Category: Health & Medicine

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.

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 The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance’s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.

The documents were released in connection with ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health. The Intercept is making the full documents available to the public.

“This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19.

One of the grants, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab-leak theory seriously. “In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan said. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?”

According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents. Ebright also said the documents make it clear that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice. “While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,” Ebright said, referring to the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Asked about the grant materials, Robert Kessler, communications manager at EcoHealth Alliance, said, “We applied for grants to conduct research. The relevant agencies deemed that to be important research, and thus funded it. So I don’t know that there’s a whole lot to say.”

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period — from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.

The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is a virus found in bats, making the animals a focal point for efforts to understand the origins of the pandemic. Exactly how the virus jumped to humans is the subject of heated debate. Many scientists believe that it was a natural spillover, meaning that the virus passed to humans in a setting such as a wet market or rural area where humans and animals are in close contact. Biosafety experts and internet sleuths who suspect a lab origin, meanwhile, have spent more than a year poring over publicly available information and obscure scientific publications looking for answers. In the past few months, leading scientists have also called for a deeper investigation of the pandemic’s origins, as has President Joe Biden, who in May ordered the intelligence community to study the issue. On August 27, Biden announced that the intelligence inquiry was inconclusive.

Biden blamed China for failing to release critical data, but the U.S. government has also been slow to release information. The Intercept initially requested the proposals in September 2020.

“I wish that this document had been released in early 2020,” said Chan, who has called for an investigation of the lab-leak origin theory. “It would have changed things massively, just to have all of the information in one place, immediately transparent, in a credible document that was submitted by EcoHealth Alliance.”

The second grant, “Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emerging Infectious Disease Hotspots of Southeast Asia,” was awarded in August 2020 and extends through 2025. The proposal, written in 2019, often seems prescient, focusing on scaling up and deploying resources in Asia in case of an outbreak of an “emergent infectious disease” and referring to Asia as “this hottest of the EID hotspots.”

Forbes Deletes Article by Education Expert Asserting That Forcing Children to Wear Masks Causes Psychological Trauma

Forbes deleted an article written by an education expert who asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks was causing psychological trauma after the piece began to go viral.

The article (archived here) was written by Zak Ringelstein, who has a a PhD in education from Columbia University and founded Zigadoo, an educational and development app aimed at helping children.

Ringelstein explains how he worked hard to remove standardized testing from schools but that this was derailed when the pandemic began, a process that “transformed the American public education system into something unrecognizable: a system of restrictions and mandates far more repressive than standardized testing ever was.”

Ringelstein attacked the notion that “kids are resilient” and can overcome the onerous COVID rules imposed on them by asserting, “Masks and social distancing induce trauma and trauma at a young age is developmentally dangerous, especially for children who are experiencing trauma in other parts of their lives.”

He went further, noting how the new measures were creating classrooms full of lonely, atomized kids.

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ACLU: Forced vaccine passports is a win for civil liberties
“We care deeply about civil liberties and civil rights for all – which is precisely why we support vaccine mandates.”

Forcing people to use vaccine passports to access everyday freedoms is apparently protecting their civil liberties, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The organization’s opinion was, for obvious reasons, criticized as part of its continued recent decline into politicalization and moving away from values it once supported.

The ACLU expressed its controversial opinion in an op-ed in The New York Times. According to the civil liberties groups, there is permissibility for COVID-19 vaccine passport mandates because: “The disease is highly transmissible, serious and often lethal; the vaccines are safe and effective; and crucially there is no equally effective alternative available to protect public health.”

The ACLU added: “In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. They protect the most vulnerable among us, including people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated and communities of color hit hard by the disease.”

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60% of Those Older Than 50 Who Die From COVID Are Double Vaxxed

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • As of August 15, 2021, 68% of COVID patients admitted to hospital in the U.K. who were over the age of 50 had received one or two doses of COVID injections. By mid-August, 59% of serious cases in Israel were also among those who had received two COVID injections, mirroring U.K. data
  • Only in the 50 and younger category were a majority, 74%, of British COVID patients unvaccinated. Those claiming we’re in a pandemic of the unvaccinated fail to differentiate between age groups
  • The same applies to COVID deaths in the U.K. Unvaccinated make up the majority of deaths only in the under-50 age group. In the over-50 group, the clear majority, 70%, are either partially or fully “vaccinated”
  • We cannot rely on U.S. data to get a clear idea of how the COVID shots are working, as the CDC has chosen to only track breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization and/or death
  • Reanalysis of Pfizer’s, Moderna’s and Janssen’s COVID trial data using the proper endpoint show the shots are hurting the health of the population, and if mass vaccination continues we face “a looming vaccine-induced public health catastrophe”
  • A new study shows that vaccinated individuals are up to 13 times more likely to get infected with the new Delta variant than unvaccinated individuals who have had a natural COVID infection

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The FDA did NOT grant full approval to the Pfizer shots

You may have heard that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot received FDA approval this past Monday.  Politicians, national health officials, and journalists are breathless with excitement about how this approval will finally induce the remaining “vaccine-hesitant” into stepping forward to receive their jab.  The FDA even has a press release on its website about it.

There’s just one problem.

If you read the actual letters that the FDA sent to Pfizer on August 23, 2021, you’ll see that the FDA did no such thing.  In the sense that the term “FDA approval” is generally understood, this drug is not approved by the FDA.  It is still under EUA (Emergency Use Authorization).  It is still an experimental drug.

The FDA sent two letters.  The first one was a letter of BLA (Biologics License Application) approval, and the second was a letter of EUA extension to COMIRNATY.

The BLA approval letter approves Pfizer’s application for a license to label its COVID-19 drug with the brand name COMIRNATY.  This letter also spells out the terms and requirements for nine additional clinical trials over five years, and yearly status reports, to study the acknowledged occurrences of myocarditis and pericarditis that have followed the administering of the Pfizer shots.  This license to label and manufacture is not a full approval of the drug, which clearly is still subject to many years of clinical trials.

The EUA extension letter extends the term of the EUA for the current drug and authorizes (licenses) the experimental use of the brand-name drug COMIRNATY.  In the first paragraph on page 2, this letter references the license approval letter.  In the second paragraph on page 2, the August 12 EUA is re-issued to include the name-branded drug in the emergency use authorization, and to add “language regarding warnings and precautions related to myocarditis and pericarditis.”  In the last paragraph on page 4, the EUA nature of the drugs is re-iterated, and COMIRNATY is additionally authorized for use for individuals aged 12 through 15 years.

The mRNA gene therapy shots are still experimental.  Mandating them is still wrong — by a wide variety of ethical standards.

Dr. Meryl Nass, M.D. found the truths that the FDA buried in the blather of these letters and offers a theory about why it was done this way.  The drug-manufacturers were granted immunity from liability for the drugs produced under the EUAs.  The granting of the license re-applies the customary liability for injury and death caused by the product.  Pfizer, the health officials, and the politicians get to take a fictitious victory lap for the “approval,” while Pfizer-BioNTech continues to stealthily enjoy immunity from product liability because there are many millions of the unlicensed doses on the shelves and in the manufacturing pipeline that will be administered first.  The licensed version will not arrive on shelves or be jabbed into arms for many months to come.

Of great concern, considering the factual content of the FDA EUA letters to Pfizer, is the breezy way the press release on the FDA website repeatedly uses the words “approve” and “approval” in reference to the Pfizer drug.  If only there were a word for intentionally saying things to the public that do not match reality…

COMIRNATY seems like an unusual name for anything, much less a cutting-edge-technology gene therapy.  Out of idle curiosity, I ran the name through an anagram solver.  For a result, it gave TIROMANCY, which is divination or prophecy by examining how curds form during the coagulation of cheese.  How apropos.  That’s something I’m willing to try for forecasting the results of the next election!

BLUF:
About the only thing that people are consistently sick of is the everchanging government mandates that seem to ignore data that doesn’t support their narrative.

52% of Southern Nevada COVID-19 Deaths Were Fully Vaccinated? That’s What This Data Says

Despite the media’s 24 hour-a-day, 7 day-a-week marathon in attempting to convince Americans of the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, constant reports of breakthrough cases have gone a long way to undermining that effort.  US Health Officials have been adamant that the effectiveness of the vaccines remains high, even though the CDC does not collect data for breakthrough cases, eliminating the possibility for national health officials from even weighing in on the matter.  In the UK, at least 40% of new COVID hospitalizations have been of vaccinated people, and many jurisdictions make no distinction anymore between vaccinated and unvaccinated people when it comes to COVID-19 mandates.

In a few states, they do gather breakthrough case data, but oftentimes it is lacking in data or format to which it can be compared.  For instance, some states count breakthrough cases, but not hospitalizations or deaths, which makes it hard to determine the number of vaccinated patients that are being treated for, or potentially dying from, COVID-19.  This morning, in reviewing data out Southern Nevada, I came across data that I could actually compare that told a story that doesn’t line up with the “98% of deaths and hospitalizations are unvaccinated” narrative.

“The Southern Nevada Health District was created in 1962, following statutory authorization from the Nevada State Legislature to combine the county health department and the health departments of several surrounding cities,” according to the SNHD website.

From the Website:

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The vaxx isn’t working. So tripling down will not work

BOMBSHELL UK data destroys entire premise for vaccine push
The media can read just as well as me (maybe), but somehow it is left to me to report this.

This is an absolute game-changer.

The UK government just reported the following data, tucked away in their report on variants of concern:

Less than a third of delta variant deaths are in the unvaccinated.

Let me say that another way – two-thirds of Delta deaths in the UK are in the jabbed.

To be specific:

From the 1st of February to the 2nd of August, the UK recorded 742 Delta deaths (yes, the dreaded Delta has not taken that much life).

Out of the 742 deaths, 402 were fully vaccinated. 79 had received one shot. Only 253 were unvaccinated.

The report is here.

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There’s a legal principle that came about in law enforcement criminal investigations. When a private individual, or company, does something at the request of, or influenced by, goobermint, paid or not, they are legally acting as an agent of goobermint and that means it’s just like goobermint was doing it. Biden believes he can get away with mandating this it by getting someone else other than goobermint to do it for him.

Biden calls on private companies to issue vaccine requirements

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday urged private companies to require their employees to get the Covid-19 vaccination, hours after the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine for people ages 16 and up.

Speaking at the White House, Biden said he was calling on companies to “step up the vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people.”

The president had previously voiced his support for vaccine requirements in workplaces, but his message Monday marked a more direct appeal to private employers to play a bigger role in boosting the vaccination rate in the U.S.

“If you’re a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader who has been waiting on full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that,” Biden said. “Require it.”

Approximately 70 percent of eligible Americans have received at least one shot, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Around 60 percent are fully vaccinated.

Some public health experts had argued full FDA approval would make it easier for private employers to require vaccines in their workplaces. Some also hoped it would help convince hesitant people to get the shot.

The Pfizer vaccine is the first Covid vaccine to get full approval from the FDA.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday that the Defense Department would be issuing new guidance mandating military members get vaccinated.

At the end of July, Biden announced that federal employees would be required to get vaccinated or get tested regularly for Covid, wear a mask and practice social distancing in their workplace. Some private companies quickly issued similar requirements for their employees, but such moves were met with resistance from Republican state legislatures and governors.

Private businesses are allowed to require vaccinations under the protection of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Biden has said he lacks the power to issue a nationwide vaccine mandate.

Biden said Monday the FDA’s full approval was the “gold standard” and called it an “important moment in our fight against the pandemic.”

“The moment you’ve been waiting for is here,” Biden said. “It’s time for you to go get your vaccination.”

Comment O’ The Day

A couple of things

*****

I am not and have not ever said that COVID is a fake illness.

Where we need to be spending our scientific efforts is in discovering why some people suffer more than others, and why some have problems recovering fully. So why aren’t we doing that?

Because of the real problem. Some people in and out of our government have discovered that this crisis can be used to create fear, and with that fear, they can take more power and money for themselves. Now that they have that money and power, they are not likely to give it up.

In Melbourne, Australia, a protest against Covid restrictions turned violent.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Protesters in Melbourne demonstrating against Covid restrictions on Saturday clashed with the police, who used pepper spray to disperse them. Several officers were injured and hundreds of people were arrested, the police said.

More than 4,000 people joined the protest, one of a number of anti-lockdown demonstrations that were held on Saturday in Australian cities. Protesters in Melbourne, most of whom appeared not to be wearing masks, charged police lines, threw objects at officers and set off flares, according to news reports and footage posted on social media.
Four officers were treated for concussions, one for a broken thumb and two others for possible broken noses, according to the police in the state of Victoria, which includes Melbourne. Another officer was treated at the scene for a cut on the neck.

The police said it was the first time officers had been forced to use “a range of nonlethal options” to disperse anti-lockdown protesters in Melbourne, which has seen a number of demonstrations against restrictions. Officers fired pellets and used pepper spray.
“While there were some peaceful protesters in attendance, the majority of those who attended came with violence in mind,” the police said in a statement.

Earlier Saturday, Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, extended Melbourne’s lockdown, which has been in place since early August, to the entire state, after 17 new cases were detected in the regional hub of Shepparton.

Restrictions in Melbourne were also tightened. Child care is now only available to essential workers, and the authorities are recommending that children wear masks.

A much smaller protest was held on Saturday in Sydney, the epicenter of Australia’s current Covid outbreak, in which the Delta variant of the virus has been dominant. New South Wales, the state that includes Sydney, reported 825 new cases on Saturday, the most since the pandemic began.
Roughly 250 people attended the Sydney protest, vastly outnumbered by about 1,500 officers patrolling the streets, officials said. Forty-seven people were arrested and 260 tickets were issued for violations of Covid restrictions.

The authorities in Sydney had barred taxis and ride-share services from taking people to the central business district in an attempt to head off the protest. Trains had also been prevented from stopping at stations in the area.
“Anybody who attends the protest tomorrow is going to feel the full force of the N.S.W. police force,” David Elliott, police commissioner of the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, said on Friday. “You’ll also be endangering the lives of your loved ones and of course prolonging this lockdown. You’re going to be doing everything you want to stop.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Elliott said it was “no coincidence” that a recent spike in the number of daily infections in the state had followed an anti-lockdown protest three weeks ago.

About 5,000 people attended a peaceful protest on Saturday in Brisbane, where no restrictions are in place, according to the local police.

Some doctors quietly secretly came up with a plan that if they ran out of ICU beds, then vaccinated patients would get priority. After this was reported, [likely because one, or more, of the doctors involved realized how morally and ethically corrupt this was, and spilled the beans to the newspaper] the doctors backed down. Good, but not good enough.

An idea like this should never have been even imagined in the first place.

So, someone goes to the hospital for whatever.  The staff there check and find out the patient is unvaccinated and then give them a low priority for treatment?

I can guarantee, with Metaphysical Certitude™, if that happens, an angry parent or spouse will seek treatment for their sick ones at gunpoint. And making medical staff into the arbiter of who lives and who dies, based on social status, is one of the worst things that a society can do.

We must be able to trust doctors because we put our lives in their hands.
If doctors decide that “those people” don’t deserve the same level of care then that trust is destroyed and bad things will happen. Those medicos made the right decision this time because of public pressure after it was aired to the public.

But if crap-for-brains shenanigans like this continue, the medical community is going to rue the day such an idea popped into their pinheads.

North Texas doctor’s group retreats on policy saying vaccination status to be part of care decisions
This would have been a big change in health care, and it was all outlined in a memo obtained by the Watchdog.

Updated at 8:15 p.m. Aug. 19, 2021: After this story was posted, Dr. Mark Casanova gave interviews to local media and revised his story. He described the memo to the task force as a “homework assignment.” In a reversal, he told NBC-5 that vaccinations should not be among the factors hospitals should consider when making critical care triage decisions.

Original story published Aug. 19, 2021: North Texas doctors have quietly developed a plan that seeks to prepare for the possibility that due to the COVID-19 surge the region will run out of intensive-care beds.

If that happens, for the first time, doctors officially will be allowed to take vaccination status of sick patients into account along with other triage factors to see who gets a bed.

A copy of an internal memo written by Dr. Robert Fine, co-chair of the North Texas Mass Critical Care Guideline Task Force, was sent to members of the task force — and leaked to The Watchdog. It summarizes the latest work by the task force, a volunteer group that periodically updates medical guidelines for hospitals in our region. There are about 50 members from various hospitals in the group. Although their recommendations are not enforceable, the guidelines are generally followed.

The one-page summary memo is a “heads up” alert in the event things get worse, says Dr. Mark Casanova, director of clinical ethics for Baylor University Medical Center and a spokesperson for the task force. After Monday’s meeting, doctors had yet to make plans to inform the public.

“We’re trying to decide how to explain this addition to the public,” Casanova said.

But after studying the memo and interviewing doctors involved in the decision for two hours this week, The Watchdog can explain it to you.

Although doctors make triage decisions all the time, the proposed guideline addition is significant. Casanova predicted that if this change were copied by others medical care, for as long as the crisis persists, “is going to look and feel different for everybody who is alive right now in the United States of America.”

Yet a leading medical ethicist who studies how COVID-19 affects communities says he worries that adding vaccination status to the triage of patients will unfairly harm low-income people and people of color. These groups are historically disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining proper medical care.

SloJoe believes POTUS possesses powers that he doesn’t have

Biden threatens action against governors who refuse to force masks on school children

During a speech given by President Joe Biden on Wednesday regarding COVID-19 response and vaccination programs, Biden slammed states that have banned the requirement of masks in school, announcing that government action will be taken against these states and their governors.

Fauci: ‘Put Aside All of These Issues of Concern About Liberties’

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Sunday that unvaccinated Americans need to shift their focus from “concerns about personal liberty” to combat the “common enemy” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You have to get the overwhelming proportion of people vaccinated, but you also have to do mitigation, and that gets to the controversial issue of mask wearing, and the mandating of things. Mandating vaccines, for example, for teachers and … personnel in the school,” Fauci said during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Fauci went on to say that, while vaccinated individuals have become infected with the coronavirus, the unvaccinated are the ones with more severe cases. He also took the stance that personal liberties should be put on the back burner in favor of mitigating the spread of the virus.

“It’s the unvaccinated that are doing that, so we have a lot of tasks,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to do mitigation. Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy and that common enemy is the virus. And we really have to go together to get on top of this. Otherwise, we’re going to continue to suffer as we’re seeing right now.

Now, I will be the first to opine that education doesn’t necessarily equate to intelligence, or even ‘common sense’, but there is a lot to said by the fact that a lot of the highly educated, with access to a lot more information than most, is like this.

Most vaccine-hesitant group is those with PhDs, research shows.

Most skeptical and least likely to change their minds, findings reveal

A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh researchers found that vaccine hesitancy is highest among those with a PhD.

The online survey of more than 5 million adults was conducted between January 6 and May 31. People who said “probably not” or “definitely not” when asked if they would get the vaccine were considered vaccine hesitant.

“There was not a decrease in hesitancy among those with a professional degree or PhD,” the paper states.

A news release regarding the results explained further: “Hesitancy held constant in the most educated group (those with a Ph.D.); by May Ph.D.’s were the most hesitant group.”

The graph (below) provided in the survey charted the results. The line in yellow represents those with PhDs. It shows that their vaccine hesitancy rate rose slightly over the five-month survey period to end at the top of the chart.

“Most of the coverage would have you believe that the surge in cases is primarily down to less educated, ‘brainwashed’ Trump supporters who don’t want to take the vaccine,” Unherd reports. “This may be partially true: the areas in which the delta variant is surging coincide with the sections of red America in which vaccination rates are lowest.”

But “this does not paint the full picture,” Unherd noted:

People with a master’s degree had the least hesitancy, and the highest hesitancy was among those holding a Ph.D.

What’s more, the paper found that in the first five months of 2021, the largest decrease in hesitancy was among the least educated — those with a high school education or less. Meanwhile, hesitancy held constant in the most educated group; by May, those with Ph.Ds were the most hesitant group.

So not only are the most educated people most sceptical of taking the Covid vaccine, they are also the least likely the change their minds about it…

Read the paper here and the Unherd analysis here.

‘Lots’.

Massive New Analysis Confirms Just How Many COVID-19 Cases Are Truly Asymptomatic.

Within months of SARS-CoV-2‘s emergence as a global catastrophe it was becoming clear that many who spread the disease did so unwittingly, experiencing not so much as a tickle in their throat to alert them of the danger within.

Distinguishing those who are truly asymptomatic from those who are simply yet to show signs of the virus has made it hard to calculate a precise figure on the risks of succumbing to the illness.

Now an analysis by a group of US medical researchers on more than 350 studies has found just over 35 percent of all COVID-19 infections don’t proceed to a symptomatic phase.

Early estimates ranged from just 4 percent of infections being asymptomatic, all the way up to 81 percent. Even as the pandemic ensued, figures conservatively estimated fewer than 20 percent of people might be infectious without showing any signs.

Confidently nailing down a number is harder than it might seem. Without the fever, loss of smell, sore throat, aches, and cough to encourage a trip to a clinic, few people bother lining up for a test.

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Isn’t something like this supposed to be the other way around, like the NY Times posting infoo from the CDC?

CDC Took Mistaken Data on Delta Variant Transmissibility From a New York Times Infographic.

Another CDC data flub distorts delta variant contagiousness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claimed the delta variant of COVID-19 is “as transmissible as” chickenpox. It’s not true.

Chickenpox, caused by the varicella-zoster virus, is one of the most contagious diseases we know of. “If one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected,” states the CDC website.

One person infected with chickenpox will infect an average of 10 people when everyone in a population is vulnerable to catching it. (This transmissibility number—referred to as R0—goes down when people have immunity to the disease.)

“The initial COVID-19 strain had an R0 between two and three,” computational biologist Karthik Gangavarapu told NPR. The delta variant has an R0 between six and seven. For chickenpox, the R0 is nine or 10.

How did the CDC conclude that these were equivalent?

For one, the leaked document underestimated the R0 for chickenpox and overestimated the R0 for the delta variant. “The R0 values for delta were preliminary and calculated from data taken from a rather small sample size,” a federal official told NPR. The value for the chickenpox (and other R0s in the slideshow) came from a graphic from The New York Times, which wasn’t completely accurate.

Apparently, the federal agency charged with disseminating COVID-19 data and setting public health policy is taking its cues from a newspaper infographic. Oh my.

Using more accurate data, the delta variant proves more transmissible than O.G. COVID but less transmissible than the virus behind the chickenpox.

New data on coronavirus vaccine effectiveness may be “a wakeup call”

A new preprint study that raises concerns about the mRNA vaccines’ effectiveness against Delta — particularly Pfizer’s — has already grabbed the attention of top Biden administration officials.

What they’re saying: The study found the Pfizer vaccine was only 42% effective against infection in July, when the Delta variant was dominant. “If that’s not a wakeup call, I don’t know what is,” a senior Biden official told Axios.

Driving the news: The study, conducted by nference and the Mayo Clinic, compared the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the Mayo Clinic Health System over time from January to July.

  • Overall, it found that the Moderna vaccine was 86% effective against infection over the study period, and Pfizer’s was 76%. Moderna’s vaccine was 92% effective against hospitalization and Pfizer’s was 85%.
  • But the vaccines’ effectiveness against infection dropped sharply in July, when the Delta variant’s prevalence in Minnesota had risen to over 70%.
  • Moderna was 76% effective against infection, and Pfizer was only 42% effective.
  • The study found similar results in other states. For example, in Florida, the risk of infection in July for people fully vaccinated with Moderna was about 60% lower than for people fully vaccinated with Pfizer.

Why it matters: Although it has yet to be peer-reviewed, the study raises serious questions about both vaccines’ long-term effectiveness, particularly Pfizer’s.

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The neo-feudalism of Obama’s maskless ball.

I lost my invitation and, besides, the pilot of my private plane was on holiday, so I had to miss the intimate, scaled-back get-together that Barack Obama convened to celebrate his 60th year gracing our planet with his awesomeness.

I didn’t feel too badly, though — no paralyzing waves of ‘FOMO’ — because all my friends in the media made me feel I was almost there. There were all those leaked snaps and videos, for one thing, showing the Prez dance-dance-dancing the night away, nary a mask in sight.

In truth, that was the one thing I liked about this obscene, Gatsby-esque spectacle. The Obamas, and presumably their guests, had been vaccinated. They therefore knew that they were not at any meaningful risk of contracting THE WORST DISEASE SINCE THE BLACK DEATH — I mean, the nasty little respiratory virus bequeathed to a grateful world by the ChiComs. They just weren’t, and neither are you — always assuming you are vaccinated and under the age of, say, 80.

The only thing that would have made this aspect of Obama’s Feast of Trimalchio more delicious would have been a couple of candid snaps of St Anthony Fauci doing the twist with Chrissy Teigen. Maybe the Daily Mail will eventually come through on that.

Let’s just set the record straight on a couple of matters. When it was first revealed that His Highness was planning this illustration of Thorstein Veblen’s thesis about conspicuous consumption, there were some plangent noises among the patter of adulation. Four hundred guests and 200 peons — er, servants? A teensy bit over the top, Barack?  So the Obamas said they scaled it back — look it up: it was all over the court press. But it is clear that they didn’t. Possibly, the Cuomo Bros had their invitations yanked, but that was only because — Ecce Cuomo — shares in Cuomo preferred had just taken a sharp dive. This, incidentally, provided a good illustration of the irrationality of this part of the market. Stock in the Cuomo Mafia deserves to be rated a zero — bankruptcy time — but not because Andrew is the Luv Gov and can’t keep his pinky off the pink bits of the ladies. That’s what the media outrage machine would have you believe. But the real reason he deserves to go can be adduced in the number 15,000, approximately the number people whose deaths he caused by forcing nursing homes to take patients suffering from COVID. Anyway, the ‘root cause’ of Cuomo’s defenestration is the threat he poses — make that ‘posed’ — as a possible alternative to the gibbering, geriatric wing of the Democratic party going forward.

The second thing that needs to be corrected is the calumny that the Obamas occupy a pad worth $11-$12 million on Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, that 30-acre estate is worth about three to four times that much, but some lingering sense of propriety (I won’t call it shame) caused them or their PR flaks to lowball the assessment.

All in all, the Obama Odeon was an excellent illustration of Joel Kotkin’s thesis in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. Western societies, above all American society, is lapsing back into a sort of stratified, feudal arrangement with some a tiny hyper-rich elite at the top and a vast pool of ‘deplorables’ kept in check by the police power of the state — what Joe Biden memorably apostrophized as ‘F-15s and some nuclear weapons’. Mediating the two like a layer of fat is a sort of clerisy that is treated to varying crumbs from the table as it explains, flatters, and cajoles.

There is a lot to be repelled by in the Spectacle of Barack Obama’s exercise in brazen self-indulgence, also a lot to be angry at.
I think it is important, though, to look at it as a learning experience. Pretend you were Aesop. What moral would you draw from this exercise in exhibitionism?

Doubtless there are several learning experiences to be had. But I thought that Rep. Jim Jordan perfectly articulated an important lesson in a tweet.  Now we know, he wrote, that

‘#COVID19 spreads at:

-Church
-School
-Trump rallies
-Motorcycle rallies

It doesn’t spread at:

-“Peaceful” protests
-The southern border
-Democrat wedding receptions
-San Francisco hair salons
-Governor Newsom’s dinner
-President Obama’s birthday party’

Really, I hadn’t know that before and I am grateful for the enlightenment.

Religious Victory: Judge Blocks Mandate Requiring Doctors to Perform Gender Reassignment Surgery

A federal court in Texas blocked a transgender mandate from President Joe Biden that would require doctors to go against their religious beliefs and perform gender transition surgeries.

Judge Reed O’Connor granted a permanent injunction and said that the doctors are “to be exempt from the government’s requirement to perform abortions and gender-transition procedures.”

In a win for religious liberty, Monday’s ruling prohibits Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra from requiring the Christian plaintiffs to “perform or provide insurance coverage for gender-transition procedures or abortions, including by denying Federal financial assistance because of their failure to perform or provide insurance coverage for such procedures or by otherwise pursuing, charging, or assessing any penalties, fines, assessments, investigations, or other enforcement actions.”

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