Wait what? FDA wants 55 years to process FOIA request over vaccine data - "Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA note in court papers that the plaintiffs are seeking a huge amount of vaccine-related material – about 329,000 pages. The plaintiffs, a group of more than 30 professors and scientists from universities including Yale, Harvard, UCLA and Brown, filed suit in September in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, seeking expedited access to the records. They say that releasing the information could help reassure vaccine skeptics that the shot is indeed “safe and effective and, thus, increase confidence in the Pfizer vaccine.” But the FDA can’t simply turn the documents over wholesale. The records must be reviewed to redact “confidential business and trade secret information of Pfizer or BioNTech and personal privacy information of patients who participated in clinical trials,” wrote DOJ lawyers in a joint status report filed Monday. The FDA proposes releasing 500 pages per month on a rolling basis, noting that the branch that would handle the review has only 10 employees and is currently processing about 400 other FOIA requests... Plaintiffs' lawyers argue that their request should be top priority, and that the FDA should release all the material no later than March 3, 2022. “This 108-day period is the same amount of time it took the FDA to review the responsive documents for the far more intricate task of licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine,” wrote Aaron Siri of Siri & Glimstad in New York and John Howie of Howie Law in Dallas in court papers. “The entire purpose of the FOIA is to assure government transparency,” they continued. “It is difficult to imagine a greater need for transparency than immediate disclosure of the documents relied upon by the FDA to license a product that is now being mandated to over 100 million Americans under penalty of losing their careers, their income, their military service status, and far worse.” They also argue that Title 21, subchapter F of the FDA’s own regulations stipulates that the agency “is to make ‘immediately available’ all documents underlying licensure of a vaccine." Given the intense public interest in the vaccine, the plaintiffs' lawyers say that the FDA “should have been preparing to release (the data) simultaneously with the licensure. Instead, it has done the opposite.”... To be sure, most people -- including many who sanctimoniously proclaim “I do my own research” -- lack the expertise to evaluate the information. But the plaintiffs, who also include overseas professors from the UK, Germany, Denmark, Australia and Canada, appear to be well-positioned to do so."
Only "anti-vaxxers" will see a problem with this!
FDA Says It Now Needs 75 Years to Fully Release Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Data - "The Food and Drug Administration is asking a judge to give it 75 years to produce data concerning the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, up 20 years from a previous request."
FDA report finds all-cause mortality higher among vaccinated - "The clinical trials of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine found that the all-cause mortality rate of the vaccinated group was higher than that of the control group, months after the trials were launched, according to a recently released FDA report... The report emphasized that "None of the deaths were considered related to vaccination.""
Pfizer-funded talks falsely suggested rival vaccines might cause cancer, experts say - "at least one prominent scientist has said the presentations spread the kind of misinformation that fuels vaccine hesitancy."
Omicron: Pfizer CEO says we may need fourth Covid vaccine doses sooner than expected - "the two-dose series likely still offers protection against getting severely sick from omicron, the companies said... Pfizer and BioNTech can develop a vaccine that specifically targets omicron by March 2022 should that prove necessary, Bourla said. He said he anticipates new variants to emerge in the future, and the company is monitoring to see if vaccine adjustments are needed."
Soon, you will lose your job if you don't get the booster, since being protected from severe sickness from 2 jabs still won't mean you're fully vaccinated against covid
Pfizer boss: Annual Covid jabs for years to come - "Pfizer has also developed an antiviral pill, Paxlovid, which in trials cut hospital admissions and deaths by nearly 90%... Dr Bourla had a strong message for those who did not want to have vaccines. "For those that are just afraid, the only emotion of human beings stronger than fear is love," he said. "So I am using always this argument that the decision to get another vaccine is not going to influence only your health, it is going to affect the health of others and particularly the health of the people you love the most, because they are the ones that you will interact with. "So take the courage to overcome your fears and do the right thing.""
Annual revenue stream for years to come assured! It is more profitable to jab the whole population every year than to treat high risk populations who do actually have serious covid symptoms
They are still preventing the vaccine is great for reducing transmission (when, sotto voce, the supposed justification for vaccine apartheid is to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed). Ironically, even before Delta, Public Health England data suggested that Pfizer/AstraZeneca only reduced transmission by 40-60%, and 50% is the WHO's vaccine effectiveness threshold
Pfizer Claims Vaccine Will Reduce Average Daily Child COVID Deaths From Almost Zero To Almost Zero | The Babylon Bee - "In a moment celebrated by all hard-working lobbyists, Pfizer announced that the COVID-19 vaccine will reduce average daily child COVID deaths from almost zero all the way down to almost zero."
Pfizer is brutalized after posting what many call an extremely "disturbing" meme in "Science" - "Gee, nothing says “science” quite like posting a meme of a genderless humanoid blob being hugged and comforted by a giant, shapeless, pink pharmaceutical lab blob, right? Well, apparently that’s how Pfizer sees the world because it’s the meme they posted to comfort everyone about “misinformation” and it scared a lot of people. Pfizer thought they would be smart and dismiss what they call “wild conspiracy theories” about their COVID vaccine with this bizarre blobby meme, which looks like something straight out of a dystopian comic. And really, if you want to talk about disinformation, look no further than the humanoid blob that occupies the White House. This is the guy who went to a CNN town hall and told the world that if they got any of the COVID vaccines they wouldn’t get COVID. As we know now, that was wildly erroneous misinformation that was actually very dangerous. Note that Pfizer has disabled comments, so people cannot comment directly under the meme. What are they afraid of?"
Did Biden Say You Won't Get COVID if You're Vaccinated? - "During a July 2021 CNN town hall, U.S. President Joe Biden falsely stated that "You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations," and "If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU unit, and you’re not going to die."
Covid vaccines: Pfizer CEO says people who spread misinformation on shots are 'criminals'
Especially considering that last year's misinformation is this year's fact (or plausibility)...
PolitiFact | Sun exposure does not kill the coronavirus - "There is no evidence that sun exposure kills the coronavirus, known officially as COVID-19. UNICEF has debunked the claim. (UNICEF is a humanitarian organization, not a public health institution.)"
Sunlight linked with lower COVID-19 deaths, study shows
Hong Kong’s covid rules and extreme quarantine drive exodus of foreign talent - The Washington Post - "With China exercising ever-tighter control over Hong Kong, the city is hewing to the country’s strict “zero covid” policy extolled by Beijing as evidence of a superior political system. Yet the approach has largely cut off Hong Kong from both China and the world — a severe blow for a place that built its success on global connections. Even more than recent political changes, the authorities’ refusal to adapt to living with the virus is eroding Hong Kong’s viability as an international city, according to almost two dozen diplomats, chambers of commerce, recruiters, pilots and other expatriates. The resultant brain drain is altering the face of the financial hub, which some Western companies now consider a hardship post, as fewer people are willing to take the places of those leaving. The number of overseas professionals and investors admitted to Hong Kong under its general employment program dropped from about 41,000 in 2019 to 15,000 last year and 10,000 through the third quarter of 2021, immigration data shows. With quarantine rules unlikely to be lifted within the next year, departures of foreign businesspeople and other expatriates are set to accelerate. “The long-term damage has already been done to Hong Kong’s viability,” said one senior Western diplomat. “There is an absolute lack of predictability that businesses don’t like.” Authorities have defended the approach, insisting on the need to keep the virus out — a goal health experts say is unsustainable — as they prioritize reopening to mainland China. The strict measures already included collecting stool samples from young children in hotel quarantine. This month, the omicron variant’s spread led Hong Kong to further tighten rules, lengthening quarantines for most arrivals and threatening holiday travel plans with sudden flight bans for airlines that unwittingly bring in even a few infected passengers. In a survey released this month, the British Chamber of Commerce found that 70 percent of respondents hoping to add staff in Hong Kong had encountered difficulties, with many citing quarantine restrictions. “As the rest of the world opens up to international travel, there is a risk that Hong Kong will become increasingly isolated as an international business center,” an overview of the results said, adding that senior executives were relocating to Singapore or Dubai, where borders are more open. Jan Willem Moller, chairman of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, said that about a quarter of Dutch businesspeople have left this year, and that the departures would “increase significantly” if the quarantine rules stay in place. “Inflow has pretty much dried up, as well,” he said, adding that colleagues at other chambers reported similar patterns. On the front line of quarantine restrictions are pilots, especially at Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific. Some have been on “closed loop” rotations, alternating between working and isolating for extended periods before they can reenter the community. On layovers, pilots and aircrews are forbidden to leave their hotel rooms, keeping them in a hermetically sealed bubble. Cathay has occasionally tried to force hotels overseas to provide its pilots and aircrews with single-use card keys to stop them from leaving their rooms... “A lot of colleagues are at breaking point,” said one pilot who resigned recently after more than 15 years flying for Cathay. “I’m tired, and I can’t see the future.” At least 240 Cathay pilots have quit since May, according to employees who reviewed internal numbers. The carrier is reeling, with staff morale at “rock bottom” after hefty pay cuts last year and more departures imminent... the Oneworld Cockpit Crew Coalition, a federation of pilot unions from the Oneworld network, which includes Cathay, said the airline’s pilots faced “untenable” working conditions. One pilot who has flown with Cathay for more than 20 years said the exodus “is only just beginning.” “Another year, two years, three years or more of quarantine in Hong Kong and there will be almost nobody left. Some pilots haven’t seen their wife and children for two years”... Tightened quarantine measures have led other carriers, including British Airways and Swiss International Air Lines, to suspend Hong Kong flights. Cargo operator FedEx said last month that it would shut its crew base in the city and relocate pilots over the next 16 months... “With pretty much every expert agreeing that unfortunately covid-19 is here to stay, what exactly is China or Hong Kong’s end game?” On top of the quarantine rules, Hong Kong temporarily bans flights by airlines found to be carrying at least four passengers who test positive for the virus on arrival. Qatar Airways, Nepal Airlines, Air India, Korean Air and Cathay Pacific routes from some cities are currently subject to bans, which are often announced with little warning, throwing travel plans into disarray. Three of these routes, including Cathay Pacific flights from London to Hong Kong, were banned just before Christmas. Flight changes have prevented people from seeing dying relatives and complicated travelers’ efforts to return to Hong Kong. A shortage of rooms at quarantine hotels has added to the frustration. Meanwhile, businesses including banks, media and restaurant groups have begun to pay staff thousands of dollars to offset the costs of quarantine, adding to the burden of operating in one of the world’s most expensive cities... Officials have tried to offer sweeteners in the interim. In an interview with local media, Eddie Yue, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the de facto central bank, said that it had put together a team to deliver “wine and gourmet food” to quarantined finance workers in hopes of making them “less angry with Hong Kong.”"
Scott Adams on Twitter - "Here's the Fake News telling you in 2020 that using UV Light as a disinfectant inside the body is a bad idea and (so Trump could be wrong).
Here are the trial results for using light as a disinfectant inside the body. It worked. Conclusion: Trump asked a well-informed question on a topic his own "experts" did not yet know about.
Here's the full transcript of Trump's comments about "injecting a disinfectant" inside the body. Note his references to light at the start and the end are typically edited out for the Fake News clips you have seen. Removing them changes the meaning...
So why haven't more people heard this debunk of the #DrinkingBleachHoax? One reason might be that Google removed the company's video on it. I assume it is being suppressed on search as well.
If you are a Democrat, you probably never heard the full debunk of the #DrinkingBleachHoax. Look into it and you will find it is like a Rosetta Stone that lets you see the other hoaxes, such as the #FinePeopleHoax the #RussianCollusionHoax and more."
Evidence mounts that Omicron COVID variant is more infectious, less severe than Delta - "the South African Medical Research Council published a report about an Omicron-driven outbreak in the Tshwane district in South Africa’s northern Gauteng province, one of the first areas in the world where Omicron has overtaken Delta as the dominant strain. The researchers wrote that in the past two weeks there has been an “exponential" rise in caseloads, but the surge has not corresponded to a significant uptick in hospitalizations and deaths. “The relatively low number of COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalizations in the general, high care, and ICU wards constitutes a very different picture compared to the beginning of previous waves,” the report said, examining data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital complex... Scientists elsewhere have posited a theory that may explain why Omicron appears to be less severe than previous variants. At Nference, a U.S.-based biomedical data platform, researchers sequenced Omicron and found that part of its genetic code, which is not in other variants, is also present in the common cold. That strand could be a sign that Omicron is evolving to become less severe and more transmissible similar to the evolution of other viruses... a group of researchers led by Carl Pearson, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published a non-peer-reviewed study finding that Omicron may be spreading twice as fast as the Delta variant. But the researchers said they were uncertain whether Omicron was more infectious than Delta or if the variant is simply better than previous strains at evading immune defenses established by previous infections or vaccines... Researchers in Hong Kong say that a case of Omicron transmission in one of the city's quarantine hotels is fueling worries about the variant's potentially high degree of transmissibility. Hong Kong University researchers reported that Omicron likely spread between two fully vaccinated people across the hall from one another even though the patients never left their respective rooms... Researchers are concerned that Omicron's numerous mutations on the spike protein will make it more resistant to vaccines and natural immunity acquired from previous COVID infections. In the coming days and weeks, scientists will likely release neutralization studies projecting how much Omicron may evade existing COVID-19 vaccines. For natural immunity, emerging evidence suggests that Omicron is bypassing the immune defenses built up from earlier infections. Last week, a group of researchers in South Africa posted a preprint study finding that the risk of reinfection was 2.4 times higher with Omicron compared to Beta and Delta."
Obsessing about case counts but ignoring hospitalisations and deaths while still pretending that it is an "epidemic of the unvaccinated" is a great way to sustain moral panic
South Africa Hospitalization Rate Falls 91% in Omicron Wave - "Infections in Gauteng, where South Africa first identified the omicron variant, may have peaked, he said. Infections in North West province may also be peaking, data presented at the press conference showed."
Chise 🧬🧫🦠💉 on Twitter - "HKUMed shows Omicron infects and multiplies 70X faster than Delta in the human bronchus, which may explain why it transmits faster, BUT also shows Omicron infection in the lung is significantly LOWER than the original virus, which may be an indicator of lower disease severity... In contrast, Omicron variant replicated LESS efficiently (MORE than 10X lower) in the human lung tissue than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, which may suggest lower severity of disease."
Dr ANGELIQUE COETZEE, who discovered Omicron says we are over-reacting to the threat - "As chair of the South African Medical Association and a GP of 33 years’ standing, I have seen a lot over my medical career. But nothing has prepared me for the extraordinary global reaction that met my announcement this week that I had seen a young man in my surgery who had a case of Covid that turned out to be the Omicron variant... nothing I have seen about this new variant warrants the extreme action the UK government has taken in response to it. No one here in South Africa is known to have been hospitalised with the Omicron variant, nor is anyone here believed to have fallen seriously ill with it. Yet Britain and other European nations have reacted with heavy travel restrictions on flights from across southern Africa, as well as imposing tighter rules at home on mask-wearing, fines and extended quarantines. The simple truth is: we don’t know yet anywhere near enough about Omicron to make such judgments or to impose such policies. In South Africa, we’ve retained a sense of perspective. We’ve had no new regulations or talk of lockdowns because we’re waiting to see what the variant actually means. We’ve also become accustomed here to new Covid variants emerging. So when our scientists confirmed the discovery of yet another, nobody made a huge thing of it. Many people didn’t even notice... If, as some evidence suggests, Omicron turns out to be a fast-spreading virus with mostly mild symptoms for the majority of the people who catch it, that would be a useful step on the road to herd immunity... the reality is that Covid is something we have to learn to live with. Look after yourself and get your vaccines. Above all, don’t panic – and that goes for governments as well."co
This is good evidence that the whole response to covid is essentially political
Study: Omicron risk of hospitalization, death is 54% lower than Delta - "A new study from Public Health Ontario suggests the Omicron COVID-19 variant causes less severe illness."
South Africa study suggests Omicron could displace Delta - "Research by South African scientists suggests that Omicron could displace the Delta variant of the coronavirus because infection with the new variant boosts immunity to the older one."
Omicron is ‘not the same disease’ as earlier Covid waves, says UK scientist - "Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University and the government’s life sciences adviser, said that although hospital admissions had increased in recent weeks as Omicron spreads through the population, the disease “appears to be less severe and many people spend a relatively short time in hospital”. Fewer patients were needing high-flow oxygen and the average length of stay was down to three days... Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said people with Covid should eventually be allowed to “go about their normal lives” as they would with a common cold."
Recent COVID-19 Trends Suggest That Initial Fears of Omicron Were Overwrought - "The U.K. likewise has seen a dramatic increase in daily new cases but only a modest increase in hospitalizations, which in turn seem to involve fewer severe cases than they did during the last surge. "[The] number of patients with covid-19 in English hospitals is definitely rising, but not precipitately so," Chris Hopson, CEO of NHS Providers, which represents British health care workers, reported in a Twitter thread yesterday. Here is how he summarized his conversations with the heads of the trusts that oversee British hospitals: "What's very interesting is how many are talking about [the] number of asymptomatic patients being admitted to hospital for other reasons and then testing positive for Covid. Some are describing this as 'incidental Covid.'" Hopson said hospitals are "not, at moment, reporting large numbers of patients with severe Covid type respiratory problems needing critical care.""
This won't stop the mischievous conflation of protection from serious disease and protection from infection used to push boosters
Three doses of China’s Sinovac do pretty much nothing against omicron: Study - "While much is still unknown about how Sinovac’s shot holds up to omicron — including how T cells, the immune system’s weapon against virus-infected cells, will respond — the initial results are a blow to those who have received CoronaVac. There have been more than 2.3 billion doses of the shot produced and shipped out, mostly in China and the developing world."
Commentary: Omicron and travel restrictions – uncertain environment is destroying passenger confidence - " The uncertain environment is destroying passenger confidence, leading many Singapore travellers to delay their first trips since the start of the pandemic. They fear restrictions will tighten further, adding hassle to an already stressful travel experience and possible quarantine requirements by the time they return. Singapore has also become an even less attractive destination for potential tourists due to the uncertainty and a new daily testing requirement for the vaccinated travel lane (VTL) scheme. Singapore was already struggling to recover international tourism compared to other destinations. Local restrictions were unappealing. People were also unable to pursue multi-country itineraries using Singapore as a stopover or jumping off point. The VTLs have so far mainly attracted Singapore residents and overseas travellers visiting friends and relatives in Singapore rather than those visiting purely for leisure purposes. The outlook for Singapore’s tourism sector was already rather dismal and is now even bleaker. Hotels have lost most of their quarantine business, which has been a lifeline since March 2020 but is now limited to a relatively small group of countries due to the introduction of VTLs and home quarantine becoming the default option for travellers from nearly 100 countries. Most hotels will again have to rely mainly on overseas visitors as staycations is a limited market. However, visitor numbers will be a tiny fraction of what they were prior to the pandemic for at least several months. Omicron has already prompted two of Singapore’s largest source markets for tourism, Australia (New South Wales and Victoria) and India, to reintroduce quarantine requirements, essentially killing what was already relatively subdued leisure demand. Singapore’s largest source market, China, had not yet reopened and was already not expected to permit quarantine free travel for at least several months. Singapore’s second largest source market, Indonesia, also still had quarantine requirements before Omicron. These were expected to lift soon but Indonesia has instead now tightened quarantine rules, making it unlikely two-way quarantine free travel with Singapore will be established for at least a few months. China accounted for 17 per cent of all visitors landing at Changi in 2019 followed by Indonesia with 13 per cent, India with 8 per cent and Australia with 7 per cent... Singapore has kept the door open, electing not to follow some countries that have shut the borders to all visitors, but the requirements are so cumbersome and the risk of travelling is so high, most travellers will be scared away... Earlier VTLs focused primarily on long-haul markets in Europe and North America, which account for a relatively small share of Singapore’s pre-pandemic passenger traffic, despite being economically important... The onerous requirements and the stress of international air travel were already impacting demand, to the point the VTL cap for most countries was not yet an issue although seats on VTL flights were close to being sold out from some countries during peak days... A smoother recovery is only possible once there is more consensus and uniformity in the governmental response to new variants. There has been huge variation. Many responses do not make sense and seem arbitrary rather than based on data or science. Politics and a lack of consensus over border policies and travel protocols are the major impediment in resuming international travel. In the Asia Pacific, where international passenger traffic was still down by about 95 per cent in October (including in Singapore), this has particularly been an issue. The situation was only starting to improve in November as several countries began reopening. Many have now slammed on the brakes, making it hard to confidently plan any overseas trips. Omicron shows how precarious the situation still is and how difficult it will be to transition to an endemic state where borders stay open and confidence in international air travel can be restored."
Omicron’s rapid spread shreds budding recovery in air travel - "Requirements vary and can change rapidly, making air travel a befuddling proposition for those in a position to consider it. Over the weekend, the UK added a pre-flight test requirement for all incoming travellers, while the US said it’s reviewing policies on a daily basis. Japan backtracked on a plan to stop inbound flight reservations... “Pent-up demand will come back, it’s just that there needs to be clarity on what those travel rules and restrictions are,” said Goh, adding that the confused response to omicron “does not necessarily bode well for the next variant.”"
liv 🐝 on Twitter - ""once covid is over" is starting to sound like "once I finish this shroud for Laertes""
Cody Gamble on Twitter - "Imagine the outrage if the state enforced weight loss mandates for "the obese to relieve the health care system"
ZUBY: on Twitter - "Do you know the darkest realisation I've had over the past year? It's not about the governmental overreach... It's not the bastardisation of science... It's the realisation that a significant % of my fellow citizens would turn on me if instructed to by an 'authority'."
Anti-Vaxxers Are Terrified the Government Will ‘Enforce’ a Vaccine for Coronavirus - "Anti-vax groups on social media are claiming that the spread of the disease will lead to mandatory vaccinations and 'unlimited surveillance.'... This is a common theme in the anti-vax world, and conspiracy theorist communities more broadly: that every disease outbreak is a pretext to enforce a secret, frequently sinister agenda. (Conspiracy theorists of all stripes have already seized on that idea; almost as soon as the disease started to spread, they were busily peddling paranoia alongside xenophobia and bullshit treatments.) In this case, they have a real-world data point to draw on: the way the Chinese government is furiously cracking down on dissenting voices who criticize its response to the outbreak... The consensus now seems to be that while there’s no coronavirus vaccine yet, it’ll soon be impressed on an unwilling population, along with other vaccines. “Of course, they will enforce another vaccination,” wrote Mark Elkin, who holds himself out on Facebook as an author and “Earth change analyst,” and who has 16,000 followers. “It’s a double sided agenda. Cull the nations and form more control. However, the ‘order out of chaos’ card will be in full effect due to this virus. The infrastructure of the world is in serious trouble and with that comes medical martial law.” (Facebook has pledged to curtail coronavirus misinformation and "harmful content," instead prioritizing what it calls "accurate information and helpful resources" in their search results.) Elkin’s message speedily made its way through Facebook’s still ultra-effective anti-vax grapevine -- despite Facebook's stated goal, beginning in March 2019, of stemming the tide of anti-vaccine misinformation... Elkin's post was shared by a woman named Mary Elizabeth... Elizabeth’s post, in turn, was shared by Larry Cook, the founder of the massive anti-vaccine Facebook page Stop Mandatory Vaccination. Cook is one of the biggest single sources of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media, and the coronavirus has made him busy... Cook is also resharing old rumor-mongering posts from Stop Mandatory Vaccination, lightly updated for the coronavirus crisis—for instance, claiming that the CDC will impose “indefinite detainment, forced vaccination and unlimited surveillance.” “Make no mistake, the purpose of the Coronavirus is to help usher in vaccine mandates,” Cook wrote in yet another post. “Be Woke. Know the Plan. Prepare. Resist.” A Facebook spokesperson tells us, “We are connecting people with authoritative information from regional and global health organizations, as well as from our third-party fact-checking partners." Referring to Stop Mandatory Vaccination and Chem Free Kids, they add, "Both of these Pages have educational pop-ups that direct people to credible information from the CDC and posts rated false by fact-checkers.”... Bigtree is one of the filmmakers behind the anti-vaccine movie Vaxxed, on which he worked with Andrew Wakefield, the now discredited former gastroenterologist who first suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Bigtree, on his radio show The Highwire, also promoted claims that coronavirus was made in lab. This idea was so exciting that The Highwire sent out a press release, which is currently being hosted on the Associated Press site for press releases, lending it a thin but shiny veneer of respectability... The state of rising global panic is good for social media engagement, and good for peddling bogus cures. But vaccine opponents in the U.S. are also clearly hoping it’ll do something else: enlist future warriors in their fight against vaccines at the legislative level. “Right now there are laws trying to be passed in New Jersey that are going to take away your right to opt out of a future coronavirus vaccine,” Bigtree proclaimed on Press For Truth, apparently referring to a recent bill that would have ended religious exemptions for vaccines, but which died in January. “Laws are being dropped in states all across this country. That’s what you have to get involved with. That’s what you have to worry about.”"
From Feb 28, 2020
So much for mandatory vaccines and the lab leak hypothesis being paranoid far right conspiracy theories
Meme - "IT'S NOT COERCION! YOU HAVE A CHOICE. *Woman held up at gunpoint*"
Omicron study concludes variant more resistant to coronavirus vaccines, causes less severe covid - The Washington Post - "He said the disease may be less severe in South Africa because more than 70 percent of the population had already been exposed to the coronavirus."
Ironically, this is a good advertisement for natural immunity, but it won't stop natural immunity being ignored in the quest to get everyone jabbed multiple times, possibly for the rest of all time
Chris Selley: The experts making apocalyptic Omicron predictions lost our trust long ago - "“This will reach every single person,” another U of T professor and science table member, Peter Juni, told both CTV News and the Star. (In his CTV interview Juni described as a “myth” the idea that Omicron might cause milder symptoms than other variants, but also, confusingly, said that ”we simply don’t know” what Omicron really has in store for us.)... it’s an odd thing: Even amid the uncertainty and apocalyptic predictions, calls for lockdown measures such as we have seen in the past aren’t nearly as strident this time around. There’s little evidence Canadians wouldn’t put up with closing restaurants, bars, gyms and swimming pools: Léger’s latest poll for the Association for Canadian Studies, released last week, found 68 per cent of Canadians (and 71 per cent of Ontarians) would support “reintroducing … lockdown restrictions in Canada” in the face of the Omicron variant. But most expert calls for action, even from those predicting massive rates of infection, have thus far focused on improving ventilation in schools and other indoor spaces, on quickening the pace and expanding the availability of vaccine booster shots, and on rapid testing... It could not really have been more obvious that these leading medical minds had a bred-in-the-bone antipathy to rapid testing — goodness knows where it came from — and were crafting their arguments to fit it. “PCR tests are more accurate than rapid antigen tests, therefore we shouldn’t allow rapid antigen tests” is the sort of perfect-defeating-the-good logic that one often hears in activist circles. It has no business coming out of a doctor’s mouth. We’ve heard a lot about how much politicians let Canadians down since March 2020, and quite rightly. But Canadians can vote those politicians out. When this is over, the medical and public-health communities have just as many existential questions to ask themselves about what they said, why they said it, and what damage they have done to the “trust the experts” mentality that generally serves us very well."
Are we overhyping the threat of Omicron? - "The Omicron known unknowns can be overcome with more evidence and data. Acquiring such evidence can help attain an accurate perception of the threat. But this takes time and effort, and it doesn’t make for exciting headlines. As a society, we are more accustomed to receiving snippets of information from a few sources. And, as a result, we have become impatient and lazy. This evidence vacuum leads to disagreements, unchecked opinions, and the outsourcing of decisions to third parties about how we go about our daily lives. In consequence, as a society, we are becoming accustomed to being told what to do. Individuals can readily project their anxieties on to others – as many experts have done. In a state of ignorance and fear, the threat is distorted and bad decisions can follow. When evidence is de-emphasised and the role of experts is overemphasised, this fosters paternalistic and authoritarian policies. Medicine itself has long dispensed with such paternalistic attitudes. Instead, clinicians seek to inform patients about what they may want or need to know. They share information, recognising a patient’s autonomy, values and his or her need to be informed about the risks and benefits of any given intervention. Dealing with uncertainty is a vital part of medical training due to its importance for informing decisions. Clinicians who can’t tolerate uncertainty are more likely to over-test, over-interpret results and over-refer patients. Such intolerance further increases stress and burnout, and can lead to poor prescribing and have other detrimental effects on patients... Answers to very complex questions become black and white. Uncertainty is suppressed as it instills a sense of dread about what’s next. What follows are political attempts to provide plausible protection from known unknowns. The threat has to be ramped up – and so, in this case, the increased transmissibility of Omicron is discussed as though it is incontrovertible. The failure to reduce uncertainties is the single most abject failure of the response to the pandemic. Nearly two years in, we have still not researched the impact of those interventions that affect the whole of society – those interventions regularly rolled out when the threat is heightened, which lead to profound societal disruption and divisions... politicians and other experts who are intolerant of uncertainty will only seek to increase the sense of threat and instigate control measures based on little or no evidence. In the face of uncertainty, the wise learn to watch and wait."
Covid antibody rates more than 50 per cent higher than roadmap predictions - "Antibody rates are now more than 50 per cent higher than epidemiologists predicted they would be when they published models which informed the Covid roadmap. In February, Imperial College warned that only 44.6 per cent of the population would be protected by the original lockdown release day of June 21. But the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that eight in 10 people over the age of 16 now have antibodies to Covid."
Of course we are still told that covid modelling is very accurate
