A Pima County judge cleared the way Friday for a 121-year-old near-total ban on abortion to go back into effect in Arizona.
Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson’s ruling reinstated a law from 1901 — more than a decade before Arizona was granted statehood — that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother, KOLD-TV reported. There is no exception for cases of rape or incest, according to the report.
Johnson’s ruling lifted a 1973 court injunction against the ban.
Johnson heard arguments one month ago in the case brought by Planned Parenthood of Tucson against the Arizona attorney general’s office, according to KGUN-TV.
Pro-abortion advocates, including Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs, were infuriated at the ruling.
Katie_Hobbs, pro-abortion AZ gubernatorial candidate
“I am outraged and devastated by today’s decision by the Pima County Superior Court to allow a territorial ban on abortion to take effect,” Hobbs said, according to KOLD. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this draconian 1901 law will have dire consequences on the health and well-being of Arizona women and their families.”
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich lauded the new development.
“We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue,” Brnovich wrote in a tweet.
“I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.”
A Pima County judge lifted an injunction that was placed on AZ’s abortion statute. We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue. I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.
KGUN reported that the 12-decade-old law, now codified in Arizona as Revised Statute 13-3603, “does not mention any timeline for when an abortion may be permitted. There’s no 15-week rule, like the one stated [in] the more recent state law, SB 116.”
The statute mandates a prison sentence of two to five years for abortion providers.
Johnson cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade as the legal basis for her ruling.
High school officials in Tennessee said that a student and cross country runner suffered a heart attack following a race in Florida on Saturday, September 10.
Gabe Higginbottom, 17, a junior at Bartlett High School in Tennessee, participated in a cross-country race in Pensacola, Florida.
According to a Facebook post, Gabe didn’t bounce back following the race.
“Yesterday after the Pensacola race he didn’t bounce back,” according to a post published in the Bartlett High School Boys Cross Country Facebook group.
“After an hour he was taken by some of the dad’s and coach to the medical tent. His vitals were good. Out of an abundance of caution, the doctor on site said he should go to the hospital. At the hospital, his vitals were good until they weren’t. He was then airlifted with his mom to Gainesville Florida for further tests. Today he had surgery and it went well. Please pray for this family and our team,” the post concluded.
A healthy, athletic kid has a heart attack, doctors find blood clots. Hmm, I wonder if he got the Covid-19 experimental gene therapy clot shot.–TPR
The Bartlett City Schools also released a statement regarding the incident. According to the school, doctors found two blood clots after they performed a 3-hour surgery.
“On September 10th, after a race in Pensacola, FL, one of Bartlett High School’s Cross-Country runners suffered a heart attack. Gabe Higginbottom, 17, a junior at Bartlett High School was sent to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola Hospital at the advice of the on-staff medical team. Sacred Heart performed a CAT scan which revealed further action needed to be taken.”
“Gabe was transported to the UF Shands Heart and Vascular Hospital in Gainesville, FL by helicopter that night. In Gainesville, they found his right artery was completely blocked. The doctors performed an angioplasty to insert a balloon to open up that artery. Later, they performed a 3-hour surgery inserting two stents and found two blood clots.”
“Cross Country coach, Kris Harman, and Gabe’s mother, Edrika, remain by Gabe’s side, as he is currently recovering at the UF Shands in Gainesville, FL. A Go Fund Me page has been set up by the Cross Country Booster Club. The money raised will be used to offset any medical bills. No amount is too small. Please pray for Gabe and his family as he begins the rehab process,” the post concluded.
Kris Harman, a team coach, told WREG something just wasn’t right with Gabe after competing.
“He started complaining about his chest hurting and kept complaining and we went to the trainer’s tent…everybody initially thinks it’s hot, it’s heat exhaustion so give him ice but he’s still complaining about his chest,” Harman told the outlet.
Harman told WREG that doctors found Gabe had a blocked artery and performed a procedure to fix it. “Now, they’re just trying to figure out what caused it,” Harman told the outlet.
Phil Clark, the athletic coordinator at Bartlett City Schools, told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that doctors said the heart attack wasn’t heat related and that they don’t know what caused it. “The doctor at the hospital he’s at, he told our track coach he had seen one (other) instance like this in his 11 years down there,” Clark said, the outlet reported.
He said Gabe is working toward recovery.
“They’re going to get him up and get him walking down the hallway this morning and they think everything is going to be fine,” Clark said Tuesday, Sept. 13, according to the Commercial Appeal. “He’s a strong, healthy young man, which surely helped in this situation.”
Ukraine Seeks Corridor to Evacuate Civilians Near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant – Scores of people tried to evacuate villages near the power plant following an explosion that cut power and water supplies in a nearby town, and U.N. inspectors released a report that detailed damage that has been done to the nuclear plant. A6
It’s our time to bat. The chance to convene a Grand Jury investigation against the CDC is finally here as Dr. Henry Ealy, and the team behind beyondthecon.com finally received a late response from the defendants on August 27.
We “now have only until September 12 to respond and urge the court, on behalf of freedom-loving Americans, to rule in our favor and get our petition before a Grand Jury to investigate our allegations against the defendants.”
So what is the CDC being accused of?
Willful misconduct and criminal data fraud.
But let’s focus on death certificates, as Dr. Henry Ealy eloquently explains the abhorrent actions taken by the CDC to inflate the COVID death count.
“We’ve all heard out there that the death certificates are wrong; people got hit by a bus and called COVID death and so forth, right? We’ve all heard that. We’ve even seen with a new filing by one of our colleagues, John Beaudoin, in Massachusetts. He got all the death certificates in Massachusetts, and he’s showing — he’s showing that people who died from the shot were counted as COVID deaths and not adverse event deaths.”
Dr. Naomi Wolf almost jumped out of her seat.
“People who died from the shot are counted as COVID deaths?!”
Ealy confirms.
“We are seeing this everywhere, Naomi. People who died from the shot are being counted as COVID deaths.”
Naomi asks, “What’s the evidence in the records that they died from the shot? Shortly after the injection or —”
Ealy: “There was one that died within five minutes of getting the injection, but they called it a COVID death.”
Naomi: “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
Ealy: “Right? So this was a little girl. This is a little girl.”
Naomi: “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
Ealy: “So John [Beaudoin] got all this. Some angel behind the scenes gave him access to all of the death certificates. His team broke everything down. We’re actually going to use some of his work to corroborate what we’re saying in our response to their most recent motion to dismiss.”
“They made a little sleight of hand and said, ‘If you had pre-existing conditions and got COVID, or we think you got COVID, we’re going to ignore the pre-existing conditions — those aren’t going to be considered the cause of death — it’s always going to be COVID. And that’s the exact opposite thing that they do with every other cause of death.
And what it allowed them to do, Naomi, was to hyperinflate the death count so it looks like an emergency, when in fact, what the people really should have been listed as dying of is diabetes, or of heart failure or hypertension, or the pre-existing condition because it’s always been that your oldest known pre-existing condition is the cause of death. And infection is what is termed as an initiating factor but not a cause. And it’s a little subtle distinction, but it’s crucial when we talk about the death count for COVID.”
“So what we’re saying is that we have evidence to support a Grand Jury investigation, because what’s happened thanks to Robert Redfield did, Alex Azar did, what Xavier Becerra and Rochelle Walensky continue to do. They’ve just adopted all of those early policies, so that makes them culpable.
And what a little-known man by the name of Brian Moyer, with the head of the National Vital Statistics systems — what they all did, was they changed how death certificates were reported, violated three federal laws in the process, did not open up public comment, did not seek oversight by the Office of Management and Budget, which sits under the President’s jurisdiction, and therefore, went rogue.
And in doing that — this is where it gets crazy, Naomi. In doing that simultaneously, what they did, was the HHS erected a structure for Medicare-Medicaid insurance fraud. That led to the misappropriation of $3.5 TRILLION of U.S. taxpayer money throughout this supposed ‘crisis,’ all based upon the sleight of hand of a death certificate.”
If you’re as mad as I am and want to see these criminals behind bars, please sign this petition at beyondthecon.com. DEMAND a Grand jury investigation and share this website with all receptive family and friends. The goal is 1 million signatures before September 12.
Part 2: Ivermectin vindicated – 2 years too late
“Horse Paste” Has Been Listed as an Antiviral COVID Treatment on the NIH’s Website
The suppression of this drug “is one of the greatest stories of our lifetime, and we’re not going to let it go.”
Believe it or not, after two years of censorship, suppression, threatening of doctors’ licenses, and relentless smear campaigns as being a “horse dewormer,” the HUMAN drug of ivermectin has risen from the ashes and quietly made its way to the antiviral COVID therapy list on the NIH’s website.
Now, the description has still not changed, but it wasn’t even included in the same list as these pictured drugs before per OAN. So, baby steps. But progress.
Not too long ago, it was one of NIH’s studies that piled on a “mountain of evidence showing ivermectin is not effective at treating COVID-19.”
This was done on a controlled population of 88,102 subjects, which is a gigantic sample size for a scientific study.
Here’s the quick rundown.
Among 223,128 subjects from the city of Itajaí, 159,560 were 18 years old or up and were not infected by COVID-19 until July 7, 2020, from which 45,716 (28.7%) did not use and 113,844 (71.3%) used ivermectin. Among ivermectin users, 33,971 (29.8%) used irregularly (up to 60 mg) and 8,325 (7.3%) used regularly (more than 180 mg).
So what they were looking for here was a dose-dependent enhanced effect. As the dose increases, do we see a greater and stronger effect? That is the greatest evidence that ivermectin is not an anomaly — that it actually works, and that’s exactly what they saw in this study.
And here’s the conclusion.
“Mortality rate was 92% lower in regular users than non-users…”
“Non-use of ivermectin was associated with a 12.5-fold increase in mortality rate and a seven-fold increased risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to the regular use of ivermectin. This dose-response efficacy reinforces the prophylactic effects of ivermectin against COVID-19.”
Now think about this…
Del Bigtree, asks.
“You have Francis Collins at the head of the NIH.”
“You have Tony Fauci at NIH inside of NIAID.”
“And so, these two guys have come out strongly against ivermectin; they were pushing the vaccine. And as we pointed out many times, you could not get the emergency use authorization to rush the vaccine out if there was a product that could protect you from this illness, which this [study] shows prophylactically, it completely does.
And so they needed to squash it. So now, when we look at really one of the only studies found on the planet Earth that show that ivermectin was not effective, it goes and is led by the two guys who literally could go to jail if we prove that their denial of ivermectin got a half a million people killed in the United States of America, got doctors fired for no reason, whatsoever, and then put their patients who would have been saved in peril.
Do you realize how massive this story actually is?
I’ve been thinking about this. We keep watching these headlines go by. You keep tuning into the Highwire, and we’re really getting numb to what are horrific stories, outrageous stories of government interference when it comes to living humans in the United States of America. Is it possible Tony Fauci is responsible for over a half a million deaths within two years in the United States of America? Do you realize where that will put him in human history amongst perhaps the dictators of the world?”
“And then how many people around the world followed our mandates? How many millions didn’t use ivermectin because of this study done at the NIH? Now, I’m not saying the study is fraudulent. But what I am saying is there’s no way that we can use that as the only study, especially given the fact that we recognize the sheer bias that has to be taking place at NIH to protect their own butts.
So that against the mountain of evidence that has come up against ivermectin. This is one of the greatest stories of our lifetime, and we’re not going to let it go.”
Exactly, Del. We CAN’T let it go. Because if their actions — their negligence (at best) or deliberate suppression of ivermectin to push a vaccine agenda (at worst) gets brushed to the side and called a “whoopsie,” what precedent is that going to set?
That you can get away with deliberately squashing life-saving medications in order to serve the interests of the pharmaceutical industry? That is no world that I want anyone to live in, but sadly, that is the world we seem to be in, and it has to change.
If you want justice — if you want accountability for these criminals, please sign the petition below. Dr. Henry Ealy and his team are hoping to raise 1 million signatures to bring forth to a judge to demand a Grand Jury investigation against the CDC.
And if that goes through, it opens the door for Fauci & Friends. Please sign the petition below and share it with all receptive family and friends.
I want to thank one of the writers from Substack for this great article.
For several months, The Dossier has reported on the unscientific, political mRNA mandates being pursued by executive branch agencies within the Biden Administration, particularly the Department of Defense, which has unlawfully forced active duty service members to get injected with the gene juice.
The Dossier
Biden Admin officials scramble to escape blame for unlawful Pentagon order mandating mRNA for troops
Lawyers representing America’s service members are beginning to produce victories defending the U.S. Armed Forces against forced compliance with biomedical gene therapy experiments, and suddenly, nobody in the Pentagon wants to take accountability for their legally dubious mRNA injection order…
It seemed obvious to anyone thinking clearly about this issue that the government’s mRNA mandates, especially in the military, are being leveraged to create ideological conformity within the ranks. Clearly, “readiness” is not a serious explanation for the mRNA mandate, given the minuscule threat posed by the coronavirus to young men, coupled with the troubling side effect profile of the shots.
The Dossier
Military whistleblowers: DOD’s legally dubious mRNA mandate has harmed readiness, produced widespread injuries
A group of active U.S. military pilots are coming forward as whistleblowers to challenge both the legal and moral nature of the Department of Defense mRNA mandate, and they’ve produced some shocking testimonials that challenge virtually all of the mainstream narratives about a supposedly “safe and effective” mRNA vaccine…
12 days ago · 219 likes · 69 comments · Jordan Schachtel
Picket reported, via a whistleblower, that this is exactly what is happening at the FBI. This newly fired agent was allegedly dismissing unvaccinated agents to ensure political compliance within the Bureau.
The agent was allegedly “known for pushing out unvaccinated agents from the FBI’s election squad whom he suspected to be Trump supporters,” the story reads.
This is the real reason for the mRNA mandate. It’s the best way to clean house, ideologically.
Through an even wider scope, COVID Mania as a whole has involved powerful enterprises conducting routine power grabs, dividing up civil society, and installing political compliance tests into every avenue of daily life. The FBI’s reported role in this process serves as just one example of many more to come.
It all began on August 24, 2021, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memo mandating mRNA “vaccination” for the active military, but with the stipulation that this mandate only applied to fully licensed products. This was because, as The Dossier understands, it is illegal to force service members to take an EUA vaccine.
Sec Def Lloyd Austin memo
The Sec Austin memo and the guidance that followed created an issue, because, as The Dossier readers are well aware of by now, the FDA licensed versions of the mRNA shots never actually made it to market, rendering the initial vaccine mandate useless.
This is where the infamous September 14, 2021 memo comes into play.
Dr Terry Adirim, the woman who signed the memo, is a devoted democrat political activist and, as a medical doctor, advocates for “gender-affirming prescriptions” for “transgender” children. At the time, she was the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs (under a Biden political appointment). Adirim’s memo attempted to justify mandating EUA shots as if they were FDA approved.
Terry Adirim Twitter profile
Dr Adirim’s deceptive memo described the EUA and FDA licensed vaccines as “interchangeable,” adding that the Defense Department can “use doses distributed under the EUA to administer the vaccination series as if the doses were the licensed vaccine.” Adirim failed to note that the EUA vaccines were only administratively interchangeable, but not *legally* interchangeable, as made clear by the FDA. This should have rendered any mandate unenforceable.
In other documents and statements, she routinely made claims that FDA licensed vaccines were available to troops, when that was not in fact the case.
Following the mRNA injection order, untold thousands of service members were coerced — under threat of both administrative and criminal action — to take a “vaccine” that they wanted no part of. Unsurprisingly, this mandatory novel gene therapy injection has harmed combat readiness and produced widespread, serious, long term injuries throughout the armed forces.
The Dossier
Military whistleblowers: DOD’s legally dubious mRNA mandate has harmed readiness, produced widespread injuries
A group of active U.S. military pilots are coming forward as whistleblowers to challenge both the legal and moral nature of the Department of Defense mRNA mandate, and they’ve produced some shocking testimonials that challenge virtually all of the mainstream narratives about a supposedly “safe and effective” mRNA vaccine…
The Pentagon’s unlawful order is being challenged in court by lawyers representing all branches of the military. On Thursday, the Marine Corps became the latest service branch granted a class wide injunction against the mandate.
Since leaving the Pentagon, Adirim has sought to distance herself from the letter, claiming that “crazy” attempts to hold her accountable are misguided, because it was “The Secretary” (Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin) who “directed vaccinations.” Neither Austin nor the Pentagon has confirmed that the Secretary of Defense ordered Adirim to sign off on the unlawful mandate.
Adirim remains in government as the program executive director of the VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office. As a government official, both she and the Secretary of Defense are easily accessible to testify via a congressional subpoena, should congress want to investigate their controversial memos. As Adirim’s memo has come under scrutiny, she has decided to lock her social media accounts.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, pictured May 17 during a Senate subcommittee hearing, became a hated figure on the right in part because of what he represented—the arrogant, corrupt, and often incompetent bureaucratic managerial class that believes it has a right to make decisions for our society. (Photo: Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)
Of all the institutions that have become radicalized in the last couple of years, the realm of medicine is perhaps the most disturbing.
What will our society look like when you can’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or even your doctor?
Dr. Anthony Fauci announced Monday that he will step down in December from his position at the National Institutes of Health, ending a tenure in public health policy that stretches back to the late 1960s.
It’s a notable moment. Fauci’s long-term obscurity—followed by short-lived, media-driven stardom and then intense polarization—is illustrative of larger trends in American society.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted that other public health experts used Fauci, 81, to “lobby for broad economic lockdowns that we now know were far more destructive than they needed to be” and that Fauci advocated “mask and vaccine mandates that were far less protective than his assertions to the public.”
The Journal rightly highlighted the fact that Fauci’s name being widely recognized is a negative mark, not a positive one, of his tenure. It’s like being the long snapper in football: If people generally know who you are, it’s almost certainly because you messed up.
In the case of Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, he became a notable and polarizing figure because he seemed to make often dubious or at least wide-reaching political decisions while hiding behind his credentials.
Again, as The Wall Street Journal explained, Fauci’s public and private comments suggest his ethos was that the public “is supposed to let a few powerful men and women define science and then impose their preferred policies and mandates on the country.”
It’s a philosophy that runs counter to the ideas of 1776 and the American founding, but many of Fauci’s bureaucratic and ideological ilk seem to have little problem with that.
The important matter to recognize here is how institutions and bureaucrats—like Fauci—seemingly have dropped the pretense of objectivity in favor of ideology and, in many cases, duplicity.
To believe in science is also to believe in our new state ideology.
If the facts don’t line up with preferred outcomes, then fudge the facts and silence those who have doubts.
Perhaps paradoxically, the two-sided nature of Western institutions in the past few years—that claim to be guided by objectivity while becoming more nakedly ideological and partisan—is destroying the authority of institutions in the minds of the public. That’s certainly the case in the United States, where we are particularly prone to rebel against an unqualified pseudo-elite claiming a right to rule.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were told by Fauci and other public officials that we had to lock down and suspend the most important parts of our lives—including going to church, weddings, and funerals—to stop the spread of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
However, when the Black Lives Matter-inspired protests erupted in the summer of 2020, many of those same officials and organizations suddenly said it was OK to gather in massive groups because stopping racism as they defined it was too important.
It only added salt to the wound that these “mostly peaceful” protests soon turned violent and caused enormous damage and loss of life in communities around the country.
Fauci became a hated figure on the right in part because of what he represented—the arrogant, corrupt, and often incompetent bureaucratic managerial class that believes it has a right to rule and make decisions for our society.
Any figure or policy that strikes at the power of the managerial class—whether it be Donald Trump or civil service reform or school choice—is met with unhinged hostility. Resistance by the wrong types is a threat to “democracy.”
The fall of so many institutions at once puts conservatives in an unusual position. The instinct of a conservative is to preserve and perpetuate culture and institutions. We look to what has succeeded in the past and try to make it work for ourselves and posterity. That’s why the Constitution of the United States, though revolutionary in design as a written framework of government, is fundamentally conservative in the best sense.
What happens when institutions and the culture they seek to perpetuate are inherently revolutionary? That is the reality of where Americans, and many of us in the West, find ourselves. Our institutions no longer perpetuate the general welfare and ideas that our societies were built on. These institutions increasingly are committed to radical societal transformation, and they think they can do it whether you like it or not, as a smarmy California politician once said.
And our institutions do this while obnoxiously holding to the façade of expertise and objectivity. We are supposed to believe, for instance, that the American Academy of Pediatrics is promoting “gender-affirming” care for children because of its commitment to good medicine and science.
However, it’s all too obvious that the academy’s “science” is working backward from ideology, that it would promote gender “transition” no matter what the facts said. Studies or physicians that say otherwise are ignored or, through the power of the academy’s allies in Big Tech, censored and banned.
Worse, every major health institution, professional organization, and government institution is following in lockstep. When a series of disturbing videos from Boston Children’s Hospital surfaced in which medical doctors advocated “gender-affirming hysterectomies” among other “treatments,” many were horrified.
This wasn’t a disturbing outlier, however. It’s the tip of the iceberg. These ideas are simply what’s being pushed in America’s top medical schools, where the cult of diversity, equity, and inclusion now holds absolute sway with negligible dissent. It’s a double-edged sword, though.
As members of the institutions both tout and hide behind their credentialism, their obviously ideological positions shred the public’s faith in their credentials.
The rise and fall of Anthony Fauci is illustrative of this trend. Sure, Fauci will retain his acolytes and super fans. But his actions and attitude have only drawn public attention to the rot and illegitimacy of American institutions, institutions that have squandered their reputations in the name of revolution. This is the real death of expertise. Death by suicide
Anthony Fauci is ending his long and celebrated government career by being widely lauded for getting so much so very wrong on Covid-19.
Now 81 years old, Dr. Fauci has spent 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. He has been rightly honored for his many contributions over the decades, most notably during the fight against AIDS, for which he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. But to Covid-19 he brought a monomaniacal focus on vanquishing a single virus, whatever the cost—neglecting the damage that can follow when public health loses sight of the public’s health.
As the lead medical authority to two administrations on Covid-19, Dr. Fauci was unwavering in his advocacy for draconian policies. What were the impact of those policies on millions of Americans? And what would the country look like now had our public health experts taken a different approach? As Dr. Fauci is preparing to leave his post, those are a few of the questions worth asking as we consider his various Covid-19 legacies.
Dr. Fauci attends the National AIDS Update Conference in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 1989. (Deanne Fitzmaurice via Getty Images)
On Children:
Very early on in this pandemic, we knew that there was an extremely stratified risk from Covid. The elderly and those with co-morbidities were especially vulnerable, while children were extremely unlikely to get dangerously ill.
Instead of acting on the good news for children—or drawing on the ample experience in Scandinavian and European countries where schools were open and students were without masks—American kids were seen as vectors of disease. Young children were forced to wear masks inside school and out, affecting the language and social development of many. The effects of school closures will play out for decades, but we already know that children suffered major learning loss, and many left school never to return. Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Fauci supported the most oppressive restrictions for children, including school closures and mandatory cloth masking.
Yesterday on Fox Neil Cavuto asked Dr. Fauci whether Covid restrictions “went too far” and if they “forever damaged” the children “who couldn’t go to school except remotely.” Dr. Fauci replied: “I don’t think it’s forever irreparably damaged anyone.”
Parents know otherwise.
A generation is coping with learning loss, and the impact has been the worst in poor and minority communities. According to the Brookings Institute, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20 percent in math and 15 percent in reading over the pandemic. Meantime, anxiety and depression have hit record highs among young Americans, and the surgeon general has described a youth mental health crisis. Of all of Dr. Fauci’s legacies, this might be the gravest.
On Research:
Dr. Fauci let basic research questions about the nature of the Covid-19 virus go unanswered. Somehow, despite the NIH’s more than $45 billion budget, only 2 percent of grants went to basic Covid research while billions of federal money was invested in developing vaccines, according to a study conducted by my colleagues at Johns Hopkins and I.
The federal government failed to conduct timely studies on the following: masks; the susceptibility of people in nursing homes; natural immunity; wastewater data; vaccine-induced heart injury in young people; and the optimal interval between the first two vaccine doses.
In short, Dr. Fauci didn’t deliver the basic research we needed so that public policy would be shaped by the best science. Because policymakers lacked good evidence to support their dictates, political opinions filled the void. So Covid-19 became a highly politicized health emergency—to all of our detriment.
On Natural Immunity:
One of the most inexplicable decisions by Dr. Fauci and his team was to ignore natural immunity—that is, the immune response generated by contracting Covid-19. As the evidence mounted that having had the virus was as good as—perhaps even better than—a vaccine, Dr. Fauci and his circle ignored it.
When Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked Dr. Fauci in the Fall of 2021 on CNN: “As we talk about vaccine mandates, I get calls all the time, people say I already had Covid, I’m protected, and now the study says even more protected than the vaccine alone. How do you make the case to them?” Dr. Fauci answered: “I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that.”
Hundreds of studies have now shown that natural immunity is better than vaccinated immunity and that the level of protection vaccines have against severe disease is at the same level of natural immunity alone.
But Dr. Fauci didn’t talk about it.
Americans had circulating antibodies against the virus, but they were antibodies that Dr. Fauci seemed to ignore. The upshot was that thousands of Americans lost their jobs for their choice not to get vaccinated. Some of those Americans were nurses, pilots, truck drivers, and dock workers central to the American supply chain of food, medication, and other essential products. This summer, more than 60,000 National Guard and Reserve soldiers who refused the Covid-19 vaccine were not allowed to participate in their military duties and lost pay and benefits. All of these people should have their jobs reinstated.
On Dissent:
Any physician who has met Dr. Fauci will agree that he is one of the kindest, most charming human beings you will ever meet. That’s why it was so jarring to witness the way that he and Dr. Francis Collins, his close friend and former director of the NIH, denigrated dissent on Covid-19.
Just ask the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration—the open letter published in October 2020 that called for focused protection of the most vulnerable instead of blanket shutdowns of schools and businesses. It was authored by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, then of Harvard, and it was signed by tens of thousands of doctors and scientists.
Drs. Fauci and Collins never talked to these prominent authors to discuss their differing points of view. Instead, they criticized them.
Four days after the Great Barrington Declaration was published, Dr. Collins sent an email to Dr. Fauci in which he called the authors “fringe epidemiologists.” “There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “I don’t see anything like that on line yet—is it underway?” Dr. Fauci replied: “Francis: I am pasting in below a piece from Wired that debunks this theory.” Soon after, big tech platforms like Facebook and Google followed suit, suppressing their ideas and falsely deeming them “misinformation.”
The ultimate irony is that federal officials are now endorsing many of the policies the Great Barrington Declaration authors suggested, insisting schools stay open and quietly ending isolation and quarantine requirements. In the end, Sweden, which adopted many principles in the Great Barrington Declaration, had roughly half the Covid deaths as Michigan, despite having the same population, percent of elderly, and climate.
If dissent had been welcomed from the start—which is what science demands—a lot of suffering could have been avoided.
On Science:
Here’s what Dr. Fauci and other public health authorities could have been saying from the start: We strive to provide you with the best information and recommendations, but in the face of an emergency we will surely make mistakes. We will sometimes change our minds. We may even reverse our guidance. But we will always own up to our mistakes, explain our policy changes and strive to do better. Instead, Dr. Fauci admitted to telling noble lies.
Covid brought us the concept of “The Science.” Dr. Fauci famously said last year: “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” But no person embodies science. To suggest as much betrays a cast of mind that is entirely at odds with science itself.
On Leadership:
George Washington was onto something when he decided to limit his presidency to two terms. New leaders don’t just avoid the risk of too much power concentrated in the hands of one person or group, they also bring new ideas. New perspectives are especially important to accelerating scientific inquiry by challenging deeply held assumptions. In his long tenure, Dr. Fauci made tremendous contributions, but during this crisis we needed someone at the top who took a broad view of how to fight a novel virus, and made recommendations based on weighing the direct and indirect consequences to society.
How to Regain Trust:
We now face the threat of a future pandemic in a country in which a large number of people no longer trust public health authorities. What happens when we have a novel, highly contagious, airborne virus with a much higher fatality rate than that of Covid-19?
We desperately need to rebuild public trust now. That begins by having public health officials apologize for being dogmatic in their pronouncements, when the correct answer should have been: “We don’t know.” One lesson we should all learn from Covid-19 is that we should not put our entire faith and trust in one physician.
Dr. Marty Makary is a public health expert, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the author of the bestselling book The Price We Pay.
His last piece for Common Sense was about top doctors and scientists at the NIH, FDA and CDC who are alarmed at the direction of those institutions. Read it here.
Chairman of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission ‘pretty convinced’ pandemic’s origin from ‘US lab biotechnology,’ suggests governments aren’t investigating because even more ‘dangerous research underway right now’
The chairman of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission has come forward to say that he is “pretty convinced” that the pandemic’s origin is from “U.S. lab biotechnology.” He also warns that even more dangerous research is happening right now – which could be why governments don’t seem to be interested in investigating the origins of COVID-19.
Jeffrey Sachs is the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, the president of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, winner of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, a best-selling author, and a Chairman of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission.
In November 2020, Sachs assembled a task force for the prestigious medical journal to determine the origins of COVID-19. He hand-selected Dr. Peter Daszak – the president of EcoHealth Alliance – to be the chairman of the task force. However, Daszak recused himself from the investigation in June 2021, following accusations of a conflict of interest.
Daszak had deep ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of National Institutes of Health funding to the Chinese lab. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Daszak has vehemently argued that COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease that jumped from animals to humans. Furthermore, he vociferously argued that suggesting that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak is a baseless conspiracy theory.
By September 2021, the task force organized by the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission was disbanded because of EcoHealth’s conflict-of-interest issues.
Sachs said at the time, “I just didn’t want a task force that was so clearly involved with one of the main issues of this whole search for the origins, which was EcoHealth Alliance.”
Last week, Sachs told Current Affairs that he appointed Daszak to the task force dedicated to discovering the origins of COVID-19 because he said to himself, “Well, here’s a guy who is so connected, he would know.”
Sachs added, “And then I realized he was not telling me the truth. And it took me some months, but the more I saw it, the more I resented it.”
Sachs revealed that he disbanded the task force because other members were “part of this thing.”
He noted that the NIH had been hiding documents from the public – which were later revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request. Emails exposed by a FOIA request revealed that officials with the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases were concerned that EcoHealth could be conducting gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab.
Sachs noted that Daszak should have informed him that EcoHealth Alliance was “manipulating the viruses.”
Sachs said that he requested a research proposal from Daszak, but the EcoHealth head allegedly balked, “No, my lawyer says I can’t give it to you.”
A video went viral last month featuring Sachs proclaiming that “after two years of intensive work,” he is “pretty convinced” that COVID-19 originated from “U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature.”
“So it’s a blunder in my view of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover,” he said. “We don’t know for sure, I should be absolutely clear.”
Sachs noted, “But there’s enough evidence that it should be looked into. And it’s not being investigated, not in the United States, not anywhere.
“And I think for real reasons that they don’t want to look underneath the rug.”
Wow😯Prof. Jeffrey Sachs:
"I chaired the commission for the Lancet for 2 years on Covid. I'm pretty convinced it came out of a US lab of biotechnology […] We don't know for sure but there is enough evidence. [However] it's not being investigated, not in the US, not anywhere." pic.twitter.com/IYvSJnlv1q
In the interview with Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, Sachs suggested that scientists were “creating a narrative” of COVID’s origins early in the pandemic by collectively claiming that COVID-19 naturally originated from the Wuhan wet market without definitive evidence.
Sachs asked, “Did we find an animal? No. Do we have an explanation of where that furin cleavage site came in? No. We don’t have an explanation of the timing, which doesn’t quite look right.”
He accused health officials and the media of pulling a “kind of misdirection” since February 2020.
Sachs believes the laboratory hypothesis is “very plausible.”
“The alternative that is the right one to look at is part of a very extensive research program that was underway from 2015 onward, funded by the NIH, by Tony Fauci, in particular NIAID, and it was to examine the spillover potential of SARS-like viruses,” Sachs told Robinson.
Sachs suggested that COVID-19 may have come from gain-of-function research, “There was a lot of research underway in the United States and China on taking SARS-like viruses, manipulating them in the laboratory, and creating potentially far more dangerous viruses.”
Governments could be saying, “Don’t poke your nose into that.”
“We know that at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the scientists there had been trained by American scientists to use advanced bioengineering methodologies,” Sachs explained. “And in particular, we have scientists in North Carolina, Texas, and so forth who do this kind of research, believe in it, argue for it, and say that they don’t want any regulations on it and so on. And they were in close contact with Wuhan Institute of Virology, and they were part of a joint research group that was stitched together by something called EcoHealth Alliance.”
Sachs described EcoHealth Alliance as a “vehicle for funding from the U.S. government, especially from the National Institutes of Health, and especially from Tony Fauci’s unit, the NIAID.”
Sachs said Dr. Anthony Fauci and the NIH “haven’t shown us anything” about possible research at the Wuhan lab.
“So you saw a narrative being created,” he continued. “And the scientists are not acting like scientists. Because when you’re acting like a scientist, you’re pursuing alternative hypotheses.”
Robinson asked Sachs why governments aren’t vigorously investigating the origins of a disease that has killed more than 6.4 million people in less than three years.
Sachs responded, “There are at least two reasons why they might be doing what they’re doing. One is, as you say, the implications are huge. Imagine if this came out of a lab. And we have, by some estimates, about 18 million dead worldwide from this. That’s not the official count. But that’s the estimated excess mortality from COVID. Well, the implications of that—the ethical, the moral, the geopolitical—everything is enormous.”
The chairman of the Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission added, “But there’s a second matter that is really important, too. One thing that is rather clear to me is that there is so much dangerous research underway right now under the umbrella of biodefense or other things that we don’t know about, that is not being properly controlled.”
He suggested that governments could be saying, “Don’t poke your nose into that.”
On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said, “The fact that virtually no one in Washington DC wants to investigate the origins of COVID-19 should tell you all you need to know about the origins of COVID-19.”
Hmm. Guess all those “conspiracy theory nuts” weren’t so nuts after all.
Crew members from a Seattle-based fishing boat that experienced an explosive outbreak of the novel coronavirus have serendipitously provided what could be the first direct evidence that antibodies can protect people from reinfection.
Blood samples collected before the vessel sailed in May showed that three of the 122 people aboard had robust levels of neutralizing antibodies — the type that block the virus from entering human cells — indicating they had been previously infected and recovered. All three were spared during the shipboard outbreak, which quickly spread to more than 85% of the crew.
“It’s a strong indication that the presence of neutralizing antibodies is associated with protection from the virus,” said Dr. Alex Greninger, assistant director of the UW Medicine Clinical Virology Laboratory and co-author of a report posted on the preprint server MedRxiv that has not yet been peer-reviewed. “It’s hopeful news.”
However, it’s not really surprising, Greninger added. Researchers are generally confident that prior infection will provide some level of immunity. But what constitutes a protective immune response and how long immunity lasts is still unknown and of vital importance to the race for vaccines and other treatments.
Early vaccine trials, including one in Seattle, have induced strong antibody responses in volunteers. But the only direct evidence so far that neutralizing antibodies can protect against infection has come from monkeys and other laboratory animals.
It wouldn’t be ethical to deliberately expose humans to the virus — even people who have recovered from infection. But in this case, researchers from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center were able to analyze results from a natural experiment that played out in the close quarters and isolation of a vessel at sea.
“While this is a small study, it offers a remarkable, real-life, human experiment,” Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, wrote in a commentary on the report. “Who knew immunology research on fishing boats could be so informative?”
The report does not identify the vessel, but Greninger confirmed it is the factory trawler FV American Dynasty, which was fishing for hake off the Washington coast when the outbreak struck. A statement from American Seafoods, which owns the ship and several others, says the company has partnered with the UW on its testing program and shares the data.
“We hope that their study will be beneficial to the broader scientific community in learning more about COVID-19,” said Valentina Zackrone, chief human resources officer at American Seafoods.
Mark Slifka, an immunologist and vaccine developer at Oregon Health & Science University who was not involved in the work, described it as “very, very interesting.”
The keys were the pre-departure blood testing of nearly the entire crew
The keys were the pre-departure blood testing of nearly the entire crew, and the stunning rate of infection — which means it’s unlikely that the three crew members with neutralizing antibodies were simply not exposed to the virus during the outbreak, Slifka said.
As part of ongoing efforts to protect fishing fleets, 120 of the 122 crew members were tested both for active infection, via nasal swabs, and previous exposure, via antibody blood testing, in the two days before the ship left port.
None of the nasal swabs was positive. But 18 days into its voyage, the ship returned to shore after a crew member became sick and needed hospitalization. Monitoring over the next 50 days showed that 104 crew members had been infected.
After learning of the outbreak, Greninger and his colleagues reexamined the results from the earlier blood tests and conducted additional tests on leftover specimens. Before departing, six crew members tested positive for antibodies that bind to the capsule of the novel coronavirus, but only three of those also had neutralizing antibodies.
While none of the crew members with neutralizing antibodies reported symptoms or became infected, the other three all got the virus — suggesting their initial results might have been false positives, Greninger said.
That adds to growing concern about the accuracy of many antibody tests and their ability to indicate immunity, Slifka pointed out.
Statistical analysis suggests it’s highly unlikely to be a random coincidence that all three people with neutralizing antibodies escaped infection. But the study doesn’t offer an explanation for the 15 other crew members who also apparently never became infected. It’s possible their jobs or actions on the boat shielded them from exposure, Greninger said.
Genomic analysis of virus from 39 crew members suggests that all the strains are closely related, but it doesn’t prove they all originated from a single infection, Greninger said.
The analysis doesn’t rule out the possibility that people can catch COVID-19 more than once, Slifka said, though it strongly suggests those who develop neutralizing antibodies may be protected. But the number of cases is too small to draw sweeping conclusions, he added.
Not the first insight to come from studying ships
This isn’t the first insight about the novel coronavirus to come from studying ships. Analysis of the outbreak early in the pandemic on the Diamond Princess cruise ship helped establish the importance of asymptomatic people in spreading the virus. Federal researchers who examined sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, where nearly 1,000 people were infected, documented a robust, neutralizing antibody response in more than half of those tested.
The Biden administration has declared monkeypox a public health emergency as cases of the disease continue to spread in the U.S., according to various news reports that said the announcement came during a briefing with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
As of August 3, there were a total of 6,617 confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A CDC map of the outbreak showed that at least one case had been detected in all U.S. states apart from Montana and Wyoming as of Wednesday.
“We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters, according to NPR.
As the U.S. continues to contend with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, though data shows that COVID cases are significantly lower now than they were during the Omicron-driven surge in late 2021 and early 2022, many details on what monkeypox is, its symptoms and how it spreads may remain unclear.
According to the CDC, it is a rare disease resulting from infection with the monkeypox virus, which is part of the same family of viruses as the one that causes smallpox. The symptoms of monkeypox—which can include fever, headache, exhaustion and a rash—are similar to those of smallpox, but monkeypox is milder and rarely fatal, the CDC said.
‘Winter of Death’ 2.0? Dr. Fauci Just Threatened 70% of Americans
Dr. Anthony Fauci has once again sounded the warning bell over COVID-19, saying in an interview on Tuesday that those who are not up to date on vaccines will “get into trouble” this fall and winter.
“If they don’t get vaccinated or they don’t get boosted, they’re going to get into trouble,” Fauci told Los Angeles radio station KNX-AM.
A large part of the U.S. population is not up to date on the COVID-19 vaccines.
The Kaiser Family Foundation found that as of July 21, 227.8 million Americans either had not received a primary series of shots or had not gotten a booster dose. That is about 70 percent of the population.
“In each state, at least half the population is not up to date on COVID-19 vaccines. In Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, over 80% of people are not yet up to date on COVID-19 vaccines,” KFF noted.
The number of Americans who have received the second booster shot is even lower.
The CDC recommends that people over the age of 50 receive the second booster. Only 19,935,913 members of that demographic — about 31 percent — have done so.
In the Tuesday radio interview, Fauci called the overall vaccination and booster rates “quite discouraging.”
“If you want to get your arms around — metaphorically, as it were — the outbreak, you want to get as many people in our community — and by community I mean our nation and the world — vaccinated and boosted so you don’t give this virus such ample opportunity to freely circulate,” Fauci said.
He insisted that the only way to get the virus under control and to keep it from continually mutating is to get everyone vaccinated.
Fauci called getting vaccinated and boosted a “communal responsibility.”
“People say, ‘Well, the risk to me is low, so why get it?’ It is about you as an individual, but it’s also about the communal responsibility to get this outbreak under control.”
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Any threat especially against law enforcement or politicians will get you banned.
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