Health & Medicine – Page 12

CDC Walks Back COVID Guidance Again, Finds Lasting Post-Vaccine Heart Problems in Young Adults

The CDC continues to erase distinctions by COVID-19 vaccination status in public health guidance as ongoing global research — including its own — documents the mediocre performance of COVID vaccines and their unexpectedly high rates of lasting harm in some groups.

Vaccination status is no longer used “to inform source control, screening testing, or post-exposure recommendations” for healthcare personnel, the Friday update to their CDC guidance says.

The agency “[c]larified” that healthcare facilities, including nursing homes, have discretion on whether to screen-test asymptomatic personnel. It also now says asymptomatic patients “in general” do not require “empiric use of Transmission-Based Precautions” after exposure to an infected person.

A CDC study of 12-29 year-olds with heart inflammation following mRNA vaccination, published last week in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, found that 1 in 6 still had not “fully recovered” at least 90 days after myocarditis onset, including 1 in 100 who hadn’t improved at all.

Myocarditis has increased so markedly among youth since vaccines were authorized for them that an Ivy League-affiliated hospital started running TV ads this month for its treatment in children. New York-Presbyterian marked the ad’s Sept. 6 YouTube video private less than two weeks later, following criticism that it was trying to “normalize” a vaccine-induced condition.

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BLUF
The fact that so many things once deemed “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be true harms the credibility of the scientific community, especially those working in or in league with the federal government. To turn that around, there needs to be honesty and transparency. You aren’t going to get that from the Biden administration, though.

Another COVID-19 Vaccine Claim Collapses, No Apologies to Be Found

Over the course of the last several years, there have been a series of claims about the COVID-19 vaccines that have collapsed in light of various studies.

Most infamously, the idea that the vaccines stop the transmission of the virus permeated all the way to the highest levels of government, including the President of the United States. Those false assertions then formed the basis of federal mandates, including a vicious campaign against the “unvaccinated” that never made any scientific sense.

Unfortunately, there’s another example to add to the list after it was revealed that prior claims about mRNA not being transferred through breast milk were false. That despite “fact-checks” back in 2021 asserting that wasn’t possible.

Now we find out that Biden’s vaccine mandates caused infants (for which no safe dose has been established) to receive mRNA through their mother’s breast milk. Does abuse of power get any more evil?https://t.co/9v6lz2G37Z pic.twitter.com/lmiOvupBPS

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 27, 2022

How it started. How it’s going. pic.twitter.com/JTfkOcIvEI

— Dr. Michael Verbora (@mverbora) September 27, 2022

Here is the summary of the study, which gives the nod to the vaccines before noting that breastfeeding mothers were never tested by the CDC to see what was being transmitted.

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More hypocrisy, and deceit

A friend took this pic of Fauci at the Aspen airport this weekend. Why no mask? Because no tv cameras were around. pic.twitter.com/gFmWjVfsxf

— Michael Berry (@MichaelBerrySho) September 26, 2022

It must have finally dawned on them that it stopped working from them politically

Biden: ‘The pandemic is over.’

President Biden declared the coronavirus pandemic “over” in an interview that aired Sunday, pointing to the return of large events and the lack of masking and other public health measures in place nationwide.

“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”

The United States is still recording an average of more than 400 deaths per day from COVID-19, according to New York Times data, and more than 1 million Americans have died from the virus since the pandemic began in early 2020.

Highly contagious variants have spread throughout the globe, making it nearly impossible to fully eradicate COVID-19.

As a result, the Biden administration has focused its messaging on the importance of getting vaccinated and receiving booster shots to increase immunity, as well as the wide availability of of antiviral pills and other forms of treatment for those who contract the virus.

Biden himself contracted COVID-19 in July, but experienced only mild symptoms, according to his doctor. Officials credited his mild case to being fully vaccinated and taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

The U.S. and much of the world has returned to hosting large events over the past year, like the auto show, and done away with requirements that attendees wear masks or provide proof of vaccination. The U.S. still requires foreign visitors to be fully vaccinated to come to the country by plane.

The World Health Organization (WHO) still categorizes COVID-19 as a pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s top medical adviser on the pandemic, said earlier this year the U.S. was moving “out of the pandemic phase” with COVID-19, pointing to the manageable levels of hospitalizations and deaths in the country.

Biden has in the past argued that the United States had turned a corner on the pandemic, most notably during a speech on Independence Day in 2021, when he asserted the country had the tools necessary to “declare independence” from the virus.

But in the weeks that followed, the delta variant contributed to a surge in cases and deaths. And in late 2021 into early 2022, the omicron variant again led to a spike in cases and deaths. Newly available booster shots were designed specifically to shield Americans from severe cases of the omicron variant.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Biden said the “impact on the psyche of the American people as a consequence of the pandemic is profound.”

“Think of how that has changed everything. You know, people’s attitudes about themselves, their families, about the state of the nation, about the state of their communities. And so there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, a great deal of uncertainty. And we lost a million people. A million people to COVID,” he said.

“When I got in office, when I got elected, only 2 million people had been vaccinated. I got 220 million — my point is it takes time,” he added. “We were left in a very difficult situation. It’s been a very difficult time. Very difficult.”

Adults Aged 35-44 Died at Twice the Expected Rate Last Summer, Life Insurance Data Suggests

Authored by Margaret Menge via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

Death claims for working-age adults under group life insurance policies spiked well beyond expected levels last summer and fall, according to data from 20 of the top 21 life insurance companies in the United States.

Death claims for adults aged 35 to 44 were 100 percent higher than expected in July, August, and September 2021, according to a report by the Society of Actuaries, which analyzed 2.3 million death claims submitted to life insurance firms.

The report looked at death claims filed under group life insurance policies during the 24 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, from April 2020 to March 2022. The researchers used data from the three years before the pandemic to set a baseline for the expected deaths.

While COVID-19 played some role in the majority of the excess deaths for adults over the age of 34 during the two pandemic years, the opposite was true for younger people. For people 34 and younger, the number of excess non-COVID deaths was higher than those related to COVID, the data show.

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Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response

Wonder Land: Like other world leaders who leaned into lockdowns, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are now realizing how complicated the private economy actually is, and how easy it is to wreck it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention belatedly admitted failure this week. “For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Director Rochelle Walensky said. She vowed to establish an “action-oriented culture.”

Lockdowns and mask mandates were the most radical experiment in the history of public health, but Dr. Walensky isn’t alone in thinking they failed because they didn’t go far enough. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, recently said there should have been “much, much more stringent restrictions” early in the pandemic.

The World Health Organization is revising its official guidance to call for stricter lockdown measures in the next pandemic, and it is even seeking a new treaty that would compel nations to adopt them. The World Economic Forum hails the Covid lockdowns as the model for a “Great Reset” empowering technocrats to dictate policies world-wide.

It was bad enough that Dr. Fauci, the CDC and the WHO ignored the best scientific advice at the start of this pandemic. It’s sociopathic for them to promote a worse catastrophe for future outbreaks. If a drug company behaved this way, ignoring evidence while marketing an ineffective treatment with fatal side effects, its executives would be facing lawsuits, bankruptcy and probably criminal charges. Dr. Fauci and his fellow public officials can’t easily be sued, but they need to be put out of business long before the next pandemic.

BLUF
What the CDC pushed on the country, even the world, was without precedent. The resulting disasters are everywhere present. At minimum we should expect the CDC to cease and desist, and certainly not entrench and codify. That the latter is taking place reveals what a long struggle lies ahead.

CDC Wants Its Covid Regime Made Permanent

There is no remorse at the CDC. Far from it. The model of virus control deployed over the last 27 months is now part of normal operations. It wants it institutionalized.

The bureaucracy has now codified this into a new online tool that instructs cities and states precisely of what they are supposed to do given a certain level of community spread. The new tool doesn’t say lockdowns as such but the entire model of containment via masks and distancing is baked in, and it can be easily expanded at will.

To understand how absurd this is, consider that as of this writing, major parts of Southern Florida are supposed to be masked up, according to the map provided by the CDC, because covid testing reveals high community spread.

Hardly anyone in Florida has worn a mask since 2020. The very notion is a joke there. However, what happens to the other states and what happens when or if political control of Florida changes to a pro-lockdown party?

Under the orange label (high), the following pertains:

Wear a mask indoors in public
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
Additional precautions may be needed for people at high risk for severe illness

Some standout points here. Masks have nowhere controlled the spread of covid. We know this from countless examples all over the world. They have been a spectacular failure except as signals to others to feel a sense of alarm at the presence of disease. Neither have vaccinations achieved the stopping or even slowing of infection or spread. Note the new language too: “Stay up to date.” Vaccinations are headed toward the WEF ideal of subscription plans.

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Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of radical gender theory, doesn’t feel good and changes – TRANS! Many such cases! https://t.co/1EnT2DvWqj

— Armen Tooloee (@tooloee) August 14, 2022

Fast forward to 1:39 in the vid.

Biden’s Latest COVID Diagnosis Nukes What’s Left of the COVID Panic Regime.

A double-bout of COVID never happened to Donald Trump. Joe Biden has caught the virus again. Did he lie about the initial negative test on day seven? Who knows? It’s a legitimate question. He took Paxlovid to manage symptoms, but COVID isn’t dead after seven days. It will keep replicating for ten days. This isn’t new. If he felt fine on day eight and stopped taking the antiviral, then no doubt a positive test would show up. The most crucial point is that Biden was probably still infected with the virus. He left quarantine too early. He met with business leaders this week ahead of the news that we’ve entered a recession, and he was still infected. What a reckless and selfish old man who might have exposed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week (via Politico):

Biden’s doctor was very clear in his note to reporters Wednesday: “He will wear a well-fitting mask for 10 full days any time he is around others.”

That matches CDC guidance for people who are ending their isolation after a bout with Covid-19: “You should continue to wear a well-fitting mask around others at home and in public for 5 additional days (day 6 through day 10) after the end of your 5-day isolation period.”

But Biden was not wearing a mask today [July 28] while participating in a roundtable on the economy, despite sitting near Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN. It is the latest instance of both the president and the vice president not following the CDC Covid guidance despite asking Americans to. Bloomberg’s JOSH WINGROVE has more with the headline: “Biden Ditches Mask at Meeting, Deviating From CDC Covid Guidance.”

A White House official argued that “we have ensured that there is sufficient distance between him and others to allow him to safely remove his mask.” When we noted that’s not what the CDC guidance says or what Dr. O’Connor said he’d do, the official declined to comment further.

To make matters worse, he reportedly has not been abiding by CDC guidelines which is the Holy Bible for liberals during this pandemic. Whatever the CDC and Anthony Fauci say is gospel. Not following it makes you a white nationalist, a Trump supporter, anti-science, and a terrible human being in the eyes of the Left. How long did the COVID stigma last? So, when I read that Biden has been maskless this entire time, I don’t want to hear anything about “doing our part” or “we’re in this together” regarding COVID. The grand Democratic marathon in expanding government power over a virus with a 99-plus percent survival rate is over.

Now, I will take my foot off the Left’s throat for a second. A part of me is okay with Biden not following the guidelines since they were science fiction anyway. Masks don’t work. Vaccines and therapeutics have worked to keep hospitalizations down and better manage symptoms. We are better prepared. Besides the political angle, that’s one of the reasons why the lockdowns are not coming back, even though Fauci lusts for their re-establishment. Then again, how many times did Biden and company raise those CDC protocols as the word of God? The spectacle of hypocrisy would be a brutally explicit event for Democrats when the pandemic’s intensity subsided; we all saw that coming. So, we must remind the Left that these are their rules and the stigma over this virus was their creation.

The cherry on top of this fiasco would be for Biden to do another COVID vaccine plug to show American voters more about the detachment from reality that has engulfed this administration.

Biden couldn’t even handle his COVID treatment without tripping over himself. Can he run a country? I don’t think so. This viral disaster feels like reason number 5,000 for why he cannot be president.

Missouri Aims To Expand Deer Hunting Season To Control Chronic Wasting Disease

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is revising its surveillance and management plan for chronic wasting disease (CWD) and is seeking public feedback on the plan’s goals and objectives, and potential changes to deer hunting regulations.

As part of the plan revision, MDC is considering some changes to deer-hunting regulations for the 2023 deer hunting season. Proposed regulation changes include:

• Increasing the maximum number of firearms antlerless deer hunting permits that a hunter could fill from two to four in select counties,

• Creating a three-day early antlerless portion of firearms deer season in select counties that would begin on a Friday in early-to-mid October, and

• Creating a five-day CWD portion of firearms deer season in select CWD Management Zone counties that would begin the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

“The proposed changes to deer hunting regulations are designed to offer hunters greater opportunities to harvest deer to help manage CWD and assist with meeting deer-management goals,” said Isabelle. “Hunting is the primary tool to achieve deer population goals and hunters play a critically important role in helping to manage CWD.”

According to MDC, white-tailed deer are an extremely important wildlife resource of the state and deer hunting is tremendously popular. Each year, nearly half a million hunters head to Missouri woods in pursuit of deer. This represents a tremendous boon to Missouri’s economy and supports thousands of jobs. Deer are also a favorite species for photographers and wildlife viewers, attracting thousands of visitors annually to Missouri’s public lands.

CWD is a fatal, contagious, disease of white-tailed deer and other members of the deer family, known as cervids. The disease is 100% fatal to deer and there is no known cure, treatment, or vaccine. The disease can be spread from deer to deer through direct contact and when deer encounter the disease-causing agent after it has entered the environment from an infected deer.

According to MDC, CWD poses a direct threat to the health of Missouri’s deer population, making efforts to manage the disease critically important. MDC developed its first CWD Surveillance and Management Plan after detecting the first cases of the disease in 2010 in northcentral Missouri. Following the detection of CWD in other areas of the state, MDC updated its CWD Surveillance and Management Plan in 2015.

With the continued detection of CWD in new areas and expanding distribution where the disease exists, MDC is again revising its CWD Surveillance and Management Plan to ensure that surveillance and management efforts adapt to changing disease dynamics.

“With the changes we’re seeing in the distribution of CWD in our state, it’s important that our approach to disease surveillance and management adapts as well,” said MDC Cervid Program Supervisor Jason Isabelle.

The main areas of focus within the plan call for continued disease surveillance throughout the state, ensuring hunter service testing demands are met, communication, conducting applied research, monitoring disease distribution in affected areas, and applying management actions to limit further spread of the disease.

For more information on CWD, MDC’s ongoing efforts to manage CWD in Missouri, and to read and comment on the draft CWD Surveillance and Management Plan goals and objectives, and proposed changes to deer hunting regulations, visit MDC online at mdc.mo.gov/cwdplan.

BLUF
This is a VERY SMALL list of the over 7,000 incidents listed at the http://SSRIStories.org website.

So IS this the ignored connection? Are these mass shooters on some sort of SSRI when they go off the reservation and dream up schemes from hell to do as much harm to others as they can while in an altered state of reality due to these DRUGS?

The SSRI Connection To Suicides, Spontaneous Murder and Mass Shootings.

Do we need MORE GUN CONTROL? Or BETTER PRESCRIPTION DRUG CONTROL?
Reason, logic and common sense should dictate the correct answer.

A mass shooting is defined as an incident where four or more people are shot. So far this year, the numbers average out to 11 mass shootings per week. 2021 saw a total of 692 mass shootings throughout the year.

Year 2022, just the first six months: – January: 41 mass shootings, 59 dead, 128 wounded February: 43 mass shootings, 40 dead, 174 wounded
March: 52 mass shootings, 47 dead, 217 wounded- April: 66 mass shootings, 75 dead, 271 wounded- May: 67 mass shootings, 87 dead, 324 wounded-June: 68 mass shootings, 78 dead, 275 wounded- These numbers accumulate to a total of 386 people dead and 1,389 people wounded.

I’m not sure how The Scotsman reporter Rachael Davies who wrote the article on 05/07/2022 came up with May and June numbers…but hey, that’s main stream media for you!

Now let’s take a look at mass shootings in the USA before 1968 and we will go back as far as 1954. 1968 was the year massive gun control reform was passed with the Gun Control Act. One of the provisions was that no longer could a rehabilitated felon ever have possession of a firearm. Let’s look at mass shootings prior to that day and realize that firearms were taken to school by boys who were going hunting afterwards and could be seen in the back windows of their pickups. That you could easily obtain firearms from a Sears & Roebuck catalog without back ground checks at all and have one sent directly to your home with no FFL dealer involved.

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Dr. Deborah Birx: I knew shots would not prevent COVID infection

Former White House Covid Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx to Neil: "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 paxolovid." pic.twitter.com/1oB62gFdCJ

— Neil Cavuto (@TeamCavuto) July 22, 2022

Defenders of federal officials, including President Biden, who declared one year ago that people who received the COVID-19 vaccines would not contract the disease argue “the science” changes over time.

But the White House coronavirus response coordinator at the time the vaccines were developed and rolled out said in an interview Friday she wasn’t surprised that people who were quadruple vaccinated, including Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci, contracted the disease.

“I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection and I think we overplayed the vaccines,” Birx told the Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto.

Birx, who is promoting a new book in which she confesses she manipulated data and quietly altered CDC guidance without authorization, was responding to the question of what she would say to unvaccinated people who in light of the ineffectiveness of the vaccines in preventing COVID might ask why they should bother getting the shots.

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JUST IN – WHO declares #monkeypox a global health emergency. pic.twitter.com/ldl8s7deVt

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 23, 2022

US RECORDS FIRST TWO CHILD MONKEYPOX CASES: CALIFORNIA TODDLER AND AN INFANT IN D.C. WERE LIKELY INFECTED BY ‘HOUSEHOLD CONTACTS’ AND BOTH HAD CONTACT WITH GAY OR BISEXUAL MEN, CDC CHIEF SAYS.

No, mRNA Covid vaccines do not offer long-term protection from serious illness
Data from the Dutch government show the opposite – after seven months they substantially RAISE the risk of hospitalization and intensive care

mRNA vaccine advocates have one final defense against the failure of their billion-person experiment.

Okay, the shots won’t stop you from getting Covid. Or spreading it. Or having symptoms.

But they will stop you from getting very sick, and that protection lasts long after they stop working against infection.

Only it doesn’t.

Not against Omicron, anyway. And Omicron is only variant that matters now, since it’s the only variant that exists now.

An official government report from the Netherlands earlier this month has the truth.

On July 5, the RIVM – a research institute that is part of the Dutch Ministry of Health – reported a basic two-dose Covid vaccination offered no protection against Covid hospitalization. Worse, vaccinated people were 20 percent more likely to need intensive care than the unvaccinated.

“There was hardly any visible protective effect of the COVID-19 basic vaccination series against hospital and ICU – intensive care- intake,” the researchers wrote (understating the case).

SOURCE

—

The topline figures are bad enough.

The report is based on hospitalizations across the Netherlands from March 15 through June 28, not a small sample. And like the United States, the Dutch relied overwhelmingly on mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna – the supposed gold standard for Covid shots.

But the details in the report are even more disturbing.

The researchers stratified the risks of hospitalization and intensive care by time from vaccination and the age of the infected person – and those show that the risks increase over time.

After seven months, vaccinated people in their fifties and sixties had a 68 percent higher risk of being hospitalized for Covid compared to the unvaccinated. They had a 41 percent higher risk of needing intensive care.

The trends were similar for people 70 and over, though most of them had been boosted or received a fourth shot, so comparisons were harder to make.

(Negative vaccine effectiveness, it’s a thing. A very bad thing.)

Again, this negative effectiveness is against severe disease – hospitalizations and intensive care.

Not infection, severe disease.

—

The report also showed that boosters and fourth shots did reverse the negative efficacy against hospitalization and intensive care and provide some protection. That fact led the researchers to call for vaccinated people to receive boosters.

But the effectiveness of boosters and fourth shots against severe disease also sharply and quickly declined.

In people 70 and over, the effectiveness of a booster against hospitalization fell from 85 percent in the first month to under 50 percent by five months out. The trends for the fourth shot were similar, but worse. Though the researchers did not have five months of data for the fourth shot, by roughly three months, protection had fallen to 60 percent.

—

The results could not be clearer, or grimmer.

The mRNA vaccines fail within a few months and then begin to raise the risk of serious outcomes.

Why?

The promise that the mRNA shots will produce durable T-cell protection against severe disease appears faulty. Any protection the shots offer against hospitalization or death probably results from their antibody-driven protection against infection, which lasts only a few months.

Repeated shots can reverse the trend, but they too fail, and each additional shot appears to do less and fail more quickly. Worst of all, because the shots cause recipients to produce antibodies to the original coronavirus rather than Omicron’s mutated spike, vaccinated people now have a higher risk of Omicron infection – which means they have a higher risk of hospitalization or death.

Worst of all, the Dutch collected this data during the spring, when the existing Omicron subvariant was relatively mild. Now Omicron has mutated again, and we do not at this point know if the new variant is more or less dangerous.

But the trends from countries like New Zealand – which are test cases for Omicron’s potential virulence because they are highly mRNA vaccinated and have little preexisting natural immunity – are not promising.

Buckle up.

A Pandemic of the Vaccinated: President Biden tests positive for COVID-19

President Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, despite being fully vaccinated and double boosted. Or perhaps it was because he’s vaccinated and boosted.

In July of 2021 he said this was impossible, lying to the American public about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.

https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1550141637959057409

That guarantee from Biden was significant. After that statement, there was a multi-pronged effort to scapegoat the continuation of the “pandemic” on the unvaccinated. Dr. Fauci blamed the unvaccinated for “propagating” the latest outbreak, saying we need to “do something to get them to be vaccinated.”

That term do something suggested action. State governments and cities began issuing their own vaccination requirements. New York City led the way, requiring “proof of at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine for a variety of activities for workers and customers — indoor dining, gyms and performances — to put pressure on people to get vaccinated.”

The media called for more extreme measures, demanding Biden institute a “no-fly list for unvaccinated adults.” They called for mandates. They begged for the federal government to raise “the costs of remaining unvaccinated.” Thankfully, they didn’t get much of what they asked for. COVID-19 cases are rising in many of the most vaccinated states, including California. The mandates and the vaccines haven’t stopped the spread.

As to Biden’s current COVID-19 diagnosis?

At least it isn’t cancer. The remarkable thing about Biden’s purported cancer “gaffe” – apart from (incorrectly?) saying he has cancer – is that he didn’t notice he said he has cancer. A normal mind might correct itself after making such a seismic error. Biden didn’t comprehend the significance of his statement. He just continued mumbling along, reading words off a screen as fast as he could before getting out of that riverfront hellscape.

President Biden just said he has cancer.

Is it true?

Or is the Commander in Chief confused?

Who knows!! pic.twitter.com/OyrPXCYrd2

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) July 20, 2022

Anyways, who gave President Biden COVID-19? You better believe the person had their shots and was boosted.

It’s a pandemic of the vaccinated.

"This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated."

– Joe Biden, 1/4/22 pic.twitter.com/6bxLfbHEkO

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 21, 2022

FYI
Dad is in hospital with a reoccurrence of pancreatitis.
Keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
Posting may be sparse for a few days.

Governor DeSantis Rights Another Pandemic Wrong for Florida Residents.

On July 5, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the No Patient Left Alone Act to right some of the most egregious wrongs of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, hospitals nationwide denied patients visitation, even at the end of their lives. Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities did the same. Closing healthcare facilities to visitation from family is no longer legal in Florida.

During the announcement, DeSantis explained, “It [the law] increases patient protections and ensures Florida families have a fundamental right to visit their loved ones receiving care in Florida hospitals, hospices, and long-term care facilities.” It also prevents the facilities from requiring that family members receive a COVID-19 vaccination to access visitation and bans any policy that prevents them from having physical contact, such as hugging their loved ones. “This ensures families can be there and patients can have their support system around them when it matters most,” DeSantis added.

One woman in Florida made national news during the pandemic and met DeSantis to share her story. Mary Daniel’s husband suffered from Alzheimer’s and was in long-term care in Florida when the pandemic began. She visited her husband every day after work and spent the evening with him. On March 11, 2020, she kissed him goodnight. On March 12, the staff called her and said she could not come back. In Daniel’s own words:

I knew that the isolation was going to hurt him. With dementia patients, Alzhiemer’s patients specifically, the human contact, the hand holding, the back rubbing, me being with him was the most important part. I couldn’t talk to him on the phone. I couldn’t talk to him on FaceTime. His verbal skills are very limited. He talks but I can’t understand what he says.

So there was no conversation that we could have. He would kiss the iPad because he didn’t understand where I was and how that worked. We tried two window visits and he cried the entire time. He just truly didn’t understand why are you not in here and why are you not with me? He had no knowledge and no cognitive idea of the virus. He didn’t know what it was and didn’t understand it and so didn’t know what was going on.

She spent 114 days advocating for herself and other families and figuring out how to get back to the daily routine her husband was used to. Daniel received national media attention when she took a part-time job as a dishwasher in her husband’s facility just to check on him. She also started to connect with other families in similar situations and has a Facebook group that was 14,000 strong when she interviewed with American Thought Leaders in April of 2021.

During the process she met with DeSantis and his wife Casey, who listened intently to her story. She participated in task forces trying to work out how to reconnect patients and families in the state. “Governor DeSantis has absolutely without question led the way in how to do this right and get us back to our loved ones. After our conversation, we walked out to a press conference, and he announced the establishment of a Long Term Care Task Force for Reopening Facilities in Florida.”

Initially, DeSantis issued executive orders to get families back in with their loved ones. Those activities resulted in the law he signed on Tuesday. Residents of other states, especially those with hard lockdowns, did not have a similar advocate in the governor’s mansion. Patty Heffernan, a resident of Michigan, lost her brother to cardiac disease during the pandemic.

Her 96-year-old mother, who is entirely cognizant and only requires assisted living, grieved the loss of her child alone. No family was allowed to visit and comfort her. The only people allowed to touch her mom was the staff. “It stays with you forever, ” Heffernan said. “We got no closure, could not gather in our grief, and only five people could attend his funeral. That just accommodated his immediate family.”

Needless to say, Governor Gretchen Whitmer did not help Heffernan or other families in a similar situation. She was too busy putting COVID-positive patients into facilities like Heffernan’s mother is in and ensuring no one could buy seeds at Walmart.

The right to receive visitors should be in every patient’s bill of rights. Every patient deserves an advocate. And every family member needs to be able to make observations about the care their loved one is receiving and ask questions of their providers. As Daniel explained:

When I saw Steve after 114 days, there were light bulbs out in his room. His remote control was gone from his TV. When I took his shoes off to put him in bed, his toenails had not been cut in 114 days. This is a man who was meticulous about his appearance. We didn’t dry his golf shirts. We hung them.

He has every shirt he’s ever owned in that closet in there because he took care of his things and his appearance with such great care. I pulled his shoes off, and I couldn’t believe it. Now is that neglect? No, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t realize it. I know, and I see it. What do you think that looks like after 300 days?

The cruelty of making people die alone in any setting is unspeakable. We know this happened to patients who died of COVID. It also happened to countless Americans hospitalized for other illnesses and in long-term care facilities. The fact that healthcare administrators and caregivers around the country enforced policies that isolated these patients is sickening, and anyone who ever attended a death knows it.
>

And thanks to the work of Mary Daniel and the decisive action of Governor DeSantis, it will never happen in Florida again.

COVID-19 vaccine updates

There have been several developments concerning COVID-19 vaccines. To call some of them “horrifying” is a gross understatement.

First, the vaxx and fertility.

Why is there a substantial decrease in births in Germany and Switzerland (and other countries) – nine months after the beginning of covid mass vaccinations?

Do covid vaccines influence male or female fertility? … new birth data out of Germany and Switzerland raises some serious questions. Specifically, both countries recorded a consistent 10% to 15% decrease (compared to expectations) in monthly births from January to March/April 2022 (the latest available data) – that is, precisely nine months after the beginning of covid mass vaccination in the general population in April/May 2021 (see charts above and below).

How can this substantial decrease be explained? Is it due to behavioral or biological factors?. . .

Furthermore, there have been widespread and officially acknowledged reports of post-vaccination menstrual disorders (over 30,000 reports in Britain alone); official reports of vaccine adverse events including death in breastfeeding babies (over 60 reported cases in Germany alone); a still unexplained, transient increase in neonatal deaths in countries like Scotland; and reports by Austrian midwives of an increase in complications during pregnancy and delivery after covid vaccination. Meanwhile, Pfizer has never even finished its vaccine trial in pregnant women.. . .

A similar decline in births since early 2022 is visible in Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia and Taiwan, but apparently not in California (though states that saw an initial lockdown-related decline in births may see a subsequent rebound).

There’s more at the link, including further links to the studies cited above.

Some authorities are already trying to decry such “rumors” and “falsehoods”. Unfortunately for them, the trickle of evidence is turning into a tidal wave. See, for example, this Twitter thread from user Jikkyleaks (original tweet is here), providing yet more links and graphics to illustrate the trend. A brief excerpt:

This is a massive safety signal for infertility. Germany’s FIRST report of birth rates since the rollout.

Remember that the birth rate data is 9 months too late.

If the next quarter is worse, this is Children of Men scenario.

For the years 2011-2021 the average number of births is 63,911 for the Jan-Mar quarter, with a standard deviation of 1015.

The drop to 54871 for 2022 is approx 9 SD.

9 Sigma. Unicorn events.

The money people understand this.

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/51725008-quantsb/5548386-2-3-sigma-events-are-low-probability-5-6-9-sigma-events-are-unicorns-lots-of-unicorn-events

Again, more at the link. Nassim Taleb might call it a “black swan event” rather than a “unicorn event”, but the impact of either is no less disastrous.

Another report notes that Taiwan is experiencing an almost 25% drop in births over the same period, and rates this as no less than a 26-sigma event. The author notes: “This can be described as “unimaginable” in terms of the likelihood of happening due to random chance.”

Next, there’s preliminary but growing evidence that mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 may cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob or other prion diseases of the brain in some recipients.

Researchers believe the prion region from the original Wuhan COVID-19 variant’s spike protein was incorporated into mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vector vaccines — given to hundreds of millions of humans — and that it can cause a new type of rapidly progressing sporadic CJD.. . .

A French pre-print paper published in May on CJD and COVID-19 vaccination identified a new form of sporadic CJD that occurred within days of receiving a first or second dose of Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.. . .

Sporadic CJD occurs when a person becomes infected for no apparent reason. Once a single prion becomes infected, it will progress to other prions, and there is no treatment capable of stopping it.