Defund the CDC On July 16, 2021, the CDC manipulated their data and lied: calling it a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" — using mostly January/February 2021 unweighted data when over 98% of total Americans were still unvaccinated; that lie was repeated thousands of times on major media news networks. Demand Congress to investigate this lie — and hold the CDC accountable!

News media, the CDC, politicians, and pharmaceuticals all vehemently declared that the Covid19 vaccine would prevent infections, stop transmissions, and end the pandemic. Anybody who disagreed was vilified by the press — and banned from social media: PFIZER Real-World Evidence Confirms High Effectiveness of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and Profound Public Health Impact of Vaccination One Year After Pandemic Declared Thursday, March 11, 2021 - 06:45am "Dramatically lower COVID-19 disease incidence rates observed in individuals fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.... These new data build upon and confirm previously released data from the MoH demonstrating the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.... " CBS Pfizer vaccine 97% effective against symptomatic COVID-19, study shows UPDATED ON: MARCH 11, 2021 7:14 PM CBS/AFP "Pfizer-BioNtech's coronavirus vaccine offers more protection than earlier thought, with effectiveness in preventing symptomatic disease reaching 97%, according to real-world evidence published Thursday by the pharma companies." Real-world vaccine study shows 99% effective rate By Briona Arradondo Published May 26, 2021 Updated May 27, 2021 "A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how well COVID-19 vaccines protect against the virus as you reenter society. The four-month study from January 1 to April 30 found that out of 101 million fully vaccinated people, only 10,000 - .01% - contracted COVID-19." WASHINGTON POST Experts urge faster vaccinations and efforts to curb spread in response to virus variants By Paulina Firozi January 31, 2021 at 2:03 p.m. EST "The pace of vaccinations appears to be slowly ticking up amid concerns about how the emergence of more transmissible coronavirus variants will affect U.S. efforts to crush the pandemic... Meanwhile, experts are calling for dual efforts to address the emergence of the variants by ramping up vaccinations and by continuing to underline the need for safety protocols to curb transmission.... Experts say a faster pace for vaccinations will be key." GOV A Study to Evaluate Efficacy, Safety, and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older to Prevent COVID-19 First Posted : July 14, 2020 "The mRNA-1273 vaccine is being developed to prevent COVID-19, the disease resulting from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection." LIVE SCIENCE COVID-19 vaccines: What does 95% efficacy actually mean? By Anna Nowogrodzki February 11, 2021 "What the 95% actually means is that vaccinated people had a 95% lower risk of getting COVID-19 compared with the control group participants, who weren't vaccinated. In other words, vaccinated people in the Pfizer clinical trial were 20 times less likely than the control group to get COVID-19." National Public Radio Vaccine Refusal May Put Herd Immunity At Risk, Researchers Warn April 7, 2021 10:52 AM ET Geoff Brumfiel "Reaching high levels of vaccination would mean new outbreaks of the coronavirus would die down quickly, as opposed to growing and spreading." Transcript: The Rachel Maddow Show, 3/29/21 Guests: Rochelle Walensky (CDC), Brandt Williams Rochelle Walensky: "Instead of the virus being able to hop from person to person to person, potentially mutating and becoming more virulent and drug resistant along the way, now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person." CDC.GOV CDC Real-World Study Confirms Protective Benefits of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Embargoed until: 11 a.m. ET, Monday, March 29, 2021 "A new CDC study provides strong evidence that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections in real-world conditions among health care personnel, first responders, and other essential workers." WhiteHouse.GOV Remarks by President Biden in a CNN Mount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, Ohio July 21, 2021 President Joe Biden: "You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations" NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH Prevention of COVID-19 Transmission by Covered Entities Effective date: 8/26/21 "The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. They offer the benefit of helping to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections, including the Delta variant, which is a critical component to protecting public health. Certain settings, such as healthcare facilities and congregate care settings, pose increased challenges and urgency for controlling the spread of this disease because of the vulnerable patient and resident populations that they serve. Unvaccinated personnel in such settings have an unacceptably high risk of both acquiring COVID-19 and transmitting the virus ..." NPR Biden issues new rules for international travelers October 25, 2021 4:31 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered "In two weeks, most people traveling to the U.S. from overseas will have to provide proof of vaccination. It's all part of the reopening of international travel that had been shut down for more than a year." Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine December 31, 2020 N Engl J Med 2020; 383:2603-2615 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 "Funded by BioNTech and Pfizer. The results demonstrate that Covid-19 can be prevented by immunization, provide proof of concept that RNA-based vaccines are a promising new approach for protecting humans against infectious diseases, and demonstrate the speed with which an RNA-based vaccine can be developed with a sufficient investment of resources." How many people need to get a COVID-19 vaccine in order to stop the coronavirus? Published: January 5, 2021 8.08am EST "Clinical trials have shown that once a person gets vaccinated for the coronavirus, they won’t get sick with COVID-19. .... When enough of the population is vaccinated, the virus has a hard time finding new people to infect, and the epidemic starts dying out. And not everyone needs to be vaccinated, just enough people to stop the virus from spreading out of control. The number of people who need to be vaccinated is known as the critical vaccination level. Once a population reaches that number, you get herd immunity. Herd immunity is when there are so many vaccinated people that an infected person can hardly find anyone who could get infected, and so the virus cannot propagate to other people." NEW YORK TIMES 2 Companies Say Their Vaccines Are 95% Effective. What Does That Mean? By Carl Zimmer Published Nov. 20, 2020 "Vaccines don’t protect only the people who get them. Because they slow the spread of the virus, they can, over time, also drive down new infection rates and protect society as a whole." CNN Fauci: Vaccinations will help coronavirus variants from emerging By Theresa Waldrop, Dakin Andone and Madeline Holcombe, CNN Updated 2:51 AM EST, Fri January 22, 2021 "Covid-19 vaccinations will not only help stop the virus from spreading, they will also hamper the coronavirus’ ability to mutate into new variants, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday. " NEW YORK TIMES Biden Mandates Vaccines for Workers, Saying, ‘Our Patience Is Wearing Thin’ By Katie Rogers and Sheryl Gay Stolberg Published Sept. 9, 2021 "Experts say vaccine mandates are highly effective at preventing the spread of infectious disease.... But the vaccination rate has yet to help the nation cross the threshold of “herd immunity” — the tipping point that occurs when widespread vaccination, coupled with natural immunity, slows the spread of a virus. ...“When you have 75 to 80 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated, who don’t get vaccinated, you’re going to have a dynamic of continual smoldering spread of the infection,” Mr. Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, warned in an interview, adding, “It’s very frustrating, because we have the wherewithal within our power to be able to actually suppress it.”" National Public Radio Challenges low income countries are facing July 11, 2022 4:18 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered "We have been able to help shore up surge staffing for campaign events, and we have proven that in four to 10 weeks, you can double, triple, quadruple the number of people being vaccinated.... The number of deaths in the world depend on us being supportive of getting the whole world to stop the pandemic." Only 2 ‘breakthrough’ infections among hundreds of fully vaccinated people, new study finds By Jacqueline Howard, CNN Updated 7:35 AM EDT, Thu April 22, 2021 "For fully vaccinated people, the risk of still getting Covid-19 – described as “breakthrough infections” – remains extremely low, a new study out of New York suggests." PBS NPR WHYY What is a breakthrough COVID infection? How can I avoid it? By Zoë Read August 9, 2021 "Most epidemiologists agree that a breakthrough case occurs when a person who has been fully vaccinated becomes infected with the coronavirus. That infection could manifest as anything from asymptomatic, to mild symptoms, to severe symptoms that result in hospitalization or even death." Could a universal coronavirus vaccine be the silver bullet that ends this pandemic—and the next? Erin Prater Sun, July 10, 2022 at 2:18 PM 6 min read First-generation vaccines were not the panacea hoped for in COVID-19’s early days. Nor did herd immunity swoop in and save the day. Could a so-called “pan-coronavirus” vaccine be the long-awaited silver bullet that ends the COVID pandemic—and the next one, too? CNBC There's a major thing people are missing about Covid boosters—and it's really important Cory Stieg Published Thu, Sep 16 2021 9:24 AM EDT Updated Thu, Sep 16 2021 1:05 PM EDT ..."Vaccines are designed to prevent serious illness, not to prevent infection or prevent any symptoms," Dr. Anna Durbin, director of the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said during a briefing Wednesday. LANCET JOURNAL COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified Volume 398, ISSUE 10314, P1871, November 20, 2021 Günter Kampf Published: November 20, 2021 "In the USA and Germany, high-level officials have used the term pandemic of the unvaccinated, suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19.... There is increasing evidence that vaccinated individuals continue to have a relevant role in transmission. In Massachusetts, USA, a total of 469 new COVID-19 cases were detected during various events in July, 2021, and 346 (74%) of these cases were in people who were fully or partly vaccinated, 274 (79%) of whom were symptomatic.... It is therefore wrong and dangerous to speak of a pandemic of the unvaccinated." mRNA Boosters Don’t Block Omicron, South African Study Shows Antony Sguazzin Posted on 06:01 PM IST, 19 Jan 2022 Updated On 07:17 PM IST, 19 Jan 2022 (Bloomberg) — Booster shots with mRNA vaccines such as those made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE failed to block infection with the omicron coronavirus variant in the first study of its kind, South African researchers said. NIH: 2021 Jul 30;11(1):15531. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-94719-y. "COVID-19 vaccines ...do not block infection" NPR Vaccinated People With Breakthrough Infections Can Spread The Delta Variant, CDC Says July 30, 2021 3:34 PM ET Laurel Wamsley "...It also found no significant difference in the viral load present in the breakthrough infections occurring in fully vaccinated people and the other cases, suggesting the viral load of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with the coronavirus is similar. The CDC said the finding that fully vaccinated people could spread the virus was behind its move to change its mask guidance. "High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC's director, said in a statement Friday....."    On July 22, 2022, former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said that vaccines do not work, so instead we have another scam for Wallstreet to get rich: "I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines, and it made people then worry that it's not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization. It will. But let's be very clear: 50% of the people who died from the Omicron surge were older, vaccinated. So that's why I'm saying even if you're vaccinated and boosted, if you're unvaccinated right now, the key is testing and $ Paxlovid $." Fully vaccinated people who get a Covid-19 breakthrough infection can transmit the virus, CDC chief says By Madeline Holcombe and Christina Maxouris, CNN Updated 2:21 AM EDT, Fri August 6, 2021 “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death – they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.” (but did they ever work to prevent infection for any variant?) CNN Why vaccinated people dying from Covid-19 doesn’t mean the vaccines are ineffective By Katia Hetter, CNN Updated 8:27 AM EDT, Tue October 19, 2021 "Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell died on Monday of Covid-19 complications. His family announced that he was fully vaccinated." (but does it really prevent severe illness?) Opinion: The false 'pandemic of the unvaccinated' motto did lasting harm President Biden's comments were enormously divisive to the country, and they were also factually incorrect. By Brian Myers Published 8:32 a.m. CT April 17, 2022 "Back in early November of 2020, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced that data from clinical trials had demonstrated that its new vaccine was 95% effective one week after the second dose. By “effective,” they meant that the vaccinated individual was protected from infection for a period of time, and that was, no doubt, how it was understood by everyone who heard the news.... The narrative was simple: Get vaccinated and you won’t get sick. Don’t get vaccinated and not only can you get sick, but you’ll be a threat to everybody else.... But it was enormously divisive to the country. It was also factually incorrect. LANCET JOURNAL What is the vaccine effect on reducing transmission in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant? Volume 22, ISSUE 2, P152-153, February 01, 2022 Annelies Wilder-Smith "However, this study unfortunately also highlights that the vaccine effect on reducing transmission is minimal in the context of delta variant circulation." TIME What to Know About Getting a Second COVID-19 Booster By Alice Park April 14, 2022 10:56 AM EDT "At this point, COVID-19 vaccines have been available for well over a year in the U.S. But the shots weren’t designed to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, and the immunity generated by the vaccines wanes, so the virus continues to mutate and become even more transmissible—and infect even the vaccinated." Newer subvariants are ‘most resistant’ to COVID vaccines, antibody drugs, study says Julia Marnin December 16, 2022, 2:26 PM 5 min read "Overall, the newer subvariants were “barely susceptible” to the neutralizing capabilities of the original and updated COVID-19 vaccines, researchers wrote." (did they ever work for any variant?) Syracuse judge strikes down NY vaccine mandate for health workers, rules state overstepped its authority Updated: Jan. 14, 2023, 3:34 p.m. Published: Jan. 14, 2023, 8:33 a.m. By Fernando Alba Syracuse, N.Y. — A state Supreme Court judge in Syracuse on Friday struck down a statewide mandate for medical staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Judge Gerard Neri ruled that Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s health department overstepped their authority by sidestepping the Legislature and making permanent the mandate meant to limit transmission of Covid in hospitals and healthcare facilities. .. The judge also said the state acknowledges vaccines don’t prevent covid transmission despite the title of the executive order: “Prevention of COVID-19 transmission by covered entities” ... “In true Orwellian fashion, the Respondents acknowledge then-current COVID-19 shots do not prevent transmission,” the judge wrote. COVID booster may lower protection against omicron reinfection, study finds Julia Marnin Thu, November 3, 2022 at 12:18 PM 4 min read “If you got infected with Omicron at any time, a third vaccine dose actually doubles your risk of reinfection compared to 2 doses only,” Dr. Daniele Focosi, who specializes in hematology and works at Pisa University Hospital in Italy, wrote on Twitter in response to the findings. “Amazing immune imprinting at work.” Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Bivalent Vaccine Nabin K. Shrestha, Patrick C. Burke, Amy S. Nowacki, James F. Simon, Amanda Hagen, Steven M. Gordon doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625 Posted December 19, 2022 "Therefore, those who received fewer than 3 doses (>45% of individuals in the study) were not those ineligible to receive the vaccine, but those who chose not to follow the CDC’s recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to have exhibited higher risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses. This is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19. A large study found that those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving three doses of vaccine had a higher risk of reinfection than those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving two doses of vaccine. Another study found that receipt of two or three doses of a mRNA vaccine following prior COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of reinfection than receipt of a single dose." Are vaccines not supposed to prevent transmissions? Are we supposed to take "vaccines" every 3 months, even when they do not prevent the spread of infections? Vaccines with 95-100% efficacy to PREVENT transmission:   Measles, Smallpox, Chickenpox, yellow fever, Polio,   Mumps, Tetanus, Hepatitis A, Diphtheria Rubella declared eradicated from U.S. after vaccine Measles declared eradicated after vaccine Smallpox declared eradicated after vaccine   TED TALK How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected Christine Stabell Benn October 2018 MORE: Is there a pattern of inaccurate information from the CDC? MORE: Does the Covid19 vaccine even prevent severe illness? Does it do anything?

National Public Radio Scientists debate how lethal COVID is. Some say it's now less risky than flu September 16, 2022 5:08 AM ET By Rob Stein Debating the way deaths are counted: The debate over COVID's mortality rate hinges on what counts as a COVID-19 death. Gandhi and other researchers argue that the daily death toll attributed to COVID is exaggerated because many deaths blamed on the disease are actually from other causes. Some of the people who died for other reasons happened to also test positive for the coronavirus. "We are now seeing consistently that more than 70% of our COVID hospitalizations are in that category," says Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease specialist at the Tufts Medical Center and a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. "If you're counting them all as hospitalizations, and then those people die and you count them all as COVID deaths, you are pretty dramatically overcounting." If deaths were classified more accurately, then the daily death toll would be closer to the toll the flu takes during a typical season, Doron says. If this is true, the odds of a person dying if they get a COVID infection — what's called the case fatality rate — would be about the same as the flu now, which is estimated to be around 0.1%, or perhaps even lower. WAMU 1A The Federal Vaccine Mandate — Politics, Healthcare and First Responders November 23, 2021 Jenn White, NPR Host: Is there a sense of fear, among the officers you speak to, especially given the high number of police deaths related Covid? Dr. Carrie Steiner, Therapist with First Responders Wellness Center: ...They really don't see that there's that much of a risk, because they feel like they have been out there this whole time, and only nine officers in Illinois have died this year, from it, and all of the officers that I know of said that they all had underlying conditions; and so they feel that this is really more of an issue for people with underlying conditions, and not the healthy, which is the majority of the first responder community. (listen to audio clip) ... I don't think that, in general, they trust the numbers of how many people have died, because, stories that I've heard, is that they had, like one example, was that somebody died from a heart attack and was 83 years old, and when they went to the hospital, and tested them, he did have Covid, and the family was asked if he had any Covid symptoms, and they said no; but they still classified him as dying from Covid. So I think that most law enforcement and first-responders don't believe that the numbers are accurate. They also feel that if it is that deadly then why aren't more of them dying. And most of them that have gotten it, even if they weren't vaccinated, don't get it very bad; so I think that they are very, very suspicious of this. (listen to audio clip) WASHINGTON POST We are overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations. That’s a problem. By Leana S. Wen Contributing columnist January 13, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST "Dretler also sees patients with multiple concurrent infections. “People who have very low white blood cell counts from chemotherapy might be admitted because of bacterial pneumonia or foot gangrene. They may also have covid, but covid is not the main reason why they’re so sick.” If these patients die, covid might get added to their death certificate along with the other diagnoses. But the coronavirus was not the primary contributor to their death and often played no role at all. Dretler is quick to add that the imprecise reporting is not because of bad intent. There is no truth to the conspiracy theory that hospitals are trying to exaggerate coronavirus numbers for some nefarious purpose. But, he said, “inadvertently overstating risk can make the anxious more anxious and the skeptical more skeptical.” NEW YORK TIMES How Does the Coronavirus Compare With the Flu? By Denise Grady Aug. 25, 2020 "The true death rate could turn out to be similar to that of a severe seasonal flu, below 1 percent, according to an editorial published in the journal by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." MORE: Is there corruption in the Covid19 counting?

Lockdown effects feared to be killing more people than Covid Unexplained excess deaths outstrip those from virus as medics call figures ‘terrifying’ By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 18 August 2022 9:30pm "The Telegraph understands that the Department of Health has ordered an investigation into the figures amid concern that the deaths are linked to delays to and deferment of treatment for conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Over the past two months, the number of excess deaths not from Covid dwarfs the number linked to the virus. It comes amid renewed calls for Covid measures such as compulsory face masks in the winter." Death and Lockdowns There’s no proof that lockdowns save lives but plenty of evidence that they end them. By John Tierney March 21, 2021 John Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal, a contributing science columnist for the New York Times, and coauthor of The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.... City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank.... "The best gauge of the pandemic’s impact is what statisticians call “excess mortality,” which compares the overall number of deaths with the total in previous years. That measure rose among older Americans because of Covid-19, but it rose at an even sharper rate among people aged 15 to 54, and most of those excess deaths were not attributed to the virus." For Americans under 45, there were more excess deaths without the virus in 2020-21 than with it. By Rob Arnott and Casey B. Mulligan Jan. 11, 2023 11:59 am ET "Covid-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it. During the first two years of the pandemic, “excess deaths”—the death toll above the historical trend—markedly exceeded the number of deaths attributed to Covid. In a paper we just published in Inquiry, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that “non-Covid excess deaths” totaled nearly 100,000 a year in 2020 and 2021. Even these numbers likely overestimate deaths from Covid and underestimate those from other causes. Covid testing has become ubiquitous in hospitals, and the official count of “Covid deaths” includes people who tested positive but died of other causes. .... What are non-Covid excess deaths? During the pandemic, deaths from accidents, overdoses, alcoholism and homicide all soared, as did deaths from hypertension, heart disease and diabetes.... The CDC data show the rate of non-Covid excess deaths in the first half of 2022 was even higher than 2020 or 2021. These deaths therefore likely already exceed 250,000, disproportionately among young adults. We are witnessing multiple healthcare emergencies, but resources and attention are still directed toward Covid. Non-Covid excess deaths have shown no signs of diminishing, at least through mid-2022. We now have more overdose deaths each year than all military deaths of the last 60 years combined. Homicides, accidents and alcohol deaths are collectively running tens of thousands per year above pre-pandemic norms." SAE./No.200/January 2022 A LITERATURE REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS ON COVID-19 MORTALITY John Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no [beneficial] effect on COVID-19 mortality. ... While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument. MORE: Excess deaths caused by virus — or by virus prevention measures?

Washington Post Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows By Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating April 29, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT "The vaccinated made up 42 percent of fatalities in January and February during the highly contagious omicron variant’s surge.... Vaccinated people made up slightly less than half the patients in the intensive care units of Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California hospital system in December and January, according to a spokesman." Omicron’s Mutations Impaired Vaccine Effectiveness, CDC Says Madison Muller August 25, 2022 1:28 PM (Bloomberg) -- "Almost 40% of people hospitalized in the US with the Covid subvariant that circulated this spring were vaccinated and boosted..."    On July 22, 2022, former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said that vaccines do not work, so instead we have another scam for Wallstreet to get rich: "I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines, and it made people then worry that it's not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization. It will. But let's be very clear: 50% of the people who died from the Omicron surge were older, vaccinated. So that's why I'm saying even if you're vaccinated and boosted, if you're unvaccinated right now, the key is testing and $ Paxlovid $." CNN Growing share of Covid-19 deaths are among vaccinated people By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Published 7:58 AM EDT, Wed May 11, 2022 "But in January and February, amid the Omicron surge, more than 40% of Covid-19 deaths were among vaccinated people." MORE: See how CDC manipulated data to call it "pandemic of the unvaccinated"

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New York Times There’s much to learn about how the virus spreads By David Leonhardt July 30, 2021 "In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January [2021]. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes." Every U.S. media outlet has repeatedly used this July 16, 2021 CDC phrase and statistic, "pandemic of the unvaccinated", allegedly with "97% of the hospitalizations are unvaccinated" (Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director). The majority of the hospitalizations used to create this CDC statistic are from January 2021 and February 2021, when over 98% of total Americans were still unvaccinated. Obviously its a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" when almost nobody is technically "fully vaccinated." Spread the word of this blatant CDC corruption.   CDC DATA FROM JANUARY 1 TO JUNE 15, 2021* (BEFORE DELTA, YET AFTER ALPHA BEGAN ITS NATURAL DOWNWARD CYCLE) CDC data to used to create "pandemic of the unvaccinated" lie (stated July 16, 2021) Using mostly data from when almost nobody was vaccinated (Over 90% of these fatalities happened when vaccines were not available)   January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021     May 2021 June 1-15 2021 Vaccine NOT yet available to MOST Americans Vaccines available to all Americans over 18 12+ eligible May 10 Feb 25, 2021: Vaccines available to most Seniors 65 & older 18+ eligible April 19; % counted as Fully Vaccinated 0% 2% 7% 19% 41% 48% Majority of CDC Data from when over 98% were unvaccinated 72% of data that CDC used was before vaccines Alpha variant disappearing before vaccines Delta variant surge begins after June 15 not included Official Covid19 Fatalities (vaccinated and unvaccinated) 105,061 48,240 22,975 18,490 14,638 4,284 Percent of CDC Data used for this time period 49% 23% 11% 9% 6% 2% 90% of data that CDC used was before April 19, before vaccines available to 18+ only this 8% of data might be valid % Americans 2 weeks after Fully Vaccinated 0% 2% 7% 19% 41% 48% *Why did the CDC start with January 2021 data to do this analysis? Over 90% of these fatalities in this data happened before widespread vaccine rollout. Of course it is a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" if almost all of the data used by the CDC was before vaccines. This deceptive data practice only proves that all data from the CDC is suspect. MEETING OF THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES (ACIP) July 22, 2021 CDC.GOV "Between January 1, 2021 and June 15, 2021, 98% of hospitalizations and 98.8% of deaths from COVID-19 were in those who were not fully vaccinated." Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization drops, CDC says Aug 30, 2021 11:48 am ABC NEWS "The COVID-19 vaccines' ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly, particularly for those 75 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday during an advisory panel.... The CDC has previously estimated that 97% of people in the hospital being treated for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, but that data was collected before the spread of delta ... " Statistics show the stark risks of not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 COVID-19 has become a "pandemic of the unvaccinated." July 19, 2021, 10:02 AM 8 min read By Meredith Deliso ABC NEWS New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi said the vaccines are "astonishingly effective" while sharing that over 98% of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the city between Jan. 1 and June 15 were in people who were not fully vaccinated. The national picture is unclear, [January 1st] through in mid-June, former White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said in an interview with The Washington Post that "98, 99-plus percent of people that are being hospitalized and dying with COVID have not been vaccinated." Biden's big COVID challenge: Fading vaccines may demand boosters By Caitlin Owens, Sam Baker Aug 12, 2021 - Health "Experts trying to parse how well the vaccines are performing are relying heavily on data from other countries, in part, because the CDC has released very little formal data about the U.S. experience in the months since Delta became dominant." Why ARE COVID cases plummeting? Health Reporter For Dailymail.com and Associated Press February 3, 2021 Health experts say it is too soon for vaccines to be playing a major role in the decline with just 8% of the population having received the first shot and fewer than 2% being fully immunized. CNN Roughly 35.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the US, according to CDC 7:12 p.m. ET, February 4, 2021 From CNN's Deidre McPhillips [Despite major declines, only] about 2% have been fully vaccinated, CDC data shows.

COVID booster may lower protection against omicron reinfection, study finds Julia Marnin Thu, November 3, 2022 at 12:18 PM 4 min read “If you got infected with Omicron at any time, a third vaccine dose actually doubles your risk of reinfection compared to 2 doses only,” Dr. Daniele Focosi, who specializes in hematology and works at Pisa University Hospital in Italy, wrote on Twitter in response to the findings. “Amazing immune imprinting at work.” Irish Times Waterford city district has State’s highest rate of Covid-19 infections County also has highest rate of vaccination take-up in the Republic Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 21:30 Updated: Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 22:05 "Waterford city has one of the Ireland’s highest rates of vaccination against Covid-19, but one of its electoral areas has emerged as the place with the highest rate of Covid-19 infection in the State." London Financial Times Why are fully vaccinated people testing positive for Covid? Oliver Barnes and John Burn-Murdoch in London July 23 2021 "About half of the 460 deaths in the country [England] linked to the Delta strain since February were people who were also fully immunised." Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Bivalent Vaccine Nabin K. Shrestha, Patrick C. Burke, Amy S. Nowacki, James F. Simon, Amanda Hagen, Steven M. Gordon doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625 Posted December 19, 2022 "Therefore, those who received fewer than 3 doses (>45% of individuals in the study) were not those ineligible to receive the vaccine, but those who chose not to follow the CDC’s recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to have exhibited higher risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses. This is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19. A large study found that those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving three doses of vaccine had a higher risk of reinfection than those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving two doses of vaccine. Another study found that receipt of two or three doses of a mRNA vaccine following prior COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of reinfection than receipt of a single dose." Scotland Herald Public Health Scotland pulls Covid case rate data over claims it 'demonstrates conclusively' that vaccines are not working 17th February, 2022 By Helen McArdle Health Correspondent PUBLIC Health Scotland will no longer publish weekly data on Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths from next week after mounting concerns that it is being misused by antivaxxers..... Dr Alexander was referring to a table published by PHS which showed that by the week beginning January 22, the age-standardised Covid case rate per 100,000 in Scotland was 381.5 among the unvaccinated compared to 570 in the double-vaccinated and 447 per 100,000 in the boosted. ... Similar patterns are being seen other countries including England and Ontario in Canada, but PHS officials stress that it has been misunderstood. Highly-vaccinated Vermont has more COVID-19 cases than ever. Why is this happening? Elizabeth Murray, Burlington Free Press Wed, November 10, 2021, 11:40 AM 3 min read "As Vermont reports higher than ever COVID-19 case rates, state health officials have been trying to understand why." Covid case counts set Vermont records, and state data shows concerning trends on fatalities By Mike Dougherty and Erin Petenko Sep 24 2021 "However, the spike in deaths related to the Delta variant has affected vaccinated and unvaccinated Vermonters nearly alike. Vaccinated Vermonters have accounted for roughly 64% of the 42 deaths reported since July 29. That’s the most recent date for which comprehensive data is available, and roughly tracks with estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of when the Delta variant became dominant in the Northeast." Irish county with 99.7% vaccination rate has highest COVID case rate Daniel Horowitz October 28, 2021 "With 99.7% of adults in the Irish county of Waterford having received the COVID shots, they have the highest per-capita case rate of COVID anywhere in the country. Are they now going to suggest it's the fault of the 0.3%?!" National Public Radio The White House Is Expected To Announce A 6-Prong Plan To Address The Pandemic Heard on Morning Edition September 9, 2021 7:15 AM ET "CELINE GOUNDER: It should not be a political decision. It should be coming down through the scientific and regulatory agencies. ... STEIN: And there are other concerns. You know, why is testing still so hard to get? Why is the U.S. relying on Israeli and British data to make crucial decisions? Why isn't the CDC tracking and analyzing all vaccinated people with breakthrough infections in this country way more closely? Here's Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel at the University of Pennsylvania. He's another former Biden adviser. EZEKIEL EMANUEL: The CDC has not done the job it should do for monitoring genetic variants as well as breakthrough. I mean, in May, we stop recording breakthrough infections systematically." mRNA Boosters Don’t Block Omicron, South African Study Shows Antony Sguazzin Posted on 06:01 PM IST, 19 Jan 2022 Updated On 07:17 PM IST, 19 Jan 2022 (Bloomberg) — Booster shots with mRNA vaccines such as those made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE failed to block infection with the omicron coronavirus variant in the first study of its kind, South African researchers said. Planet Money Investigates The Base Rate Fallacy As It Pertains To The Pandemic August 20, 2021 5:07 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition "She found that over one month this summer, 67% of COVID infections there were in people who were fully vaccinated, which sounds really bad.... So in this case, the base rate that we care about is what percentage of the country's population has already been vaccinated. And the answer is 71%. Seventy-one percent of the total population of Iceland has been vaccinated. So that's a lot of people." Chris Whitty warns of ‘very sick’ Covid patients as he urges people to get a jab Aine Fox, Ian Jones and Joe Gammie, PA 20 August 2021, 0:08 pm 5-min read "The UK’s vaccine programme has so far seen around three-quarters of adults in the UK double-jabbed.... Of the 1,076 deaths of people aged 50 or over, 318 (30%) were unvaccinated, 93 (9%) had received one dose of vaccine and 652 (61%) [fully vaccinated] had received both." “Pandemic of the unvaccinated”? At midlife, white people are less vaccinated but still at less risk of Covid-19 mortality in Minnesota Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Kaitlyn M. Berry, Andrew C. Stokes, Jonathon P. Leider doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.02.22271808 "Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults under age 65 were all more highly vaccinated than white populations of the same ages during most of Minnesota's substantial and sustained Delta surge and all of the subsequent Omicron surge. However, white mortality rates were lower than those of all other groups. These disparities were extreme.... This discrepancy between vaccination and mortality patterning by race/ethnicity suggests that, if the current period is a "pandemic of the unvaccinated," it also remains a "pandemic of the disadvantaged" in ways that can decouple from vaccination rates. This result implies an urgent need to center health equity in the development of Covid-19 policy measures." High hopes were riding on the new Omicron boosters this autumn. But they may not work any better than the original Erin Prater Wed, October 26, 2022 at 2:50 PM 3 min read "New Omicron boosters that were initially touted as offering better protection against more recent COVID strains may not be any more effective than the original jabs, according to two new studies published this week." The Washington Post Experts ask to see data behind new policy Joel Achenbach, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ben Guarino and Carolyn Y. Johnson July 28, 2021 But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not publish the new research. In the text of the updated masking guidance, the agency merely cited "CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021." Some outside scientists have their own message: Show us the data. "They're making a claim that people with delta who are vaccinated and unvaccinated have similar levels of viral load, but nobody knows what that means," said Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. "It's meaningless unless we see the data." The Washington Post A majority of Americans in highly vaccinated counties now live in covid hot spots, according to Post analysis Fenit Nirappil August 12, 2021, 8:24 PM 7 min read Two-thirds of Americans in highly vaccinated counties now live in coronavirus hot spots, according to an analysis by The Washington Post CNN FDA vaccine advisers ‘disappointed’ and ‘angry’ that early data about new Covid-19 booster shot wasn’t presented for review last year By Elizabeth Cohen and Naomi Thomas, CNN Published 6:35 AM EST, Wed January 11, 2023 "Some vaccine advisers to the federal government say they’re “disappointed” and “angry” that government scientists and the pharmaceutical company Moderna didn’t present a set of infection data on the company’s new Covid-19 booster during meetings last year when the advisers discussed whether the shot should be authorized and made available to the public. That data suggested the possibility that the updated booster might not be any more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections than the original shots. The data was early and had many limitations, but several advisers told CNN that they were concerned about a lack of transparency....Among the hundreds of participants who received the original vaccine and showed no evidence of a prior Covid-19 infection, over the period of the small study, 1.9% became infected. Among the hundreds who received the new bivalent vaccine, a higher percentage, 3.2%, became infected." COVID-19 deaths in California among vaccinated rose sharply with omicron 10 people died in Santa Cruz County, nine were vaccinated By John Woolfolk, Harriet Blair Rowan and Emily DeRuy PUBLISHED: March 6, 2022 at 5:50 a.m. During a three-week stretch at the height of this winter’s devastating omicron case surge, Santa Cruz County health officials lost 10 patients to COVID-19. All but one were vaccinated, and five had received booster shots. Reuters Vaccinated people make up 75% of recent COVID-19 cases in Singapore Aradhana Aravindan and Chen Lin Fri, July 23, 2021, 6:47 AM 3 min read "Of Singapore's 1,096 locally transmitted infections in the last 28 days, 484, or about 44%, were in fully vaccinated people, while 30% were partially vaccinated and just over 25% were unvaccinated, Thursday's data showed.... Singapore uses the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in its national vaccination programme." COVID: the reason cases are rising among the double vaccinated July 22, 2021 6.01am EDT Updated July 22, 2021 6.08am EDT Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, has announced that 40% of people admitted to hospital with COVID in the UK have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccine. ... There are several factors at play that explain why such a high proportion of cases are in the fully vaccinated. Ultra-Vaxxed Israel’s Crisis Is a Dire Warning to America Noga Tarnopolsky Tue, August 24, 2021, 3:38 AM 6 min read "In June, there were several days with zero new COVID infections in Israel. The country launched its national vaccination campaign in December last year and has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 80 percent of citizens above the age of 12 fully inoculated ....In a Sunday press conference, the directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer admit any coronavirus patients. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring critical care, their wards are overflowing and staff are at breaking point." Israel data 'preliminary signal' Delta variant can bypass vaccine: expert JULY 5, 2021 Rising coronavirus cases in Israel, where most residents are inoculated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, offer "a preliminary signal" the vaccine may be less effective in preventing mild illness from the Delta variant, a top expert said Monday. Vaccinated people: Your odds of a COVID 'breakthrough' infection have gone up. Hilary Brueck Tue, July 20, 2021, 10:30 AM 8 min read ....The CDC doesn't encourage any of the 160 million vaccinated people across the US who are exposed to COVID-19 to get tested for it, unless they go on to develop symptoms. Instead, the country relies on data from the UK and Israel to figure out how well COVID-19 can dodge our vaccines. This puts the US at a disadvantage as the virus continues to morph, doing its best to survive. With Delta around, we know vaccinated people are not as well protected as they once were. Now, we risk missing the signals of a more dangerous variant - something that our existing vaccines would barely combat. Young is frustrated that the data on her own breakthrough case - which was detected with an at-home test - won't be recorded anywhere by the CDC. Young said her doctor didn't encourage her to seek out confirmation with a laboratory test. Instead they said, "You just have to quarantine, and you should be fine." Dean said, given the low level of testing and sequencing being done on fully vaccinated people right now, there's no way the US can keep tabs on the virus well enough. If we want to know how decent the vaccine protection of the country really is, Dean said, we need to know when vaccinated people are getting infected, what variant they have, and how severe their case is. "It's very concerning to me that we're 20 months into the pandemic and we don't have that capability yet," she said. Study: Vaccinated people can carry as much virus as others By LINDSEY TANNER, MIKE STOBBE and PHILIP MARCELO July 30, 2021 In another dispiriting setback for the nation’s efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots. This Is How Common Breakthrough Infections Really Are, New Data Says By Zachary Mack Wed, August 18, 2021, 10:14 AM 4 min read "Now, early data has found that breakthrough infections are more common than we originally thought—as are resulting hospitalizations and deaths, The New York Times reports.... Analysis showed that in six of the states, breakthrough infections made up 18 to 28 percent of all newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the past several weeks. Results also found that fully vaccinated people made up 12 to 24 percent of all COVID-related hospitalizations, and while the number of deaths was too small to be considered significant, it is likely higher than the original Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates of .5 percent.... The figures on non-hospitalized breakthrough infections are also assumed to be underestimations since many fully vaccinated people who become infected may not feel sick enough to be tested for the virus, The Times reports. Official data has also been scarce since the CDC stopped recording cases that didn't lead to hospitalization or death in May." CBS Higher COVID Rate Found In Some Counties With Higher Vaccination Rate By Julie Watts July 26, 2021 at 10:11 pm "A new analysis finds several counties with above-average vaccination rates also have higher COVID case rates, while case rates are falling in counties with below-average vaccination rates." Wall Street Journal Israel, Widely Vaccinated, Suffers Another Covid-19 Surge By Dov Lieber Updated Aug. 12, 2021 2:01 pm ET After becoming one of the first countries to open up thanks to a widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Israel is again on guard, this time against the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.... Health officials are warning that Israel could face a fourth lockdown during the Jewish holiday season in September if the country doesn’t deliver more booster shots and improve on its wider vaccination rate; 60% of the total population are fully vaccinated, making up around 80% of adults. Reuters Delta infections among vaccinated likely contagious; Lambda variant shows vaccine resistance in lab By Nancy Lapid August 2, 2021 3:25 PM EDT Among people infected by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, fully vaccinated people with "breakthrough" infections may be just as likely as unvaccinated people to spread the virus to others, new research suggests. LANCET JOURNAL COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified Volume 398, ISSUE 10314, P1871, November 20, 2021 Günter Kampf Published: November 20, 2021 "In the USA and Germany, high-level officials have used the term pandemic of the unvaccinated, suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19.... There is increasing evidence that vaccinated individuals continue to have a relevant role in transmission. In Massachusetts, USA, a total of 469 new COVID-19 cases were detected during various events in July, 2021, and 346 (74%) of these cases were in people who were fully or partly vaccinated, 274 (79%) of whom were symptomatic.... It is therefore wrong and dangerous to speak of a pandemic of the unvaccinated." Reuters Vaccines less protective in Colorado county with Delta variant surge - CDC study By Manas Mishra Fri, August 6, 2021, 2:52 PM 2 min read (Reuters) -COVID-19 infections in a Colorado county with a Delta variant surge this spring were more common among fully vaccinated people than in the state's other counties where it was circulating at lower levels, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released on Friday showed. Washington Post CDC study shows three-fourths of people infected in Massachusetts coronavirus outbreak were vaccinated By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Joel Achenbach July 30, 2021 at 6:35 p.m. EDT A sobering scientific analysis published Friday found that three-quarters of the people infected during an explosive coronavirus outbreak fueled by the delta variant were fully vaccinated. The report on the Massachusetts cases, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, offers key evidence bolstering the hypothesis that vaccinated people can spread the more transmissible variant and may be a factor in the summer surge of infections. Bloomberg Hawaii, Masked and Vaccinated, Still Falls Prey to Delta Strain Nic Querolo and Jonathan Levin August 7, 2021 (Bloomberg) — Hawaii has one of the country’s most comprehensive mask mandates and a highly effective vaccine campaign. Despite that, Covid-19 cases on the islands are climbing with a ferocity that’s outstripping every other U.S. state.

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Lawmaker from Trudeau's own party RESIGNS and slams him for 'dividing people' after PM smeared anti-mandate Freedom Convoy as 'swastika wavers' By Andrea Cavallier and James Gordon For Dailymail.com and Associated Press Published: 16:53 EST, 7 February 2022 "A flag incorporating the Nazi symbol was [allegedly] spotted in the initial days of the protests, and DailyMail.com's reporter, who's been there for a week, has not seen any." National Public Radio Trucker protests over COVID mandates fuel Canada's growing far-right February 10, 2022 5:07 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor at Canada's Carleton University, about what the spreading trucker protests mean for the country's far-right movement. CARVIN: Well, it's interesting. It's not so much that these groups have been folded in, it's that they're at the very core of the movement. In fact, the organizers themselves are extremists. They have expressed, you know, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and conspiratorial worldviews. Stephanie Carvin racist cakes What a Few Cakes Say About the US Drone Program by Maryam Jamshidi September 16, 2020 Earlier this month, Lawfare’s infamous “Baker of Hard National Security Choices” unmasked herself. Stephanie Carvin, a professor of international relations at Carleton University who has worked as a national security analyst for the Canadian government and served as a consultant to the U.S. Defense Department, declared in a series of tweets that she was the creator of several cakes displayed on the Lawfare website since 2013. These cakes variously celebrate drone strikes and other targeted killings. As Carvin herself put it, “National Security is difficult and demanding work. In most cases it takes years before you may see the results of all of your efforts. I figure that edible targets are one way to relieve the stress of it all.” Call for Carleton U & NPSIA: Reject Dr. Carvin's Offensive Actions and Promote Anti-Racism On September 3, 2020, Dr. Stephanie Carvin, Assistant Professor at Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University, proudly shared on her Twitter account gruesome depictions of killings of Muslim and Brown bodies as terrorists on cakes. Dr. Carvin stated that her newly obtained academic tenure gave her the “courage” to express herself without scrutiny. As a tenured instructor and a representative of Carleton University, Dr. Carvin has used her public and very active twitter platform to trivialize the dehumanization of people of colour in the context of the war on terror. Considering her roles as educator and security expert frequently called upon by the media, it is unacceptable that Dr. Carvin’s actions directly contribute to the stigmatization and “othering” of marginalized communities. As members and allies of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) community, we are denouncing her actions and we are calling on Carleton University and NPSIA to publicly denounce Dr. Carvin's actions and to commit to an anti-racist environment by offering the necessary training and resources to its faculty members. Stephanie Carvin racist cakes Rolling Stone Magazine House Hearing Fails to Address Major Concerns With Targeted Killing Program Limited range of opinions sidesteps the most important questions about the government’s right to kill U.S. citizens without trial By John Knefel February 27, 2013 5:32PM ET “Where were the victims, where were representatives of civil society in the affected countries?” asks Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel and advocate with Human Rights Watch, in an email. She suggests that Congress could have invited family members of Anwar al-Awlaki to testify, but “instead, the only congressional hearing to date on the preeminent legal and political issue of our time consisted of four American men who are participants in the same legal blogging project.” (That blogging project once somewhat notoriously posted a user-submitted photo of a tasteless “drone cake,” with an accompanying joke referencing their site’s motto.) NPR Trucker protests against pandemic mandates are spreading beyond Canada February 11, 2022 7:19 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition JACOBS: [Stephanie] Carvin, [repeated NPR guest on this subject] a former national security analyst for the Canadian government, now at Carleton University, says the fundraisers have become symbols of support. MORE: Covid19 Laws used as excuse to crackdown on the poor, minorities, and rights activists

CNN Mask study author: 'More likely than not they don't work' September 9, 2023 "Masks have become political" says an author of the Cochrane Library study on mask effectiveness. "I can only tell you what the science is....I can't tell you whether they work or don't work. But it's more likely than not that they don't work." San Fransisco Gate Do mask mandates work? Bay Area COVID data from June says no. Eric Ting, SFGATE June 29, 2022 "But regional case data provides no discernible evidence that the rule, which was lifted June 25, succeeded at that goal....The case rate curves for Alameda and Contra Costa counties are near-identical. Because the neighboring counties are similar in so many respects, if masking policy had an impact on pandemic outcomes, one would expect to see some sort of discrepancy in the graph. ..." Comparing COVID-19 cases at schools with and without mask mandates Mark Johnson, Lansing State Journal Mon, February 14, 2022, 10:00 AM 3 min read "Comparing COVID-19 cases at 20 mid-Michigan school districts — including those in Clinton and Eaton counties without mask mandates — paints a foggy picture of the rules' efficacy. Charlotte Public Schools, which hasn’t had a mask mandate for most of the school year, saw a case rate of roughly 19%, nearly identical to DeWitt Public Schools, Waverly Community Schools and Webberville Community Schools, which all required masks. Meanwhile, St. Johns Public Schools, which didn't have a mandate all year, had the lowest case rate among 20 mid-Michigan districts. Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools and Ovid-Elsie Area Schools, both without mandates, the fourth-lowest and fifth-highest rates respectively." Lockdowns had little to no impact on reducing Covid deaths per Johns Hopkins Wed, February 2, 2022, 9:00 AM So why did so many American mainstream media outlets IGNORE a reputable university's study that lockdowns didn't work? New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC and CBS all failed to run the story because they 'have their own narrative written' By Melissa Koenig and Adam Manno and Gina Martinez and Mansur Shaheen For Dailymail.Com Published: 17:32 EST, 3 February 2022 Updated: 17:40 EST, 3 February 2022 The study, published in the Studies in Applied Economics January 2022 edition, that lockdowns caused 'enormous economic and social costs' and concluded that they were 'ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument' going forward. But the study was largely ignored by mainstream American media outlets, with just DailyMail.com, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and the Washington Times publicizing it. The study was nowhere to be found on the New York Times, Washington Post and ABC News websites, and while some regional NBC and CBS affiliates reported on the story, the national networks did not. On Wednesday night, a Johns Hopkins university professor who was not involved in the study slammed the media institutions for downplaying the study. Harvard Study Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States Eur J Epidemiol. 2021 Sep 30 : 1–4. S. V. Subramanian (Harvard) and Akhil Kumar "At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people." NEW YORK TIMES: The Covid Fable When we treat Covid as a simple morality play, we can end up making bad predictions. By David Leonhardt Oct. 8, 2021 "In the case of Covid, the fable we tell ourselves is that our day-to-day behavior dictates the course of the pandemic." https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic Christopher R. Berry, Anthony Fowler, Tamara Glazer, Samantha Handel-Meyer, and Alec MacMillen April 13, 2021 We estimate the effects of shelter-in-place (SIP) orders during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not find detectable effects of these policies on disease spread or deaths. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.20160341v3 Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19: A Tale of Three Models Vincent Chin, John P.A. Ioannidis, Martin A. Tanner, Sally Cripps December 10, 2020 Objective: To compare the inference regarding the effectiveness of the various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for COVID-19 obtained from different SIR models. Conclusions: Inferences on effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification. Claimed benefits of lockdown appear grossly exaggerated. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg and Jean-Francois Toussaint November 19, 2020 Results: Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65] latitude and in the [-35/-125] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate. Study: Mask Mandates Didn't Help Slow Spread of COVID-19 Elizabeth Nolan Brown 5.27.2021 10:00 AM A new study suggests state mask mandates didn't help slow COVID-19 transmission. The pre-publication study found "qualitatively comparable courses of viral spread" among states with early, late, and no mask mandates.... Going into the study, lead author Damian D. Guerra, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Louisville, and co-author Daniel J. Guerra, of VerEvMed, "hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use are associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates." .... However, the study does add to evidence that mandating mask use may have made little difference. "Case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states at low or high transmission rates," they found. The Telegraph Lockdown 'had no effect' on coronavirus pandemic in Germany Justin Huggler June 3, 2021, 9:10 AM 2 min read A new study by German scientists claims to have found evidence that lockdowns may have had little effect on controlling the coronavirus pandemic. Statisticians at Munich University found “no direct connection” between the German lockdown and falling infection rates in the country. ..... “You can't tell from the data that the lockdown was unnecessary,” Prof Ralph Brinks, one of the study’s co-authors, told German television. Landmark Danish study shows face masks have no significant effect 19 November 2020, 7:45am Do face masks work? ....Yesterday marked the publication of a long-delayed trial in Denmark which hopes to answer that very question. The ‘Danmask-19 trial’ was conducted in the spring with over 3,000 participants, when the public were not being told to wear masks but other public health measures were in place. Unlike other studies looking at masks, the Danmask study was a randomised controlled trial – making it the highest quality scientific evidence.... In the end, there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19. New York Times There’s much to learn about how the virus spreads By David Leonhardt July 30, 2021 Consider these Covid-19 mysteries: In India — where the Delta variant was first identified and caused a huge outbreak — cases have plunged over the past two months. A similar drop may now be underway in Britain. There is no clear explanation for these declines. In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes. In March and April, the Alpha variant helped cause a sharp rise in cases in the upper Midwest and Canada. That outbreak seemed poised to spread to the rest of North America — but did not. This spring, caseloads were not consistently higher in parts of the U.S. that had relaxed masking and social distancing measures (like Florida and Texas) than in regions that remained vigilant. Large parts of Africa and Asia still have not experienced outbreaks as big as those in Europe, North America and South America. ... “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” ... much of the ebb and flow of a pandemic cannot be explained by changes in human behavior... MORE: Do any measures actually make a difference?

New York Times The acknowledgments should have come sooner, some experts said. Published July 9, 2020 The W.H.O. had described this form of transmission [aerosolization] as doubtful and a problem mostly in medical procedures. But growing scientific and anecdotal evidence suggest this route may be important in spreading the virus, and this week more than 200 scientists urged the agency to revisit the research and revise its position. USA TODAY A letter to my loved ones about COVID-19: You've moved on, but I'm still here Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY Sun, March 19, 2023 at 5:00 AM EDT 7 min read "...We know more about the pandemic now. We know that COVID-19 is airborne, that it moves through the air like cigarette smoke, so “social distancing” as we knew it in 2020 is pretty meaningless today when sharing indoor air.... Loose-fitting blue surgical masks and cloth masks don’t cut it." It took two years for the WHO to admit covid is airborne. The reason is rooted in science history Annalisa Merelli Fri, August 26, 2022 at 3:08 PM 7 min read Covid, it’s now an established fact, is airborne.... Yet when the virus emerged, and for some time afterward, public health authorities thought instead that the virus might spread through large droplets, which unlike aerosols can only travel about two meters, and can fall on nearby surfaces, which in turn become potential vehicles of transmission. This was the theory that had everyone wiping down their groceries and wondering whether to disinfect their mail in early 2020... Though aerosols and droplets may sound similar, their public health implications are very different. The assumption that covid was spread by droplets informed public health advice such as stressing the importance of social distancing, wearing any kind of mask including cloth ones, and disinfecting surfaces.... Admitting to airborne transmission has implications that go beyond infectious medicine, or hard-held beliefs. If a disease is transmitted through direct contact, or by proximity, the responsibility to prevent it can be placed on the individual. Protective equipment, distancing, disinfecting: These are all measures that people can take to stop outbreaks. This way, getting sick becomes a personal failure—people must not have washed their hands, or missed some precaution.... But if the virus is airborne and one gets infected in a school or an office, where they can’t control the quality of the air, then the fault can’t be personal. The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill May 13, 2021 06:00 AM [Linsey] Marr is an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech and one of the few in the world who also studies infectious diseases. To her, the new coronavirus looked as if it could hang in the air, infecting anyone who breathed in enough of it. .... But the WHO didn’t seem to have caught on. Just days before, the organization had tweeted “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.” That’s why Marr was skipping her usual morning workout to join 35 other aerosol scientists. They were trying to warn the WHO it was making a big mistake.... They ticked through a growing list of superspreading events ... instances where people got sick even when they were across the room from a contagious person. The incidents contradicted the WHO’s main safety guidelines of keeping 3 to 6 feet of distance between people and frequent handwashing. If SARS-CoV-2 traveled only in large droplets that immediately fell to the ground, as the WHO was saying, then wouldn’t the distancing and the handwashing have prevented such outbreaks? Infectious air was the more likely culprit, they argued. But the WHO’s experts appeared to be unmoved.... Along with 237 other scientists and physicians, they warned that .... airborne spread of SARS-CoV-2 would undermine even the most vigorous testing, tracing, and social distancing efforts. ... [Linsey Marr] started talking to Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at UC San Diego, who had the ear of prominent public health leaders within the CDC and on the White House Covid Task Force. In July, the two women sent slides to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. One of them showed the trajectory of a 5-micron particle released from the height of the average person’s mouth. It went farther than 6 feet — hundreds of feet farther. A few weeks later, speaking to an audience at Harvard Medical School, Fauci admitted that the 5-micron distinction was wrong—and had been for years. National Public Radio Scientists Probe How Coronavirus Might Travel Through The Air April 3, 2020 3:03 PM ET Nell Greenfieldboyce At a briefing by the White House's coronavirus task force on Tuesday, a reporter asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the potential for the coronavirus to travel 27 feet.... Fauci went on to say he was "disturbed" by headlines about the virus traveling such distances "because that's misleading. That means that, all of a sudden, the 6-foot thing doesn't work." The virus traveling distances that might be achieved after a vigorous sneeze is "not what we're talking about" when it comes to social distancing, Fauci said, defending the 6-foot guideline. WHO, in its general communications with the public on such platforms as Twitter, has stated that the virus "is NOT airborne" and that it is mainly transmitted "through droplets generated when an infectious person coughs, sneezes or speaks." ... "Transmission of COVID-19 is through droplets, it is not airborne," said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead for COVID-19, at a recent press briefing. CNBC MIT researchers say you're no safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet in new study challenging social distancing policies Published Fri, Apr 23 2021 12:15 PM EDT MIT professor Martin Bazant: "This emphasis on distancing .... is based on studies of coughs and sneezes, where they look at the largest particles that might sediment onto the floor and even then it's very approximate, you can certainly have longer or shorter range, large droplets... The distancing isn't helping you that much and it's also giving you a false sense of security because you're as safe at 6 feet as you are at 60 feet if you're indoors. .... It really has no physical basis because the air a person is breathing while wearing a mask tends to rise and comes down elsewhere in the room." Penn Medicine (University of Pennsylvania) COVID-19: Droplet or Airborne Transmission? Penn Medicine Epidemiologists Issue Statement August 02, 2020 With the publication of a letter from 239 scientists petitioning the WHO to revise its recommendations to recognize the airborne spread of SARS-CoV-2, the simmering question of SARS-CoV-2 transmission came to a boil again. At issue is the constantly shifting interpretation of droplet size with reference to SARS-CoV-2. Traditionally, droplets are defined as large (>5 microns) aqueous bodies. However, airborne (or aerosolized) transmission of the virus has been proposed as a source of infection almost since the inception of the COVID pandemic. By comparison to droplets, aerosolized particles are infinitesimal. ..... Shortly after publication of the letter, the WHO reiterated its position that SARS-CoV-2 is spread from person to person by droplet-bound virions that fall to earth within a short distance of their source. MSN.COM Hygiene Theater Is Still a Huge Waste of Time Derek Thompson February 8, 2021 "Six months ago, I wrote that Americans had embraced a backwards view of the coronavirus. Too many people imagined the fight against COVID-19 as a land war to be waged with sudsy hand-to-hand combat against grimy surfaces. Meanwhile, the science suggested we should be focused on an aerial strategy. .... If somebody with COVID-19 sneezes three times onto a little spot on a cold steel table, and you rub your hand around in the snot for a bit and immediately lick your fingers, that disgusting act may well result in you infecting yourself." Point: There’s No Evidence That Masks Work Joel Zinberg Fri, May 6, 2022, 1:47 PM 4 min read "A recent review of the literature reported two randomized controlled clinical trials of the effectiveness of masking in COVID-19. One failed to demonstrate a statistically significant benefit. The second found small, marginally statistically significant reductions in viral transmission for surgical masks but not for cloth masks. Thirteen of 14 tests assessing mask-wearing in non-COVID respiratory infections failed to find a statistically significant benefit for masks." MORE: Why were people told to stay indoors without ventilation, the unhealthiest suggestion possible?

LEADING U.S. CAUSES OF DEATH (differences between 2017 to 2020 in blue) 2017 COVID 2020 (before vaccines) Ages 1-20 1. Car crash/accident 2. Drug overdose/suicide 3. Guns/homicide 1. Car crash/accident 2. Drug overdose/suicide 3. Guns/homicide Ages 20-35 1. Drug overdose/suicide 2. Car crash/accident 3. Guns/homicide 1. Drug overdose/suicide 2. Car crash/accident 3. Guns/homicide Ages 35-50 1. Cancer 2. Heart disease 3. Drug overdose/suicide 1. Drug overdose/suicide 2. Cancer 3. Heart disease Over 50 1. Heart disease 2. Cancer 3. Respiratory disease* 1. Heart disease 2. Cancer 3. Respiratory disease* * includes all influenza and coronaviruses (including Covid19) SHARE THE GRAPHIC BY TEXT/SOCIAL MEDIA COVID-19 not the sole cause of excess U.S. deaths in 2020 April 13, 2021 by University of Pennsylvania By the year 2017, the United States was already suffering more excess deaths and more life years lost each year than those associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to research from demographers Samuel Preston of the University of Pennsylvania and Yana Vierboom of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. In 2017, the United States suffered an estimated 401,000 total excess deaths, those beyond the "normal" number of deaths expected to have occurred. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 376,504 deaths related to COVID-19 in 2020. Death and Lockdowns There’s no proof that lockdowns save lives but plenty of evidence that they end them. By John Tierney March 21, 2021 John Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal, a contributing science columnist for the New York Times, and coauthor of The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. "The best gauge of the pandemic’s impact is what statisticians call “excess mortality,” which compares the overall number of deaths with the total in previous years. That measure rose among older Americans because of Covid-19, but it rose at an even sharper rate among people aged 15 to 54, and most of those excess deaths were not attributed to the virus." Washington Post Editorial Board: Don’t bring back restrictions. July 27, 2021 at 4:46 p.m. EDT A research team at Johns Hopkins led by Makary looked at 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with covid-19, and found a mortality rate of zero among children without a preexisting medical condition, such as pediatric cancer. Indeed, there is no official government data to show whether any healthy children have died as a result of covid-19." MORE: Excess deaths caused by virus — or by virus prevention measures?

Help restore democracy for the people, not the rich!

$12 billion a year (CDC budget) can go to
help the environment, schools, and working class jobs.

Help restore democracy for the people, not the rich!

In order to combat the opioid hesitancy,
Big Pharma recruited family doctors to help
change the hearts and minds of reasonable people
(same method is now used for vaccine hesitancy)

After overprescribing opioids inevitably became ineffective,
the industry coined the term "breakthrough pain,"
and the FDA authorized pharmaceuticals to increase dosages
and prescribe boosters to perpetuate opioid treatment
("breakthrough" rhetoric now used for ineffective vaccines)

Books Empire of Pain: The billionaire Sackler family's role in the opioid crisis A much-anticipated book delves into the Sackler dynasty's multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical business and its staggering human cost By Brian Bethune April 14, 2021 "But Purdue’s new OxyContin was something else again, partly because it was twice as potent as MS Contin, but mostly because the Sacklers wanted to expand its market to the estimated 50 million Americans who suffered chronic “non-malignant” agony, from back pain to arthritis. They expected physician and FDA opioid hesitancy to remain high in that area. But the FDA quickly approved not only the new drug but its descriptive package insert, which included the words “Delayed absorption, as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability.” That was a peculiar piece of rhetoric, Keefe notes, denounced in one FDA email as “sounds like B.S. to me.” But the idea, and the doctor-soothing wording, was accepted by an FDA official who mattered most. The executive who oversaw pain management at the agency became a Purdue employee a year later." US medical group that pushed doctors to prescribe painkillers forced to close Chris McGreal Sat 25 May 2019 02.00 EDT "A leading medical society, described by a US Senate report as a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry for its prominent role in pressuring doctors to prescribe opioids, is to shut down in the face of lawsuits blaming it for America’s worst drug epidemic." NPR 'You Can't Treat If You Can't Empathize': Black Doctors Tackle Vaccine Hesitancy January 19, 2021 5:00 AM ET Pien Huang "So how can medical and public health leaders work to overcome this hesitancy? To start with, acknowledge the historical reasons for black mistrust of medicine, say researchers and Black physicians working to reach their own communities." Fully vaccinated people who get a Covid-19 breakthrough infection can transmit the virus, CDC chief says By Madeline Holcombe and Christina Maxouris, CNN Updated 2:21 AM EDT, Fri August 6, 2021 “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death – they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.” (but did they ever work to prevent infection for any variant? ..... and does it really prevent severe illness?) New York Times Lawsuits Lay Bare Sackler Family’s Role in Opioid Crisis By Danny Hakim, Roni Caryn Rabin and William K. Rashbaum April 1, 2019 Manufacturers funded “front groups” that were “disguised as ‘unbiased’ sources of cutting-edge medical research and information,” according to the New York attorney general’s office, ostensibly to educate the public about chronic pain and the benefits of opioids. Physicians were paid as consultants to further spread their message. The companies claimed that opioids were safer than high doses of acetaminophen and other anti-inflammatory agents and that there was a minuscule risk of addiction.

Working people were hit hardest by the ineffective measures
— while the rich got richer

Homelessness has risen 70% in California’s capital. Inside the staggering emergency Dani Anguiano in Sacramento Thu 3 Nov 2022 06.00 EDT "During the pandemic, California’s homeless population, and the visibility of those residents, surged to unprecedented levels, prompting the state to pour billions into housing projects and related services to alleviate the longstanding emergency." Here's what's driving the gap between the richest and poorest Americans Tanya Kaushal Writer Wed, November 2, 2022 at 12:43 PM 6 min read "Economic inequality between the richest and poorest Americans continues to widen, exacerbated by pandemic stimulus and corporate inflation, according to new research and expert commentary." BLOOMBERG World’s Wealthiest Families Gained $312 Billion Over Past Year By Devon Pendleton September 17, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC Abundant liquidity, soaring stock markets and accommodating tax policies have been favorable for growing dynastic wealth. The world’s 25 richest families are worth $1.7 trillion, a 22% increase from a year ago. ... Surging dynastic fortunes underscore a widening wealth gap that’s been exacerbated by the pandemic. Covid vaccine profits mint 9 new pharma billionaires By Hanna Ziady, CNN Business Updated 4:03 PM ET, Fri May 21, 2021 London (CNN Business) Covid-19 vaccines have created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots soared. WASHINGTON POST The covid-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history Heather Long, Andrew Van Dam, Alyssa Fowers and Leslie Shapiro, The Washington Post Sep. 30, 2020 Black women are facing the largest barriers to returning to work, data shows, and have recovered 34% of jobs lost in the early months of the pandemic. They are among the most likely to work in low-paying service-sector jobs, which have been slow to rebound at a time when it is still a major health risk to be around others. Nearly 30% of Black women work in services, compared with a fifth of White women. Black people also often face discrimination in the hiring process, research from Texas A&M University and elsewhere has shown. It took until 2018 for Black women's employment to recover from the Great Recession. Now almost all of those gains have been erased. Fortunes of US billionaires grew by $434B since coronavirus crisis By Noah Manskar May 22, 2020 | 1:22pm | Updated The combined fortunes of America’s billionaires ballooned by $434 billion during the coronavirus pandemic, even as millions of Americans lost their jobs, a new report says. 'Heads we win, tails you lose': how America's rich have turned pandemic into profit Dominic Rushe and Mona Chalabi The Guardian April 26, 2020 Never let a good crisis go to waste: as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, America’s 1% have taken profitable advantage of the old saying. RICH GET RICHER Amazon sales jumped 40%, Facebook profit increased by 98% and Apple posted more than $11BILLION profit in last quarter Mollie Mansfield Jul 31 2020, 9:48 ET Updated: Jul 31 2020, 9:55 ET AMAZON sales have jumped by 40 percent, Facebook's profit has increased by 98 percent and Apple has posted more than $11billion profit in the last quarter. The companies have all seen a rise despite the coronavirus pandemic causing stores to shut and employees to work from home. The pandemic has transformed America’s dining landscape into an oligopoly dominated by chains by Adam Reiner 05.12.2022, 11:34am "Financial analysts who cover the food and beverage industry recognized early in the pandemic that large restaurant groups were likely going to benefit from increased market share as swaths of independent restaurants closed. .... While independent restaurants across the country have indeed closed in record numbers since the pandemic began, corporate full-service restaurant groups have succeeded by leveraging the one advantage most indies don’t have—scale." Debt, wealth destruction and lower pay will be coronavirus’ legacy Satyajit Das MarketWatch April 23, 2020 Financial fallout from the health crisis will widen the gap dividing rich and poor Jeff Bezos Gains $24 Billion While World’s Rich Reap Bailout Rewards Sophie Alexander, Tom Maloney and Tom Metcalf Bloomberg April 14, 2020 (Bloomberg) — The world’s richest person is getting richer, even in a pandemic, and perhaps because of it. “All These Rich People Can’t Stop Themselves”: The Luxe Quarantine Lives of Silicon Valley’s Elite By Nick Bilton August 13, 2020 Travis Kalanick is throwing (outdoor) parties, private-jet owners are hopping from safe zone to safe zone, and dinner party hosts are administering 15-minute COVID-19 rapid tests—all business as usual. “Coronavirus is a poor person’s virus,” says one source. CNBC Fed Chief Powell, other officials owned securities central bank bought during Covid pandemic Published Fri, Sep 17 2021 10:40 AM EDT Updated Sat, Sep 18 2021 9:39 AM EDT By Steve Liesman Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin held $1.35 million to $3 million in individual corporate bonds purchased before 2020. They include bonds of Pepsi, Home Depot and Eli Lilly. The Fed last year opened a corporate bond-buying facility and purchased $46.5 billion of corporate bonds. MORE: Millions of poor people globally died from the lockdown measures

Covid19 Laws used as excuse to crackdown on the poor, minorities, and rights activists

ProPublica How the Pandemic Economy Could Wipe Out a Generation of Black-Owned Businesses March 4, 2021 5 a.m. EST by Lydia DePillis "There are disparities between American businesses owned by white people and those owned by all minority groups, but the widest ones are typically with Black entrepreneurs, who tend to have modest family wealth and thin professional networks to help recruit talent and cut deals. Although the number of Black-owned businesses has grown in recent years... those years of compounding disadvantage have been exacerbated by the pandemic. For example, 18.4% fewer self-employed Black people were working in July 2020 than there had been a year previously, compared to 6.2% fewer self-employed white people (the dips for Asian and Hispanic people were even smaller). And minority-owned businesses overall have also been at the back of the line for relief programs, which were initially designed without factoring in the unique challenges of small businesses owned by people of color." WASHINGTON POST The covid-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history Heather Long, Andrew Van Dam, Alyssa Fowers and Leslie Shapiro, The Washington Post Sep. 30, 2020 Black women are facing the largest barriers to returning to work, data shows, and have recovered 34% of jobs lost in the early months of the pandemic. They are among the most likely to work in low-paying service-sector jobs, which have been slow to rebound at a time when it is still a major health risk to be around others. Nearly 30% of Black women work in services, compared with a fifth of White women. Black people also often face discrimination in the hiring process, research from Texas A&M University and elsewhere has shown. It took until 2018 for Black women's employment to recover from the Great Recession. Now almost all of those gains have been erased. Washington Post Global freedoms have hit a ‘dismal’ record low, with pandemic restrictions making things worse, report says Ellen Francis February 10, 2022 "The state of democracy around the world fell to a record low last year, according to a new report released Thursday that placed blame in large part on pandemic restrictions that have seen many nations struggle to balance a public health emergency with personal freedoms." New York Times It’s ‘Alarming’: Children Are Severely Behind in Reading By Dana Goldstein March 8, 2022 "The kindergarten crisis of last year, when millions of 5-year-olds spent months outside of classrooms, has become this year’s reading emergency. As the pandemic enters its third year, a cluster of new studies now show that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, up significantly from before the pandemic.... In the Boston region, 60 percent of students at some high-poverty schools have been identified as at high risk for reading problems — twice the number of students as before the pandemic, according to Tiffany P. Hogan, director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston. Children in every demographic group have been affected, but Black and Hispanic children, as well as those from low-income families, those with disabilities and those who are not fluent in English, have fallen the furthest behind." New York Times Living by the Code: In China, Covid-Era Controls May Outlast the Virus January 30, 2022 By Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang and Keith Bradsher The health code “can also easily be used as a dirty trick for stability maintenance,” said Lin Yingqiang, a longtime petitioner from Fuzhou, in southeastern China. He said that he was taken off a train by the police ahead of a party leaders’ meeting in November. His health code app turned yellow, requiring that he return to Fuzhou for quarantine, though he had not been anywhere near a confirmed case. Army spied on lockdown critics: Sceptics, including our own Peter Hitchens, long suspected they were under surveillance. Now we've obtained official records that prove they were right all along Published: 17:05 EST, 28 January 2023 By Glen Owen Political Editor A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government's Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Reuters June 16, 2020 / 4:14 PM U.S. racial inequality 3 Min Read The unrest has sharpened the public focus on economic plight of black and Latino families, who on average continue to earn less, have higher unemployment, and are harder hit when economic shocks like the coronavirus hit. NPR National Vaccine Passports: 'Scarlet Letter' Or Just The Ticket? April 9, 2021 7:06 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Tovia Smith "Being Jewish, I've always had this apprehension about anyone saying 'Show us your papers!'" Greenberg says, because it harkens back to the horrors Jews experienced in Nazi Germany. She's quick to acknowledge a vaccine passport is hardly the same thing, but she worries it would be prone to abuse. "It'll create two classes of human beings, almost like a caste system of vaccinated and unvaccinated. So then, what's next? It just makes me a little bit uneasy."... John Calvin Byrd III, has similar qualms. The self-described "far-left militant black man" lives in Los Angeles, and says he cringes at the thought of being seen as sharing the same concerns as "Trumpers," but he believes vaccine passports would impinge on his civil liberties. He says he and his family are not vaccinating, because they don't trust how fast the COVID-19 vaccines were rushed through the emergency authorization process, and because he doesn't trust Big Pharma. But he thinks it's unfair to penalize people like him, by restricting his ability to go out for dinner, travel, or visit a park, museum, or grocery store. "It's not like we committed a crime," he says. "We should be able to go and play and do whatever we want." He's also feeling pressure from his boss to vaccinate, and fears his decision not to, may cost him his job. ... More broadly, Byrd worries that vaccine passports will exacerbate inequities for Black and Brown people, who are still less likely to be vaccinated — either by choice or because of lack of access. "It puts people into separate groups, and one group has privileges and the other group does not ... That keeps myself, my family and people like us in the margins," Byrd says. Black leaders react to South Beach spring break curfew, crackdown: ‘unnecessary force’ By Martin Vassolo March 21, 2021 12:40 PM "After weeks of uninhibited partying on South Beach by spring breakers, police turned away throngs of people — many of them Black — from world-famous Ocean Drive with a SWAT truck, pepper balls and sound cannons." Democrat Miami Mayor Dan Gelber justifies crackdown on African-Americans, while letting the white crowds enjoy their privilege: "I don't see this [group dispursed by police] is a sort of spring break thing, because I don't think these are college kids," said Mayor Gelber. Because Covid19 restrictions are sacralized, we see no political outrage from Congress or Biden White House on discriminatory "social distancing" enforcement. NPR National Human Rights Advocacy Is Changing Tones Under The Biden Administration March 30, 2021 4:08 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Michele Kelemen "The coronavirus pandemic has created more problems. The State Department says some governments have used the crisis as a pretext to restrict human rights." A tale of two parks: Enjoying the sun in wealthy Manhattan, social distancing under police scrutiny in the Bronx Yahoo News May 6, 2020 Thousands of New Yorkers flocked to city parks all over the five boroughs last weekend to enjoy sunny spring weather and temperatures in the 70s. .... But not all parts of the city were enjoying the respite equally. .... This image was in stark contrast to a viral image Conde also took on May 2, showing Christopher Street Pier, on the edge of Greenwich Village, packed with New Yorkers enjoying the sun, in close proximity without masks. No officers were in sight, according to Conde. In another image Conde took at the same park on May 3, an officer is calmly passing out face masks to visitors. ... “I guess in the police force’s eyes, people of color need to be policed,” Conde said in an interview with Yahoo News.... It seems like two different cities: residents of affluent and mostly white neighborhoods enjoying the warm weather and receiving masks from friendly officers, while police cars patrol parks in the mostly Latino and black Bronx communities, an implied warning to residents not to enjoy the warm weather too much. Amazon Fires Worker Who Led Strike Over Virus Bloomberg News March 31, 2020 (Bloomberg) — Chris Smalls, an Amazon.com Inc. fulfillment center employee, said the company fired him after he led a strike at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, over coronavirus safety conditions.....Amazon confirmed it fired Smalls, saying he violated safety regulations, including failing to abide by a 14-day quarantine required after being exposed to an employee with a confirmed case of Covid-19. AFP Governments use pandemic to crack down on online dissent: watchdog October 14, 2020, 8:54 AM 2 min read NPR 'Pandemic Pods' Raise Concerns About Equity July 28, 2020 3:48 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Anya Kamenetz "KAMENETZ: Melinda Anderson is a journalist covering education and equity. Opportunity hoarding is a sociological concept that basically means a group in power is grabbing up resources and excluding a less powerful group. Anderson says..... ANDERSON: Parents forming pandemic pods and micro-schools did not create school inequalities. But they're certainly exacerbating inequalities by seeking out options unavailable to everyone.... PRUDENCE CARTER: I think parents are just trying to do what they have to do to survive in this moment." China using fake Covid alerts to stop people staging protests Simina Mistreanu June 16 2022 02:30 AM China has been accused of sending false Covid infection alerts to protesters in order to keep them away from demonstrations, raising fears that Beijing is using strict quarantine rules to control its population. Governments and police must stop using pandemic as pretext for abuse 17 December 2020, 00:01 UTC Abusive policing and excessive reliance on law enforcement to implement COVID-19 response measures have violated human rights and in some instances made the health crisis worse, Amnesty International said today. Boston Mayor Kim Janey compares vaccine passports to slave papers, birtherism Updated: 4:47 PM EDT Aug 3, 2021 "There's a long history in this country of people needing to show their papers," said Janey. "During slavery, post-slavery, as recent as you know what immigrant population has to go through here. We heard Trump with the birth certificate nonsense. Here we want to make sure that we are not doing anything that would further create a barrier for residents of Boston or disproportionally impact BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) communities."

Excess deaths caused by virus — or by virus prevention measures?
Deaths from lockdown measures surpass deaths from virus:
Suicide, lack of access to medicine, hunger, depression,
alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse, homicides, etc
are all skyrocketed due to lockdowns

NIH Deaths involving alcohol increased during the COVID-19 pandemic Thursday, June 30, 2022 "Recently researchers at NIAAA used the national death certificate database to assess changes in alcohol-related deaths during the first year of the pandemic. The results, published in JAMA, show that after increasing around 2.2% per year over the previous two decades, deaths involving alcohol jumped 25.5% between 2019 to 2020, totaling 99,107 deaths." Los Angeles Times 17 L.A. gangs have sent out crews to follow and rob city's wealthiest, LAPD says Kevin Rector April 12, 2022 9 min read "The trend, in a city known for opulence as well as extreme poverty, comes at a time when crime overall is under a microscope — with homicides, shootings and armed robberies all at elevated levels since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and candidates in the city's ongoing mayoral race denouncing those increases as they vie for voters and wealthy donors." Lockdown effects feared to be killing more people than Covid Unexplained excess deaths outstrip those from virus as medics call figures ‘terrifying’ By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 18 August 2022 9:30pm "The Telegraph understands that the Department of Health has ordered an investigation into the figures amid concern that the deaths are linked to delays to and deferment of treatment for conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Over the past two months, the number of excess deaths not from Covid dwarfs the number linked to the virus. It comes amid renewed calls for Covid measures such as compulsory face masks in the winter." Hospitals Retreat From Early Covid Treatment and Return to Basics By Melanie Evans Wall Street Journal Dec. 20, 2020 2:10 pm ET Now hospital treatment for the most critically ill looks more like it did before the pandemic. Doctors hold off longer before placing patients on ventilators.... Doctors could have employed other kinds of breathing support devices that don't require risky sedation, but early reports suggested patients using them could spray dangerous amounts of virus into the air ... At the time, he said, doctors and nurses feared the virus would spread through hospitals. "We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients' benefit, but in order to control the epidemic and to save other patients," Dr. Iwashyna said "That felt awful." ‘Deadly cancer timebomb’ as thousands more than expected killed by the illness since pandemic Sarah Knapton Thu, December 15, 2022 at 1:00 AM 3 min read "Nearly 8,900 more people have died of cancer than expected in Britain since the start of the pandemic, amid calls for the Government to appoint a minister to deal with the growing crisis." ‘Needless’ deaths of 30,000 heart patients in England since Covid Andrew Gregory Health editor Wed 2 Nov 2022 20.01 EDT "More than 30,000 heart patients in England have died needlessly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid continuing ambulance delays, inaccessible care and soaring waiting lists, a report says. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said significant and widespread disruption to heart care services was still driving a surge in excess deaths. Its analysis of official data reveals that there have been, on average, more than 230 extra deaths a week over and above what would be expected for heart disease since the start of the pandemic. Since the arrival of Covid there have been just over 30,000 excess deaths linked to heart disease.... It warns of millions of “missing” heart patients, diagnosed and undiagnosed, who could have conditions such as high blood pressure that put them at higher risk of heart attack and stroke." Washington Post U.S. firearm homicide rate in 2020 highest in quarter-century, CDC says By Mark Berman May 10, 2022 at 1:49 p.m. EDT "The surge in gun violence across the United States in 2020 pushed the firearm homicide rate that year to its highest level in a quarter-century, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.... In its new report, the CDC examined how rates of deaths involving guns shifted in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. What emerged was alarming: The firearm homicide rate that year was higher than in any year since 1994." NEW YORK TIMES Some Ask a Taboo Question: Is America Overreacting to Coronavirus? By Amy Harmon Published March 16, 2020 "Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he favors a 14-day national shutdown (lasting for over 15 months) to slow down the coronavirus. “I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting,” Dr. Fauci said. But even the many experts who agree on social distancing as an effective remedy worry about some of the fallout. There are civil liberties concerns surrounding quarantines. There is economic hardship for hourly wage workers." NPR.org During The Pandemic Lockdown, Traffic Deaths Soared To The Highest Level In 13 Years June 3, 2021 4:41 PM ET The Associated Press "DETROIT — U.S. traffic deaths rose 7% last year, the biggest increase in 13 years even though people drove fewer miles due to the coronavirus pandemic, the government's road safety agency reported Thursday.... The increase came even though the number of miles traveled by vehicle fell 13% from 2019. Motorcyclist deaths rose 9% last year to 5,015, while bicyclist deaths were up 5% to 846. Pedestrian deaths remained steady at 6,205, and the number of people killed in passenger vehicles rose 5% to 23,395, according to NHTSA." WASHINGTON POST A patient at a care facility was in cardiac arrest. Paramedics refused to enter, citing covid restrictions. Jaclyn Peiser Mon, December 20, 2021, 6:47 AM 5 min read When the police officer entered a room at a southern California care facility last month, he found a panicked nurse performing chest compressions on a patient, body-camera footage shows. The patient was in cardiac arrest, and the staff did not have the proper equipment to help, according to a police report. But just outside the entrance of the building stood paramedics equipped with possible lifesaving tools. They had refused to cross the threshold, claiming it was against state covid rules, according to the report. Reuters COVID-19 has torn a particularly lethal path through the 1 in 10 Americans with diabetes, including many who never caught the virus By CHAD TERHUNE, ROBIN RESPAUT and DEBORAH J. NELSON Filed Aug. 12, 2021, 11 a.m. GMT “She was afraid COVID would kill her,” Heaston said. “Instead, it isolated her, and her diabetes got worse. She didn’t need to die at 42.” .... This grim toll is the result of a public-health failure that long predates the pandemic – and that is almost certain to persist after COVID-19 abates. After years of advances in treating diabetes, progress stalled about a decade ago. Since then, despite billions of dollars spent on new treatments, the prognosis for people with diabetes has been getting worse as the number of patients with the disease has increased, especially among working-age and even younger people. Late in the last century and early in this one, medical breakthroughs steadily chipped away at rates of diabetes-related deaths and complications in the United States. But the trend reversed as rising obesity and its consequences — like diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease — more than offset improved therapies. From 2009 to 2015, CDC data show that among diabetes patients, rates of hospitalization for hyperglycemic crises soared by 73%, and deaths by 55%. NPR.org Drug Overdose Deaths Surge Among Black Americans During Pandemic March 3, 2021 Heard on Morning Edition Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say fatal drug overdoses nationwide have surged roughly 20% during the pandemic, killing more than 83,000 people in 2020. NPR.org They Lost Sons To Drug Overdoses: How The Pandemic May Be Fueling Deaths Of Despair January 26, 2021 Heard on Morning Edition "Once COVID is in the rear-view mirror, we still have a lot of work to do to try to bring down the numbers of people who are dying annually in the U.S. from suicide, drug overdose, and from alcohol," Case said. Death and Lockdowns There’s no proof that lockdowns save lives but plenty of evidence that they end them. By John Tierney March 21, 2021 John Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal, a contributing science columnist for the New York Times, and coauthor of The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.... City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank.... "The best gauge of the pandemic’s impact is what statisticians call “excess mortality,” which compares the overall number of deaths with the total in previous years. That measure rose among older Americans because of Covid-19, but it rose at an even sharper rate among people aged 15 to 54, and most of those excess deaths were not attributed to the virus." NPR.org Communities are dealing with an increase in homicides. What's behind the rise? December 21, 2021 5:16 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition "For the second year in a row, cities nationwide are seeing a rise in gun violence and homicides. Some are breaking murder records that were set way back in the 1980s and '90s. This follows a grim 2020." NPR.org Coronavirus Lockdowns Could Ramp Up Obesity Epidemic, Study Warns August 14, 2020 by John Anderer "All of the physical inactivity, time spent stuck home, and emotional stress during coronavirus lockdowns, may escalate the obesity epidemic a new study from the University of Copenhagen finds..... In short, researchers believe that the coronavirus is creating a perfect storm of psychosocial insecurity that may lead to far greater numbers of obese individuals over the coming months and years. ... Staying away from friends and family immediately increases stress and anxiety. This, combined with the fact that so many people are sitting at home with nothing else to do anyway, promises to encourage overeating and excessive snacking..... Let’s also not forget how difficult it is for most people to get a meaningful workout in at home. It’s easy to to understand why experts ringing the proverbial obesity alarm.... “We know that there are links between obesity and a person’s class and mental health, but we don’t exactly understand how they make an impact,” he notes. Drug overdoses just one example of 'excess deaths' during pandemic EVAN WYLOGE Updated Oct 6, 2020 Drug overdoses aren’t the only cause of death that have spiked since the beginning of the spread of the novel coronavirus. The number of deaths in Colorado caused by heart disease, stroke, liver disease and Alzheimer’s are all up over recent years, adding to the understanding of the noncoronavirus “excess deaths” phenomenon. Deaths from all causes — not just Covid-19 — are up since the pandemic started, a CDC report found. By Julia Belluz Oct 21, 2020, 10:10am EDT It’s important to track excess deaths during a pandemic because official mortality counts may not capture undiagnosed fatal infections, or those who died of causes indirectly related to the virus [restrictions], such as interruptions in health care. We know of a few such interruptions in the US already: people experiencing heart attacks have been forgoing emergency room visits, and drop-offs in cancer screenings. We also know, from Brazil to Indonesia, excess deaths are way up this year. Young people experienced the greatest relative increase in excess deaths The most attention-grabbing finding relates to the pandemic’s toll on young people: For 25- to 44-year-olds, the excess death rate is up 27 percent. That’s the largest percentage increase of any age group. ....Drug overdoses and suicides were major contributors to the trend — and the arrival of the coronavirus may be exacerbating these factors. “If young adults were already dying at higher rates from drug overdoses and suicide before the pandemic, the additional stresses brought on by the pandemic [fear-mongering] could not have helped matters,” said Woolf. MORE: Fearmongering and isolation is creating anxiety and despair

How many media news articles mention that the greatest
correlation coefficient factor in Covid19 deaths is the
number of comorbidities (another cause of death)?
Is comorbidity hiding the real numbers?

In 2020, the CDC admitted that for 94% of the Covid19 deaths, there was another cause of death: CDC Releases Early Demographic Snapshot of Worst Coronavirus Cases David Waldstein The New York Times April 9, 2020 Approximately 90% of the 1,482 hospitalized patients included in the study released Wednesday had one or more underlying medical conditions. 99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says By Tommaso Ebhardt, Chiara Remondini, and Marco Bertacche March 18, 2020, 8:56 AM EDT More than 99% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country’s national health authority. Most NYC Virus Deaths Were Among People With Other Health Ills By Drew Armstrong March 25, 2020, 11:25 AM EDT "Ninety-five percent of New York City’s almost 200 deaths from the new coronavirus had underlying health conditions.... About half of all adults had some degree of high blood pressure, according to a separate CDC report..... The [New York] data line up with places like Italy, where 99% of patients who died in that country’s large, ongoing outbreak had some form of underlying health condition." CDC website (2020) Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Table 3. Conditions contributing to deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), by age group, United States. Week ending 2/1/2020 to 8/22/2020.* Comorbidities: Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. In 2021, the CDC changed the wording to be deceptive: "For over 5% of these deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes of death." MORE: Is there corruption in the Covid19 counting?

SCIENCE? In 2020, why did the CDC
ignore science to close the schools?
Why does the CDC help the wealthy
and ignore the greater good?

Back to class: Despite virus surge, Europe reopens schools By ANGELA CHARLTON August 27, 2020 GMT "Virus or no virus, European authorities are determined to put children back into classrooms, to narrow the learning gaps between haves and have-nots that deepened during lockdowns — and to get their parents back to work.... European leaders from the political left, right and center are sending an unusually consistent message: Even in a pandemic, children are better off in class..... France’s prime minister promised Wednesday to “do everything” to get people back to school and work. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called reopening schools a “moral duty,” and his government even threatened to fine parents who keep kids at home.... School “has to start up again at some point,” he says. “The health risk exists, but the risk of not putting children in school is even bigger.” ... “Our students really, really need school,” he said. For those growing up in an environment plagued with violence and drugs, school “is a place where they can breathe.” .... Parents and teachers are not the only people demanding a voice in school reopenings. Denmark’s second-largest city, Aarhus, sent all high school students home after a spike in virus cases but the teens pushed back, saying they don’t learn as much online. .... Protesting Monday, they held signs reading: “I just want to go to school.” NPR Schools In Germany Remain Open Amid A New Lockdown November 6, 2020 4:02 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Rob Schmitz KELLY: We've got a lot of - in my neighborhood, restaurants and gyms are open, but a lot of the schools are still shut. What is the thinking in Germany? SCHMITZ: Yeah, so here's the thinking. First, the German government believes that distance learning is not an adequate substitute for in-class learning, especially for younger students. The government also wants to keep adults working in the economy going, which is near-impossible to do if their children are at home, as everyone knows. And finally, the German government is basing this decision on scientific studies that have shown that transmission rates of the virus are low inside a school environment. Washington Post Europe stays committed to in-person classes as school outbreaks remain rare By Michael Birnbaum, Loveday Morris and Quentin Ariès September 27, 2020 at 11:10 AM EDT .... The answer, experts are saying in Europe after several weeks back in classrooms, is that it’s rare for children to spread the virus within the walls of a school, but not unheard of. Not every country can point to a school where the coronavirus seems to have spread. And even where there are such schools, including in Belgium, Norway and Germany, such outbreaks typically remain countable on a single hand — affecting a fraction of a percentage point of the millions of students and teachers in session across the continent. So despite rising coronavirus cases, and although universities have emerged as sites of concern, European countries remain wholeheartedly committed to in-person learning for primary and secondary schools. ...Many countries in Europe have dropped rules about wearing masks in schools, reasoning that it’s difficult for students to concentrate when they have them on all day...... She noted that Norway had decided as a society to prioritize in-person education. “The view in Norway is that children and youth should have high priority to have as normal a life as possible, because this disease is going to last,” she said. “They have the lowest burden of the disease, so they shouldn’t have the highest burden of measures.” “The schools are not driving this,” said Tobias Kluth, the director of Charité’s Institute for Public Health in Berlin. “The schools are a mirror of what’s going on in society.” BBC News Coronavirus: Missing school is worse than virus for children 23 August 2020 Children are more likely to be harmed by not returning to school next month than if they catch coronavirus, the UK's chief medical adviser says. Prof Chris Whitty said "the chances of children dying from Covid-19 are incredibly small" - but missing lessons "damages children in the long run". National Public Radio Lessons From Europe, Where Cases Are Rising But Schools Are Open November 13, 2020 7:00 AM ET ANYA KAMENETZ Across Europe, schools and child care centers are staying open even as much of the continent reports rising coronavirus cases, and even as many businesses and gathering places are shut or restricted. Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy appear to be following the emerging evidence that schools have not been major centers of transmission of the virus, especially for young children.... The U.S. has taken a different approach. As new cases climb above 100,000 per day, there are very few places in the U.S. where classrooms have remained full even as restaurants and bars are empty. In cities such as Boston and Washington, D.C., schools are remote, but indoor dining is allowed. This week, Detroit announced it was closing its schools through January, while indoor dining and bars there remain open at 50% capacity. Meanwhile, in states like Florida and Texas, schools — along with most businesses — have stayed open, even with very high and rising case rates. Reuters POLITICS Pelosi says Trump 'messing with' children's health on school reopenings By Doina Chiacu July 12, 2020 10:34 AM WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused President Donald Trump of “messing with” children’s health on Sunday and said federal guidelines on reopening schools amid the coronavirus outbreak should be mandatory. The Democratic House of Representatives leader sharply criticized the Trump administration for advocating a return to school in the fall as coronavirus infections surge across the country, particularly in states that reopened their economies earliest during the pandemic. The federal government can make the Centers for Disease Control guidelines for reopening schools mandatory, like some state governors have done with anti-coronavirus measures, she said. Critics of the Trump administration’s pandemic response have long called for a national strategy on mitigation efforts. “Going back to school presents the biggest risk for the spread of the coronavirus,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “If there are CDC guidelines, they should be requirements.” “They should be mandates.” Trump last week attacked the CDC, the federal government’s health protection agency, for school reopening guidelines that he said were too tough, expensive and impractical. Washington Post America is about to start online learning, Round 2. For millions of students, it won’t be any better. By Hannah Natanson and Valerie Strauss August 5, 2020 at 5:58 PM EDT America is about to embark on Round 2 of its unplanned experiment in online education — and, for millions of students, virtual learning won’t be any better than it was in the spring. School openings across globe suggest ways to keep coronavirus at bay, despite outbreaks By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Gretchen Vogel, Meagan Weiland Jul. 7, 2020, 4:00 PM Early this spring, school gates around the world slammed shut. By early April, an astonishing 1.5 billion young people were staying home as part of broader shutdowns to protect people from the novel coronavirus. The drastic measures worked in many places, dramatically slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. However, as weeks turned into months, pediatricians and educators began to voice concern that school closures were doing more harm than good, especially as evidence mounted that children rarely develop severe symptoms from COVID-19.... Continued closures risk “scarring the life chances of a generation of young people,” according to an open letter published last month and signed by more than 1500 members of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). Virtual education is often a pale shadow of the real thing and left many parents juggling jobs and childcare. Lower-income children who depend on school meals were going hungry. And there were hints that children were suffering increased abuse, now that school staff could no longer spot and report early signs of it. It was time, a growing chorus said, to bring children back to school. By early June, more than 20 countries had done just that. (Some others, including Taiwan, Nicaragua, and Sweden, never closed their schools.) It was a vast, uncontrolled experiment. ....Several studies have found that overall, people under age 18 are between one-third and one-half as likely as adults to contract the virus, and the risk appears lowest for the youngest children. New York Times Why Democratic Governors Are Turning Against Mask Mandates Is this a watershed moment in the pandemic? Thursday, February 10th, 2022 "And at the same time, there’s more data coming out about the impacts of things like masking in schools. And there’s more research showing that maybe masking in schools isn’t all that great for kids. And there hasn’t been a lot of in-school transmission of the virus. So some public health experts are starting to ask the question of whether the public health benefit of keeping kids masked, in terms of the virus spreading, outweighs the impact it has on their development and on their learning." NPR New Mexico asks National Guard to work as substitute teachers to keep classrooms open February 2, 2022 7:01 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Alice Fordham From KUNM 3-Minute Listen "FORDHAM: More kids live in poverty here than in almost any other state. School principal Mario Vigil says the poorest children really suffer when schools close." Washington Post Enrollment fell and fell again in schools that operated virtually By Laura Meckler April 27, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT Public schools suffered significant enrollment declines as the pandemic set in, but some districts bounced back and others didn’t. New data suggests the difference can be explained in part by how much in-person school was offered. Districts that operated in person last school year were far more likely to rebound in enrollment this year than those that continued to operate virtually, according to data released Wednesday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a right-leaning think tank. NPR COVID's impact on classrooms will linger and must be addressed, according to teachers February 2, 2023 4:19 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Gus Contreras, Christopher Intagliata, Ailsa Chang 7-Minute Listen "So I teach 4-year-olds. And to be honest, this year has been a very challenging year. What I've seen in my 4-year-old students - a lot of anger, a lot of irritability, a lot of lack of impulse control, be it with their words, with their hands. I've seen a lot of oppositional defiance. It's really concerning. And I really do think this has to do with, you know, the pandemic. I think whatever the parents were going through, you know, in 2020 - something has happened because I'm seeing really a big disconnect in the young children that I'm teaching today.... A lot of swearing, which I have never...experienced before in my - I mean, like, full-blown, this person just rolled out of the bar or a pirate. Like, I have never in my life been cussed out the way that I've been cussed out this year. A lot of just, you know, given a direction and the child just turning and screaming at me, no - and the direction might be, oh, let's go back to our table, or, let's go put our boots away. I mean, really simple things are really throwing children off." MORE: What permanent damage has the CDC done to American kids?

Every year, a new virus strain of influenza or coronavirus
permeates the global ecosystem until an approximately 15% (1-in-7)
saturation threshold is reached — regardless of vaccine.

Why has the CDC not told us when each Covid-19 strain reached
its 1-in-7 threshold, rather than falsely credit the vaccine?

The United States infection rate started plummeting before January 5, 2021, at 17% already infected, With 0% of the population fully vaccinated. This was the third wave of the virus that disappeared before any vaccines were administered. New York Times There’s much to learn about how the virus spreads By David Leonhardt July 30, 2021 "In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes." Why ARE COVID cases plummeting? Health Reporter For Dailymail.com and Associated Press February 3, 2021 Health experts say it is too soon for vaccines to be playing a major role in the decline with just 8% of the population having received the first shot and fewer than 2% being fully immunized. Roughly 35.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the US, according to CDC 7:12 p.m. ET, February 4, 2021 From CNN's Deidre McPhillips [Despite major declines, only] about 2% have been fully vaccinated, CDC data shows. T cells found in COVID-19 patients ‘bode well’ for long-term immunity By Mitch Leslie May 14, 2020 , 9:00 PM "The teams also asked whether people who haven’t been infected with SARS-CoV-2 also produce cells that combat it. Thiel and colleagues analyzed blood from 68 uninfected people and found that 34% hosted helper T cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2. The La Jolla team detected this crossreactivity in about half of stored blood samples collected between 2015 and 2018, well before the current pandemic began. The researchers think these cells were likely triggered by past infection with one of the four human coronaviruses that cause colds; proteins in these viruses resemble those of SARS-CoV-2." 17% of US has been infected, model estimates USA TODAY Jan. 23, 2021 Approximately 17% of people in the U.S. have been infected with the coronavirus, a model by researches at the University of Washington estimates. Current data suggests that at least 7% of Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, but the model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation assumes that testing isn't detecting all of the cases present in the population. Antibody surveys suggesting vast undercount of coronavirus infections may be unreliable By Gretchen Vogel Apr. 21, 2020 6:30 PM At a press conference on 9 April, virologist Hendrik Streeck from the University of Bonn announced preliminary results from a town of about 12,500 in Heinsberg, a region in Germany that had been hit hard by COVID-19. He told reporters his team had found antibodies to the virus in 14% of the 500 people tested. By comparing that number with the recorded deaths in the town, the study suggested the virus kills only 0.37% of the people infected. New Covid-19 cases down 16 percent last week: WHO USA TODAY February 16, 2021 The number of new cases of Covid-19 reported worldwide fell by 16 percent last week to 2.7 million, the World Health Organization said... WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that the number of new cases had declined for a fifth consecutive week, dropping by almost half, from more than five million cases in the week of January 4. The 'one big reason to think' COVID-19 cases could start to decline soon Brendan Morrow, Staff Writer September 1, 2021, 8:28 AM 1 min read That question was posed Wednesday by The New York Times' David Leonhardt and Ashley Wu, who in the Times morning newsletter pointed to a "regular — if mysterious — cycle" that COVID-19 cases have frequently followed since the start of the pandemic: surging for about two months and then beginning to decline. ... As far as why COVID-19 surges seem to run out of gas after two months, experts aren't sure. "We still are really in the cave ages in terms of understanding how viruses emerge, how they spread, how they start and stop, why they do what they do," University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said. New York was hit early, and hit hard in 2020, and then infection rates started plummeting April 15, 2020 at 17% infected, with 0% of the population vaccinated. The media credited masks and social distancing but now scientists say that measures were not effective afterall. 1-in-7 New Yorkers May Have Already Gotten Covid-19 Bloomberg April 15, 2020 Of the 215 women who delivered babies at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Upper Manhattan from March 22 through April 4, 214 were tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Thirty-three of them, or more than 15%, tested positive, even though only a few had symptoms. In Gangelt, a German town that makes a big deal out of Karneval (aka Mardi Gras) and had a major coronavirus outbreak after this February’s festivities, 500 residents were tested for evidence of either the virus or the antibodies that indicate one has recovered from it, and 15% of them tested positive as well. New York first state to pass peak CNN June 3, 2020 "New York state reports lowest daily coronavirus death toll yet" [soon after over 15% threshold already infected] NY releases figures estimating 14 percent in state, 20 percent in NYC have had COVID-19 By Jessie Hellmann - 04/23/20 12:43 PM EDT Preliminary data shows about 13.9 percent of the population of New York state — about 2.7 million people — have at some point been infected with the coronavirus. About 3,000 people were randomly tested at grocery stores and other public locations to allow officials to get a broader sense of how widely the virus has spread in New York and how many people might now have immunity. Studies show 14-17% threshold saturation ends the spread without any vaccinations administered. See year 2020 Covid19 case studies showing 15% threshold saturation without any 2021 vaccines. New York Times Why Do Some People Never Get Covid? March 8, 2022 By Daniela J. Lamas "...why some people do not become sick despite significant exposure remains a mystery — one of the most important of the pandemic." Financial Times Widespread testing may explain low fatality figures in country that is bucking trend in Europe Tobias Buck in Berlin March 20, 2020 "In the short term at least, mass testing feeds through into a lower fatality rate because it allows authorities to detect cases of Covid-19 even in patients who suffer few or no symptoms, and who have a much better chance of survival." Household secondary attack rate of COVID-19 and associated determinants in Guangzhou, China: a retrospective cohort study Published:June 17, 2020 Between Jan 7, 2020, and Feb 18, 2020, we traced 195 unrelated close contact groups (215 primary cases, 134 secondary or tertiary cases, and 1964 uninfected close contacts). By identifying households from these groups, assuming a mean incubation period of 5 days, a maximum infectious period of 13 days, and no case isolation, the estimated secondary attack rate among household contacts was 12·4% (95% CI 9·8–15·4) when household contacts were defined on the basis of close relatives and 17·1% (13·3–21·8) when household contacts were defined on the basis of residential address. CDC Community Transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, Shenzhen, China, 2020 Volume 26, Number 6—June 2020 We found a sharply increasing proportion of infected children (from 2% before January 24 to 13% for January 25–February 5; p<0.001), implying that increased exposure for children and intrafamily transmission might contribute substantially to the epidemic. (NIH) Probable Secondary Infections in Households of SARS Patients in Hong Kong Emerg Infect Dis. 2004 Feb; 10(2): 236–243. A case-control analysis identified risk factors for secondary infection. Secondary infection occurred in 14.9% (22.1% versus 11% in earlier and later phases) of all households and 8% (11.7% versus 5.9% in the earlier and later phases) of all household members. COVID antibody test in German town shows 15 percent infection rate Scientists randomly sampled 1,000 people in Gangelt April 10, 2020 ...The 15 percent figure from Gangelt is interesting because it matches two previous studies. Firstly, there was the accidental experiment of the cruise ship the Diamond Princess, which inadvertently became a floating laboratory when a passenger showing symptoms of COVID-19 boarded on January 20 and remained in the ship, spreading the virus, for five days. The ship was eventually quarantined on February 3 and all its 3,711 passengers tested for the virus. It turned out the 634 of them — 17 percent — had been infected, many of them without symptoms. The mortality rate on the vessel was 1.2 percent — although, inevitably being a cruise ship, it was a relatively elderly cohort. We gained another insight into SARS-CoV-2 from a Chinese study into 391 cases of COVID-19 in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. In this case, scientists tested everyone who shared a household with people who were found to be suffering from the disease. It turned out 15 percent of this group had gone on to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 themselves. Again, many showed no symptoms. Volume 26, Number 10—October 2020 CDC: Contact Tracing during Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, South Korea, 2020 We analyzed reports for 59,073 contacts of 5,706 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) index patients reported in South Korea during January 20–March 27, 2020. Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had COVID-19. Spouses, Adults Most Likely to Get COVID-19 Infection from Household Member MAY 07, 2020 The results show that overall, the rate of infection among household members was 16.3%, with adults facing a greater likelihood of infection than children. CDC Public Health Responses to COVID-19 Outbreaks on Cruise Ships — Worldwide, February–March 2020 Weekly / March 27, 2020 / 69(12);347-352 On March 23, 2020, this report was posted online as an MMWR Early Release. During February 11–21, 2020, the Grand Princess cruise ship sailed roundtrip from San Francisco, California, making four stops in Mexico (voyage A).... During land-based quarantine in the United States, all persons were offered SARS-CoV-2 testing. As of March 21, of 469 persons with available test results, 78 (16.6%) had positive test results for SARS-CoV-2. Nearly half of Diamond Princess cruise ship passengers and crew who had coronavirus were asymptomatic when tested, CDC report says By Amir Vera and Shelby Lin Erdman, CNN Updated 12:50 AM ET, Tue March 24, 2020 The CDC's report also detailed the other cruise ship, the Grand Princess, which was in limbo for days off the coast of California. Of the 469 people with available test results on that ship, 78 — or 17% — of them tested positive for coronavirus.

Do quick and strong responses save lives — or increase death?

"Really? What am I going to do with 40 ventilators when I need 30,000?" — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

Beware of hysterical people who have no knowledge of safety.

New York and other states first privitized their hospitals into profit making institutions, then tried to get $39,000 per Covid19 patient even though this practice often resulted in the murder of the patient. Study: Most N.Y. COVID Patients on Ventilators Died By Robert Preidt HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, April 22, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The largest analysis of hospitalized U.S. COVID-19 patients to date finds that most did not survive after being placed on a mechanical ventilator. Fact check: Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators Michelle Rogers USA TODAY Network Published 4:53 p.m. ET April 24, 2020 "....garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000." Ventilators are being overused on COVID-19 patients, world-renowned critical care specialist says Italian experts say many patients fare poorly on ventilators; Toronto expert says more data needed CBC News Posted: Apr 17, 2020 4:00 AM ET Doctors in New York state and elsewhere have voiced similar concerns about putting patients on ventilators too soon and with the pressure too high. Many have begun to delay their use, after New York authorities reported a death rate of 80 per cent for people who go on ventilators. Newsweek: Cuomo Requests 30,000 Ventilators By Jeffery Martin On 3/26/20 at 10:36 PM EDT New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a Wednesday news conference. "Really? What am I going to do with 40 ventilators when I need 30,000?" Andrew Cuomo is no hero. He's to blame for New York's coronavirus catastrophe Lyta Gold and Nathan Robinson The Guardian May 20, 2020 As the state now staggers to its feet, Cuomo has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to “reimagine education” (which almost certainly means privatization), and with the ex-Google chief Eric Schmidt to – as Naomi Klein puts it – “permanently integrat[e] technology into every aspect of civic life”. All of this has happened without the democratic input of New Yorkers, who would likely prefer that the progressive legislators they elected could govern without interference, that their hospitals have enough money to function and that billionaires don’t infiltrate and control every element of civic life. Hospitals Retreat From Early Covid Treatment and Return to Basics By Melanie Evans Wall Street Journal Dec. 20, 2020 2:10 pm ET Now hospital treatment for the most critically ill looks more like it did before the pandemic. Doctors hold off longer before placing patients on ventilators.... Doctors could have employed other kinds of breathing support devices that don't require risky sedation, but early reports suggested patients using them could spray dangerous amounts of virus into the air ... At the time, he said, doctors and nurses feared the virus would spread through hospitals. "We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients' benefit, but in order to control the epidemic and to save other patients," Dr. Iwashyna said "That felt awful." 80% of NYC's coronavirus patients who are put on ventilators ultimately die, and some doctors are trying to stop using them Sinéad Baker Apr 9, 2020, 6:56 AM * Some doctors are trying to reduce their reliance on ventilators for coronavirus patients because of reports of abnormally high death rates for patients using the machines, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday. * New York City officials have said at least 80% of coronavirus patients who were on ventilators in the city died, the AP reported. Unusually high death rates have also been recorded elsewhere in the US and the world. New analysis recommends less reliance on ventilators to treat coronavirus patients By Sharon Begley April 21, 2020 By using ventilators more sparingly on Covid-19 patients, physicians could reduce the more-than-50% death rate for those put on the machines, according to an analysis published Tuesday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Are Ventilators Helping or Harming COVID-19 Patients? April 15, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter Mechanical ventilators mark a crisis point in a patient's COVID-19 course, and questions are now being raised as to whether the machines can cause harm. COVID-19 | TREATMENT ‘Almost a death sentence’: How Wisconsin doctors, peers are rethinking ventilators for coronavirus BRAM SABLE-SMITH Wisconsin Watch May 11, 2020 Worse than the crime: Gov. Cuomo’s obfuscation of nursing home death numbers looks more egregious by the day New York Daily News May 02, 2021 at 4:10 AM We accepted and accept Cuomo aides’ insistence that a March 25, 2020, executive order requiring nursing homes to accept new or returning residents regardless of whether they were COVID-positive — was the well-intentioned act of a governor desperate to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by the virus’s surge, as opposed to something nefarious.... Nor did we assume bad motives when it became clear last June and July that the state’s methodology for tallying COVID fatalities in nursing homes was probably a drastic undercount because it didn’t include residents who died in hospitals. But it’s now clear beyond any doubt that Cuomo and his aides set out to prevent a timely, full and honest accounting of those deaths.

Help restore democracy for the people, not the rich!

Unnecessary Covid19 measures are destroying the planet, the oceans, killing sealife!

The Covid Crisis Is Now a Garbage Crisis, Too By Mike Ives Published Sept. 18, 2021 "Surging consumption of plastics and packaging during the pandemic has produced mountains of waste." Disposable plastic face masks pose huge environmental risks, with 3 million used a minute, researchers warn March 11, 2021 Around the world 129 billion face masks are now used every month The huge demand for face masks in the year since the coronavirus pandemic has swept the globe has resulted in enormous production of disposable masks, but it is now feared that undisposed of properly, they pose a major threat to the natural world. ....Researchers now warn the huge volume of mask, with their plastic composition, pose a growing environmental threat and are urging action to prevent it from becoming the next plastic problem. ... Environmental toxicologist Elvis Genbo Xu from the University of Southern Denmark and professor Zhiyong Jason Ren, an expert in civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, said: “Disposable masks are plastic products, that cannot be readily biodegraded but may fragment into smaller plastic particles, namely micro- and nanoplastics that widespread in ecosystems..... But they said unlike plastic bottles, of which approximately 25 per cent are recycled, there is no official guidance on mask recycling, making them more likely to be disposed of in inappropriate ways, the researchers said. World Economic Forum Do you wear a disposable mask? 06 Aug 2020 ....But aside from limiting the transmission of COVID-19, disposable plastic masks are having a devastating effect on the planet, adding to the world's growing plastic problem.... Environment July 23, 2020 / 6:44 PM / 16 days ago Reuters Plastic pollution flowing into oceans to triple by 2040: study Joe Brock 4 Min Read SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The amount of plastic waste flowing into the ocean and killing marine life could triple in the next 20 years, unless companies and governments can drastically reduce plastic production, a new study published on Thursday said. Single-use plastic consumption has increased during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the International Solid Waste Association, an NGO. Face masks and latex gloves are washing up daily on Asia’s remote beaches. Landfills worldwide are piled high with record amounts of takeaway food containers and online delivery packaging. United Nations You should know about disposable masks and plastic pollution 30 July 2020 ...“Plastic pollution was already one of the greatest threats to our planet before the coronavirus outbreak,” says Pamela Coke-Hamilton, UNCTAD’s director of international trade. “The sudden boom in the daily use of certain products to keep people safe and stop the disease is making things much worse.” Discarded used masks, gloves increase health risks, pollution By Brendan Quealy Aug 8, 2020 A study released last week from the the journal of Environmental Science and Technology found that, worldwide, people are using and throwing away an estimated 129 billion disposable masks and 65 billion disposable gloves every month..... The gloves, masks and sanitizing wipes are all plastic, which break down into microplastics that attract pesticides and other harmful chemicals, officials with the Citizens Campaign for the Environment said.... When the wildlife eats the litter, they don’t just get the plastic, they get the chemicals as well. McDonald's: 'Face mask' found inside Aldershot store's chicken nugget 5 August 2020 A six-year-old girl nearly choked on a chicken nugget from McDonald's which her mother has claimed contained a blue surgical face mask..... She managed to get the chicken nugget out of her daughter's mouth and said: "It was a mask, it was absolutely baked into it".

Do measures save the children or destroy the children?

NBC News Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says David K. Li June 11, 2021, 12:45 PM 2 min read Emergency room visits for adolescent suicide attempts soared this past summer and winter, especially among girls, perhaps in connection to America's struggle with Covid-19, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data revealed Friday. ED WEEK Teen Brains Aged Prematurely During the Pandemic. Schools Should Take Note By Sarah D. Sparks December 02, 2022 3 min read Teenagers’ brains aged years in a matter of months during the stress and isolation of the pandemic lockdowns. A new study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science suggests that the pandemic caused similar effects to emotion and decisionmaking centers in the brain as chronic, toxic stress. NPR 3 years since the pandemic wrecked attendance, kids still aren't showing up to school March 2, 2023 12:00 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered "I think people have been a little bit under the false impression that when COVID became more endemic, that that would then result in a significant improvement in attendance. And I'm not seeing that." NYC kids still eating school lunch outdoors despite dropping temps By Selim Algar November 24, 2021 3:48pm Updated "Kids in some city schools are still eating lunch outdoors each day due to social distancing rules despite plunging temperatures and steamed parents." Comparing COVID-19 cases at schools with and without mask mandates Mark Johnson, Lansing State Journal Mon, February 14, 2022, 10:00 AM 3 min read "Comparing COVID-19 cases at 20 mid-Michigan school districts — including those in Clinton and Eaton counties without mask mandates — paints a foggy picture of the rules' efficacy. Charlotte Public Schools, which hasn’t had a mask mandate for most of the school year, saw a case rate of roughly 19%, nearly identical to DeWitt Public Schools, Waverly Community Schools and Webberville Community Schools, which all required masks. Meanwhile, St. Johns Public Schools, which didn't have a mandate all year, had the lowest case rate among 20 mid-Michigan districts. Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools and Ovid-Elsie Area Schools, both without mandates, the fourth-lowest and fifth-highest rates respectively." New York Times Why Democratic Governors Are Turning Against Mask Mandates Is this a watershed moment in the pandemic? Thursday, February 10th, 2022 "And at the same time, there’s more data coming out about the impacts of things like masking in schools. And there’s more research showing that maybe masking in schools isn’t all that great for kids. And there hasn’t been a lot of in-school transmission of the virus. So some public health experts are starting to ask the question of whether the public health benefit of keeping kids masked, in terms of the virus spreading, outweighs the impact it has on their development and on their learning." NY MAGAZINE FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE The Science of Masking Kids at School Remains Uncertain Aug. 20, 2021 By David Zweig “It is important for children to see facial expressions of their peers and the adults around them in order to learn social cues and understand how to read emotions.” ... “There are very good reasons that the World Health Organization has repeatedly affirmed their guidance for children under 6 to not wear masks,” said a pediatrician who has both state and national leadership roles in the AAP but who wished to remain anonymous because they did not want to jeopardize their roles in the organization. “Reading faces is critical for social emotional learning. And all children are actively learning language the first five years of life, for which seeing faces is foundational,” the pediatrician said. Children born during pandemic have lower IQs, US study finds Researchers blame lack of stimulation as parents balanced childcare with working from home Natalie Grover Science correspondent Thu 12 Aug 2021 14.45 EDT Children born during the coronavirus pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared with children born before, a US study suggests. ... The first few years of a child’s life are critical to their cognitive development. But with Covid-19 triggering the closure of businesses, nurseries, schools and playgrounds, life for infants changed considerably, with parents stressed and stretched as they tried to balance work and childcare. ... With limited stimulation at home and less interaction with the world outside, pandemic-era children appear to have scored shockingly low on tests designed to assess cognitive development, said lead study author Sean Deoni, associate professor of paediatrics (research) at Brown University. Washington Post Editorial Board: Don’t bring back restrictions. July 27, 2021 at 4:46 p.m. EDT A research team at Johns Hopkins led by Makary looked at 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with covid-19, and found a mortality rate of zero among children without a preexisting medical condition, such as pediatric cancer. Indeed, there is no official government data to show whether any healthy children have died as a result of covid-19." BBC News Coronavirus: Missing school is worse than virus for children 23 August 2020 Children are more likely to be harmed by not returning to school next month than if they catch coronavirus, the UK's chief medical adviser says. Prof Chris Whitty said "the chances of children dying from Covid-19 are incredibly small" - but missing lessons "damages children in the long run". NPR News 'I've Tried Everything': Pandemic Worsens Child Mental Health Crisis January 18, 2021 5:00 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Cory Turner, Christine Herman, Rhitu Chatterjee DATE Roughly 6% of U.S. children, ages 6 through 17, are living with serious emotional or behavioral difficulties, including children with autism, severe anxiety, depression and trauma-related mental health conditions. .... Many of these children depend on schools for access to vital therapies. When schools and doctors' offices stopped providing in-person services last spring, kids were untethered from the people and supports they'd come to rely on. ... "The lack of in-person services is really detrimental," says Dr. Susan Duffy, a pediatrician and professor of emergency medicine at Brown University. "So school-based services are one, but also in-person services in general are disrupted [by the pandemic]." NPR News Children's Health Growing up during the pandemic: What does that mean for kids' microbes? January 5, 2023 5:16 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Julie Depenbrock DEPENBROCK: The first few years of life are pivotal to the formation of our microbiomes. And the pandemic may be changing that important process. WU: Any disruptions in that sort of sensitive period early on, really in the first three-ish years of a kid's life, it's a pretty crucial period. DEPENBROCK: But microbiologists don't yet have a full understanding of exactly what can disrupt the formation of a microbiome and of what disruptions matter for future health. ... DEPENBROCK: Even if scientists are pretty sure the pandemic has affected microbiome formation, they're a long way from understanding what that'll mean for kids who are growing up in the COVID era. WU: It's going to be a really tricky thing to answer. But it's probably good that people are paying attention to it because we're still trying to figure out what sort of early life interruptions can impact how the microbes in our bodies really function. .... DEPENBROCK: And regardless of what future research shows about how pandemic behavior changes altered microbiomes. WU: None of this discussion is an indictment of the behavioral changes that people undertook, you know? Reuters How are human traffickers taking advantage of the pandemic? By Christopher Johnson October 17, 2020 9:34 PM ".... During the pandemic, IJM saw increases in exploitation first-hand – we saw migrant workers in South East Asia unable to return home and forced to continue working against their will.... In the Philippines, risks of online sexual exploitation of children escalated: children were at home, locked in with their abusers, and sex offenders in Western countries who drive the demand for livestreamed abuse were also at home and online." All-Remote Learning Is Failing Many Students All Across The Country: 'These Children Are Struggling' Monday, December 7th 2020, 11:38 am By: CBS News Students in about 40 percent of school districts across the country haven't seen the inside of a classroom in more than eight months – and their grades tell a sad story. The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to better mental health, a healthier economy and happier schoolchildren While Sweden's decision to stay open throughout the pandemic generated international debate, the controversy passed most people in Sweden by By Richard Orange Malmo 22 August 2021 8:00am Sweden's decision to eschew lockdown and leave pubs, restaurants, shopping centres and primary schools open throughout the pandemic generated furious discussion internationally. Millions of people across the world have been confined to their homes, watched businesses go under, and struggled to stay on top of their studies amid wave after wave of restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus. But for some 10 million Swedes, the eighteen months since the first local Covid-19 case was registered last February have been largely unremarkable. ... “They achieved infection control; they managed to keep infections relatively low and they didn't have any health care collapse.”... Sweden's economy has also bounced back faster than any other country in Europe. By June, GDP had overtaken where it was before the pandemic struck and the economy is estimated to grow by 4.6 per cent this year.... The psychological toll of the pandemic also appears to have been less dramatic in Sweden..... The National Board of Health and Welfare reported a continuation in the decline in the number of people seeking treatment for anxiety and depression, particularly among children and young adults. ... A large part of this is likely down to the decision to keep primary and lower secondary schools open throughout. Even in upper secondary schools, only children who test positive or have been formally contact-traced are asked to stay home. CBS News At Virtual Townhall, Officials Say Youngsters Are Committing Carjackings For Thrills By Jermont Terry February 1, 2021 at 10:30 pm CHICAGO (CBS) — It’s a thrill – that’s what the feds are saying the carjackings terrorizing Chicago amount to for those who are committing them – and 80 percent of those charged are kids.... The troubling spike keeps climbing. January ended with more than 150 carjackings. Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen Erica L. Green January 24, 2021, 10:37 AM The reminders of pandemic-driven suffering among students in Clark County, Nevada, have come in droves. Since schools shut their doors in March, an early warning system that monitors students’ mental health episodes has sent more than 3,100 alerts to district officials, raising alarms about suicidal thoughts, possible self-harm or cries for care. By December, 18 students had taken their own lives. The spate of student suicides in and around Las Vegas has pushed the Clark County district, the nation’s fifth largest, toward bringing students back as quickly as possible. CBS News Kids have regressed due to COVID-19 restrictions, with some potty-trained kids going back to diapers, experts say By Caitlin O'Kane November 10, 2020 / 3:55 PM / CBS News An education watchdog in the U.K. found that some children have regressed due to COVID-19-related school closures and restrictions. A report from Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills, says some kids have fallen back in basic skills – and some who were greatly impacted have even forgotten how to use a fork and knife. Wall Street Journal Remote Kindergarten During Covid-19 ‘Could Impact This Generation of Kids for Their Lifetime’ Kindergartners normally learn skills valuable for the rest of their education; an estimated 450,000 children may miss the grade this year By Valerie Bauerlein May 9, 2021 5:30 am ET ..... Kindergarten “can’t be replicated even by the very best teachers in the virtual environment,” said Whitney Oakley, chief academic officer for North Carolina’s Guilford County Schools. A missed, delayed or low-quality kindergarten experience “could impact this generation of kids for their lifetime.” MORE: Why did the CDC ignore the science when closing schools?

Africa spared? Isolation and chemicals worsen outbreaks, threatening natural immunity

NPR Understanding 'immunity debt', or why so many kids seem to be falling sick at once December 4, 2022 7:48 AM ET Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday "It's not just in the news. Everywhere you turn these days, there's RSV, a cold, flu, COVID....to understand why [immunity debt] happens, you have to understand, you know, what immunity means and where immunity comes from. ..... these last three years, a lot of adults, including pregnant adults, really have not had a lot of exposures to colds either.... So all of that adds up to a lot of susceptible kids now going back to daycare and getting sick.... RSV is transmitted more than some other respiratory viruses by touch"... [unlike Covid19, spread by aerosolization explaining why measures had no effect on the coronavirus spread]. NPR NEWS Children's Health The CDC issues an advisory about a surge in strep throat cases in kids January 5, 2023 5:16 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition "And we started to reduce our natural immunity that we would get when we were exposed to viruses. So when we took off the masks and we started going out and socializing more and being in crowds more, we became not only more susceptible, but also put ourselves in an easier situation to catch those viruses." BBC Covid: What’s the best way to top up our immunity? James Gallagher Health and science correspondent Published 21 August, 2021 "....The power-couple of the immune system that clears the body of infection are antibodies and T-cells. Antibodies stick to the surface of the virus and mark it for destruction. T-cells can spot which of our own cells have been hijacked by the virus and destroy them [not from vaccine] .....You get a broader immune response after being infected with the virus than vaccination.... Whether you've had Moderna or Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, your body is learning to spot just one thing - the spike protein. .... But having the other 28 proteins to target too, would give T-cells far more to go at. ... Natural infection, because it is in the nose rather than a jab in the arm, may be a better route to those antibodies, and nasal vaccines are being investigated too." CBS News: What Will Our Kids’ Post-Pandemic Immune Systems Be Like? By Heather Brown February 18, 2021 at 10:02 pm So once we’re beyond the pandemic, what happens to our immune systems? Will it affect how often our kids get sick? WCCO spoke with Dr. Gigi Chawla, head of general pediatrics at Children’s Minnesota. .... “Your immune system learns from previous illnesses and exposures, whatever the time period is,” Chawla said. NPR News Children's Health Growing up during the pandemic: What does that mean for kids' microbes? January 5, 2023 5:16 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Julie Depenbrock DEPENBROCK: The first few years of life are pivotal to the formation of our microbiomes. And the pandemic may be changing that important process. WU: Any disruptions in that sort of sensitive period early on, really in the first three-ish years of a kid's life, it's a pretty crucial period. DEPENBROCK: But microbiologists don't yet have a full understanding of exactly what can disrupt the formation of a microbiome and of what disruptions matter for future health. ... DEPENBROCK: Even if scientists are pretty sure the pandemic has affected microbiome formation, they're a long way from understanding what that'll mean for kids who are growing up in the COVID era. WU: It's going to be a really tricky thing to answer. But it's probably good that people are paying attention to it because we're still trying to figure out what sort of early life interruptions can impact how the microbes in our bodies really function. .... DEPENBROCK: And regardless of what future research shows about how pandemic behavior changes altered microbiomes. WU: None of this discussion is an indictment of the behavioral changes that people undertook, you know? The hygiene hypothesis: How being too clean might be making us sick By Joseph Stromberg Updated Jan 28, 2015, 11:07am EST Over the past few decades, doctors have arrived at a counterintuitive hypothesis about our modern, ultra-sanitized world. Too much cleanliness may be causing us to develop allergies, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases, and other autoimmune disorders. The idea is that for many children in the wealthy world, a lack of exposure to bacteria, viruses, and allergens prevents the normal development of the immune system, ultimately increasing the chance of disorders within this system down the road. This is called the hygiene hypothesis. The New York Times 'This Is Our March 2020': Children's Hospitals Are Overwhelmed by RSV Emily Baumgaertner Tue, November 1, 2022 at 2:35 PM 8 min read "Doctors suspect that those who would ordinarily have been exposed to RSV over the past couple of years were insulated from it by social distancing measures and are now driving up the numbers.... “The immune system works by recognition and repetition,” said Dr. Sarah Combs, an emergency medicine physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., where more than 1,000 children tested positive for RSV between July and early October of this year. “And when you give it a bit of a rest, like we did during the pandemic — and for good reason — we now have a generation of immune-naive children.” The onslaught of cases is coinciding with the seasonal burst of other respiratory viruses like rhinoviruses and influenza, plus the ongoing burden of COVID. ....One side effect of the surge in respiratory infections, doctors and hospital officials said, is that children who visit emergency rooms for non-life-threatening conditions like broken legs or dog bites will have longer wait times because they rank lower on the triage scale. Parents should, for the sake of both their children and the hospitals, do what they can to help flatten the curve, they said... “I don’t want to say to parents, ‘Be scared,’ or ‘Hide away,’ because RSV is not new, and I think stoking that pandemic-era anxiety is damaging,” Combs said." October 11, 2004 Washington Journal Influenza Vaccine Anthony Fauci: "The best vaccination is to get infected yourself... Its the most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself." (watch video) Contracting and beating COVID provides better protection against delta variant than Pfizer shot, new research shows Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News August 27, 2021, 12:56 PM 2 min read Catching and beating COVID-19 during one of the initial waves of the global health pandemic appears to provide more protection against the highly-contagious delta variant than both doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. T cells found in COVID-19 patients ‘bode well’ for long-term immunity By Mitch Leslie May 14, 2020 , 9:00 PM "The teams also asked whether people who haven’t been infected with SARS-CoV-2 also produce cells that combat it. Thiel and colleagues analyzed blood from 68 uninfected people and found that 34% hosted helper T cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2. The La Jolla team detected this crossreactivity in about half of stored blood samples collected between 2015 and 2018, well before the current pandemic began. The researchers think these cells were likely triggered by past infection with one of the four human coronaviruses that cause colds; proteins in these viruses resemble those of SARS-CoV-2." Coronavirus in South Africa: Scientists explore surprise theory for low death rate By Andrew Harding BBC Africa correspondent, Johannesburg Published 2 September 2020 The idea is that, by studying the PBMCs, the scientists might find evidence that people had been widely infected by other coronaviruses - those, for instance, responsible for many common colds - and that, as a result, they might enjoy some degree of immunity to Covid-19. "It's a hypothesis. Some level of pre-existing cross-protective immunity… might explain why the epidemic didn't unfold (the way it did in other parts of the world)," said Professor Madhi, explaining that data from scientists in the United States appeared to support the hypothesis of some pre-existing immunity. Colds and flu are, of course, commonplace around the world. But the South African scientists wondered whether, because those viruses spread more effectively in over-crowded neighbourhoods where it is harder for people to self-isolate, there might be an extra degree of immunity towards Covid-19. "The protection might be much more intense in highly populated areas, in African settings. It might explain why the majority (on the continent) have asymptomatic or mild infections," Professor Madhi said. "I can't think of anything else that would explain the numbers of completely asymptomatic people we're seeing. The numbers are completely unbelievable,"he said, expressing cautious hope that some of the challenges that have so often held back poorer communities might now work in their favour. Germ-free kids may risk more adult illnesses: study by Karin Zeitvogel Karin Zeitvogel Wed December 9, 2009 3:57 pm ET AFP "Our research suggests that ultra-clean, ultra-hygienic environments early in life may contribute to higher levels of inflammation as an adult, which in turn increases risks for a wide range of diseases," including cardiovascular disease, Thomas McDade, lead author of the study, said. NEW YORK TIMES Can We Learn to Live With Germs Again? The health of our bodies and microbiomes may depend on society’s return to lifestyles that expose us to bacteria, despite the risks. By Markham Heid Mr. Heid is a longtime health and science journalist who has written extensively about the microbiome. April 23, 2021 ...But some health experts are watching this ongoing onslaught with a mounting sense of dread. They fear that many of the measures we’ve employed to stop the virus.... may pose a threat to human health in the long run if they continue..... By sterilizing our bodies and spaces, they argue, we may be doing more harm than good. ... And there’s mounting evidence that our health relies on our early and ongoing interactions with [bacteria].... Deprived of these exposures, especially at the start of life, the immune system is prone to malfunction. The result can be allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and other chronic medical conditions.... The “hygiene hypothesis,” introduced in 1989 by the epidemiologist David Strachan, first made the case that bodies deprived of contact with microbes could be at risk for health problems.... But it’s now clear that exposure to “good” bacteria is necessary for a person’s health, and that living in too-sterile environments may threaten us in ways scientists are only just beginning to grasp.... Before the pandemic, there was growing recognition among both doctors and the public that aspects of modern life may be upsetting our balance of healthy microbes, perhaps especially in our guts, and hurting our health as a result. This idea is not so much controversial as simply too new to be fully appreciated; roughly 95 percent of the published microbiome scholarship has come in just the last decade, and two-thirds of it only in the last five years. But already, research has revealed that, apart from training the immune system, our bacteria produce molecules that affect the workings of our every cell and organ.... There’s some conjecture that the imbalance or loss of good microbes may heighten a person’s susceptibility to infection — including, perhaps, to the coronavirus.... There’s even some speculation that microbiome factors play a part in so-called long Covid — the brain fog, fatigue and other persistent symptoms that afflict many in the aftermath of the infection. ... In addition to antibiotic overuse, Dr. Finlay says that “hyper-hygiene” is, quite literally, overkill. “Wiping down or spraying every surface with antimicrobial agents gives people comfort, but it’s probably not doing much to protect us from Covid,” he says.... Hygiene zealotry not only deprives people of interactions with helpful bacteria, but it may also be driving some essential microbes into extinction. “We really don’t know what effect all this hyper-hygiene and hyper-cleanliness will have,” Dr. Finlay says. “This is the biggest experiment in a century, and unfortunately we have more questions than answers.”.... “A lot of things people do when they’re together that we didn’t use to think about — shaking hands or embracing, kissing or hugging — these sorts of sociocultural practices could play a part in the exchange of microbes,” says Tamara Giles-Vernick, another of the PNAS paper’s authors and a medical anthropologist at the nonprofit Pasteur Institute in Paris.... He says that plant foods (legumes, greens, whole fruits, a variety of vegetables), as well as fermented foods, support the richness and diversity of the gut microbiome. So, too, does limiting one’s intake of processed and fast foods, especially those that contain added sugar.... “Getting outside and exposing ourselves to microbes beyond our indoor spaces may have many positive impacts.” Such exposure, he notes, might even counterbalance any negative effect that extended indoor stays might be having on our microbiomes..... He also emphasizes that, before the pandemic, only one of the top 10 causes of death in America — influenza — was attributable to an infectious disease that someone could “catch.” Nearly all the rest, such as heart disease and stroke, cancer, brain disease and diabetes, are associated with poor microbiome health or dysfunction..... He and other experts will continue to work to raise awareness about the importance of bacteria and the microbiome. London Guardian After 18 months of social distancing, scientists believe people’s immune defences have weakened Ian Sample, Science editor Fri 24 Sep 2021 02.00 EDT Common colds and other respiratory tract infections tend to ramp up in September when the schools go back and autumn arrives, but after 18 months of social distancing and mask wearing, many people are thought to have weaker immune defences to protect themselves against the onslaught of respiratory viruses. With reduced immunity across the board, people may fall ill with viruses they would normally have fended off with little trouble, or develop co-infections that make them feel more poorly. This is particularly likely if the viruses that have been kept at bay by anti-Covid measures all bounce back at once. “We don’t know what we’re going to see with common colds this season,” said Prof Ronald Eccles, former director of the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University. “We’re seeing this increase now, but the whole system has been knocked out of kilter by the fact that we’ve been socially distancing and wearing masks, and children have not had that immunity over the past year or so.” NIH Annual influenza vaccination affects the development of heterosubtypic immunity. Vaccine. 2012 Dec 7;30(51):7407-10. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.04.086. Epub 2012 May 27. Bodewes R, Fraaij PL, Kreijtz JH, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF. Annual vaccination of healthy children >6 months of age against seasonal influenza has been recommended by public health authorities of some countries. However, currently used seasonal vaccines provide only limited protection against (potentially) pandemic influenza viruses. Furthermore, we recently hypothesized that annual vaccination may hamper the development of cross-reactive immunity against influenza A viruses of novel subtypes, that would otherwise be induced by natural infection. Here we summarize our findings in animal models in which we demonstrated that vaccination against influenza A/H3N2 virus reduced the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against highly pathogenic avian influenza A/H5N1 virus, otherwise induced by a prior infection with influenza A/H3N2 virus. The reduction of heterosubtypic immunity correlated with reduced virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses. An additional study was performed in humans, in which we collected peripheral blood mononuclear cells from annually vaccinated children with cystic fibrosis (CF) and age-matched unvaccinated healthy control children to study the virus-specific T cell response. An age-related increase of the virus-specific CD8+ T cell response was observed in unvaccinated children that was absent in vaccinated children with CF. TED TALK How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected Christine Stabell Benn October 2018 NIH Annual Vaccination against Influenza Virus Hampers Development of Virus-Specific CD8+ T Cell Immunity in Children J Virol. Nov 2011; 85(22): 11995–12000. doi: 10.1128/JVI.05213-11 PMCID: PMC3209321 Rogier Bodewes, Pieter L. A. Fraaij, Martina M. Geelhoed-Mieras, Carel A. van Baalen, Harm A. W. M. Tiddens, Annemarie M. C. van Rossum, Fiona R. van der Klis, Ron A. M. Fouchier, Albert D. M. E. Osterhaus, and Guus F. Rimmelzwaan Infection with seasonal influenza A viruses induces immunity to potentially pandemic influenza A viruses of other subtypes (heterosubtypic immunity). We recently demonstrated that vaccination against seasonal influenza prevented the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against influenza A/H5N1 virus induced by infection with seasonal influenza in animal models, which correlated with the absence of virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses. Annual vaccination of all healthy children against influenza has been recommended, but the impact of vaccination on the development of the virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity in children is currently unknown. Here we compared the virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity in children vaccinated annually with that in unvaccinated children. .... Similar virus-specific CD4+ T cell and antibody responses were observed, while an age-dependent increase of the virus-specific CD8+ T cell response that was absent in vaccinated CF children was observed in unvaccinated healthy control children.....Furthermore, it can be hypothesized that the use of these vaccines interferes with the induction of heterosubtypic immunity and virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses otherwise induced by natural infections, especially in children who are immunologically naïve to influenza viruses (7). .... The prevention of heterosubtypic immunity by H3N2 vaccination correlated with reduced virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses..... In 24 out of 27 children (89%) of the unvaccinated group, antibodies were detected against at least one influenza A/H3N2 virus, and in 20 out of 27 children, antibodies were detected against one of the influenza A/H1N1 viruses, including the influenza A/H1N1(2009) virus..... The proportion of subjects with antibodies to the relatively older strains influenza A/Panama/07/99 (H3N2) and A/New Caledonia/20/99 was significantly (P < 0.05) greater in the group of vaccinated children with CF than in the unvaccinated group (Fig. 1B). .... in unvaccinated children, an age-dependent increase in the frequency of virus-specific CD8+ T cells which was not observed in vaccinated children with CF was detected. These findings are in concordance with our results in the mouse model, in which we demonstrated that vaccination against seasonal influenza A virus prevented the development of influenza A virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity otherwise induced by infection (4, 6). .... This indicates that memory CD8+ T cells provoked against seasonal influenza A viruses will cross-react with other influenza A viruses, even with those of other subtypes (24, 27). Thus, vaccinated children with CF will develop lower cross-reactive virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses than unvaccinated children. ....In the group of CF patients vaccinated annually, the age-dependent increase in virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses was absent. Our interpretation of these findings is that vaccination efficiently induced virus-specific antibodies which protected against infection with seasonal influenza viruses to a great extent and thereby prevented the induction of virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses. ....Thus, annual vaccination against influenza is effective but may have potential drawbacks that have previously been underappreciated and that are also a matter of debate (7, 22, 37). .... long-term annual vaccination using inactivated vaccines may hamper the induction of cross-reactive CD8+ T cell responses by natural infections and thus may affect the induction of heterosubtypic immunity. This may render young children who have not previously been infected with an influenza virus more susceptible to infection with a pandemic influenza virus of a novel subtype. ... it has been demonstrated that live attenuated influenza vaccines induce virus-specific CD8+ T cell responses (21, 23a). In addition, it has been demonstrated that live attenuated influenza vaccines are also effective against drift variants in children (1, 2, 19). You Can Stop Cleaning Your Mail Now People are power scrubbing their way to a false sense of security. July 27, 2020 Staff writer at The Atlantic As a COVID-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage. FDA Warns About Toxic Hand Sanitizers Agency found wood alcohol, which can be fatal when ingested, in dozens of products originating from companies in Mexico By Sharon Terlep Wall Street Journal July 24, 2020 8:18 am ET "Wood alcohol, or methanol, can be fatal when ingested and lead to methanol poisoning when applied to the skin." One Of The World's Poorest Countries Has One Of The World's Lowest COVID Death Rates May 4, 2021 8:22 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition NPR: "Haiti has one of the lowest death rates from COVID-19 in the world..... Most people have given up wearing masks in public. Buses and markets are crowded. And Haiti hasn't yet administered a single COVID-19 vaccine. ... Dr. Jean Pape says very few cases are detected each day. ... "Sometimes it's two, sometimes zero, sometimes it's 20 cases," he says. "But we are not seeing a second wave, as we had thought would happen." George Carlin once brilliantly destroyed germaphobia in a single sentence Jun 11, 2015, 4:13 PM Chris Weller In his [February 6] 1999 stand-up comedy special "You Are All Diseased," the wily old comic, then 71, released obscenity-laced frustrations that scientists have actually come to validate time and again. As Carlin so eloquently states in his special, "If you kill all the germs around you and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along you're not going to be prepared." Scientists have arrived at a similar conclusion. Dubbed the "hygiene hypothesis," the theory argues we should stop demonizing germs, since being exposing to germs allows a person to build a more robust immune system. Click here to listen to George Carlin clip on Cell Phone for texting to others Here is entire George Carlin monologue on YouTube

Do any measures actually make a difference?

The weather has a bigger impact on COVID spread than social distancing, study concludes February 3, 2021 "WASHINGTON — A lot of the blame for COVID-19’s “second wave” has been pointed at people not following safety guidelines put out by health experts and government officials. A new report however, says don’t blame people, blame the weather. Researchers from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus find hot weather and wind have a bigger impact on virus transmission rates than social distancing during a pandemic." New York Times Do Covid Precautions Work? By David Leonhardt March 9, 2022, 6:32 a.m. ET "The lack of a clear pattern is itself striking. Remember, not only have Democratic voters been avoiding restaurants and wearing masks; they are also much more likely to be vaccinated and boosted (and vaccines substantially reduce the chances of infection). Combined, these factors seem as if they should have caused large differences in case rates. They have not. And that they haven’t offers some clarity about the relative effectiveness of different Covid interventions. ... The second lesson is that interventions other than vaccination — like masking and distancing — are less powerful than we might wish. How could this be, given that scientific evidence suggests that mask wearing and social distancing can reduce the spread of a virus?" BBC Covid: Netherlands to ease restrictions despite rising case numbers January 25, 2022 "But despite the restrictions, Covid-19 cases have continued to increase, with some 60,000 now recorded per day....Nearly 90% of people in the Netherlands have now been vaccinated." Washington Post Temp checks, digital menus and 'touchless' mustard: The maddening persistence of 'hygiene theater' Marc Fisher June 14, 2021, 8:40 AM 10 min read "WASHINGTON - At an ice cream shop in Rockville, Md., gloved servers scoop the frozen treat into cups, but a sign taped to the front window says "No cones: Covid." At McDonald's outlets along I-95 in Virginia, yellow police-style tape cordons off self-serve beverage stations. And at Nationals Park, baseball fans use a QR code and digital menu rather than ordering directly from the person who hands them their hot dog. None of these precautions provide meaningful protection against the spread of the coronavirus, safety experts say. Instead, they are examples of what critics call "hygiene theater," the deployment of symbolic tactics that do little to prevent the spread of the coronavirus but may make some anxious consumers feel safer." NIH "The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks." Med Hypotheses. 2021 Jan; 146: 110411. By Baruch Vainshelboim "Conclusion: The existing scientific evidences challenge the safety and efficacy of wearing facemask as preventive intervention for COVID-19. The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects. These include hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue, headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression. Long-term consequences of wearing facemask can cause health deterioration, developing and progression of chronic diseases and premature death. Governments, policy makers and health organizations should utilize prosper and scientific evidence-based approach with respect to wearing facemasks, when the latter is considered as preventive intervention for public health." NY TIMES Fever Checks Are No Safeguard Against Covid-19 The practice of taking temperatures is becoming de rigueur in many workplaces and restaurants, even though federal health officials say they are of limited value. By Roni Caryn Rabin Published Sept. 13, 2020 Updated Sept. 14, 2020 In recent weeks, a new cadre of gatekeepers armed with thermometer guns has appeared at the entrances of hospitals, office buildings and manufacturing plants to screen out feverish individuals who may carry the coronavirus. / Employees at some companies must report their temperature on apps to get clearance to come in. And when indoor dining resumes at restaurants in New York City later this month, temperature checks will be done at the door. / Since the beginning of the pandemic, the practice of checking for fever has become more and more commonplace, causing a surge in sales of infrared contact-free thermometers and body temperature scanners even as the scientific evidence indicating they are of little value has solidified. / Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York last week called for checking patrons’ temperatures as one of several ground rules for resuming indoor dining in restaurants, along with strict limits on the number of tables and a mask mandate for diners when they are not seated. Restaurants also will be required to obtain contact information from one guest at each table. .... But while health officials have endorsed masks and social distancing as effective measures for curbing the spread of the coronavirus, some experts scoff at fever checks. Taking temperatures at entry points is nothing more than theater, they say, a gesture that is unlikely to screen out many infected individuals, and one that offers little more than the illusion of safety. USA TODAY Opinion I am done with masks. We've been idiotic about them since the beginning. David Mastio, USA TODAY Sun, January 23, 2022, 5:00 AM 4 min read "Now, experts are saying never mind. For instance, Dr. Lena Wen, a health policy professor at George Washington University's School of Public Health and an emergency room doctor, said, "Cloth masks are little more than a facial decoration." .... Finally, we all will have the right masks, right? Not so fast. You'd have to be an idiot to think this was the end of the great mask debate. .... N95s can be worn a maximum of five times if they are used correctly (far from a guarantee). It turns out that those Americans who receive the masks will be unmasked again not long after their "really important tool" arrives." New York Times Those Anti-Covid Plastic Barriers Probably Don’t Help and May Make Things Worse August 19, 2021 in News Intuition tells us a plastic shield would be protective against germs. But scientists who study aerosols, air flow and ventilation say that much of the time, the barriers don’t help and probably give people a false sense of security. And sometimes the barriers can make things worse. ... Research suggests that in some instances, a barrier protecting a clerk behind a checkout counter may redirect the germs to another worker or customer. Rows of clear plastic shields, like those you might find in a nail salon or classroom, can also impede normal air flow and ventilation. ... Under normal conditions in stores, classrooms and offices, exhaled breath particles disperse, carried by air currents and, depending on the ventilation system, are replaced by fresh air roughly every 15 to 30 minutes. But erecting plastic barriers can change air flow in a room, disrupt normal ventilation and create “dead zones,” where viral aerosol particles can build up and become highly concentrated. Plexiglass Barriers Are Everywhere, but They're Probably Useless There's a good chance they haven't been preventing the spread of COVID, and they might even be counterproductive. Liz Wolfe 5.27.2021 4:30 PM For a virus that spreads via airborne transmission of aerosols—something scientists have known for many months, though it took the World Health Organization until the end of April to update its guidance—these plastic barriers between diners were always a confusing addition. Think of the particles that disperse through the air when someone smokes a cigarette. A plastic barrier wouldn't prevent you from smelling that cigarette and breathing some of that same air.... It would be one thing if this form of hygiene theater was limited to restaurants. But school districts across the country have forced children to try to learn while encased in plexiglass desk dividers—that is, if they've allowed kids to return to full-time in-person schooling at all. ... Given the incredibly low risk of death to children posed by COVID, and the mounting evidence that Plexiglass barriers do not make people safer, it's past time to remove them; a kindergarten classroom shouldn't be filled with thick, see-through partitions like a convenience store in a bad part of town. MSN.COM Hygiene Theater Is Still a Huge Waste of Time Derek Thompson February 8, 2021 "Six months ago, I wrote that Americans had embraced a backwards view of the coronavirus. Too many people imagined the fight against COVID-19 as a land war to be waged with sudsy hand-to-hand combat against grimy surfaces. .... If somebody with COVID-19 sneezes three times onto a little spot on a cold steel table, and you rub your hand around in the snot for a bit and immediately lick your fingers, that disgusting act may well result in you infecting yourself." New England Journal of Medicine Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era May 21, 2020 N Engl J Med 2020; 382:e63 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2006372 "We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. .... The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic..... A mask alone in this setting will reduce risk only slightly, however, since it does not provide protection from droplets that may enter the eyes or from fomites on the patient or in the environment that providers may pick up on their hands and carry to their mucous membranes (particularly given the concern that mask wearers may have an increased tendency to touch their faces)." Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 CDC Policy Review CDC 2018 Virus study review: Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning. .... In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks.... Given that influenza virus can survive on some surfaces for prolonged periods, and that cleaning or disinfection procedures can effectively reduce or inactivate influenza virus from surfaces and objects in experimental studies, there is a theoretical basis to believe that environmental cleaning could reduce influenza transmission. As an illustration of this proposal, a modeling study estimated that cleaning of extensively touched surfaces could reduce influenza A infection by 2%. However, most studies of influenza virus in the environment are based on detection of virus RNA by PCR, and few studies reported detection of viable virus. ... Although irritation caused by cleaning products is limited, safety remains a concern because some cleaning products can be toxic or cause allergies. .... In this review, we did not find evidence to support a protective effect of personal protective measures or environmental measures in reducing influenza transmission. ... However, in our systematic review, updating the findings of Wong et al., we did not find evidence of a major effect of hand hygiene on laboratory-confirmed influenza virus transmission .... We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility. Dr. Anthony Fauci talks with Dr Jon LaPook about Covid-19 CBS 60 Minutes March 8, 2020 Dr. Anthony Fauci: "Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face." The surgeon general wants Americans to stop buying face masks By Leah Asmelash, CNN Updated 9:38 AM ET, Mon March 2, 2020 (CNN) The United States' top doctor has one simple request: Stop buying face masks. US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams' message, posted to Twitter on Saturday, was a response to face mask shortages as people stocked up due to coronavirus concerns. "Seriously people," he began, and though it's a tweet, you can almost hear the exasperation in his plea. "STOP BUYING MASKS!... They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus..." NEWSWEEK Fauci Said Masks 'Not Really Effective in Keeping Out Virus,' Email Reveals By Darragh Roche On 6/2/21 at 4:59 AM EDT Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in February 2020 that store-bought face masks would not be very effective at protecting against the COVID-19 pandemic and advised a traveler not to wear one. Fauci says he wears a mask to be a symbol of what 'you should be doing' By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN Updated 11:36 AM ET, Wed May 27, 2020 Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday called for a cautious approach to reopening the US and implored Americans to wear face masks in public.... "because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that's the kind of thing you should be doing," Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House's coronavirus task force, told CNN's Jim Sciutto on "Newsroom." Fauci said he believes that while wearing a mask is not "100% effective," it is a valuable safeguard and shows "respect for another person." Is Sweden’s coronavirus strategy working after all? By Natalie Huet & Per Bergfors Nyberg last updated: 28/07/2020 Sweden famously took a totally different approach to its Nordic neighbours in trying to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Swedish strategy allowed people to keep living largely as normal. Stores and restaurants remained open – so too did many schools. With a COVID-19 death toll of 5,700, Sweden’s mortality rate from the disease is now around a quarter higher than that of the United States, when adjusted for population size. Sweden is still nowhere near 'herd immunity,' even though it didn't go into lockdown By Niamh Kennedy, CNN Updated 5:12 PM ET, Thu May 21, 2020 "Sweden's percentage of people with antibodies is not far off that of other countries that did enforce lockdowns." CNBC Health and Science Sweden resisted a lockdown, and its capital Stockholm is expected to reach 'herd immunity' in weeks Published Wed, Apr 22 2020 6:56 AM EDT Key Points * Unlike its neighbors, Sweden did not impose a lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak. * The strategy — aimed at building a broad-base of immunity while protecting at-risk groups like the elderly — has proved controversial. * But Sweden's chief epidemiologist has said "herd immunity" could be reached in Stockholm within weeks. Its neighbors closed borders, schools, bars and businesses as the coronavirus pandemic swept through Europe, but Sweden went against the grain by keeping public life as unrestricted as possible. Sweden Says Controversial Virus Strategy Proving Effective By Niclas Rolander (Bloomberg) Updated on April 20, 2020, 2:10 AM EDT "Sweden has left its schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open throughout the spread of the pandemic. Instead, the government has urged citizens to act responsibly and follow social distancing guidelines." Sweden bucks global trend with experimental virus strategy Fewer restrictions than other leading countries and schools remain open Richard Milne in Oslo (Financial Times) March 25, 2020 Sweden has become an international outlier in its response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak by keeping schools open and adopting few other restrictions, as the Scandinavian nation embarks on what one health expert called a “huge experiment”. Rate of coronavirus death proportion to population as of August 21, 2020 (highest to lowest) Belgium: 0.087% (9,976 deaths of 11.5 million population) England: 0.066% (36,765 deaths of 56 million population) Spain: 0.061% (28,838 deaths of 47 million population) Italy: 0.059% (35,427 deaths of 60.3 million population) Chile: 0.057% (10,723 deaths of 18.7 million population) Sweden: 0.057% (5,810 deaths of 10.23 million population) United States: 0.053% (175,000 deaths of 328 million population) How Sweden swerved Covid disaster The death toll here is lower than nations with draconian restrictions BY JOHAN ANDERBERG November 8, 2021 "...During the year that followed, the virus continued to ravage the world and, one by one, the death tolls in countries that had locked down began to surpass Sweden’s. Britain, the US, France, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain, Argentina, Belgium — countries that had variously shut down playgrounds, forced their children to wear facemasks, closed schools, fined citizens for hanging out on the beach and guarded parks with drones — have all been hit worse than Sweden. At the time of writing, more than 50 countries have a higher death rate. If you measure excess mortality for the whole of 2020, Sweden (according to Eurostat) will end up in 21st place out of 31 European countries. If Sweden was a part of the US, its death rate would rank number 43 of the 50 states. This fact is shockingly underreported. Consider the sheer number of articles and TV segments devoted to Sweden’s foolishly liberal attitude to the pandemic last year — and the daily reference to figures that are forgotten today. Suddenly, it is as if Sweden doesn’t exist. When the Wall Street Journal recently published a report from Portugal, it described how the country “offered a glimpse” of what it would be like to live with the virus. This new normal involved, among other things, vaccine passports and face masks at large events like football matches. Nowhere in the report was it mentioned that in Sweden you can go to football matches without wearing a facemask, or that Sweden — with a smaller proportion of Covid deaths over the course of the pandemic — had ended virtually all restrictions. Sweden has been living with the virus for some time. The WSJ is far from alone in its selective reporting. The New York Times, Guardian, BBC, The Times, all cheerleaders for lockdowns, can’t fathom casting doubt on their efficacy.

In the Covid year of 2020
Before Covid19 vaccines — over 90% of the infections
were asymptomatic or had pre-existing immunity
Did vaccines make it better or worse?

Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have been infected with coronavirus, study finds By Melanie Mason, Staff Writer Los Angeles Times April 20, 2020 "Both studies [Stanford University and University of Southern California] estimated a mortality rate of 0.1% to 0.2%, which is closer to the death rate associated with the seasonal flu." NPR Schools In Germany Remain Open Amid A New Lockdown November 6, 2020 4:02 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Rob Schmitz "SCHMITZ: And, Mary Louise, my family has personal experience with this, too. You know, my oldest son tested positive for the coronavirus more than a month ago. This was after his school told us his teacher tested positive. A handful of his classmates also tested positive. My son did not pass it on to us. And if the local health authority here in Berlin wouldn't have tested him, we would never have known that he had the virus. I told Dr. Hoebner about this, and he said our experience was pretty typical...." Why Do Some People Get COVID But Others In The House Don't? Catherine Pearson Thu, February 10, 2022, 6:37 PM 5 min read "When I caught COVID right before Christmas — a breakthrough infection I got despite being vaccinated, boosted and wearing a medical-grade mask just about everywhere I went — I resigned myself to the fact that my kids would get it, too. We live in a tiny New York City apartment, after all.... The fact that my unvaccinated preschooler never got COVID when I had it makes me question whether he had an asymptomatic infection at some prior point that we never knew about that gave him some level of immunity, but I have no evidence of that." In four U.S. state prisons, nearly 3,300 inmates test positive for coronavirus — 96% without symptoms APRIL 25, 2020 / 6:01 PM Reuters "Of the 444 who were infected by the virus, 98% were asymptomatic, the state’s department of public safety said." More than 200 sailors aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt test positive for coronavirus By Justin Wise - 04/07/20 06:09 PM EDT More than 200 sailors from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the aircraft carrier whose captain was fired after warning of a coronavirus outbreak, have tested positive for COVID-19, the Navy said Tuesday.... No hospitalizations have been required, the Navy said, and 2,000 sailors were temporarily moved to shore in response to the outbreak. Nearly 95 percent of Tyson Foods employees with COVID-19 were asymptomatic, company says by KATV Friday, June 19th 2020 "Of the 3,748 team members tested, 481 tested positive for COVID-19, and 455 were asymptomatic." Low Asymptomatic Risk: Virus Update Bloomberg News June 8, 2020 Transmission of the coronavirus by people who aren’t showing symptoms is “very rare,” the World Health Organization said as infections surpassed 7 million globally.

Poverty and hunger caused by social distancing killed millions.....

More Americans Go Hungry Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Census Shows Causes include higher food prices, school closings; expiration of federal jobless benefits deepens distress Wall Street Journal By David Harrison Updated Aug. 16, 2020 12:47 pm ET The number of Americans who say they can’t afford enough food for themselves or their children is growing, according to Census data, and it is likely to get larger now that some government benefits have expired. Thailand Once Shut Out Covid-19 but Is Now Pivoting to Living With It By Feliz Solomon in Singapore and Wilawan Watcharasakwet in Bangkok June 19, 2021 8:55 am ET "Last year, Thailand was one of the world’s top performers at fighting the coronavirus. It sacrificed the tourism dollars that normally buoy its economy to shut out Covid-19. In September, it celebrated 100 consecutive days of no locally transmitted infections. The government is now making a stark departure from that vision of an infection-free oasis. Its new message: Learn to live with the virus long term..... Doing so, he said, would mean accepting higher infection rates, but the step is necessary to ease the enormous suffering of those struggling to earn a living." Extreme poverty rises and a generation sees future slip away By ELIAS MESERET and CARA ANNA Associated Press August 10, 2020 GMT "With the virus and its restrictions, up to 100 million more people globally could fall into the bitter existence of living on just $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank." Coronavirus Pandemic Leaves Millions Of Americans Unemployed, Hungry By Steve Inskeep, National Public Radio May 27, 2020 (NPR) Originally published on May 27, 2020 8:03 am U.N. Warns Number Of People Starving To Death Could Double Amid Pandemic May 5, 2020 3:55 AM ET H.J. Mai, National Public Radio (NPR) The U.N.'s humanitarian chief has warned that without global cooperation and financial assistance, the number of people dying from hunger or hunger-related diseases could double this year due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic..... Every year, around 9 million people die of hunger, according to the international relief agency Mercy Corps. 'We need food': Tunisians struggle under coronavirus lockdown Tensions rise in Tunisia as people struggle to cope with hunger and unemployment amid coronavirus outbreak. by Sofia Barbarani 11 Apr 2020 18:12 GMT Hungry neighbors cook together as virus roils Latin America FRANKLIN BRICEÑO and RODRIGO ABD Associated Press June 19, 2020 "....in recent months as coronavirus quarantines and shutdowns have left millions of poor people with no way to feed their families." 'Hunger will kill us before coronavirus', say Rohingya in India Thousands of Rohingya in India battle hunger as a coronavirus outbreak in refugee camps looms large. by Raqib Hameed Naik 31 Mar 2020 05:10 GMT Din Mohammad is doing everything possible in his power to keep his family and fellow Rohingya refugees healthy during a three-week lockdown enforced by the Indian government to fight the coronavirus. New York Times For India’s Laborers, Coronavirus Lockdown Is an Order to Starve Despite leaders’ decrees on staying home, laborers who live hand-to-mouth say they have no choice but to keep hitting the streets. Here are their stories. By Maria Abi-Habib and Sameer Yasir March 30, 2020 Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered a lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion citizens to fight the spread of coronavirus, urging people to distance themselves socially and work from home.

Media Covid19 fearmongering is creating anxiety and increasing suicide rates

Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis Med Hypotheses. 2021 Jan; 146: 110411. Published online 2020 Nov 22. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110411 PMCID: PMC7680614 PMID: 33303303 By Baruch Vainshelboim NIH: "Psychologically, wearing facemask fundamentally has negative effects on the wearer and the nearby person. Basic human-to-human connectivity through face expression is compromised and self-identity is somewhat eliminated. These dehumanizing movements partially delete the uniqueness and individuality of person who wearing the facemask as well as the connected person. Social connections and relationships are basic human needs, which innately inherited in all people, whereas reduced human-to-human connections are associated with poor mental and physical health. Despite escalation in technology and globalization that would presumably foster social connections, scientific findings show that people are becoming increasingly more socially isolated, and the prevalence of loneliness is increasing in last few decades. Poor social connections are closely related to isolation and loneliness, considered significant health related risk factors." National Public Radio WAMU May 18, 2020 Suicide Experts Are Seeing Worrying Signs During The Pandemic The global pandemic is putting a strain on Americans’ mental health. There’s been a surge of calls to crisis lines in the past two months. Add a spike in gun sales to that, and experts say we may be at risk of a suicide epidemic. Domestic violence victims facing higher risks amid coronavirus quarantine By Sara Dorn March 28, 2020 | 10:55am Domestic violence victims trapped at home with their abusers amid the coronavirus crisis are in more peril than ever — at the same time, the courts have vastly reduced the number of protection orders they are processing. A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau finds Alyssa Fowers and William Wan The Washington Post Published 1:51 pm PDT, Tuesday, May 26, 2020 A third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau data shows, the most definitive and alarming sign yet of the psychological toll exacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Mental Health How Pandemic Has Affected Mental Health Of LGBTQ Youth In The U.S. July 20, 2020 4:09 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Amit Paley of The Trevor Project about its recent survey on the mental health of LGBTQ youth and how being quarantined in unsupportive households is affecting their lives. HEALTH The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship There’s a reason you miss the people you didn’t even know that well. AMANDA MULL JANUARY 27, 2021 ATLANTIC: "Masks, though necessary, mean you can’t tell when people smile at you..... Strip out the humanity, and there’s nothing but the transaction left." Exasperation Grows Over Delays Trying To Sign Up For Unemployment, ‘People Have No Food, People Are Talking About Suicide’ April 27, 2020 at 6:56 pm NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Unemployment remains a major issue across the country. “People have no food. People are talking about suicide,” Izzi said. “We’re literally begging you, sir, please come out of your ivory tower, come down here in the trenches with your people and actually see what’s going on, answer us.” Wall Street Journal More People Are Taking Drugs for Anxiety and Insomnia, and Doctors Are Worried As coronavirus health concerns, social isolation and job-loss stress take a toll, people turn to medications; ‘It can very quickly become a habit’ By Andrea Petersen May 25, 2020 9:00 am ET Prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications and sleep aids have risen during the pandemic, prompting doctors to warn about the possibility of long-term addiction and abuse of the drugs. Health (National Public Radio) COVID-19 Crisis: More Testing Needed, Online Support For Alcoholics April 20, 2020 5:02 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Allison Aubrey, NPR "AUBREY: That's right. That's exactly right. I mean, it is clear in the scientific literature that poverty and economic hard times take their toll on health. Economic hardship can exacerbate chronic conditions. It can obviously limit access to health care. And for many people who are dealing with addiction or alcoholism, this shutdown has been tough." "NOGUCHI: You know, the common thread I've heard across a lot of stories is that life in pandemic is just full of triggers, stresses that stir up past traumas and past problem behaviors. So, for example, I talked to one local woman. She's in early recovery from addiction and didn't want us to use her name. She's a teacher and isn't working obviously. And in the past, she says that kind of social isolation triggered heavy drinking." New York Times In the Wake of Covid-19 Lockdowns, a Troubling Surge in Homicides August 11, 2020 “People have gotten to the point where they just don’t give a damn,” said a minister in Kansas City, which is on pace for a record number of killings. NPR Mental Health What We Lose When We Lose Acquaintances February 1, 2021 4:28 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered "KELLY: He's wearing a mask. I'm wearing a mask. We can't really talk. I'm trying to get him out of there really fast. There's none of the serendipity and the joy, to use a couple of the words that you put out there.... MULL: Right. These interactions that we used to have that are transactions, to be fair, and they always were - but when we had the full use of our faculties, when we could smile at people, when we could dawdle, when we could chat, when it wasn't dangerous to be close to people, these transactions had all these other elements that were psychologically satisfying for both parties. And now we don't have a lot of the psychological element. So you strip all the humanity out. Just the transaction remains." MORE: Kids have been especially hit hard by the pointless fearmongering intended only for profits

5 states account for almost all the Covid19 excess deaths
The CDC has the numbers. Why are they not investigating?

New York’s true nursing home death toll cloaked in secrecy By BERNARD CONDON, MATT SEDENSKY and MEGHAN HOYER August 11, 2020 GMT "New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. .... But so far the administration of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has refused to divulge the number, leading to speculation the state is manipulating the figures to make it appear it is doing a better than other states and to make a tragic situation less dire..... But a controversial March 25 order to send recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes that was designed to free up hospital bed space at the height of the pandemic has drawn withering criticism from relatives and patient advocates who contend it accelerated nursing home outbreaks. ... Cuomo reversed the order under pressure in early May. And his health department later released an internal report that concluded asymptomatic nursing home staffers were the real spreaders of the virus, not the 6,300 recovering patients released from hospitals into nursing homes. .... But epidemiologists and academics derided the study for a flawed methodology that sidestepped key questions and relied on selective stats, including the state’s official death toll figures." In per-capita COVID deaths, Texas ranks No. 28 Rick Kelley - August 3, 2020 "In the states with highest per-capita death rates, both New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy ordered nursing homes to accept patients who had tested positive for coronavirus.... Governors of three other states with high per-capita death rates, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, which ranked No. 7 with 65 deaths per 100,000, and Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, which ranked 11th at 56 deaths per 100,000, also ordered positive COVID-19 cases into nursing homes." New York Times ‘Playing Russian Roulette’: Nursing Homes Told to Take the Infected California, New Jersey and New York have made nursing homes accept Covid-19 patients from hospitals. Residents and workers fear the policy is risking lives. By Kim Barker and Amy Julia Harris Published April 24, 2020 Updated May 7, 2020 Neal Nibur has lived in a nursing home for about a year, ever since he had a bad bout of pneumonia. Now, the 80-year-old man has not only his own health to worry about but that of his neighbors at the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., residence. Four new patients recently arrived from the hospital with Covid-19. They were admitted for one reason, according to staff members: A state guideline says nursing homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals solely because they have the coronavirus. POLITICO: States prod nursing homes to take more Covid-19 patients Offered vastly higher reimbursements, many substandard facilities are jumping at the chance to accept sick residents. By MAGGIE SEVERNS and RACHEL ROUBEIN 06/04/2020 07:55 PM EDT Programs designed to help elderly people with coronavirus are creating a perverse financial incentive for nursing homes with bad track records to bring in sick patients, raising the risks of spreading infections and substandard care for seriously ill patients, according to advocates for the elderly and industry experts. Coronavirus-positive patients can bring in double or more the funding of other residents. States including California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New Mexico, wanting to relieve pressure on crowded hospitals, are providing extra incentives for nursing homes to accept such patients. States ordered nursing homes to take COVID-19 residents. Thousands died. Here's what happened David Robinson, Stacey Barchenger Kelly Powers Published 7:25 a.m. ET May 1, 2020 The deadly virus has spread like wildfire through many nursing homes across the Northeast, and state officials are scrambling to better protect those most vulnerable to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. House Hammers Governors Over Nursing Home Admission Orders Amid COVID-19 Pandemic By Alex Spanko June 17, 2020 As a leading House Democrat demands information about the response to COVID-19 in nursing homes from the federal government — and a quintet of top operators — his Republican counterparts have targeted governors whose states required facilities to take in patients with COVID-19. Rep. Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who serves as the ranking member on the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, led a group of GOP lawmakers in sending letters to five state governors, all Democrats, asking for detailed information about their COVID-19 policies for nursing homes. “The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the elderly, especially those living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities,” the U.S. representatives wrote in the introduction to each letter. “We write seeking information, at a granular level, about the science and information used to inform your decision to mandate nursing homes and long-term care facilities admit untested and contagious COVID-19 patients from hospitals.” The letters, dated June 15, were sent to Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, and Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania.

Is there corruption in the Covid19 fatality counting?

Colorado Gov Polis pushes back against CDC’s coronavirus death counts Ronn Blitzer May 17, 2020 Colorado Gov. Jared Polis pushed back against recent coronavirus death counts, including those conducted by the CDC, days after his own state’s health department acknowledged that their numbers had been inflated by including people who had the virus but died from other causes. Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing | April 7, 2020 Issued on: April 7, 2020 Deborah Birx: "There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem. Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. [In the United States] if someone dies with covid-19, we are counting that as a covid-19 death." N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive. By J. David Goodman and William K. Rashbaum April 14, 2020 "New York City is among a handful of places in the country, including Connecticut, Ohio and Delaware, that are beginning to disclose cases where infection is presumed but not confirmed." WAMU 1A The Federal Vaccine Mandate — Politics, Healthcare and First Responders November 23, 2021 Jenn White, NPR Host: Is there a sense of fear, among the officers you speak to, especially given the high number of police deaths related Covid? Dr. Carrie Steiner, Therapist with First Responders Wellness Center: ...They really don't see that there's that much of a risk, because they feel like they have been out there this whole time, and only nine officers in Illinois have died this year, from it, and all of the officers that I know of said that they all had underlying conditions; and so they feel that this is really more of an issue for people with underlying conditions, and not the healthy, which is the majority of the first responder community. ... I don't think that, in general, they trust the numbers of how many people have died, because, stories that I've heard, is that they had, like one example, was that somebody died from a heart attack and was 83 years old, and when they went to the hospital, and tested them, he did have Covid, and the family was asked if he had any Covid symptoms, and they said no; but they still classified him as dying from Covid. So I think that most law enforcement and first-responders don't believe that the numbers are accurate. They also feel that if it is that deadly then why aren't more of them dying. And most of them that have gotten it, even if they weren't vaccinated, don't get it very bad; so I think that they are very, very suspicious of this. Feds classifying all coronavirus patient deaths as ‘COVID-19’ deaths, regardless of cause April 7, 2020 | 11:38pm The federal government is classifying the deaths of patients infected with the coronavirus as COVID-19 deaths, regardless of any underlying health issues that could have contributed to the loss of someone’s life. Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, said the federal government is continuing to count the suspected COVID-19 deaths, despite other nations doing the opposite. “There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem,” she said during a Tuesday news briefing at the White House. “Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Minnesota doctor blasts 'ridiculous' CDC coronavirus death count guidelines April 10, 2020 By Charles Creitz "Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000; three times as much. Nobody can tell me, after 35 years in the world of medicine, that sometimes those kinds of things [have] impact on what we do. CBS News Man who died in motorcycle crash counted as COVID-19 death in Florida: Report by Lizandra Portal Saturday, July 18th 2020 According to the report, Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino was asked whether two coronavirus victims in their 20s had any underlying medical conditions that could have potentially made them more susceptible to the virus.... Pino's answer was that one of the two people who was listed as a COVID death actually died in a motorcycle crash. Despite health officials knowing the man died in a motorcycle crash... Gov. Ron DeSantis during a news conference on Wednesday says Florida law for a reportable illness states that if someone tests positive, it must be reported. Chicago mother who 'caught COVID from student' actually DRANK to death Melissa Koenig and Harriet Alexander For Dailymail.com March 8, 2022 "A Chicago mother who the teachers' union claimed died when a COVID-positive student was sent home to quarantine as they rallied for more COVID protocols actually died of alcoholism, it emerged on Monday. .... the Chicago Teachers' Union claimed at a rally that both mothers caught COVID from a child at the school... But according to a Cook County Medical Examiner's report obtained by Chicago City Wire on Monday, Henry actually died of chronic ethanolism - a term coroners use to describe someone who died of alcoholism. Now, parents in the Chicago Public School system say the teachers' union should be ashamed for misrepresenting her death in an effort to deride the school system for its handling of the pandemic. 'My God, the burden they placed on those young children who lost their mothers. Telling them basically you killed your mothers by going to school,' one parent, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, said. 'Shame on them. This proves they'll stop at nothing to get what they want.' " MORE: Is comorbidity hiding the real numbers?

Safer at home — or is isolation the cause?

CNBC Fauci says he thinks there is ‘a degree’ of airborne spread of the coronavirus Published Mon, Aug 3 2020 2:09 PM EDT Noah Higgins-Dunn Fauci said it has become “much clearer” that someone is likely at greater risk if they’re in an indoor space where there’s less air circulation and “any degree of aerosolization.” CNBC Cuomo says it’s ‘shocking’ most new coronavirus hospitalizations are people who had been staying home Published Wed, May 6 2020 12:25 PM EDT Noah Higgins-Dunn, Kevin Breuninger “This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he added. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.” National Public Radio Coronavirus Updates: National Public Radio April 30, 2020 4:15 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered "SHAPIRO: ... But this is a controversial idea, so what does the science tell us about the risk of catching the coronavirus when you're outside in a place like a beach?... LINSEY MARR: And out of over 7,000 cases that they looked at, they were able to identify only two where the transmission occurred outdoors in a conversation between two people..... GREENFIELDBOYCE: So that suggests the indoors, not outside, is where the vast majority of transmission actually happens..... SHAPIRO: So if people are going to go to beaches, should they pack masks along with their sunscreen? .... GREENFIELDBOYCE: Well, I asked Josh Santarpia at the University of Nebraska Medical Center specifically about beaches today. And he told me there's a lot there at the beach that would work against the virus. You've got the breeze, the sunlight, the humidity, the heat.... JOSH SANTARPIA: I mean, my honest opinion is that, you know, you're probably safer outside than inside." Why does COVID-19 strike some and not others? Fauci sees an answer in new study Michael Wilner August 11, 2020, 4:00 AM The study found that the immune systems of roughly half of its subjects appeared to remember past exposure to other, prevalent coronaviruses, including variants of the common cold, equipping them to respond more quickly to a COVID-19 infection once it appeared. Coronavirus: Long Beach issues ‘Safer at Home’ order closing playgrounds, most businesses By Hayley Munguia and Chris Haire Long Beach Press-Telegram PUBLISHED: March 19, 2020 at 6:08 p.m. UPDATED: March 20, 2020 at 4:49 p.m. Long Beach followed Los Angeles County in ordering non-essential retail businesses to close Thursday evening, March 19, in the most recent escalation of regulations that have been implemented to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. The order requires the closure of all malls, shopping centers and children’s playgrounds. Some businesses, such as grocery stores, laundromats and hardware stores, can remain open, as can medical centers. Food banks, organizations that provide social services to vulnerable populations, banks and other essential businesses will also remain open. Coronavirus: Hawaii tourist arrested after posting beach photos on Instagram By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER The Associated Press Posted May 15, 2020 11:31 pm A tourist from New York was arrested for allegedly violating Hawaii’s traveler quarantine after he posted on Instagram photos of himself sunbathing and carrying a surfboard, state officials said. Regular exercise protects against fatal covid, a new study shows The study found that exercise, in almost any amount, reduced people’s risks for a severe coronavirus infection By Gretchen Reynolds December 21, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST Men and women who worked out at least 30 minutes most days were about four times more likely to survive covid-19 than inactive people, according to an eye-opening study of exercise and coronavirus outcomes among almost 200,000 adults in Southern California. All California beaches to close after Gov. Newsom sees Orange County crowds amid COVID-19 pandemic ByABC7.com staff via KABC Thursday, April 30, 2020 SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Concerned after seeing thousands of people on Orange County beaches this weekend, Gov. Gavin Newsom is ordering the closure of all beaches in California, as well as all state parks, ABC's Los Angeles affiliate KABC has learned. Huntington Beach votes to challenge Newsom’s order closing O.C. beaches by: Sareen Habeshian, Rick Chambers, with reporting from Erika Martin Posted: Apr 30, 2020 / 01:17 PM PDT Updated: Apr 30, 2020 / 10:14 PM PDT Hours after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all Orange County beaches to close, the Huntington Beach City Council voted Thursday evening to challenge the directive. T cells found in COVID-19 patients ‘bode well’ for long-term immunity By Mitch Leslie May 14, 2020 , 9:00 PM "The teams also asked whether people who haven’t been infected with SARS-CoV-2 also produce cells that combat it. Thiel and colleagues analyzed blood from 68 uninfected people and found that 34% hosted helper T cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2. The La Jolla team detected this crossreactivity in about half of stored blood samples collected between 2015 and 2018, well before the current pandemic began. The researchers think these cells were likely triggered by past infection with one of the four human coronaviruses that cause colds; proteins in these viruses resemble those of SARS-CoV-2." A year into the pandemic, it’s even more clear that it’s safer to be outside Karin Brulliard, Lenny Bernstein 4/13/2021 "And with good reason, according to many scientists and public health experts, who say that the outdoor spaces now warming under spring sun should be viewed as havens in the battle against a stubborn virus and restriction-induced fatigue. For more than a year, the vast majority of documented coronavirus clusters have been linked to indoor or indoor-outdoor settings — households, meatpacking plants, nursing homes and restaurants. Near-absent are examples of transmission at beaches and other open spaces where breezes disperse airborne particles, distancing is easier, and humidity and sunlight render the coronavirus less viable." How did Hawaii go from the most isolated and safest state in June 2020 — to the worst hit with coronavirus in August 2020? Isolation from infection makes people more vulnerable: 'Ghost town': As tourism plummets from coronavirus, Hawaii grapples with Great Depression-level unemployment One town has 35% unemployment, higher than the peak of the Great Depression. By Catherine Thorbecke June 13, 2020, 9:25 AM 15 min read "We’re probably the safest state in the country right now in terms of health outcomes and controlling the virus," he said. Experts: COVID-19 is spreading in Hawaii at a faster rate than anywhere else in the nation By HNN Staff | August 10, 2020 at 3:18 PM HST Updated August 11 at 2:45 PM MORE: Does isolation hurt natural immunity?

Before Covid19 vaccines — were hospitals overwhelmed?

New York Times The U.S. media is offering a different picture of Covid-19 from science journals or the international media, a study finds. By David Leonhardt March 24, 2021 6:47 a.m. ET ...When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. .... The coverage by U.S. publications with a national audience has been much more negative than coverage by any other source that the researchers analyzed, including scientific journals, major international publications and regional U.S. media. .... National Public Radio Las Vegas Casinos Are Open At 50% Capacity. What About Las Vegas Hospitals? August 10, 2020 3:48 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered (NPR) "STEVE SISOLAK: We have room in our hospitals. We have room in our ICUs." Two Miami-Dade COVID hospitals haven’t treated a single patient. One closed this week. By Martin Vassolo and Doug Hanks June 05, 2020 05:07 PM Miami-Dade’s first coronavirus field hospital, assembled in March in Tamiami Park, was dismantled this week, while the state has extended its lease on the Miami Beach Convention Center, which was retrofitted with hospital facilities for COVID-19 patients in April.... Neither hospital has had a single patient. Doctors worry the coronavirus is keeping patients away from US hospitals as ER visits drop: 'Heart attacks don't stop' Published Tue, Apr 14 2020 3:40 PM EDT CNBC "Instead of the wartime triage scenarios predicted by U.S. health officials, emergency rooms in some parts of the country are relatively empty." Health National Public Radio COVID-19 Fears May Be Causing People To Ignore Medical Emergencies May 6, 2020 5:04 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition "....ER doctors are saying they're seeing this overall big drop in patients coming in, including here in Los Angeles. They say they've never seen anything like this, and they use words like eerie and shocking. One estimate says ER visits are down 40% to 50% nationwide.... KING: And, Will, it's worth noting that heart attacks and strokes are some of the most common medical problems in the United States. These are not things that you can put off for a week. And yet you're reporting that those patients who would normally be calling 911 are not. What's going on? .... STONE: Doctors and nurses are wondering the same thing. They say this kind of drop-off in heart attack and stroke patients is just unprecedented. Some 911 data show calls for these types of emergencies started declining in mid-March. At the University of Washington here in Seattle, the hospital saw a 60% decline in patients admitted for stroke in the first half of April compared to last year. There's a similar trend with heart attacks, according to another study..... KING: Which sounds like it could potentially lead to another public health crisis which is quieter than COVID-19 but happening at the same time. Will, what happens to patients who are having strokes or heart attacks but who don't call an ambulance right away?... STONE: Some doctors have told us they are already seeing tragic consequences because people are avoiding the hospital. You see, for an emergency like a stroke, acting quickly when you first notice symptoms is absolutely crucial." New York Times Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone? Except for treating Covid-19, many hospitals seem to be eerily quiet. By Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D. April 6, 2020 The hospitals are eerily quiet, except for Covid-19......In more normal times, we never have so many empty beds. CBS reairs footage of Italian hospital after blaming first incident on 'editing mistake' by Dominick Mastrangelo April 08, 2020 05:19 PM CBS News reaired footage of an Italian hospital during a segment about U.S. medical facilities scrambling to deal with overcrowding because of the coronavirus.

How do we stop the inevitable new virus strain?
Every year, new virus strains travel our global ecosystem,
and no measures can reduce inevitable total cases.

Washington Post Editorial Board: Don’t bring back restrictions. July 27, 2021 at 4:46 p.m. EDT "Indeed, [Johns Hopkins University professor Marty Makary] points out that there are four seasonal coronaviruses that have circulated in the United States for decades, and that make up about 25 percent of all cases of the common cold. Covid-19 is probably going to become the fifth." Flattening the Coronavirus Curve and the Importance of Social Distancing By Katelyn Newman, Staff Writer U.S. News March 18, 2020, at 6:07 a.m. "The purpose was always, as mentioned in the original documents, to try to keep the demand on the system down and not overwhelm the capacity for health responders to manage people who would inevitably become ill." Why we should keep trying to contain the coronavirus and ‘flatten the curve’ By Melissa Healy, Amina Khan Los Angeles Times March 11, 2020 5:23 PM Instead, the objective is to spread out the inevitable infections so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed with patients. Americans Act To Flatten the Coronavirus Epidemic Curve Ronald Bailey 3.13.2020 3:40 PM Since the epidemic is inevitable, the best strategy for coping with it is to flatten the curve—that is, to adopt measures that slow down the rate of infection. The number of people eventually infected will not necessarily be lower, but the goal is spread out the infections over time in order to avoid overtaxing the health care system with a flood of cases. Coronavirus: What is 'flattening the curve,' and will it work? By Brandon Specktor Senior Writer 16 March 2020 A flatter curve, on the other hand, assumes the same number of people ultimately get infected, but over a longer period of time. US Tries To 'Flatten The Curve', Avoid Overwhelming Spike In Coronavirus Cases WGHN Boston National Public Radio By Joe Mathieu March 16, 2020 The whole goal is to limit the number of close interactions you have with other people in the hopes that it will just make it that much harder for the virus to spread from one person to another, slow down the spread and make the inevitable surge in cases something that is more manageable for the health care system as opposed to a tsunami of cases that would effectively cripple hospitals. Coronavirus infection rates begin to fall, but 'flattening the curve' may mean WA is locked down even longer By James Carmody Posted 31 March 2020, updated 1 April 2020 He was resolute that WA could not avoid coronavirus and that he remained committed to the national goal of "flattening the curve".

Science? The racist theory of the exotic Wuhan wet market:
the Rhinolophus affinis bat was never near the Wuhan market

2013: researchers collected virus samples in Yunnan bat cave (RaTG13)
2018: researchers work to add furin cleavage site to the 2013 sample
2019: sample RaTG13 with the furin cleavage site emerged as Covid-19
This family of coronavirus never had a furin cleavage site added in nature

Which Origins narrative is more xenophobic? * Anglo-American funding to a high-tech laboratory * An exotic Chinese wet market serving "bat soup" No, Coronavirus Was Not Caused by 'Bat Soup'–But Here's What Researchers Think May Be to Blame By Korin Miller Updated on June 26, 2020 "However, no animal samples from the market were reported to be positive," the team points out. What's more, neither the first identified case in a human nor other early patients had visited the market, "suggesting the possibility of an alternative source." Scientists created false narrative over suspected Covid leak from Wuhan lab, say experts Sarah Knapton The Telegraph August 20, 2021, 3:49 PM 3 min read The scientific establishment created a false narrative about whether coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab, and dismissed critics as “conspiracy theorists”, experts have claimed. .... They discovered that the Wuhan team had been working with a virus in 2013 that is the closest ever found to Sars-Cov-2. That virus had been discovered in horseshoe bats living in a mineshaft in Mojiang, Yunnan, China, in 2013. The same mineshaft was also associated with a severe pneumonia-like illness in miners in 2012, which killed three people. Vanity Fair In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan A spokesman for Dr. Fauci says he has been “entirely truthful,” but a new letter belatedly acknowledging the National Institutes of Health’s support for virus-enhancing research adds more heat to the ongoing debate over whether a lab leak could have sparked the pandemic. By Katherine Eban October 22, 2021 ....One distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code is a furin cleavage site that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells. That is just the feature that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had proposed to engineer in the 2018 grant proposal. “If I applied for funding to paint Central Park purple and was denied, but then a year later we woke up to find Central Park painted purple, I’d be a prime suspect,” said Jamie Metzl, a former executive vice president of the Asia Society, who sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing and has been calling for a transparent investigation into COVID-19’s origins. Vanity Fair The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits. Those who dared to push for transparency say toxic politics and hidden agendas kept us in the dark. By Katherine Eban June 3, 2021 But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.” Exclusive: New York Times quashed COVID origins inquiry The Times, according to two well-placed sources, refused to investigate the biggest story of our time August 2, 2021 2:15 pm Written by: Dominic Green Atop editor at the New York Times instructed Times staffers not to investigate the origins of COVID-19, two Times employees confirmed today. The Intercept The Lab-Leak Theory Is Looking Stronger by the Day. Here’s What We Know. A panel of journalists discuss the latest revelations regarding the theory that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. May 6 2022, 3:01 p.m. In the early days of the pandemic, the theory that Covid-19 may have originated in a virology lab was often dismissed as a xenophobic right-wing conspiracy theory. Over the intervening months and years, new information has cast a different light on the idea. Ryan Grim: ...the nature of our public discourse, and what information is allowed to be discussed freely and what isn’t. And, for a long time, any speculation about a potential lab leak was literally banned from major social media platforms. You’d have your posts taken down and you might even have your entire account deleted just for discussing it.... And so there’s a critical series of days from I believe, Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, a lot of emails going back and forth, a conference call..... And it’s 11 scientists that got together to talk about the possibility that Covid-19, may have originated from a lab leak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it might have been due to the manipulation of one of the viruses that they had there. ...Katherine Eban: So I mean that gets disseminated from the White House podium with no reference to this February confab. Meanwhile, and this is something that my story exposed for the first time, Bob Redfield, who was the Director of the CDC, had these private communications with Fauci, Jeremy Farrar of Wellcome Trust, and Dr. Tedros of the WHO, and basically said: We have to take a lab leak possibility with utmost seriousness, we need to look into this. ... Ryan Grim: So Peter Daszak also started to participate in this effort to organize scientists to push the media away from looking at the lab leak. .... Katherine Eban: So meanwhile, while that huddle is going on, Daszak is organizing a letter to be published in The Lancet, which basically says: ... Anybody who is talking about the possibility of a lab origin is basically peddling conspiracy theories. What wasn’t clear at the time that that came out in late February, is that there was a whole cache of emails, in which he [Peter Daszak] and Ralph Baric and others were saying: We need to conceal our role in organizing this letter... Fauci and Collins Dismissed Prominent Scientists Who Endorsed Lab-Leak Theory, Emails Show Caroline Downey January 11, 2022 4 min read Early in the pandemic, multiple scientists urged NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins to seriously consider the theory that Covid escaped from a Chinese laboratory, arguing that the lab-leak theory, which Fauci and Collins have downplayed since the pandemic began, was more plausible than the natural origin explanation. Mike Farzan, an immunology researcher and the discoverer of the SARS receptor, Bob Garry, a virology expert, and Dr. Andrew Rambaut, a British evolutionary biologist, all observed that a particular feature of the virus, the “furin cleavage site,” was peculiar and suggested gain-of-function engineering. .... Garry echoed Farzan in his analysis, adding that the virus’s chemical makeup would mean that the “bat virus” would have had to have undergone an extremely intricate alteration more likely to have been performed in a laboratory setting. He later specified that the furin cleavage site present in the original Covid strain would be unlikely to emerge in nature in a way that made the virus highly transmissible in humans. “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus or one very similar to it to nCoV where you insert exactly 4 amino acids 12 nucleotides that all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function – that and you don’t change any other amino acid in S2? I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature,” he said. On a February 2 email, on which Fauci and Collins were copied, Rambaut wrote that he’s also skeptical of the notion that the novel furin cleavage site emerged naturally. “From a (natural) evolutionary point of view the only thing here that strikes me as unusual is the furin cleavage site,” he said. Rambaut noted that the insertion sequence of Covid, which has not been found in any other known coronavirus, also “resulted in an extremely fit virus in humans,” meaning it spreads among humans very efficiently. NBC NEWS China slams new WHO report suggesting further investigation into Covid ‘lab leak’ theory New study is a U-turn for the agency, which was criticized for ruling out the theory last year and has faced accusations of being too deferential to Beijing. June 10, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC By Alexander Smith The World Health Organization is recommending more investigation into the theory that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory, something once dismissed by some as a conspiracy theory but since taken seriously by some experts and officials. US experiments ‘may have contributed to emergence of Covid’ The Telegraph Sarah Knapton Fri, May 20, 2022, 9:14 AM 4 min read ....The pair also point out that the same group of Chinese/US scientists had submitted proposals to insert a specialist feature into Sars-like viruses called the furin cleavage site (FCS). Covid-19 is unique in having a FCS, and it is the reason the virus is so infectious to humans. No other coronaviruses have the feature, and some scientists believe it is evidence the virus was man-made. Others think it occurred naturally through evolution. ...“We do know that the insertion of such FCS sequences into Sars-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal that was submitted to Darpa. “The 2018 proposal to Darpa was not funded, but we do not know whether some of the proposed work was subsequently carried out in 2018 or 2019, perhaps using another source of funding.” ProPublica Researcher Toy Reid sits before a timeline chronicling the lead-up to the pandemic at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington The Wuhan lab at the center of suspicions about the pandemic’s onset was far more troubled than known, documents unearthed by a Senate team reveal. Tracing the evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica give the clearest view yet of a biocomplex in crisis. by Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, and Jeff Kao, ProPublica Oct. 28, 12:45 p.m. EDT ".... How did the virus arrive in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people hundreds of miles north of China’s teeming bat caves? Wuhan lab leak 'is now the most likely origin of Covid because Beijing tried to cover it up' and it is 'reasonable to believe virus was engineered in China', Harvard scientist tells MPs By Joe Davies and Jack Wright For Mailonline Published: 13:25 EST, 15 December 2021 Updated: 18:44 EST, 15 December 2021 Dr Chan added: 'We know this virus (Covid) has a unique feature, called the furin cleavage site, and without this feature there is no way this would be causing this pandemic. 'A proposals was leaked showing that EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were developing a pipeline for inserting novel furin cleavage sites. So, you find these scientists who said in early 2018 'I'm going to put horns on horses' and at the end of 2019 a unicorn turns up in Wuhan city.' Lord Ridley said: 'I also think it's more likely than not because we have to face the fact after two months we knew the origins of SARS, and after a couple of months we knew MERS was though through camels, but after two years we still haven't found a single infected animal that could be the progenitor, and that's incredibly surprising. The Intercept NEW DETAILS EMERGE ABOUT CORONAVIRUS RESEARCH AT CHINESE LAB More than 900 pages of materials related to US.-funded coronavirus research in China were released following a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept. Sharon Lerner, Mara Hvistendahl September 6 2021, 9:06 p.m. NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic. NEW YORK TIMES Scientist Finds Early Virus Sequences That Had Been Mysteriously Deleted By Carl Zimmer June 23, 2021 About a year ago, more than 200 data entries from the genetic sequencing of early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan disappeared from an online scientific database. ....it does raise questions about why original sequences were deleted ... Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wrote the new report, called the deletion of these sequences suspicious. It “seems likely that the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence,” he wrote in the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. ... Some of the earliest samples come from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where an outbreak occurred in December 2019. But those market viruses actually have three extra mutations that are missing from SARS-CoV-2 samples collected weeks later. In other words, those later viruses look more like coronaviruses found in bats, supporting the idea that there was some early lineage of the virus that did not pass through the seafood market. ... This suggests, he said, that by the time SARS-CoV-2 reached the market, it had been circulating for awhile in Wuhan or beyond. The market viruses, he argued, aren’t representative of full diversity of coronaviruses already loose in late 2019..... It’s not clear why this valuable information went missing in the first place. ... “These SARS-CoV-2 sequences were submitted for posting in SRA in March 2020 and subsequently requested to be withdrawn by the submitting investigator in June 2020,” said Renate Myles, a spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Health. ... “You can’t really say why they were removed,” Dr. Bloom acknowledged in an interview. “You can say that the practical consequence of removing them was that people didn’t notice they existed.” He also noted that the Chinese government ordered the destruction of a number of early samples of the virus and barred the publication of papers on the coronavirus without its approval. USA TODAY Deleted gene sequences confirm coronavirus circulated before Wuhan seafood market Karen Weintraub and Elizabeth Weise Published 10:06 a.m. ET June 26, 2021 Updated 11:37 ET June 27, 2021 The virus that causes COVID-19 did not originate at the Wuhan seafood market, confirms a new study of deleted gene sequences from the virus' earliest days. The sequences had been posted to a website run by the National Institutes of Health but were removed for unknown reasons. Emails reveal Fauci was WARNED at the start of pandemic by lab expert that COVID may have been 'engineered' - as calls grow for him to be fired By Christopher Eberhart and Emily Crane For Dailymail.com Published: 16:30 EDT, 2 June 2021 Updated: 20:15 EDT, 2 June 2021 Dr. Anthony Fauci was warned that the coronavirus was possibly 'engineered' in a lab before the pandemic started, emails show... He seemed to be taking it seriously behind closed doors ---- while downplaying the idea in public... State Department warned against investigating COVID-19's origins, fearing a probe would 'open a can of worms,' a leaked memo says Anna Cooban June 3, 2021, 7:52 AM 2 min read Staff in two US government bureaus warned leaders against pursuing an investigation into the origins COVID-19 because it would "open a can of worms," according to an internal memo viewed by Vanity Fair. NEWSWEEK Fauci Emails Show Experts Had Concern COVID Virus Could 'Look Engineered' By James Walker On 6/2/21 at 5:22 AM EDT In an email to Dr. Fauci sent on January 31 last year, Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute told the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director that some of SARS-CoV-2's features "(potentially) look engineered." CNN Former CDC director believes virus came from lab in China March 26, 2021 Former CDC Director Robert Redfield sits down with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss the pandemic and shares his opinion about the origin of the Covid-19 virus. “I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human -- and, at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” Redfield said. “It takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission. I just don’t think this makes biological sense.” NBC News U.S. intel community examining whether coronavirus emerged accidentally from a Chinese lab One expert said the theory the virus came from a Wuhan animal market has lost favor in some quarters, in part because an early patient had no market link. April 16, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC By Ken Dilanian and Courtney Kube WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community is examining whether the coronavirus that caused the global pandemic emerged accidentally from a Chinese research lab studying diseases in bats, current and former U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News....Dr. Ronald Waldman, a former official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a public health expert at George Washington University, said the theory has fallen out of favor in some quarters, in part because one of the early infected persons had no connection to the market. Two laboratories in Wuhan have been conducting research on coronaviruses found in bats. Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab with Millions of U.S. Dollars for Risky Coronavirus Research By Fred Guterl On 4/28/20 at 2:57 PM EDT Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic—and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt. But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID of NIH, National Institutes of Health], the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses. In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million. U.S. State Department Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology Office of the Spokesperson January 15, 2021 "The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses. ...Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar). .... The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness. National Public Radio U.S. Intelligence Community Assesses Beginnings Of COVID-19 National Security April 17, 2020 5:02 AM ET Greg Myre 'We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was,' Pompeo said. Emails reveal scientists suspected COVID leaked from Wuhan lab – then quickly censored themselves By Nicholas Wade January 24, 2022 8:19pm Updated ...The furin cleavage site in the COVID virus sticks out like a sore thumb because no other known member of its family — a group called Sarbecoviruses — possesses a furin cleavage site. So how did the virus acquire it? A member of the Andersen group, Garry of Tulane University, remarks in the latest emails on the fact that the inserted furin cleavage site, a string of 12 units of RNA, the virus’ genetic material, was exactly the required length, a precision unusual in nature: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature ... it’s stunning. Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.” Another member of the Andersen group, Farzan of Scripps Research, apparently felt much the same way. “He is bothered by the furin cleavage site and has a hard time explain[ing] that as an event outside the lab (though, there are possible ways in nature, but highly unlikely),” the House committee’s letter says of his remarks. Farzan noted that viruses can acquire elements like furin cleavage sites when grown in cultures of human cells, so “instead of directed engineering ... acquisition of the furin site would be highly compatible with the continued passage of virus in tissue culture.” Both routes — direct insertion of the cleavage site or tissue culture — would mean that the virus came from a lab. .... Besides adding novel spike proteins, Shi’s manipulations may well have included insertion of a furin cleavage site. EcoHealth applied for a grant in 2018 for research that proposed to “introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites” into SARS-like coronaviruses. Though this grant application, submitted to an agency of the Defense Department, was turned down, Shi’s research team was clearly aware of the technique and may well have conducted such experiments with other funds. NY MAGAZINE The Lab-Leak Hypothesis For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if ...? Jan. 4, 2021 By Nicholson Baker And late in the month, a professor at National Taiwan University, Fang Chi-tai, gave a lecture on the coronavirus in which he described the anomalous R-R-A-R furin cleavage site. The virus was “unlikely to have four amino acids added all at once,” Fang said — natural mutations were smaller and more haphazard, he argued. “From an academic point of view, it is indeed possible that the amino acids were added to COVID-19 in the lab by humans.” The Intercept Jeffrey Sachs Presents Evidence of Possible Lab Origin of Covid-19 An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of Covid. Sharon Lerner May 19 2022, 4:00 p.m. Sachs and Harrison are hardly the first to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 might have been created in a lab. Since its genetic sequence was first published in February 2020, scientists have puzzled over the furin cleavage site, an area on the virus’s spike that allows it to be cleaved by a protein on the membrane of human cells and makes the coronavirus particularly dangerous to people.....They focus particularly on scientists who submitted an unfunded grant proposal to a division of the Defense Department called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, laying out plans to insert a furin cleavage site into a bat coronavirus.....The intriguing theory of viral engineering hinges on two observations: that the amino acid sequences match and that experts in both the ENaC-alpha furin cleavage site and the insertion of genetic sequences into bat coronaviruses happen to work at the same academic institution: the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. [Ralph] Baric, whose work aims to prevent and create treatments for viral outbreaks, has previously inserted segments of DNA and RNA into viruses and created an infectious clone of SARS using his own patented “No See’m” method of inserting genetic materials without a trace.... In another paper, published a year earlier, Baric, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli and a lung expert at UNC-Chapel Hill’s lung institute, described creating a hybrid virus using a SARS-like virus from a bat and a “mouse-adapted” coronavirus. The new virus caused mice to get sicker than those exposed to the original virus. The goal of these experiments was to prepare for the possibility that a virus might jump naturally from animals to humans, as SARS had in 2003. But even before the pandemic, the experiment drew criticism from other scientists, who were concerned because the researchers had created a virus that was able to spread in humans.... Sachs and Harrison note that the scientists who co-authored the DARPA grant proposal would have been aware of research on coronavirus furin cleavage sites, including one 2006 experiment in which a furin cleavage site was inserted into a coronavirus. “The research team would also have some familiarity with the FCS sequence and the FCS-dependent activation mechanism of human ENaC, which was extensively characterized at UNC,” they write. Still, both the overlap in the amino acid sequence and the fact that experts in the furin cleavage site of the ENaC-alpha and insertion of genetic material into bat coronaviruses work at the same university could be coincidental, as Harrison and Sachs acknowledge. Some virologists, though, say that the coincidence strains credulity. “Could be,” Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, wrote in an email to The Intercept when asked about the possibility that these things are both chance occurrences. “But the list of coincidences is getting verrrrrrrrrrry long.”

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