scientists during the pandemic. Not having them out there each day saying how terrifying everything is can only have made a vast difference.   This is not enough for some politicians, or that rich vein of commentary which consists of highlighting rules in more draconian countries and hinting, none too subtly, that Britain should follow suit. The recent spike in case numbers is driving this narrative...   A strong element of culture-war pantomime remains: while Labour MPs invariably wear masks in the Chamber, Tories – with a few exceptions – don’t. Having attended both party conferences, I can attest that neither side bothered to cover their faces away from the main Chambers and out of sight of those pesky TV cameras. Yet arguments over lesser issues like masks may shift vital political capital away from more important interventions, such as building up ICU capacity and doubling down on booster jabs for the most vulnerable as their immunity wanes. This, above all, should be the focus of any "Plan B". The trouble with “panic mode” isn’t just that it sparks fear, it is that it often prompts rash over-correction for the wrong problem, while ignoring the major concern."
All the covid hystericists were predicting that after Freedom Day, Britons would start dying off, and calling Boris Johnson an evil murderer. When that didn't happen they rationalised their failed prophecy by saying it was because school was out and the dieoffs would come when kids returned. I wonder what their subsequent cope was

There is no case for new Covid restrictions - "why are the UK’s Covid rates so high? Those demanding greater action say it is because the UK is ‘running hot’ with a ‘vaccines only’ policy, while other countries have ‘vaccines plus’ strategies – incorporating mask mandates and vaccine passports. This view does not hold water. Scotland and Wales, unlike England, have kept their mask mandates in place and have introduced vaccine passports. Yet their Covid rates are just as high as in England... Booster jabs not only increase antibody levels, but data from Israel suggest that they can also stall a rise in infections.  Not everyone needs a booster jab, however. Most ‘breakthrough’ infections in young, vaccinated people are mild and these will strengthen their immunity to Covid. New treatments, including Regeneron’s antibody mixture and Merck’s molnupiravir pill, will help to keep patients out of hospital, so we should start using them urgently.   We must also maximise the number of hospital beds and prepare for a rough winter in the NHS. The challenges for the health service will include Covid, a backlog of patients and a likely resurgence of other respiratory viruses. These viruses were suppressed by last year’s lockdowns, but they are now returning, finding susceptible people with diminished immunity.  But beyond all of that, there is a great deal we should definitely not do. We should not activate ‘Plan B’. There is no evidence that it will achieve any good. The evidence in favour of masks is weak. And introducing mask mandates has never led to a step change in Covid cases. My objections to vaccine passports are even stronger. They are illiberal and discriminatory. Plus, they are largely futile, given the extent of Covid infections among the vaccinated. Data from Public Health England show that most adult Covid cases (though not deaths) are now among the vaccinated. Excluding the unvaccinated minority from large events is therefore unlikely to bring cases down by much.   ‘Plan C’ – ie, more lockdowns – should be ruled out unequivocally. It begs the question of when do we ever stop. I did not support last winter’s lockdowns, as I considered their collateral damage to be disproportionate. But I could understand the logic of those who said that because vaccines were around the corner, we should just be patient for a few more weeks. Now we are wiser to the limits of these vaccines, and there are no further vaccine breakthroughs in sight. To argue for another lockdown now is tantamount to arguing for indefinite and recurring lockdowns, despite all the collateral harms they cause to society. This would clearly be unsustainable. An NHS that is ‘protected’ by indefinite lockdown could not survive very long. The NHS needs a functioning economy to sustain it... from an ethical standpoint, vaccinating kids against Covid begs the question: since when was it children’s duty to protect their elders?   Ultimately, there are three brutal and unavoidable facts we have to contend with. Firstly, SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay. ‘Zero Covid’ is unattainable.  Secondly, the vaccines are extremely valuable but they are imperfect. The protection they confer is incomplete and transient.  Thirdly, we will never develop the kind of herd immunity that squeezes Covid cases down to minimal levels, as with measles or rubella. Instead, as with common-cold coronaviruses, we are destined to live with the virus in a messy ‘dynamic equilibrium’ of occasional infection giving us immunity, followed by waning immunity and then reinfection. This is what ‘living with Covid’ means. And if you haven’t caught the virus yet, you will in time. When it happens, I hope your infection is mild and blunted by the vaccine. Occasional pandemics of respiratory viruses are simply part of the human condition. Boosters and new treatments will help the vulnerable. But new restrictions will merely delay our journey to reaching a dynamic equilibrium, at great cost to society...
  David Livermore is a professor of medical microbiology at the University of East Anglia and is on the editorial board of Collateral Global."

Revealed: The devastating impact Covid-19 and lockdowns had on physical activity - "one million more people became inactive.  The drop-off was especially alarming among young people, with some 446,000 fewer people between the ages of 16 and 24 deemed active compared to the most recent reporting period before the pandemic.  Of the entire adult population, some 12.5 million people (27.5 per cent) averaged less than 30 minutes of even moderately intense exercise a week.   The Active Lives survey, which was published by Sport England, provides the most extensive annual analysis of activity trends and found that existing inequalities relating to ethnicity, socio-economic status and disability were worsened during the various national lockdowns"
Since covid is more deadly to the unfit and the fat, this is a great self-fulfilling prophecy. No wonder covid hystericists love lockdowns

The NHS isn't facing another Covid crisis and Sajid Javid knows it - "In January, 30 per cent of hospital beds were occupied by Covid patients. Now it’s 6 per cent. So it’s not a crisis. It’s not even close.  The huge difference is that, back in January, hardly anyone was vaccinated. Now, 93 per cent of adults are estimated to have antibodies so any new wave of Covid will, as was originally envisaged, meet a wall of vaccinated people. Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, is even arguing against vaccine passports, telling colleagues that they may help vaccine-hesitant countries but could mess things up here. A papers-please ID-card system, he tells colleagues, may breed resentment and give vaccines a bad name.  Contrary to the BMA’s jeremiads, hospitals are doing well. The latest NHS figures show more empty hospital beds (4,940) than beds with Covid patients (4,901). Covid patients do need more resources but it’s worth remembering that even last year, the NHS never did melt down. At the Covid peak last April, at least a third of hospital beds (and ventilators) lay unused, as did the overflow Nightingale centres.   Matt Hancock tended not to pass this information on. It suited his purposes to talk about an NHS on the brink as he thought such scary messages encouraged lockdown compliance. Javid sees it differently: his message is one of reassurance. Covid alarmism, he thinks, can deter millions of patients from seeking the help they need and result in avoidable deaths. His priority now is to keep all healthcare moving and get the waiting list falling – which means keeping calm about Covid... This will be the first cold season in which Britain learns not how to suppress the virus, but how to live with it. To bring back restrictions in a fully vaccinated nation – and one not facing an emergency – risks ushering in a new way of life. These would be new rules not for a pandemic, but for winter. We’re about to test the “new normal”."

Lockdown fanatics should be ashamed of themselves - "At the start of this week, certain people, such as the Labour Party and the “Independent Sage” group of scientists, were calling for coronavirus restrictions to be brought back. They warned that, without them, the NHS would collapse this autumn and winter. They were wrong. As cases have since trended downwards, some of them have gone strangely silent.  These prognosticators of doom have been wrong time after time after time. And not just a little bit wrong – epically wrong, all while morally condemning their more accurate opponents. As cases rose in early July, in the run-up to England’s full reopening on July 19, restrictions advocates said that it was inevitable we would reach 100,000 cases per day. Keir Starmer released a video statement in which he declared that “Boris Johnson’s recklessness means we’re going to have an NHS summer crisis. The Johnson Variant is already out of control.” A set of academics wrote a letter to The Lancet condemning the reopening as a “dangerous and unethical experiment”.  What happened next was that cases crashed, immediately after July 19, in precisely the week my model said that would happen. In late August, after a small rise as behaviour adjusted to the absence of restrictions, cases started falling again. But restrictions advocates were unfazed by their failures of a few weeks before. Next they declared that if restrictions were not reimposed in the autumn, there would be 300,000 new cases per day, with 100,000 per day being inevitable and 200,000 likely... despite being hideously wrong both in the summer and as regards September/October, restrictions advocates still expect us to believe their new prognostications of doom"

The lockdown myths need to be challenged - "  The first myth is that the UK has had the highest Covid death rate in Europe and that this is mainly due to locking down too late in both waves. While it is true that we were highest after the first wave, the situation has changed significantly. Ranked against EU countries, the UK is 11th on Covid deaths and 15th on excess deaths.  Many claim that thousands of lives would have been saved if we had locked down earlier in the first wave, but almost every country with a higher death rate than the UK did lock down early. This gave them very small first waves in spring 2020 but these were followed by very large second waves in the autumn/winter 2021.  really happening Raghib Ali 23 October 2021 • 7:00pm  Calls are growing for restrictions to be introduced in response to rising Covid cases and hospital admissions. While these calls are undoubtedly well-intentioned, I believe that they are often based on certain myths or misunderstandings of the evidence that lead to the effectiveness of lockdowns and restrictions being overestimated.  The first myth is that the UK has had the highest Covid death rate in Europe and that this is mainly due to locking down too late in both waves. While it is true that we were highest after the first wave, the situation has changed significantly. Ranked against EU countries, the UK is 11th on Covid deaths and 15th on excess deaths.  Many claim that thousands of lives would have been saved if we had locked down earlier in the first wave, but almost every country with a higher death rate than the UK did lock down early. This gave them very small first waves in spring 2020 but these were followed by very large second waves in the autumn/winter 2021.    Similarly, the claim that the UK made the same mistake in the second wave and that thousands died due to the failure to have a “circuit-breaker” lockdown last October isn’t supported by the evidence. Wales – which did have one – ended up with similar Covid and excess death rates to England.    The current myth is that the UK has the highest Covid rates in Europe now and this is due to our lack of vaccine passports and mask mandates. But these comparisons are flawed. First, because they are based on case rates and ignore the fact that the UK does a lot more testing (test positivity rates also need to be compared – the UK is about average). Secondly, because other countries are at different stages of their third waves and their immunity will wane later than in the UK because their vaccine programmes started later. The other problem with this interpretation is that Scotland and Wales (which are more valid comparisons) kept their mask mandates and recently brought in vaccine passports, but their rates have been higher than England’s...   The next myth is that only restrictions or lockdowns bring down cases, hospital admissions and deaths. This is clearly not true given what happened in July and September when there were no restrictions and cases fell, most likely due to people voluntarily changing their behaviour in response to risk.  The last myth is that “going early and going hard” with restrictions is always better than waiting. Again, given what happened in July and September when a huge surge was predicted by many, that would have been the wrong advice. Cases actually fell significantly."

Coronavirus in UK: Britons, Unfazed by High Covid Rates, Weigh Their ‘Price of Freedom’ - The New York Times - "For some who objected to Britain’s recurring lockdowns, the return to normalcy was both welcome and overdue. But some said the tensions between freedom and security could easily resurface.  “The intensity has gone out of the debate, but it will come back if there is another wave,” said Jonathan Sumption, a former justice on Britain’s Supreme Court who has been an outspoken critic of the lockdowns.  “If it does come back,” he added, “we’ll then be in the position that even the vaccines don’t work. What is the exit route?”"
Clearly, eternal lockdown is the only solution

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