Category: COVID

Risk of Sudden Hearing Loss Doubled in the Elderly After COVID Shots -Report

Post author By Phoenix
Post date December 22, 2022
No Comments on Risk of Sudden Hearing Loss Doubled in the Elderly After COVID Shots -Report

Ear infection concept. an inflammatory disease of the middle ear.

The hits just keep coming from these shots – is this the new definition of “safe and effective?”

By Dr. Peter A. McCullough Dec 20, 2022

Loss of hearing in the elderly is common affecting both the patient and the people around them trying to communicate.

I have noticed many of my vaccinated elderly patients developing progressive hearing loss. Nieminen et al have conducted an extensive hearing assessment of patients in Finland after COVID-19 vaccination and compared them to the unvaccinated. The data suggested each successive shot increased risk for hearing loss. However, the most important results are in the supplemental tables which demonstrate the elderly and those with risk factors for hearing loss are pushed over the edge by COVID-19 vaccination.

Nieminen TA, Kivekäs I, Artama M, Nohynek H, Kujansivu J, Hovi P. Sudden Hearing Loss Following Vaccination Against COVID-19. JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online December 15, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2022.4154

Their risk for sudden and substantial loss of hearing is more than double those who wisely deferred on the vaccines.

The Spike protein produced by the vaccines is a neurotoxin damaging nerves throughout the body and likely having more of an impact in nervous tissue which is already degenerated such as the auditory nerve. It is also possible the Spike protein incites inflammation leading to fibrosis in the tissue holding the stapes or stirrup which is a bone in the middle ear, the annular ligament, or the oval window all involved in the conduction of sound vibrations to the inner ear.

If you have an elderly person in your circle who has been vaccinated, check on their hearing and do not fall behind on progressive hearing loss which if unchecked, can lead to social withdrawal and insidious depression.

Reposted from the author’s Substack

Nieminen TA, Kivekäs I, Artama M, Nohynek H, Kujansivu J, Hovi P. Sudden Hearing Loss Following Vaccination Against COVID-19. JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online December 15, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2022.4154

Is there a counter-vax to the Covid vaxxes?

COVID Crime Drugs How sick is this? Medicine The Courts

A ‘Cover-Up of Evidence of Mass Murder’: The CDC Removing VAERS Records ?

Post author By Phoenix
Post date December 21, 2022
No Comments on A ‘Cover-Up of Evidence of Mass Murder’: The CDC Removing VAERS Records ?

“It’s not an accident they would do this.”

By: The Vigilant Fox (a citizen journalist with 12 years of healthcare experience, focused on The Great Reset, world protests, and COVID-19.) December 21, 2022

Video available on Rumble

Something strange is going on with the VAERS system. Reports that were present three months ago are now inexplicably missing. And fewer than 4% of adverse events recorded in V-Safe have made their way to VAERS. This is the CDC’s database; Rochelle Walensky is in charge of it. And their failure to properly manage VAERS is suppressing the already-alarming safety signal of the Covid-19 shots.

Fifty deaths pulled the swine flu vaxx off the market. Covid-19 vaxxes caused FIFTY deaths by January 2021!

Now, what is VAERS? VAERS stands for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. As mentioned earlier, VAERS is a database put in place in 1990 under the supervision of the CDC. Reports of suspected vaccine adverse events take about half an hour to fill out, and 86% of the time, this is done by a doctor, nurse, paramedic, coroner, or healthcare professional in which he or she believes the adverse event is related to a vaccine reaction. And because of its lengthy report process as well as the lack of awareness of the existence of VAERS, there is a general consensus of a severe underreporting factor for this database.

To get a better idea of what’s going on with the CDC’s handling of the VAERS system, Dr. Naomi Wolf spoke with Dr. Henry Ealy, an expert on the database.

Dr. Henry Ealy is the Founder & Executive Community Director for the Energetic Health Institute. He holds a Doctorate in naturopathic medicine and has been at the tip of the spear on the Grand Jury front — taking action to bring forth a Grand Jury investigation of the CDC for allegations of criminal data fraud and willful misconduct.

“You mentioned that V-Safe should be added to VAERS, but only 4% of V-Safe [adverse events have been] added. Can you explain what that means to people and why it matters?” asked Dr. Wolf.

Dr. Ealy explained, “VAERS is designed specifically for medical professionals and people alike to report, ‘Hey, I got hurt.’ And when enough people have gotten hurt for officials to look at it and say, ‘Hey, this product isn’t safe; it’s got to come off the market.’ V-Safe was created (by the CDC) to also do something similar to that — and to make that process a little bit easier. You don’t need as much information to record a report in V-Safe.”

By streamlining the process, the CDC got inundated with adverse event reports from the Covid-19 shot. Out of the 10,108,273 individual users, 800,000 had an adverse event — or about 1 in 13. And of those 800,000 V-Safe reports, only 30,492 have been logged into VAERS.

Dr. Ealy continues, “In V-safe, there have been over 800,000 reports of injury. And the deal was that in V-Safe, every single report of injury was supposed to also then subsequently have a VAERS report associated with it. So that means all 800,000 should be in VAERS. But unfortunately, or by design — however you want to look at it — only just over 30,000 of those 800,000 have been recorded in VAERS. So what that means is that fewer than 4% of the records in V-Safe have actually been reported in VAERS as they were supposed to be done.”

“What a sneaky way to basically sweep almost 800,000 adverse events under the rug,” remarked Dr. Wolf.

“Adverse events, hospitalizations, permanent injuries, deaths — compromises [the] dataset,” replied Dr. Ealy.

“That’s so disgusting!” exclaimed Dr. Wolf.

To add insult to injury, not only are the bulk of V-Safe reports not making their way to VAERS, but Dr. Ealy suspects that VAERS reports are being removed.

What were 45,388 reports three months ago has now inexplicably dropped down to 12,544.

Specifically, he notes that between September 2022 and December 2022, the CDC has removed at least 32,844 records of injury related to the following conditions: myocarditis, pericarditis, and heart inflammation. What were 45,388 reports three months ago has now inexplicably dropped down to 12,544.

Note the different totals between first chart and this one

Dr. Ealy stresses he’s “triple-checked this,” and he stands by the allegation that they are removing or obfuscating records.

Dr. Jessica Rose has also reported similar issues with VAERS. She wrote on November 19, “The foreign data set was gutted this week in VAERS, and the cancer signal was halved. The myocarditis dose three response signal was lost, and 994 spontaneous abortions/stillbirths were dropped.”

So, from two credible sources, it is appears that the CDC is removing records.

“It’s not an accident they would do this,” attested Dr. Ealy. “With Dr. Ladapo and Governor DeSantis coming out with that study about myocarditis and pericarditis, they’re trying to do everything they can to delete records to thwart what Governor DeSantis and (Florida) Surgeon General Dr. Ladipo are doing.”

“I’m stunned,” expressed Dr. Wolf. “This is as big as the Pentagon Papers, easily, if indeed the CDC deleted those records. I’ve seen the screenshots; it looks pretty bad. And so, you’re saying that Dr. Ladapo and Governor DeSantis calling for a Grand Jury investigation could be the reason that they’re deleting these, basically, evidence of their crimes? Because Ladapo and DeSantis will be investigating that data? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Right,” confirmed Dr. Ealy. “When you read through the Grand Jury petition that Governor DeSantis signed and submitted to the Florida Supreme Court, they are putting a lot of what their argument based upon their findings with myocarditis. So myocarditis and pericarditis — and that’s not without good reason.”

Dr. Ealy continues, “So the issue is — if you’re the CDC now — and you know you’ve been complicit in data fraud from day one, what do you start doing? Well, you’ve been deleting records for the last couple of years. Why not delete the records specific for myocarditis and pericarditis to try to thwart their attempts and try to discredit their analysis of what they’re doing? That’s what it looks like to me right now.”

“That’s many felonies!” exclaimed Dr. Wolf. “That’s not just a felony in terms of data handling — that’s a felony in terms of the criminal process, right? Isn’t that covering up evidence of a crime?

“Well, yeah. It would definitely [be],” replied Dr. Ealy.

The problem with VAERS as a federal system is yes, maybe if there is an erroneous record here or there, you should have the ability to delete it. But when you started seeing the CDC deleting hundreds of thousands of records and removing, in this case, over 32,000 records, or at least removing the search term. That’s my suspicion here — that they didn’t delete the record. What they deleted was that word — ‘myocarditis’ or ‘pericarditis or ‘heart inflammation’ in the actual report. And so, that’s modification of official records. And when you do that, that’s now criminal fraud — again. And, of course, it throws off our ability to really understand what’s going on with this because we rely on systems like this to give us information for making decisions.”

Dr. Wolf argues the CDC’s actions appear to be a “cover-up of evidence of mass murder.”

And she pleas Governor DeSantis and Surgeon General Ladapo to get in touch with Dr. Ealy’s team “because what you all have uncovered is absolutely stunning.” “And this latest, which you’ve presented, should be on the cover of every newspaper and every magazine and every news site in the world. This is huge if, indeed, they’re concealing myocarditis outcomes.”

Biden Pandemic COVID Medicine Opinion Reprints from others. Science

New Autopsy Report Reveals Those Who Died Suddenly Were Likely Killed by the COVID Vaccine

Post author By Phoenix
Post date December 14, 2022
No Comments on New Autopsy Report Reveals Those Who Died Suddenly Were Likely Killed by the COVID Vaccine

December 8, 2022 Updated: December 14, 2022

A major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after COVID vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine.

A further two deaths were found to be possibly due to the vaccine.

The report, published in Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society, detailed autopsies carried out at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2021. Led by Thomas Longerich and Peter Schirmacher, it found that in five deaths that occurred within a week of the first or second dose of vaccination with Pfizer or Moderna, inflammation of the heart tissue due to an autoimmune response triggered by the vaccine had likely or possibly caused the death.

Epoch Times Photo — Case characteristic of five deaths likely or possibly caused by the COVID vaccines.

In total the report looked at 35 autopsies carried out at the University of Heidelberg in people who died within 20 days of COVID vaccination, of which 10 were deemed on examination to be due to a pre-existing illness and not the vaccine. For the remaining 20, the report did not rule out the vaccine as a cause of death, which Dr. Schirmacher has confirmed to me is intentional as the autopsy results were inconclusive. Almost all of the remaining cases were of a cardiovascular cause, as indicated in the table below from the supplementary materials, where 21 of the 30 deaths are attributed to a cardiovascular cause. One of these is attributed to blood clots (VITT) from AstraZeneca vaccination (the report was looking specifically at post-vaccine myocarditis deaths), leaving 20 from other cardiovascular causes.

For the five deaths in the main report attributed as likely or possibly due to the vaccines, the authors state:

“All cases lacked significant coronary heart disease, acute or chronic manifestations of ischaemic heart disease, manifestations of cardiomyopathy or other signs of a pre-existing, clinically relevant heart disease.”

This indicates that the authors limited themselves to deaths where there was no “pre-existing, clinically relevant heart disease,” making the report very conservative in which deaths it was willing to pin on the vaccines.

Dr. Schirmacher told me:

“We included only cases, in which the constellation was unequivocally clear and no other cause of death was demonstrable despite all efforts. We cannot rule out vaccine effects in the other cases, but here we had an alternative potential cause of death (e.g., myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism). If there is severe ischemic cardiomyopathy it is almost impossible to rule out myocarditis effects or definitively rule in inflammatory alterations as due to vaccination. These cases were not included.

“We did not aim to include or find every case but the characteristics of definitive, unequivocal cases beyond any doubt. Only by this way you can establish the typical characteristics; otherwise less strict criteria may lead to ‘contamination’ of the collective; it is absolutely plausible that by these criteria we may have missed further cases but the intention of our study was never quantitative or extrapolation and there are numerous positive and negative bias. But we wanted to establish the fact not the size.”

It is of course very possible that the vaccines also cause death where there is an underlying cardiovascular condition, and indeed, that it is more likely to do so. Thus these five deaths are the minimum from these autopsy cases in which the vaccines are involved—those in which there is no other plausible explanation.

It is worth noting here that initially in 2021, when the autopsies were first carried out, Dr. Schirmacher stated that his team had concluded 30–40 percent of the deaths were due to the vaccines. These earlier estimates may give us a better indication of how many of the deaths the authors really think are attributable to the vaccines, when they are unconstrained by highly conservative assumptions (and looking at causes besides myocarditis). Note that these percentages are based on a selection of deaths that occurred shortly after vaccination, not a random sample of all deaths, so the authors rightly warn that no estimation of individual risk can be made from them.

Did the autopsies find spike protein from the vaccines present in the heart tissue? The samples from the five vaccine-attributed deaths were tested for infectious agents including SARS-CoV-2 (in one instance revealing “low viral copy numbers” of a herpes virus, which the authors deemed insufficient to explain the inflammation). However, no tests were done specifically for the virus spike protein or nucleocapsid protein, such as have been used successfully in other autopsies to aid attribution to the vaccine, so unfortunately this evidence was unavailable for these autopsies.

The autopsies in the report also only cover doses 1 and 2, not any booster doses, and only deaths within 20 days of vaccination, so the report doesn’t address directly the question of what’s been causing the elevated heart deaths since the booster rollouts from autumn 2021 or whether the vaccines can trigger cardiovascular death weeks or months later. (Other autopsies have confirmed that the spike protein can persist in the body for weeks or months after vaccination and trigger a fatal autoimmune attack on the heart.)

What the report does do, however, is establish that people who die suddenly in the days immediately following vaccination may well have died from a vaccine-related autoimmune attack on the heart. It also confirms how deadly even mild vaccine-induced myocarditis can be—and thus why studies like the one from Thailand, found cardiovascular adverse effects in around a third of teenagers (29.2 percent) following Pfizer vaccination and subclinical heart inflammation in one in 43 (2.3 percent), and the study from Switzerland finding at least 2.8 percent with subclinical myocarditis and elevated troponin levels (indicating heart injury) across all vaccinated people, are so worrying.

The authors of the new study diplomatically write that the “reported incidence” of myocarditis after vaccination is “low” and the risks of hospitalization and death associated with COVID-19 are “stated to be greater than the recorded risk associated with COVID-19 vaccination”—notably declining to commit themselves to the official propositions that they dutifully repeat.

The fact that those who die suddenly after vaccination may have died from the hidden effects of the COVID vaccine on their heart is thus now firmly established in the medical literature. The big remaining question is how often it occurs.

Stop Press: Dr. John Campbell has produced a helpful overview of the report’s findings in his latest video.

We’ve suspected this for some time, now we have proof,

COVID Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

Scalise Blasts Democrats’ Failures; Releases Key Findings from Select Subcommittee Republicans’ Investigation

Post author By MC
Post date December 12, 2022
No Comments on Scalise Blasts Democrats’ Failures; Releases Key Findings from Select Subcommittee Republicans’ Investigation

Summary.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (Subcommittee) was formed on
April 23, 2020, with Chairman James Clyburn (D-SC) promising the Subcommittee would be
“forward looking” and would “look at the totality of the current response.” The Subcommittee
failed on both accounts.
Instead, Congressional Democrats used the Subcommittee as a hatchet against political
adversaries and the former Trump Administration. The most prominent example of this is the
fact that the Subcommittee held five hearings with Trump Administration officials in 2020,
compared to two with Biden Administration officials in 2021 and only two in 2022. Further, the
Subcommittee sent 31 public letters to Trump Administration officials in 2020, compared to 10
letters to Biden Administration officials in 2021 and only three in 2022. Subcommittee
Democrats failed to hold the Biden Administration accountable.
Specifically, Subcommittee Democrats refused to investigate: (1) the origins of COVID19, (2) President Biden’s politically motivated decision making, (3) the Biden Administration’s
decision not to purchase more rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests leading up to the holidays in 2021,
and (4) the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s (CDC) actions sideling scientific experts regarding vaccine booster shots.
While Democrats sat idly by, Subcommittee Republicans uncovered: (1) the United
States likely funded gain-of-function (GOF) research on novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology (WIV), (2) the scientific establishment, including Drs. Anthony Fauci and
Francis Collins, worked to suppress the lab leak hypothesis, (3) the Biden Administration
provided uncommon access to teachers unions to draft and edit official CDC guidelines so they
could make it easier to keep schools closed, causing devastating learning loss for America’s
young people, and (4) the governors of certain Democrat-led states, particularly New York,
violated CDC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance to force

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potentially COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, causing thousands of unnecessary
deaths.
This internal memorandum details efforts from Subcommittee Republicans to uncover the
truth and hold bad actors accountable. It also addresses the failures stemming from
Subcommittee Democrats inaction. Simply, Republicans acted while Democrats failed.
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE REPUBLICANS’ FINDINGS
Finding 1: The United States likely funded gain-of-function research on novel
coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
On June 1, 2014, EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. (EcoHealth) received a $3.7 million dollar
grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), entitled
“Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”1 Through this grant, EcoHealth sent
more than $600,000 to the WIV in Wuhan, China. Also pursuant to this grant, EcoHealth was
required to report to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and “immediately stop all
experiments” if it created a virus that showed evidence of viral growth 1,000 percent that of the
original virus.2 Even if EcoHealth did not immediately report an experiment that met these
parameters as required by the grant, EcoHealth would have to submit its annual progress report
by September 30, 2019.
On October 20, 2021, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform received a letter
from Dr. Lawrence Tabak, Principal Deputy Director of the NIH. According to Dr. Tabak,
EcoHealth “failed” to properly and promptly report an experiment that violated the terms of the
grant.3 In one experiment, EcoHealth created a virus which showed evidence of viral growth
over the stated threshold, but subsequently failed to report it. This experiment qualified as GOF
research since the virus gained enhanced transmissibility.
This is further complicated by the NIH’s revolving and changing definition to GOF to fit
their preferred narrative. Prior to October 20, 2021, GOF was defined as, “research that modifies
a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent.”4 EcoHealth’s
experiment would clearly fit this definition. However, after October 20, this definition was
stripped from NIH’s website. The only viable explanation for this is to shield NIH from scrutiny
and accountability since Drs. Fauci and Collins have long been proponents of GOF research
1 Project Grant, Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Research, EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. (June 1, 2014).
2 Letter from Hon. Francis Collins, Dir., Nat’l Insts. Of Health, to Hon. James Comer, Ranking Member, H. Comm.
on Oversight & Reform (July 28, 2021) [hereinafter Collins Letter]. 3 Letter from Lawrence Tabak, Deputy Dir., U.S. Nat’l Insts. Of Health, to Hon. James Comer, Ranking Member, H.
Comm. on Oversight & Reform (Oct. 20, 2021) [hereinafter Tabak Letter].
4 Gain-of-Function Research Involving Potential Pandemic Pathogens, U.S. NAT’L INSTS. OF HEALTH (last updated
July 12, 2021) (archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20211019065407/https:/www.nih.gov/news-events/gainfunction-research-involving-potential-pandemic-pathogens.)

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stating, “important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous
virus in the laboratory.”5
Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
Finding 2: The scientific establishment, including Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis
Collins, worked to suppress the lab leak hypothesis.
Despite Dr. Fauci claiming otherwise on multiple occasions, he was, in fact, aware of the
monetary relationship between the NIAID, the NIH, EcoHealth, and the WIV by January 27,
2020.6 Dr. Fauci also knew that NIAID worked with EcoHealth to craft a grant policy to sidestep
the gain-of-function moratorium at the time.7 This new policy, designed by EcoHealth and
agreed to by NIAID, allowed EcoHealth to conduct dangerous experiments on novel bat
coronaviruses—with very little oversight—that would have otherwise been blocked by the
moratorium.8 In January 2020, Dr. Fauci was also aware that EcoHealth was not in compliance
with the terms of its grant that funded the WIV.9 EcoHealth was required to submit an annual
progress report to NIAID by September 30, 2019, and failed to timely submit the report.
10
On February 1, 2020, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, and at least eleven other scientists convened
a conference call to discuss the origins of COVID-19.11 It was on this conference call that Drs.
Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the WIV and, further,
may have been intentionally genetically manipulated:
• Dr. Kristian Andersen said, “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of
the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of
the features (potentially) look engineered . . . Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Farzan],
and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”12
• Dr. Robert Garry said, “I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario . . . I just can’t
figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . Of course, in the lab it would be easy . . .
.”13
5 Anthony S. Fauci, Gary J. Nabel, & Francis S. Collins, A flu virus risk worth taking, WASH. POST (Dec. 30, 2011). 6 Email from Greg Folkers to Anthony Fauci, et. al. (Jan. 27, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff); Zachary Basu,
Fauci and Rand Paul clash over NIH funding for Wuhan Institute of Virology, AXIOS (May 11, 2021). 7 Sharon Lerner & Mara Hvistendahl, NIH Officials Worked with EcoHealth Alliance to Evade Restrictions on
Coronavirus Experiments, INTERCEPT (Nov. 3, 2021). 8 Id.
9 Letter from Lawrence Tabak to James Comer (Oct. 20, 2021).
10 Id. 11 Email from Jeremy Farrar to Anthony Fauci, et. al. (Feb. 1, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff). 12 E-mail from Dr. Kristian Andersen to Dr. Anthony Fauci & Dr. Jeremy Farrar (Jan. 31, 2020) (On file with
Comm. staff).
13 Letter from Hon. James Comer, supra note 2.

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• Dr. Michael Farzan said he was “bothered by the furin site and ha[d] a hard time explain[ing]
that as an event outside the lab . . . I am 70:30 or 60:40 [lab].”14
• Dr. Andrew Rambaut said, “[f]rom a (natural) evolutionary point of view the only thing here
that strikes me as unusual is the furin cleavage site.”15
• Dr. Edward Holmes indicated that he was “60-40 lab . . . .”16
• Dr. Jeremy Farrar said, “I am 50-50 [lab].”17
Only three days later, on February 4, 2020, four participants of the conference call
authored a paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and sent a draft to Drs. Fauci
and Collins.18 Prior to final publication in Nature Medicine, the paper was sent to Dr. Fauci for
editing and approval.19 It is unclear what, if any, new evidence was presented or if the
underlying science changed in those three days, but after speaking with Drs. Fauci and Collins,
the authors abandoned their belief COVID-19 was the result of a laboratory leak. It is unclear if
Drs. Fauci or Collins edited the paper prior to publication.
On April 16, 2020, more than two months after the original conference call, Dr. Collins
emailed Dr. Fauci expressing dismay that the Nature Medicine article—which they saw and were
given opportunity to edit prior to publication—did not squash the lab leak hypothesis.
20 Dr.
Collins asks if the NIH can do more to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis.21 The next day—after
Dr. Collins explicitly asked for more public pressure—Dr. Fauci cited the Nature Medicine paper
from the White House podium likely in an effort to further stifle the hypothesis COVID-19
leaked from the WIV.22
The Biden Administration continues to hide, obfuscate, and shield the truth. By
continuing to refuse to cooperate in the Republican investigation into the origins of COVID-19,
the Administration is choosing to hide information that will help inform the origins of the
pandemic, prevent and respond to future pandemics, inform the United States’ current national
security posture, and restore confidence in our public health experts. This continued obstruction
is likely to cause irreparable harm to the credibility of these agencies.
14 Id; “Furin” refers to COVID-19’s Furin Cleavage Site. Generally, Furin is a protease enzyme that breaks down
proteins into single amino acids, to then form new proteins. This is done by cleaving bonds within specific proteins.
COVID-19’s unique Furin Cleavage Site enhances transmissibility and ability to infect other tissue types in the
body.
15 Id. 16 Id. 17 Id. 18 Email from Jeremy Farrar to Anthony Fauci & Francis Collins (Feb. 4, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff) 19 Email from Kristian Andersen to Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, & Jeremy Farrar (Mar. 6, 2020) (On file with
Comm. staff).
20 Email from Kristian Andersen to Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, & Jeremy Farrar (Mar. 6, 2020) (On file with
Comm. staff).
21 Email from Francis Collins to Anthony Fauci, et. al. (Apr. 16, 2020) (On file with Comm. Staff). 22 John Haltiwanger, Dr. Fauci throws cold water on conspiracy theory that coronavirus was created in a Chinese
lab, BLOOMBERG (Apr. 18, 2020).

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Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
Finding 3: The Biden Administration provided uncommon access to teachers unions to
draft and edit official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines
so they could make it easier to keep schools closed, causing devastating
learning loss for America’s young people.
On May 11, 2021, after public reports of political interference by American Federation of
Teachers (AFT) in the school re-opening policymaking process, Subcommittee Republicans
wrote to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to request documents and information regarding the
formulation of the “Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools through Phased Prevention”
(Operational Strategy).
23 On July 19, 2021, Director Walensky responded and asserted CDC’s
consultation with AFT was routine and consistent with the agency’s customary process for
issuing guidance.24 Documents and testimony show, however, that Director Walensky
downplayed the degree to which CDC departed from past practice to allow AFT to influence the
policymaking process. In fact, CDC allowed AFT to insert language into the Operational
Strategy that made it more likely schools across the country would remain closed after February
2021.
Contrary to the CDC’s long-standing practice of keeping draft guidance documents
confidential Republicans learned through documents and testimony that senior CDC officials
shared a draft copy of the Operational Strategy with the AFT, a political union with no scientific
expertise but an extensive record of providing financial support to the Biden campaign and other
elected Democrats. After reviewing the draft, AFT staff asked Director Walensky to install a
“trigger” in the guidance that would cause schools to close automatically if COVID-19 positivity
rates reached a certain threshold.25 The CDC obliged, and thousands of schools across the
country remained closed throughout the 2020-2021 school year.
On February 18, 2022, Subcommittee staff interviewed Dr. Henry Walke, a career CDC
scientist and medical doctor. Dr. Walke testified this level of coordination between the CDC and
an outside organization was “uncommon.”26 In fact, according to Dr. Walke, the CDC does not
typically share draft guidance outside the agency for any reason, even with other federal
partners.27
23 Letter from Hon. Steve Scalise, Ranking Member, Select Subcomm. on the Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. on
Oversight & Reform, et. al., to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director, U.S. Cents. For Disease Control & Prevention
(May 11, 2021).
24 Letter from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director, U.S. Cents. For Disease Control & Prevention, to Hon. James
Comer, Ranking Member, Comm. on Oversight & Reform (July 19, 2021). 25 Email from Ms. Kelly Trautner, American Fed. Of Teachers, to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Dir., U.S. Cents. for
Disease Control & Prevention, et. al. (Feb. 11, 2021).
26 Transcribed Interview of Dr. Henry Walke, Director, Cent. for Preparedness & Response, U.S. Cents. For Disease
Control & Prevention, by H. Comm. on Oversight & Reform Staff (Feb. 18, 2022) [hereinafter Walke TI].
27 Id.

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The actions by the AFT and the Biden Administration led to more school closures.
Virtual school and school closures will be one of the biggest failures during the pandemic and
they were largely perpetuated by teachers unions and Democrats nationwide. According to
University of Harvard professor Thomas Kane, “…the closures came at a stiff price—a large
decline in children’s achievement overall and a historic widening in achievement gaps by race
and economic status.”28 Further according to Brown University professor Emily Oster, “[t]he
past two years have seen enormous test score declines for kids…these declines were caused, at
least in significant part, by school closures.”29 Professor Oster continued, “…the lack of
resumption of in-person learning was a significant contributing factor to test score declines.”30
Compared to the academic decline, the mental health toll on America’s youth is vast but more
difficult to ascertain.
Because lawyers for the Biden Administration prevented a key witness from explaining
why the CDC allowed AFT to write key portions of its guidance for re-opening schools, there are
still several unanswered questions.31
Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
Finding 4: The governors of certain Democrat-led states, particularly New York,
violated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services guidance to force potentially COVID-19
positive patients into nursing homes, causing thousands of unnecessary
deaths.
On March 13, 2020, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued
guidance “For Infection Control and Prevention of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in
Nursing Homes.”32 This guidance is a blueprint for individual states to follow when determining
how to best control outbreaks of COVID-19 in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. This
guidance does not direct any nursing home to accept a COVID-19 positive patient if they are
unable to do so safely. In fact, it says “nursing homes should admit any individual that they
would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of
COVID-19 was/is present” only if the nursing home can follow Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) quarantining guidance.33
28 Thomas Kane, Kids Are Far, Far Behind in School, THE ATLANTIC (May 22, 2022). 29 Zachary Rogers, Sharpest learning loss occurred in school districts that stayed remote longer, study says, CBS
(Sept. 15, 2022).
30 Id. 31 Id. 32 Memorandum from David R. Wright, Director, Quality, Safety & Oversight Group, U.S. Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services, to State Survey Agency Directors (Mar. 13, 2020) (on file with Comm. Staff).
33 Id; (emphasis added).

Page 7 of 10
CMS Administrator Seema Verma said, “[u]nder no circumstances should a hospital
discharge a patient to a nursing home that is not prepared to take care of those patient’s needs.”34
The most infamous violation of this guidance came from former New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo. On March 25, 2020, the New York Department of Health posted, on their
website, a now deleted directive entitled “Hospital Discharges and Admissions to Nursing
Homes.”35 This directive said “[n]o resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the
[nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19” and “[nursing
homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable
to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or re-admission.”36 For clarity, this advisory
mandated nursing homes accept known COVID-19 positive patients andmandated that nursing
homes not even test patients for COVID-19 prior to admission.
On October 13, Subcommittee staff interviewed former White House COVID-19
Coordinate Dr. Deborah Birx. When asked about Governor Cuomo’s infamous March 25, 2020,
nursing home order, Dr. Birx testified that the order violated CMS guidance and that admitting
potentially positive COVID-19 nursing home residents back into the nursing home could have
led to unnecessary deaths.37
Because the former Cuomo Administration and the current Administration of Governor
Kathy Hochul have refused to share any information with the Subcommittee, several unanswered
questions remain.
Select Subcommittee Republicans will continue this investigation.
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE DEMOCRATS’ FAILURES
Failure 1: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Select Subcommittee Democrats affirmatively declined to investigate the origins of
COVID-19; a never-before-seen virus that has now killed more than six million people
worldwide. On three occasions, Subcommittee Republicans requested Subcommittee Democrats
investigate the origins of COVID-19. On each occasion, they refused. Finally, on June 11, 2021,
Chairman Clyburn responded to Republicans’ request. He stated, “[w]e are concerned that your
request may be designed…to deflect accountability from the Trump Administration.”38 He
34 Charles Creitz, Medicare chief Verma blasts Cuomo for trying to deflect blame onto White House fo NY nursing
home deaths, Fox News (May 28, 2020). 35 Memorandum from the New York State Department of Health to Nursing Home Administrators, et. al. (Mar. 25,
2020) (on file with Comm. Staff). 36 Id; (emphasis added). 37 Oct. 13 Birx TI at 119-121. 38 Letter from hon. James E. Clyburn, Chairman, Select Subcomm. On the Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. On
Oversight & Reform, & Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman, H. Comm. On Oversight & Reform, to Hon. Steve

Page 8 of 10
continued, “[y]our apparent effort to use the issue of the origin of the virus in order to shift
accountability from President Trump…is an irresponsible gambit that we urge you to
abandon.”39
Unfortunately for Subcommittee Democrats, investigating the origins of COVID-19 is
not a political pursuit. In fact, on May 14, 2021, Dr. Jesse Bloom and 17 other respected
scientists called for the origins to be investigated. They wrote, “[k]nowing how COVID-19
emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks.”40 The
authors continued, “[w]e must take hypothesis about both natural and laboratory spillovers
seriously…”41 Additionally, on September 17, 2021, another 16 scientists writing in The Lancet,
said, “[o]verwhelming evidence for either zoonotic or research-related origin is lacking: the jury
is still out.”42
On September 14, 2022, The Lancet COVID-19 Commission said, “[i]dentifiying these
origins would provide greater clarity into not only the causes of the current pandemic but also
vulnerabilities to future outbreaks and strategies to prevent them.”43 The Commission continued,
“…hypothesis about both natural and laboratory spillovers are in play and need further
investigation.”44
Despite these calls from numerous respected scientists for further investigation into the
origins of COVID-19, Subcommittee Democrats chose to play politics and ignore them.
Understanding the origins of COVID-19 is not only about accountability but also about
preparing for and defending against future viral pandemics.
Failure 2: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate President Biden’s politically
motivated decision making.
Select Subcommittee Democrats refused to investigate the Biden Administration’s
routine decisions that followed the political science instead of the medical science. For instance,
while campaigning, President Biden promised there would be no vaccine mandate but on
September 9, 2021, through executive order, he imposed a vaccine mandate.45 The Biden
J. Scalise, Ranking Member, Select Subcomm. On the Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. On Oversight & Reform, &
Hon. James R. Comer, Ranking Member, H. Comm. On Oversight & Reform (June 11, 2021). 39 Id. 40 Jesse D. Bloom, et. al., Investigate the origins of COVID-19, SCIENCE (May 14, 2021). 41 Id. 42 Jacques van Helden, et. al., An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent debate about the origin of SARSCoV-2, THE LANCET (Sept. 17, 2022). 43 Jeffrey D. Sachs, et. al., The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future form the COVID-19 pandemic, THE
LANCET (Sept. 14, 2022). 44 Id. 45 See Jacob Jarvis, Fact Check: Did Joe Biden Reject Idea of Mandatory Vaccines in December 2020?, NEWSWEEK
(Sept. 10, 2021); Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake), Twitter (July 23, 2021 02:16 p.m.),
https://mobile.twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1418636102643167235; Zeke Miller, Sweeping new vaccine mandates
for 100 million Americans, ASSOC. PRESS (Sept. 9, 2021).

Page 9 of 10
Administration went so far as to blame the pandemic on Republicans and the unvaccinated
without any evidence.46
Further, on February 24, 2022, polling firm Impact Research argued in a now-public
memoranda that the Democrats need to “declare the crisis phase of COVID over and push for
feeling and acting more normal.”47 The next day, the CDC ended their masking restrictions in
most places despite the fact that just two weeks prior CDC Director Walensky said it was not yet
time.48
In addition, the Biden Administration has repeatedly renewed the COVID-19 public
health emergency, and thus the extension of social welfare programs, despite President Biden
declaring the pandemic over.49 Select Subcommittee Democrats’ have refused to investigate any
of these politically based decisions by the Biden Administration.
Failure 3: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate the Biden Administration’s
decision not to purchase more rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests leading up to
the holidays in 2021.
Select Subcommittee Democrats ignored reports that the Biden Administration refused to
purchase more rapid, at-home tests for Americans headed into the 2021 holiday season which
corresponded with a dramatic surge in cases. In July 2020, during the Trump Administration,
Chairman Clyburn said, “[w]ithout widely available, rapid testing, it is nearly impossible to
control the spread of the virus…”50 The Chairman went on to say that the Trump Administration
was “warned” about testing and “failed.”51
However, the Biden Administration was not only warned about a lack of available testing
but flatly rejected an October 22, 2021 proposal to ramp up manufacturing and deliver tests to
Americans prior to Christmas.52 This plan detailed the need for about 400 million tests.53
Ironically, exactly two months later, President Biden said, “I wish I had thought about ordering”
46 Remarks, The White House, Remarks by President Biden on Fighting the COVID-19 Pandemic (Sept. 9, 2021). 47 Julie Hamill, @hamill_law, Twitter (Feb. 25, 2022),
https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1497205184790872065. 48 Julie Hamill, @hamill_law, Twitter (Feb. 25, 2022),
https://twitter.com/hamill_law/status/1497205184790872065; Mitch Smith & Shawn Hubler, Masks Come Off in
More States, but Not Everyone is Grinning, THE N.Y. TIMES (Feb. 9, 2022). 49 Declaration, Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Serv.,
Renewal of Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists (Oct. 15, 2022); Adam Cancryn & Krista Mahr,
Biden declared the pandemic ‘over.’ His Covid team says it’s more complicated, POLITICO (Sept. 19, 2022). 50 The Urgent Need for a National Plan to Contain the Coronavirus, Hearing Before the Select Subcomm. on the
Coronavirus Crisis, H. Comm. on Oversight & Reform, 117th Cong. (July 31, 2020). 51 Id. 52 Katherine Eban, The Biden Administration Rejected an October Proposal for “Free Rapid Tests for the
Holidays”, VANITY FAIR (Dec. 23, 2021). 53 Id.

Page 10 of 10
500 million at-home tests “two-months ago.”54 Yet no investigation was launched by the Select
Subcommittee Democrats.
Failure 4: Subcommittee Democrats failed to investigate the Food and Drug
Administration’s and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s actions
sidelining scientific experts regarding vaccine booster shots.
Select Subcommittee Democrats disregarded the fact that President Biden’s FDA and
CDC intentionally sidelined or ignored outside vaccine experts that did not support the Biden
Administration’s vaccine only strategy. On August 18, 2021, without evidence and data,
President Biden announced that booster doses of the mRNA vaccines would be available for
Americans starting September 20, 2021.55 Top scientists and researchers were stunned by this
decision—particularly because the CDC and the FDA had not yet conducted their independent
review of the data.56 In fact, two vaccine manufacturers have not yet submitted the relevant data
to the government agencies.57 This political manipulation and pressure to interfere with the
science by President Biden’s White House reportedly contributed to the decision of two top
career scientists, Marion Gruber and Phill Krause, who were key in the vaccine process, to leave
the FDA.58 They felt that the FDA was being sidelined by the Biden Administration and
according to press reports “what finally did it for them was the White House getting ahead of
FDA on booster shots.”59
We now know that those same FDA scientists disagreed with the Biden Administration
on the need for booster shots. In a paper published September 13, 2021, both Krause and Gruber
argued that “[c]urrent evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the
general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high.”60 Despite this blatant
disregard of scientific process, Select Subcommittee Democrats refused to investigate allowing
the Biden Administration to engage in politicization of the vaccine approval process.
54 Ben Gittleson, President Biden to ABC’s David Muir on at-home COVID testing: ‘Nothing’s been good enough’,
ABC NEWS (Dec. 23, 2021). 55 Bob Herman, FDA’s top vaccine leaders are leaving, Axios (Aug. 31, 2021); Erin Banco, Sarah Owerwohle &
Adam Cancryn, Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over boosters, POLITICO (Sept. 13, 2021). 56 Caitlin Owens, The bureaucracy pushes back on Biden’s booster plan, AXIOS (Sept. 1, 2021). 57 Erin Banco, Sarah Owerwohle & Adam Cancryn, Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over
boosters, POLITICO (Sept. 13, 2021). 58 Caitlin Owens, The bureaucracy pushes back on Biden’s booster plan, AXIOS (Sept. 1,2021). 59 Id. 60 Phillip R Krause, et.al, Considerations in boosting COVID-19 vaccine immune responses, LANCET (Sept. 13,

Tags Scalise Blasts Democrats’ Failures

COVID Links from other news sources. Medicine Reprints from others. Science

A Review of Criticisms of a ProPublica-Vanity Fair Story on a COVID Origins Report

Post author By MC
Post date December 8, 2022
No Comments on A Review of Criticisms of a ProPublica-Vanity Fair Story on a COVID Origins Report

Researcher Toy Reid sits before a timeline chronicling the lead-up to the pandemic at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington. Credit: Mark Peterson/Redux for Vanity Fair

ProPublica and Vanity Fair are left wing, but this ProPublica article states something that most folks didn’t even know existed. the origins of COVID-19 released by the Republican oversight staff of a Senate committee. Here’s another shocker. Our examination affirms that the story, and the totality of reporting it marshals, is sound. So please read the complete article. I’ll give my assessment in the comments section.

by Stephen Engelberg Nov. 30, 11 a.m. EST

On Oct. 28, ProPublica and Vanity Fair published a story about an interim report on the origins of COVID-19 released by the Republican oversight staff of a Senate committee. The interim report was the product of a far-reaching investigation into the question of how the pandemic began, and we wanted to give readers an inside view of the team’s work and share independent experts’ views of its findings.

The debate over COVID-19’s origins has been contentious from the start, and the report’s conclusion that the pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident” triggered criticism. Scientists, China observers and others questioned the Senate team’s findings and our reporting about them.

Over the past several weeks, reporters and editors at both publications have taken a hard look at those criticisms.

Our examination affirms that the story, and the totality of reporting it marshals, is sound.

We re-interviewed some of our original sources and reached out to other specialists to address questions that were raised about the work we did to put in context the evidence cited by the interim report. In particular, we took a close look at how Toy Reid, a State Department political officer on loan to the committee, translated a Chinese Communist Party branch dispatch that was cited in both the interim report and in our story as evidence that staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) may have been responding to a biosafety hazard or breach.

We commissioned three Chinese language experts with impeccable credentials who were not involved in the original story to review Reid’s translation. They all agreed that his version was a plausible way to represent the passage, though two also said they would have translated the words to refer to the dangers of day-to-day lab operations. The third produced a translation that was in line with Reid’s. All agreed the passage was ambiguous. We have updated the story to underscore the complexity of interpreting that dispatch.

We have added additional context to the story. We have also identified two factual errors inconsequential to the premise of the story. They have been corrected.

It remains clear that in 2019, the WIV was addressing serious safety issues while scientists there faced pressure to perform. Risky coronavirus research took place in laboratories that lacked the maximum biocontainment safeguards, according to the interim report.

A series of WIV patents and procurement notices “suggest that the WIV experienced persistent biosafety problems relevant to the containment of an aerosolized respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2,” the interim report says. On Nov. 19, 2019, the same day a senior government safety official arrived at the WIV to discuss what a meeting summary described as a “complex and grave situation currently facing [bio]security work,” the WIV sought to procure a costly air incinerator. One expert told us such equipment could be used as a “quick fix” if the HEPA air filtration system had failed in some way. A few weeks after that procurement notice, the WIV filed a patent application for an improved device to contain hazardous gases inside a biological chamber, like ones used to transport infected animals.

The interim report described the WIV’s struggles to find disinfectants that were effective enough to kill dangerous pathogens without corroding metal. In November 2020, with the pandemic well under way, the WIV filed a patent application for a new disinfectant. The patent said existing disinfectants corrode metals in ways that could allow pathogens to escape, “resulting in loss of life and property and serious social problems.”

The director of the WIV’s highest-level biosecurity lab acknowledged in September 2019 that some Chinese facilities researching dangerous viruses had “insufficient operational funds for routine yet vital processes.” Dr. Gerald Parker, a biosecurity health expert and adviser to the interim report, said he found such revelations “a recipe for disaster.” He added: “You further couple that with an authoritarian regime where you could be penalized for reporting safety issues. You are in a doom loop of pressure to produce, and if something goes wrong you may not be incentivized to report.”

We continue to see our story as a measured exploration of the array of questions raised about the WIV’s laboratories. The possibility that a biosecurity breach at the WIV occurred, and sparked the pandemic, remains plausible.

We plan to keep reporting on this issue and expect new evidence to emerge. It is our view that both the natural-spillover and laboratory-accident hypotheses for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic merit continued investigation. Given the human toll, which continues to mount, it is imperative that we continue this work.

For those who want to know more details about our exploration of issues raised, our reporting methodologies and conclusions, we are providing more information below on:

More on the Translations and Interpretations

After the Vanity Fair-ProPublica story appeared online, questions began to emerge on social media about Reid’s translation of a key passage of a Chinese Communist Party branch dispatch dated Nov. 12, 2019, on the WIV website. According to Reid’s translation, it begins by pointing out that the lab works with dangerous pathogens and that once the test tubes are opened, “it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box.” While the lab had “various preventive and protective measures,” it was nonetheless important to “avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers.”

The next phrase was the focus of the criticism. It appeared in bold letters in the interim report:

“Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the frontline, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.”

Our story shared Reid’s thought process. We wrote:

“Reid studied the words intently. Was this a reference to past accidents? An admission of an ongoing crisis? A general recognition of hazardous practices? Or all of the above?”

Reid recognized that there was an ambiguity in the phrase he translated as “Every time this has happened.” Did the word “this” refer to the daily dangers of doing experiments in a lab that handles deadly pathogens? Or did it point to the “operational errors that give rise to dangers”?

Before we published our story, Reid told us he found the passage to have a defensive tone. In the story, we quote Reid as concluding, “They are almost saying they know Beijing is about to come down and scream at them.”

Seven days later, on Nov. 19, a senior Chinese official arrived from Beijing to the WIV for a small, high-level safety training. A meeting summary said that the official had come bearing important oral remarks and written instructions from China’s senior leaders, including General Secretary Xi Jinping, related to “the complex and grave situation currently facing [bio]security work.”

To Reid, the mention of instructions from party leaders and reference to a “complex and grave situation” reinforced that the Nov. 12 dispatch was an attempt by the party branch to deflect criticism for something that had gone awry, as he explained.

We interviewed three experts on Chinese Communist Party communications before publication and shared with them the dispatches as they appeared in Chinese on the WIV website. We conducted the interviews on background to get their candid input. They expressed concerns regarding personal safety, given the sensitivity of the subject matter. All agreed with Reid’s interpretation that the safety training on Nov. 19, 2019, as described in the meeting summary, appeared to be urgent, nonroutine and related to some sort of biosafety emergency.

To assess the criticisms of Reid’s work that were raised after the story was published, we commissioned three Chinese translators, each with more than a decade of experience. One has translated for officials at the highest levels of the American and Chinese governments. We wanted their objective view of what the passage said, so we asked them to translate it and did not mention the interim report. After they had done that, we went back and asked them to review Reid’s translation from the report.

All three of their translations were different from one another’s and different from Reid’s. Yet, each agreed that Reid’s translation was one plausible way to translate the passage into English. Our translators looked at the Chinese characters that Reid had translated to read “Every time this has happened” and instead said they read them to mean “on such occasions” or “at every such an occasion.”

Before one of the translators was told what Reid had written, she said she thought the word “occasions” referred to when lab workers make mistakes that lead to hazards — an interpretation that mirrored Reid’s. The two others said they thought “occasions” referred to something more routine: opening test tubes for experiments. The language in Chinese, all three agreed, was ambiguous and could be read either way.

Some readers noted that the Nov. 12, 2019, passage actually appeared in August 2019 in a party publication. The existence of the earlier reference, they argued, proved that its repetition in November meant that it could not refer to a biosecurity emergency at that time.

We took a close look at the August 2019 post and asked our translators and the experts we consulted to do so as well. While the posts were very similar, the version uploaded on the WIV website in November 2019 was slightly different. It included additional language after the sentence that compared opening test tubes of viruses in the lab to opening Pandora’s box. The translator we commissioned who had the most experience rendered the additional language as follows: “These viruses are untraceable both coming and going, and although there are various protective measures, it is still necessary for lab workers to operate very carefully in order to avoid creating dangers through mishandling.” The translator was puzzled by the August post because without the language added in November, “it sounds as if they are leading the charge to open Pandora’s box,” she said. “If I were reading it, I’d be scratching my head.” That additional sentence, she said, “means that they go to the front lines to show everybody to be careful and not to cause errors that would be dangerous.”

One of the experts we consulted before and after publication, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, said the language added in November 2019 gave the post a defensive posture and was consistent with Reid’s analysis that party members were responding to some type of incident. The Chinese idiom that Reid translated as “come without a shadow and leave without a trace,” he said, “is a nice phrase to describe something that sneaked up on you and there was no way to defend against it. They’re basically saying to whoever this is being delivered to: ‘We didn’t see it coming. We did the best that we could to deal with the problem.’”

More on the Corrections and Added Context

There are two sentences in the story that have been corrected.

We reported that a Chinese military vaccinologist who had in the past collaborated with the WIV, Zhou Yusen, was the first to apply for a patent for a vaccine against COVID-19. The interim report stated that Zhou “was the first to patent a COVID-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020.” In fact, other researchers around the world sought patents before Zhou’s Feb. 24, 2020, filing.

However, it was the timing and nature of Zhou’s patent application and subsequent research papers that raised questions for interim report researchers.

In our review of early SARS-CoV-2 vaccine patent filings, the U.S. patent applications we found that predated Zhou’s were provisional applications, a number of which forecast experiments they planned to do in the future. Many of these applications were for vaccine candidates proposing to use a technology like mRNA. Such applications could be filed with the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence in hand and minimal experiment data.

By contrast, Zhou filed a full patent application for a different kind of vaccine that required more upfront work before its submission. Our story says, “In his patent application and in subsequently published papers, Zhou documented a robust research and development process that included both adapting the virus to wild-type mice and infecting genetically modified ones with humanized lungs.” We have updated the story to make clear why Zhou’s work stood out to the interim report researchers.

In our article, we quoted two independent experts and one adviser to the interim report about when they thought Zhou’s research was likely to have begun. After reviewing the patent and the papers, two said that they thought Zhou would have had to have started this work no later than November 2019. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, said he believed Zhou’s timetable was feasible since his team had substantial expertise and ongoing work developing similar SARS-related coronavirus vaccines, but only if “everything went right.”

We have also corrected the sentence stating that Gabriel Gras was the last French expert at the WIV. We have learned that at least one other French scientist came to the WIV after Gras left.

Elsewhere, we’ve clarified language. Our story said that party officials at the WIV’s top biosafety lab “repeatedly lamented” the problem of “the three ‘nos’: no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining [a lab of this caliber].” We found two references to this concept in party branch dispatches on the WIV website in 2019. These Chinese Communist Party dispatches, we reported, “are often couched in a narrative of heroism — a focus on problems overcome and challenges met, against daunting odds.” We have updated the story to clarify that authors of those posts referred to the “three ‘nos’” as a recounting of problems from early in the lab’s construction that they said had been overcome, rather than a reference to ongoing struggles.

However, one of the experts on party communications we consulted saw the inclusion of the “three ‘nos’” in WIV dispatches as a telling sign that these serious problems from the beginning were “part of the DNA of this lab.”

On Whether the Lab Leak Is a Question Worthy of Exploration

Our story and the interim report pointed to a pair of oft-cited scientific analyses of COVID-19’s origins, one of which concludes that the pandemic was likely the result of multiple zoonotic events in which “two distinct viral lineages” of SARS-CoV-2 that had been circulating among animals at a Wuhan market infected people there.

Michael Worobey, an author on both papers, undoubtedly speaks for many when he says that natural spillover is “the only plausible scenario for the origin of the pandemic.” We repeatedly heard the perspective that the scientific case on the origins of COVID-19 is closed and that exploring the possibility that the coronavirus could have leaked from a Chinese laboratory is something no news organization or government official should take seriously.

We believe the opposite, that it remains an essential avenue for exploration to prevent future pandemics. And as interviews with other scientists before and after publication have made clear, the question is far from resolved. In their view, there is not enough evidence to establish how the virus first reached the now-infamous Wuhan market or to assert that zoonotic spillover is the sole possible explanation for the pandemic’s origin.

Bloom, the virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, is among those scientists. “I’ve never seen anything as controversial as this in my field,” he said. “The amount of toxicity is out of control. Each side feels uniquely wronged. To me, it remains an open question.”

The story noted that the interim report also left this question open: “The authors of the interim report do not claim to have definitively solved the mystery of COVID-19’s origin.” And the story also said the interim report is “no likelier” than studies of a zoonotic origin to “close the book on the origins debate, nor does it attempt to.”

Bloom believes the findings of the interim report and the story reinforce a need to continue to explore all possible causes of the pandemic. At the same time, he recognizes that the reactions to these investigations underscore the difficulty of having a dispassionate conversation about these questions. “Right now, this whole topic is so politically fraught, it’s hard for people to give objective assessments,” he said. “We may need an independent commission to get to the bottom of this.”

Stephen Engelberg

Stephen Engelberg is ProPublica’s editor-in-chief and served as founding managing editor from 2008–2012.

Tags Truth about COVID

Biden Pandemic Corruption COVID Drugs Links from other news sources.

Covid 3-fer: Fauci deposed, Air Force vax mandate ruled against, and Pandemic of the vaxxed

Post author By Phoenix
Post date December 6, 2022
No Comments on Covid 3-fer: Fauci deposed, Air Force vax mandate ruled against, and Pandemic of the vaxxed

Fauci will be the 2023 commencement speaker at Yale’s School of medicine.

Fauci on Trial: retiring bureaucrat suddenly ‘can’t recall’ anything. Surprised?

We’ve reported this before, but someone did the legwork and read his deposition related to the govt/big tech collusion to censor those who opposed the vaccine mandates. They found a (not so) astonishing 174 times Tony the Fauch said “I don’t recall” — including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information. Considering the 80-year-old con man could be looking forward to spending the rest of his life in jail if the censorship case and any sequelae ever go to trial, is anyone surprised?

Full story here:

COVID-19 vaccine maker AstraZeneca has revealed it made four billion dollars in sales from its coronavirus jab last year

Sixth Circuit Appeals Court Upholds Air Force Personnel’s Relief From COVID Vaccine Mandate

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court ruled unanimously to uphold a class action injunction protecting Air Force personnel who declined the COVID vaccine from punitive measures.

In the ruling, Judge Murphy wrote, “Under RFRA, the Air Force wrongly relied on its ‘broadly formulated’ reasons for the vaccine mandate to deny specific exemptions to the Plaintiffs, especially since it has granted secular exemptions to their colleagues. We thus may uphold the Plaintiffs’ injunction based on RFRA alone. The Air Force’s treatment of their exemption requests also reveals common questions for the class: Does the Air Force have a uniform policy of relying on its generalized interests in the vaccine mandate to deny religious exemptions regardless of a service member’s individual circumstances? And does it have a discriminatory policy of broadly denying religious exemptions but broadly granting secular ones? A district court can answer these questions in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ fashion for the entire class. It can answer whether these alleged policies violate RFRA and the First Amendment in the same way. A ruling for the class also would permit uniform injunctive relief against the allegedly illegal policies. We affirm.”

Original article here:

Defense for Jabs Gone: Pandemic of the Vaccinated, Increased Likelihood of C19 Death

For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.

Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family.

34% increase in Covid deaths in most vaxxed states vs least vaxxed.

We looked at the top ten most vaccinated states; they had an average uptake of 82%. And we looked at the bottom ten least vaccinated states, and [it] turns out there’s a 34% increase in deaths per 100,000 of COVID deaths in the top ten most vaccinated states.

Jeffrey Jaxen [of The Highwire]comments, “So there’s a data point that is actually really shocking, really should be alarming to a lot of people, really should be investigated.”

Agreed, Jeffrey. If the shots really were “safe and effective,” how is it possible that the top ten most vaccinated states are now seeing 34% MORE Covid-19 deaths than the top ten least vaccinated states? And why is it that programs like The Highwire and internet warriors that have to do CDC’s job for them? These things clearly aren’t working. There’s a negative efficacy signal, and nothing comes to chance when you compare ten states of data to another ten states. That’s essentially a mega meta-analysis.

But luckily, the fear is gone, and no one wants these things anymore. It’s time they accept defeat, admit wrong, and pull the Covid-19 shots off the market. They see what we see. So the longer this goes on, the more we can say it’s criminal.

Original Here:

Tags The fauch losing, Winning

Biden Pandemic COVID Education Links from other news sources. Uncategorized

I could have told you this two years ago. Pandemic widened California’s ‘achievement gap’

Post author By MC
Post date December 6, 2022
No Comments on I could have told you this two years ago. Pandemic widened California’s ‘achievement gap’

The California media is finally reporting what common folks knew for two years. Unnecessary lock downs put the children behind. It’s apparent that California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included shuttering schools and forcing students into sporadic forms of on-line instruction, had the effect of widening the achievement gap. Not only did California kids score very low, vis-à-vis other states, in the most recent round of federal academic achievement tests, the National Assessment of Education Progress, but there were sharp differences in how individual school districts fared.

So how does the media say it can be fixed? California’s school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic widened the state’s “achievement gap” and addressing the crisis should be a major issue for the Legislature. They learned nothing.

Tags Pandemic, School children behind

Corruption COVID Drugs Reprints from others. The Courts

Fauci Can’t Recall Key Details During Deposition: Louisiana AG

Post author By Phoenix
Post date November 23, 2022
No Comments on Fauci Can’t Recall Key Details During Deposition: Louisiana AG

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks in Washington on May 11, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he could not recall key details about his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one of the officials who questioned him on Nov. 23.

Fauci, the director National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, was deposed by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans.

“It was amazing, literally, that we spent seven hours with Dr. Fauci—this is a man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon ‘the science, follow the science.’—and over the course of seven hours, we discovered that he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his COVID response,” Landry told The Epoch Times after leaving the deposition. “He just said, ‘I can’t recall, I haven’t seen that. And I think we need to put these documents into context,’” Landry added.

“It was extremely troubling to realize that this is a man who advises presidents of the United States and yet couldn’t recall information he put out, information he discussed, press conferences he held dealing with the COVID-19 response,” Landry added later.

Fauci and NIAID did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Landry declined to provide specific details about the deposition until it is made public, which will happen at a future date. But he said officials would be able to take some of what they learned to advance their case.

Landry and Schmitt sued the U.S. government in May, alleging it violated people’s First Amendment rights by pressuring big tech companies to censor speech. Documents produced by the government in response bolstered the claims. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, the Trump appointee overseeing the case, recently ordered Fauci and seven other officials to testify under oath about their knowledge of the censorship.

Doughty concluded that plaintiffs showed Fauci “has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”

While Fauci qualified as a high-ranking official, the burden of him being deposed was outweighed by the court’s need for information before ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction, Doughty said.

Wednesday was the first time Fauci testified under oath about his interactions with big tech firms, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Before the deposition, Landry said in a statement, “We all deserve to know how involved Dr. Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic; tomorrow, I hope to find out.”

“We’re going to follow the evidence everywhere it goes to get down to exactly what has happened, to get down to the fact that our government used private entities to suppress the speech of Americans,” Landry told The Epoch Times.

Other Depositions

The government moved to block some of the depositions, but not Fauci’s. It just won an order blocking the depositions of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, and Rob Flaherty, a deputy assistant to Biden.

Similar efforts to block the depositions of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and FBI official Elvis Chan have been unsuccessful.

Chan is scheduled to answer questions next week. Psaki is scheduled to be deposed on Dec. 8.

Chan was involved in communicating with Facebook, LinkedIn, and other big tech firms about content moderation, according to evidence developed in the case and public statements he’s made. Psaki publicly said while still in the White House that platforms should step up against alleged mis- and disinformation.

Plaintiffs have already deposed several officials including Daniel Kimmage, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.

That center worked with Easterly’s agency to create a coalition of nonprofits called the Election Integrity Partnership, which pushed social media companies to censor speech.

Kimmage was also responsible for meetings during which censorship was discussed, with State Department official Samaruddin Stewart acting on his orders, according to documents produced by LinkedIn.

Motion to Dismiss

Earlier Wednesday, the government asked Doughty to throw out the case, asserting that plaintiffs have not shown the government engaged in coercion against the companies.

Even if government officials “urged social media companies do more to contain misinformation, any content moderation decisions made by social media companies ultimately ‘rested with’ those companies,” U.S. lawyers said.

“Even emphatic requests or strongly worded urging, see … (President Biden saying failing to take action against misinformation results in ‘killing people’), do not plausibly amount to coercion,” the lawyers added.

Plaintiffs are crafting a response to the motion.

Both sides are also preparing briefs regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision that blocked the Murthy, Easterly, and Flaherty depositions.

The appeals court said Doughty had not adequately considered whether alternative means of obtaining the information sought exist, such as deposing lower-level officials or seeking written answers from higher-level officials.

Doughty ordered plaintiffs to file a brief by Nov. 29. The government has until Dec. 2 to respond. Plaintiffs may reply to that response by Dec. 5.

Funny how he can’t recall things that are already documented as happening.

Tags Big Tech, Censorship, Socialism

Biden Pandemic COVID Education Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

What speaking the truth gets you. Ex-Levi’s exec pushed out over anti COVID-19 school closure remarks speaks out on ‘Tucker Carlson Today’

Jeniffer Sey on speaking against COVID-19 school closures: I took this stance in defense of children Jennifer Sey reveals why she spoke up about opening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic on 'Tucker Carlson Today.'

By Maria Lencki | Fox News

A longtime Levi Strauss & Co. executive is revealing how she was allegedly pushed out of her high-profile role after speaking out against the COVID-19 school closures on Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today.”

Jennifer Sey, who spent nearly 23 years at Levi Strauss & Co. and described herself as a “lifelong liberal,” said she took her stance against school closure “in defense of children, which should have been a progressive value,” but soon realized it was not a welcome idea at the company.

“I kept my advocacy to schools because I knew all that other stuff was controversial, but I thought we could agree on kids,” Sey told Tucker Carlson. Her work included being vocal on social media, leading rallies and writing op-eds with data to back her point.

Advocates for keeping schools open during the pandemic were deemed racists and accused of wanting to “murder teachers,” Sey explained. Soon people were emailing the CEO and head of human resources and calling for boycotts of the company.

AS COVID CASES RISE, LA COUNTY RETURNS TO ‘STRONGLY’ RECOMMENDING MASKING UP INDOORS

“The feedback was when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company and I said, but I don’t,” the former executive said as she recalled being told multiple times to cool it. “I’m just a mom. I mean, I know I have this big job, but I am not saying it as the Levi’s brand president. I am saying it as a public school mom in San Francisco.”

A critical turning point occurred after Sey moved her family to Denver and appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss opening America’s schools. While the company said there was nothing wrong with her commentary, Sey said she was also told she should not have spoken out on Fox News.

Employees were ‘outraged’ after appearing on your show: Jennifer Sey

Video

“In the fall of that year, I was told I could be the CEO if I just cool it in my advocacy,” the former brand president told “Tucker Carlson Today.” “Schools at this point had been open for a hot second, two weeks … They needed to do a background check, not just on me, but on my husband.”

Prior to the background check, the former executive told the company they would think her social media was a “gray area” and her inclinations were right. Due to her position being the “succession role,” she was not able to keep her job if she was not eligible for the next.

After being told there would be severance, she resigned publicly. While she never received her requested severance package, she believes it would have come with a non-disclosure agreement, despite company denial.

“I wanted to be able to talk about the terms of the separation because I wanted to be able to tell you the story… In addition to the children being harmed, this idea that we can’t hold different views and work together, like the idea that I couldn’t have this view and work in this company is so disturbing to me that I did not want to sign my right away to talk about that,” Sey argued. “I wouldn’t do it.”

Research from the Department of Education shows that math and reading scores declined more during the pandemic than they have in decades, according to a previous Fox News report. Tony Kinnett, the executive director of the heterodox education publication Chalkboard Review, told Fox News Digital that some children are coming back to school “several grade levels behind.”

Sey suggests reasonable conversations about school closures may have prevented their devastating effect on children.

The U.S. Department of Education building in Washington, D.C. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

“I want it to be ok for us to talk to each other, to debate ideas,” Sey implored. “I really, in my heart of hearts, believe if we could have had a public conversation about the schools where people like me, invested parents, doctors… instead of us being vilified, we could have had a reasoned conservation, I think we would have gotten to the right answer much sooner.”

Fox Nation programs are viewable on-demand and from your mobile device app, but only for Fox Nation subscribers. Go to Fox Nation to start a free trial and watch the extensive library from your favorite Fox News personalities.

Fox News’ Yael Halon and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

Tags Spoke the truth

Biden Pandemic COVID Links from other news sources.

But we were told that the boosters were the bomb. Moderna Says New Booster Performs Worse Against Surging COVID-19 Variant

How telling is it when even Moderna tells you that the new booster jab doesn’t work well against the latest virus. Now they released this vaccine without any human testing. But now that they’ve jabbed millions, and they say it’s not as effective.

Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine booster performs worse against a virus variant that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States, the company announced on Nov. 14.But an analysis of approximately 40 participants using assays showed that that the titer levels triggered by the updated booster were 5-fold lower against BQ.1.1, the strain that is quickly becoming dominant in the United States, Moderna said in a press release.

The hits just keep coming from these shots – is this the new definition of “safe and effective?”

Pass it on.

“It’s not an accident they would do this.”

To get a better idea of what’s going on with the CDC’s handling of the VAERS system, Dr. Naomi Wolf spoke with Dr. Henry Ealy, an expert on the database.

To add insult to injury, not only are the bulk of V-Safe reports not making their way to VAERS, but Dr. Ealy suspects that VAERS reports are being removed.

What were 45,388 reports three months ago has now inexplicably dropped down to 12,544.

So, from two credible sources, it is appears that the CDC is removing records.

Dr. Wolf argues the CDC’s actions appear to be a “cover-up of evidence of mass murder.”

Pass it on.

A major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after COVID vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine.

We’ve suspected this for some time, now we have proof,

Pass it on.

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More on the Translations and Interpretations

More on the Corrections and Added Context

On Whether the Lab Leak Is a Question Worthy of Exploration

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Fauci on Trial: retiring bureaucrat suddenly ‘can’t recall’ anything. Surprised?

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Defense for Jabs Gone: Pandemic of the Vaccinated, Increased Likelihood of C19 Death

Pass it on.

Pass it on.

Other Depositions

Motion to Dismiss

Funny how he can’t recall things that are already documented as happening.

Pass it on.

Pass it on.

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