Mask Wars

Eco-Disasters: Paper Straws and Masks

Published by Papa Giorgio

PAPER STRAWS

Paper straws are more toxic than plastic straws?

LEGAL INSURRECTION has this perfectly times story to throw in the face of the world Western “do-gooders.”

A new study from Europe suggests those paper straws may contain “forever chemicals” that are harmful to both humans and the environment and were observed more often than in a sample of plastic straws.

Belgian researchers tested 39 straw brands from restaurants and retailers for synthetic chemicals known as poly and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The study found that the majority of straws contained those chemicals, but they were most common in those made from paper and bamboo.

The chemicals are referred to as “forever chemicals” as they can remain for thousands of years in the environment. The chemicals have been associated with health issues including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage and kidney and testicular cancer and can harm the environment as well.

Of the brands tested, 90% of the paper straws contained PFAS, compared to 80% of bamboo straws, 75% of plastic straws and 40% of glass straws. None of the steel straws contained the chemicals.

I had a perfectly lovely “Lava Flow” cocktail ruined by a paper straw that disintegrated on me during my last vacation. I, for one, will encourage a return to sanity and plastic straws.

Next, a new study suggests substituting single-use plastic cups with their paper counterparts is not the environmentally friendly solution that was once believed.

Findings from the University of Gothenburg published in Environmental Pollution reveal that paper cups, once discarded in the environment, can cause harm due to toxic chemicals. In their study, researchers examined the impact of disposable cups crafted from various materials on butterfly mosquito larvae, discovering that paper and plastic cups exhibited comparable levels of toxic damage.

…The researchers explained that paper used in food packaging lacks resistance to fats and water, requiring the application of a surface coating to enhance its performance. This coating, typically made of plastic material, safeguards the paper from contact with substances like coffee.

In contemporary packaging, this plastic film is frequently composed of a bioplastic known as polylactide (PLA). Unlike conventional plastics derived from fossil fuels, bioplastics like PLA are sourced from renewable materials, such as corn, cassava, or sugarcane. While PLA is often considered biodegradable, indicating its ability to break down more rapidly than traditional oil-based plastics under specific conditions, recent research suggests that it can still possess toxic properties.

“Bioplastics do not break down effectively when they end up in the environment, in water. There may be a risk that the plastic remains in nature, and resulting microplastics can be ingested by animals and humans, just as other plastics do. Bioplastics contain at least as many chemicals as conventional plastic,” said lead researcher Bethanie Carney Almroth, professor of Environmental Science at the Department of Biology and Environmental Science at the University of Gothenburg.

Personally, I find plastics greatly contribute to my quality of life. I am very skeptical of the dangers associated with “microplastics,” especially when such analysis fails to consider the benefits of plastic…..

MASKS

An article titled, “The world is throwing away 3 million face masks every minute — and the growing mountain of waste is a toxic time bomb” explains the impact on our environment from masks:

…Scientists and environmental advocates expressed alarm about this tsunami of waste from the jump. They foresaw the dire ecological ramifications of our mask waste — especially once those masks made their inevitable way into the earth’s waterways. Elastic loops pose entanglement hazards for turtles, birds, and other animals. Fish could eat the plastic-fiber ribbons that unfurl from a discarded mask’s body. Then, there is the untold menace to human health that would likely present, at the microscopic level, once masks began to disintegrate.

Now, two years into the pandemic, governments have had ample time to grapple with this serious conundrum: How do we keep people safe from a highly communicable pathogen without unleashing an environmental catastrophe? But instead of heeding the chorus of expert warnings and pouring money into biodegradable and reusable alternatives, world leaders have ignored the problem. And once the immediate public-health emergency superseded ecological concerns — the heads of Big Plastic made sure it stayed that way.

“The plastics industry saw COVID as an opportunity,” John Hocevar, the oceans campaign director at Greenpeace USA, told me from his office in Washington, D.C. “They worked hard to convince policymakers and the general public that reusables were dirty and dangerous, and that single-use plastic is necessary to keep us safe.” 

Stateside, Big Plastic’s PR campaign may have hit its apex in July 2020, when the president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association testified before Congress to argue that single-use plastic was a pandemic health necessity, stating that “plastic saves lives.”

The fear-mongering worked. The global consumption of single-use plastics has increased by up to 300% since the pandemic began, according to a 2021 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report. The plastic industry’s canny COVID strategy also provided a plausible cover for government inertia in funding sustainable solutions to disposable masks. 

[….]

The need to address the growing pile of discarded masks has only grown over the course of the pandemic. A December 2021 study reported a 9,000% rise in mask litter in the UK during the first seven months of the pandemic. And as more transmissible variants like Delta and Omicron led public-health officials to promote the use of heavy-duty disposable masks and respirators like KN95s and nonsurgical N95s — instead of the less-protective reusable cloth models that were encouraged earlier in the outbreak — it is clear that companies will be cranking out disposable masks for months to come. 

As we enter our third year of COVID-19, research not only supports environmentalists’ early fears surrounding mask pollution in waterways but has introduced new concerns. Sarper Sarp, a professor of chemical engineering at Swansea University in Wales, led a contamination study that tested nine readily available single-use masks. After submerging the masks in water and letting them sit, Sarp and his team discovered both micro- and nanoplastic particles released from every single one. The leachate from those masks — that is, the particles they emitted into fluid — amounted to a sort of toxic tea.

The masks were also found to expel nanoparticles of silicon and heavy metals like lead, cadmium, copper, and even arsenic. Sarp says that he was astonished by what he and the team found after a relatively brief period of submersion, and by the quantity of particles released by each mask. The masks released hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of toxic particles — particles that can potentially disrupt entire marine food chains and contaminate drinking water.

The presence of silicon nanoparticles was of particular concern. Silicon is a common material in healthcare products, easy to sterilize and maintain. “But when it comes to nano size,” said Sarp, “it’s a whole different story.” 

Microplastic particles are shed by all sorts of single-use plastics, from water bottles to grocery bags. While hardly ideal for marine ecosystems, Sarp explains that these particles can be filtered to a significant extent by our digestive systems and lungs. But nanoparticles — of plastic, silicon, or other materials — are so minute in size that they can breach cell walls and damage DNA, affecting both human and nonhuman life-forms at the cellular level. Recent research on silicon nanoparticles, in particular, has shown that if a particle is very small in nano scale, it can act almost as a tiny, carcinogenic bomb. Multiply that by a minimum of several hundred per mask, at a rate of 50,000 masks disposed per second, and the scope of the dilemma grows vivid. 

“I think this is a bit of an urgent situation, as both a scientist and as an environmental expert,” Sarp said….

A few recent studies have revealed that there are toxic chemicals in paper straws and N-95 masks that are unsafe for humans and the environment. My advice is simple: just be normal. Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel reacts to a South Korean study in mice finding that N-95 masks could cause cancer and says mandates could cost more lives than COVID.

On my Facebook I linked a story from LIFE SITE quoting a DAILY MAIL article about harmful chemicals from masks worn to “combat” covid.

Here is the gist of my Facebook post:

New study finds extended use of ‘best’ COVID masks may cause cancer, liver damage

South Korean researchers found that KFAD and KF94 disposable masks, South Korea’s equivalent of N95 masks made out of the same material, release eight times the EPA’s recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds.

As some institutions in the United States begin to reimpose COVID-19 mask mandates, a new study suggests that the types of masks billed as most effective may actually contain dangerous and potentially even cancer-inducing chemicals.

The Daily Mail reports that according to a study by researchers from South Korea’s Jeonbuk National University, published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) website, KFAD and KF94 disposable masks release eight times the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds (TVOCs).

It was immediately “fact-checked“, and this is the reason for this post.

What does the “fact-check” say?

Misleading check

This is the Facebook FACT CHECK

The study also wasn’t published by the NIH, but by a scientific journal unaffiliated with the NIH.

[….]

In the wake of this news, a Daily Mail article published on 27 August 2023 claimed that a “mask study published by NIH suggests N95 Covid masks may expose wearers to dangerous level of toxic compounds linked to seizures and cancer”. 

[….]

Finally, the study was published in the journal of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, not by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), as the Mail claimed. The journal is part of the MEDLINE database, which is maintained by the U.S. Library of Medicine. That the study is made available on the NIH website doesn’t mean the NIH published it, just as a book being part of a lending library’s collection doesn’t mean it’s published by the library.

Firstly, all the articles I have seen clearly state the NIH wasn’t the author of the study, but merely shared it. Here is this portion of the “fact-check”

What did the DAILY MAIL article say?

But a study quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health in spring

[….]

The study was published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the NIH’s website. 

[….]

The NIH said: ‘Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.’

N o w h e r e in the Daily Mail article do they say the NIH was the origin of the study, nor did they even hint at it.  Everything the “fact check” said the Daily Mail article said. On to the next part. No matter the link you post on Facebook, you get the same dumb “check”:

  • But a study quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health in spring [….] The study was published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the NIH’s website, but the NIH pointed out that didn’t mean they accepted its conclusions: The NIH said: “Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.” — RED STATE
  • …published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety and on the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) website [….] The NIH website contains a disclaimer that it does not necessarily endorse studies it publishes… — LIFE SITE

So the “fact-check” misses the truth embedded in all these articles.

Another point they note is this regarding the study the “check” says:

  • While KF94 and N95 masks are considered to be functionally comparable, it’s important to note that the study’s results suggest that VOC levels differ depending on the material used to make the mask. Based on the study’s Table 5, the KF94 masks tested in the study were composed primarily of polypropylene and polyurethane nylon. Most N95 masks use polypropylene, according to Meedan’s Health Desk. The study didn’t test any N95 mask, so it doesn’t offer data about N95 masks that allows us to objectively compare VOC levels between N95 and KF94 masks.

What is laughable is that the “check” acts like this is a big difference. That is between the materials used in KF94 (polypropylene and polyurethane nylon) and the N95 (polypropylene). NEW YORK MAGAZINE below that both “are made of the same synthetic material and [also] filter out and capture 95 percent of particles in the air”. And REUTERS also likewise says, “[t]hese masks and their international counterparts known as KN95s and KF94s are often made of multiple layers of polypropylene, a synthetic fiber.”

KF94

N95

They are essentially the same exact mask, one has an extra layer, almost like a second mask, across the front. It is disingenuous for this “fact check” to say “we don’t know because this exact mask “model number” wasn’t tested.

At any rate, the conclusion of study everyone is talking about has this… I will emphasize the part that caught my eye:

As the number of problems that require mask wearing (including air pollution and COVID-19) grows, masks are increasingly important. Now that masks are all but required, the harmful chemicals that can be released from them must be evaluated. In this study, VOCs generated from various types of masks, including commonly used KF94 disposable masks, were assessed. The types and concentrations of VOCs that humans are likely to be exposed to from these masks under various conditions (i.e., emission time, temperature, and mask types) were calculated and compared. This study demonstrated that disposable masks (KF94) released higher concentrations of TVOCs in comparison to cotton masks, with values of 3730 ± 1331 µg m–3 for KF94 and 268 ± 51.6 µg m–3 for cotton masks. The concentrations of TVOCs in KF94 masks are high enough to pose a concern based on indoor air quality guidelines established by the German Federal Environment Agency. However, when KF94 masks were opened and left undisturbed for 30 min at room temperature, TVOC concentrations significantly decreased to 724 ± 5.86 µg m–3 (a 78.2 ± 9.45% reduction from levels measured immediately upon opening). It is clear that particular attention must be paid to the VOCs associated with the use of KF94 masks their effects on human health. Based on our findings, we suggest that prior to wearing a KF94 mask, each product should be opened and not worn for at least 30 min, thereby reducing TVOC concentrations to levels that will not impair human health.

FLASHBACK | Old Posts

August 2nd, 2018

In light of the moonbat jihad against drinking straws (see here, here, and here) having reached the point that providing customers with straws is now punishable with jail time in Santa Barbara, see if you can guess whether this is a legitimate story or fake news from the Babylon Bee…. (MOONBATTERY)

MOONBATTERY has more on the origin of this “500-million” number:

You may have heard that Starbucks — ever at the vanguard of moonbattery — has proclaimed that it will eliminate all single-use plastic straws by 2020. You may also have heard that the lids it will use that allow drinking without a straw require more plastic than if they just stuck with the straws. You may be aware that the liberal jihad against plastic straws is reaching critical mass:

In July, Seattle imposed America’s first ban on plastic straws. Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a similar ban a few months earlier. There are active attempts to prohibit straws in New York City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. A-list celebrities from Calvin Harris to Tom Brady have lectured us on giving up straws. Both National Geographic and The Atlantic have run long profiles on the history and environmental effects of the straw. Vice is now treating their consumption as a dirty, hedonistic excess.

But did you know that the anti-straw jihad is the brainchild of a little kid?

It began with a 9-year-old boy named Milo Cress and his 2011 campaign, “Be Straw Free,” which launched to raise awareness about plastic waste.

His big finding? Americans use more than 500 million drinking straws daily, enough to fill 125 school buses. That figure has become highly touted since, referenced in straw ban coverage from The New York Times and National Geographic to reports from the National Park Service (and USA TODAY).

Young Milo came up with the outlandishly improbable 500 million straws per day stat himself. Adult moonbats ran with it…..

August 26, 2018

I combine two different segments of John and Ken discussing California’s #FakeNews regarding straws and the environment. (The first segment is from Thursday’s show, the second is from Wednesday’s show [starts at the 7:15 mark]) Some funny and frustrating stuff.

FUNNIES

Most of these are from the 2018 straw ban… as a quick background to the AR-15 “bayonet” one, USA Today ran a story about assault weapons where they literally had a chainsaw modification in their graphics. So someone added the straws. Lol.

“Peer-Reviewed” Covid Article Failures | Unfollow the #Science

Published by Papa Giorgio

Wow, some amazing news as of late. I will start out with the bad news for the cult of vaccines, then a good peer-reviewed story. Including this flashback 6-months ago (video to the right).

Here is the video description for it:

As of November 18, 2022 Retraction Watch has documented 270 peer reviewed articles about COVID-19 that have been retracted by their publishers. Articles about the unusually high retraction rate have appeared in the journal Accountability in Research and in the journal Nature. The articles about the high retraction rate suggest that lowered stringency and standards on the part of publishers and the eagerness to publish on the part of researchers may have been driving forces in the unusually high retraction rate (typically only about 4 out of 10,000 research papers are retracted).

The high rate of flawed / junk science published raises questions about the effectiveness of the peer review process which was greatly expedited to get articles published quickly.

That FLASHBACK aside, here is the latest news via DAILY CALLER on the issue:

At least 330 COVID-19-related medical papers have been retracted since the coronavirus pandemic began, oftentimes for scientific errors or ethical shortcomings, according to watchdog Retraction Watch.

Many of the papers were published in smaller, less influential publications, although a number were published in the highly-prestigious Lancet and other influential journals like Science. The topics covered in the papers ranged from alternative proposed COVID-19 treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to false COVID-19 side effects.

One example of a U-turn from researchers occurred at the University of Manchester, where researchers two years ago asserted that hearing loss could be a result of COVID-19. Now, those researchers admit that was a faulty assumption.

Professor Kevin Munro of the University of Manchester audiology department admitted that many COVID-19 studies had been rushed. “There was an urgent need for this carefully conducted clinical and diagnostic study to investigate the long-term effects of Covid-19 on the auditory system. Many previous studies were published rapidly during the pandemic but lacked good scientific rigour,” he said.

One retracted paper published in Science examined the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in South Africa. It was withdrawn after social media users pointed out that some of the samples used could have been false positives. A number of the retractions were also social science papers, including one that used an inadequate sample size and imbalanced search terms to try and report on COVID-19 vaccine “misinformation” on social media……

This is why PJ-MEDIA headlines it as “Unfollow the Science.” and HOT AIR has a decent little break down as well:

More than 300 COVID-19-related articles have been retracted — long after they’d done their damage — due to a lack of scientific truthfulness and ethical guidelines, according to Retraction Watch, a website that monitors retractions of science-related articles.

A total of 330 COVID-related papers have been retracted thus far.

According to Gunnveig Grødeland, a senior researcher at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Oslo, many researchers took ethical shortcuts when writing their essays.

[….]

…The Lancet journal (which dubs itself as “The best science for better lives”) was described as having used “fraudulent research” when it concluded that hydroxychloroquine “caused an increased risk of heart arrhythmia and even death” in COVID patients. The World Health Organization used those findings as a justification to shut down their research into what turned out to be a very effective medication for treating COVID and the media lectured us endlessly about the dangers it posed, particularly after Trump endorsed it.

Another paper from the University of Manchester that has since disappeared reported that COVID “was associated with vertigo, hearing loss, and tinnitus.” They later admitted that this is not the case. The author of the paper apparently had no research to draw on, but since viruses such as measles, mumps, and meningitis can cause auditory damage, she said “it was reasonable to assume” that COVID would do so also. I see. So policy was being made based on assumption.

And then there was the whole Ivermectin debacle. (Also endorsed by Trump initially.)

So all of that unpleasantness is simply disappearing from medical journals and research archives. And the media would like us all to pretend that it never happened. But it did happen. And if we don’t learn anything from all of this, it will happen again when the next pandemic inevitably comes along. The need for speed must be moderated by adhering to proven practices from the past. And if you’re trusting the government to deal with you honestly and fairly based on the best available science rather than “The Science,” I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in purchasing.

HEADLINE USA notes some of the main ideas in the general public that were overturned pre and post pandemic:

  • Studies about the effectiveness of masking and other COVID-related control efforts pushed by government officials are under intense scrutiny. Some second looks even revealed that masking and other measures put people in more danger than was necessary.

And don’t forget that these retractions happened while the general public still went on having their mind warped by previous headlines and what they thought was “honest reporting”

JIMMY DORE SHOW w/Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

LA Times Prints DUMBEST Covid Article In History!

Even as the dominant COVID narrative rapidly unravels more every day, the establishment’s wagons are being circled, and a perfect example is a recent LA Times article by Michael Hiltzik insisting that the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration should have faced professional consequences for “getting COVID wrong.” Except that the horrific consequences of COVID took place following establishment guidelines, NOT The Great Barrington Declaration.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to The Great Barrington Declaration co-author Jay Bhattacharya about this LA Times hit piece filled with blatant misinformation.

I forgot to add this when I posted this originally… then I was off for a quick turn-around d to Arizona Thurs/Fri. So here is the missed PJ-MEDIA post I wanted to share. The entire post is worth linking over to, but I will emphasize the last sentence in my excerpt:

The pre-print for this study, prior to the peer review process, came out late last year. It showed, in a nutshell, that more COVID-19 shots correlated to a greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

But the COVIDians predictably, in eternal denial as is their nature, pounced on the fact that the initial paper was a pre-print. They dismissed it for not being peer-reviewed, which is often described as the “gold standard” stamp of approval by The ScienceTM.

Mind you, the corporate state media expresses no such criticism of pre-print studies that say what they want them to say about the alleged efficacy of masking, the wonders of Pfizer’s mRNA injections, etc. It’s only when a study counters the narrative that they pump the brakes.

Via McGill, February 2023:

Recently, some people have been spreading the idea that getting additional doses of the COVID vaccine increases the risk of catching the virus. The suggestion was made in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal and repeated recently by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The notion seems to stem from a preprint uploaded last December by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic. Opponents of vaccines have been using it to argue their case, worrying a fair number of people, if the emails I have received on the subject are any indication.

Well, now it is peer-reviewed, and none of the conclusions have changed….

 

The Harm Caused by Masks

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager reads from [and injects thoughts] a CITY JOURNAL article about masks and their harmful effects — especially on pregnant women. Now, we already now this from previous studies… but “experts” dismissed the CO2 levels as non-harmful when common sense thinkers knew otherwise. I assume this new study fortified measurement instruments used as well as the times and increasing the study base of the old [retracted] study (ABC). But this study shows the harm of what many-many studies pre and post Covid have shown and what we have known* – which is that masks are ineffective. Here is the article title and link:

  • The Harm Caused by Masks — A new study suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers can have major health consequences (City Journal)

*RELATED: 

  • More than 170 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms (Brownstone Institute)
  • JIMMY DORE: The Outcome Of Sweden’s “School As Usual” During Covid (RPT’s Rumble)

Here is an excerpt from that article:

…What can breathing too much carbon dioxide do to you? The authors write that “at levels between 0.05% and 0.5% CO2,” one might experience an “increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and overall increased circulation with the symptoms of headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, rhinitis, and dry cough.” Rates above 0.5 percent can lead to “reduced cognitive performance, impaired decision-making and reduced speed of cognitive solutions.” Beyond 1 percent, “the harmful effects include respiratory acidosis, metabolic stress, increased blood flow and decreased exercise tolerance.” Again, mask-wearers are likely breathing in CO2 levels between 1.4 percent and 3.2 percent—well above any of these thresholds. What’s more, “Testes metabolism and cell respiration have been shown to be inhibited increasingly by rising levels of CO2.”

So, high blood pressure, reduced thinking ability, respiratory problems, and reproductive concerns are among the many possible results of effectively poisoning oneself by breathing in too much carbon dioxide.

The authors write that “it is clear that carbon dioxide rebreathing, especially when using N95 masks, is above the 0.8% CO2 limit set by the US Navy to reduce the risk of stillbirths and birth defects on submarines with female personnel who may be pregnant.” In other words, mandates have forced pregnant women to wear masks resulting in levels of CO2 inhalation that would be prohibited if they were serving on a Navy submarine.

Indeed, according to the authors, there exists “circumstantial evidence that popular mask use may be related to current observations of a significant rise of 28% to 33% in stillbirths worldwide and a reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance of two full standard deviations in scores in children born during the pandemic.” They cite recent data from Australia, which “shows that lockdown restrictions and other measures (including masks that have been mandatory in Australia), in the absence of high rates of COVID-19 disease, were associated with a significant increase in stillborn births.” Meantime, “no increased risk of stillbirths was observed in Sweden,” which famously defied the public-health cabal and went its own way in setting Covid policies.

As for countries where mask-wearing has long been common, the authors write, “Even before the pandemic, in Asia the stillbirth rates have been significantly higher” than in Europe, Asia, or North Africa.

“It has to be pointed out that this data on the toxicity of carbon dioxide on reproduction has been known for 60 years,” the authors observe. For this reason, they write, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has CO2 threshold limits of 3 percent for 15 minutes and 0.5 percent for eight hours in workplace ambient air. Yet the CDC has been perhaps the primary pusher of masks in the United States.

Nor is increased CO2 intake the only health danger that results from wearing masks. The study focused only on CO2, but the authors note that “other noxious agents in the masks contribute to toxicological long-term effects like the inhalation of synthetic microfibers, carcinogenic compounds and volatile organic compounds.” They add that “the increased carbon dioxide content of the breathing air behind the mask may also lead to a displacement of oxygen.” Masks are also uncomfortable and unhygienic, and they profoundly compromise human social interaction.

In light of all this, it seems indefensible to mandate—or even to advise—the wearing of masks, especially among the young. The authors write, “Keeping in mind the weak antiviral mask efficacy, the general trend of forcing mask mandates even for the vulnerable subgroups is not based on sound scientific evidence and not in line with the obligation in particular to protect born or unborn children from potential harmful influences.”…

Some Medical School Harms:

This next section is merely to embolden Prager’s point regarding medical schools.

  • It took only 2 centuries to reduce American government from James Madison to Joe Biden. Unless reversed, it will take less than 1 century to reduce the medical profession to uselessness. (MOONBATTERY)

Just how woke is your nearest medical school? Likely very woke — yet the organization that helps oversee medical schools thinks it’s not woke enough.

So says the Association of American Medical Colleges, which last week released the first-ever analysis of the extent to which “diversity, equity and inclusion” have infected the institutions training future physicians. I’ve covered this trend for years, but even I didn’t realize just how much patients should worry about the decline in standards and, in time, the quality of their own care.

The AAMC surveyed 101 institutions, representing almost two-thirds of American medical schools (two are in Canada), asking for audits of their DEI-related policies and programs. While the AAMC doesn’t appear to have released a list of participating schools, my organization discovered the audits’ existence in October, when Ohio State University included the document prepared by its College of Medicine in response to our freedom of information request.

The AAMC asked medical schools to answer 89 yes-or-no questions on whether they have specific DEI activities. The results are shown as a kind of report card. Schools that score 80% are colored green, and those that score between 61% and 80% are yellow. Institutions below the 60% threshold are red — a sign of failure.

Medical schools should fear a failing grade from the AAMC, which helps determine whether they get accredited. As a former associate dean, I can attest that when the AAMC sets priorities, administrators rush to follow them.

All told, more than six out of 10 medical schools scored 80%. The Ohio State University College of Medicine audit shows a score of 93%, making it one of the most woke medical schools in America. Crucially, no institution scored lower than 50% — meaning virtually every medical school is implementing at least half the policies woke activists want.

So how are medical schools most woke? Affirmative action, for one: 100% have “admissions policies and practices for encouraging a diverse class of students.” Fully 85% have leaders who’ve “used demographic data to promote change” within their institution. In other words, medical schools are giving skin color and gender a consistently bigger emphasis in recruiting. This approach risks de-prioritizing merit, leading to a lower quality of medical students.

Schools are all but uniformly woke on many other measures. Ninety-nine percent have leaders who routinely participate in local, state or national DEI forums, diverting their focus from actual education. Some 98% have created a system for students to report bias, which risks self-censorship from educators who fear reprisals for teaching health care’s more difficult topics. The same percentage have launched new initiatives or funding streams for DEI, while 97% have “a dedicated office, staff, and resources.”

That means there’s a permanent bureaucracy at most medical schools pushing woke ideology on faculty and students alike. These efforts take away time and money from actual education.

Where are medical schools falling short on the woke checklist? Some 75% advocate for DEI “policies and/or legislation at a local, state, or federal level.” Yet that means three out of four medical schools are using precious resources (and their powerful clout) to push a divisive agenda. A good example is Ohio State University’s support for declaring racism a public-health crisis in Columbus, where the College of Medicine is based. This also wastes resources that would be better spent on medical training.

More than 40% of medical schools offer tenure and promotions to faculty who conduct DEI scholarship. The Indiana University School of Medicine, for instance, implemented this policy in July. The message to current and potential faculty is clear: If you want to advance in your career, you better toe the party line. Yet politicizing faculty research will worsen, not improve, medical education and care.

Remember: The AAMC is pushing 100% of medical schools to score 100% in each category, and most are trending in that direction. This doesn’t bode well for the future of health care. Medical schools are broadly lowering standards for admissions, faculty and research while devoting a higher share of resources to political lobbying, politicized bureaucracy and public virtue signaling…….

(NEW YORK POST | hat-tip to MOONBATTERY)

Leftism has subverted every college subject, including even medicine (see here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.). But that’s no reason not to put each and every student through reeducation bootcamp. If North Korea’s rulers were in charge of American universities, they would run them like SUNY:

The State University of New York will institute a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice course into its core curriculum across its 64 campuses beginning next fall for every incoming student.

There is to be no escape. Only by taking other classes in leftist radicalism can students avoid this one.

Students are not there to receive the education they want in exchange for tuition payments (plus lavish taxpayer subsidies). They are there to be put through a meat grinder and come out the other end as intellectually homogenous moonbats ready to serve the liberal establishment.

The new course will “explore race, class, and gender identity,” according to SUNY officials.

They will not be told anything bad about favored groups (blacks, homosexuals, women, Muslims) or anything good about disfavored groups (whites, nonperverts, men, Christians). They are to be trained on who to love and who to hate. Unless they spout the correct rhetoric, their GPAs will suffer.

Professors are not allowed to deviate from the socially corrosive leftist viewpoint. According to a fact sheet provided by SUNY educrats,

In fulfilling the learning outcomes for the DEISJ category, courses must explicitly address how institutional and societal structures lead to inequities across groups.

Dissident professors who stress forbidden concepts like liberty, individuality, merit, and personal responsibility are likely to lose their jobs………

(MOONBATTERY)

A few weeks ago, someone sent me a recording of a talk called “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” It was delivered at the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center by a New York-based psychiatrist as part of Grand Rounds, an ongoing program in which clinicians and others in the field lecture students and faculty. 

When I listened to the talk I considered the fact that it might be some sort of elaborate prank. But looking at the doctor’s social media, it seems completely genuine.

Here are some of the quotes from the lecture:

  • This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil. (Time stamp: 6:45)
  • I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor.  (Time stamp: 7:17)
  • White people are out of their minds and they have been for a long time.  (Time stamp: 17:06)
  • We are now in a psychological predicament, because white people feel that we are bullying them when we bring up race. They feel that we should be thanking them for all that they have done for us. They are confused, and so are we. We keep forgetting that directly talking about race is a waste of our breath. We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. It ain’t gonna happen. They have five holes in their brain. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall. It’s just like sort of not a good idea. (Time stamp 17:13)
  • We need to remember that directly talking about race to white people is useless, because they are at the wrong level of conversation. Addressing racism assumes that white people can see and process what we are talking about. They can’t. That’s why they sound demented. They don’t even know they have a mask on. White people think it’s their actual face. We need to get to know the mask. (Time stamp 17:54)

Here’s the poster from the event. Among the “learning objectives” listed is: “understand how white people are psychologically dependent on black rage.”….

(THE FREE PRESS)

During a recent endocrinology course at a top medical school in the University of California system, a professor stopped mid-lecture to apologize for something he’d said at the beginning of class.

“I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,” the physician says in a recording provided by a student in the class (whom I’ll call Lauren). “Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.” 

His offense: using the term “pregnant women.” 

“I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you.”

It wasn’t the first time Lauren had heard an instructor apologize for using language that, to most Americans, would seem utterly inoffensive. Words like “male” and “female.”

Why would medical school professors apologize for referring to a patient’s biological sex? Because, Lauren explains, in the context of her medical school “acknowledging biological sex can be considered transphobic.”

When sex is acknowledged by her instructors, it’s sometimes portrayed as a social construct, not a biological reality, she says. In a lecture on transgender health, an instructor declared: “Biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender are all constructs. These are all constructs that we have created.” 

In other words, some of the country’s top medical students are being taught that humans are not, like other mammals, a species comprising two sexes. The notion of sex, they are learning, is just a man-made creation. 

The idea that sex is a social construct may be interesting debate fodder in an anthropology class. But in medicine, the material reality of sex really matters, in part because the refusal to acknowledge sex can have devastating effects on patient outcomes. 

In 2019, the New England Journal of Medicine reported the case of a 32-year-old transgender man who went to an ER complaining of abdominal pain. While the patient disclosed he was transgender, his medical records did not. He was simply a man. The triage nurse determined that the patient, who was obese, was in pain because he’d stopped taking a medication meant to relieve hypertension. This was no emergency, she decided. She was wrong: The patient was, in fact, pregnant and in labor. By the time hospital staff realized that, it was too late. The baby was dead. And the patient, despite his own shock at being pregnant, was shattered.

Professors Running Scared of Students

To Dana Beyer, a trans activist in Maryland who is also a retired surgeon, such stories illustrate how vital it is that sex, not just gender identity — how someone perceives their gender — is taken into consideration in medicine. “The practice of medicine is based in scientific reality, which includes sex, but not gender,” Beyer says. “The more honest a patient is with their physician, the better the odds for a positive outcome.”

The denial of sex doesn’t help anyone, perhaps least of all transgender patients who require special treatment. But, Lauren says, instructors who discuss sex risk complaints from their students — which is why, she thinks, many don’t. “I think there’s a small percentage of instructors who are true believers. But most of them are probably just scared of their students,” she says. 

And for good reason. Her medical school hosts an online forum in which students correct their instructors for using terms like “male” and “female” or “breastfeed” instead of “chestfeed.” Students can lodge their complaints in real time during lectures. After one class, Lauren says, she heard that a professor was so upset by students calling her out for using “male” and “female” that she started crying. 

Then there are the petitions. At the beginning of the year, students circulated a number of petitions designed to, as Lauren puts it, “name and shame” instructors for “wrongspeak.” 

One was delivered after a lecture on chromosomal disorders in which the professor used the pronouns “she” and “her” as well as the terms “father” and “son,” all of which, according to the students, are “cisnormative.” After the petition was delivered, the instructor emailed the class, noting that while she had consulted with a member of the school’s LGBTQ Committee prior to the lecture, she was sorry for using such “binary” language. Another petition was delivered after an instructor referred to “a man changing into a woman,” which, according to the students, incorrectly assumed that the trans woman wasn’t always a woman. But, as Lauren points out, “if trans women were born women, why would they need to transition?”

This phenomenon — of students policing teachers; of students being treated as the authorities over and above their teachers — has had consequences……

(THE FREE PRESS)

The Left’s “long march through the institutions” continues. Higher education started falling into line decades ago. And in recent years, professional schools have started doing so. Yes, that includes medicine.

In today’s Martin Center article, John Sailer writes about the conquest of the University of North Carolina’s medical school by the forces of “social justice.”

[….]

Take a look at the new promotion and tenure guidelines:

Application of material learned in DEI trainings (e.g. Safe Zone, Unconscious Bias, Implicit Bias, etc.) to promote an environment of cultural awareness, knowledge, and sensitivity.

Performing DEI or social justice-focused lectures to students, residents, or peers.

Leading a discussion or professional development activity on DEI topics.

Participating in local postgraduate or continuing medical education DEI courses.

Preparing DEI or social justice curriculum materials.

Either put your efforts in “social justice” stuff or out you go.

(NATIONAL REVIEW)

Professors at America’s top medical schools are being bullied by woke students into apologizing for using ‘transphobic’ phrases like ‘pregnant woman’ and ‘breastfeeding’

  • One student at a University of California medical school says her peers are ‘policing’ words used by professors
  • A number of petitions have allegedly circulated which are designed to ‘name and shame’ instructors for  using ‘wrongspeak’ – such as non gender-neutral terms
  • Professors are now allegedly apologizing for using terms such as ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘pregnant woman’
  • One instructor was heard on a recording claiming that ‘biological sex is a construct’
  • Some experts are saying that downplaying the differences between males and females could lead to misdiagnosis or diseases going undetected
  • A patient’s gender may put them at greater risk of certain diseases, with a transgender man’s pregnancy being misdiagnosed also cited  

(DAILY MAIL)

  • Woke doctors blast ‘corrupted’ medical schools for rejecting students on MCAT and GPA scores: ‘Insignificant’ — The authors emphasized that medical schools are corrupting the admissions process by considering the importance of an applicant’s grades (FOX NEWS)
  • Professor apologizes to medical students for being ‘offensive,’ saying ‘only women can get pregnant’ (CHRISTIAN POST)
  • Indiana medical students schooled in woke DEI instruction on gender (BPR)
  • Woke Harvard Professor Slams Colleague for Embracing Two Biological Sexes (BREITBART)
  • First-Year Med Students Told to Call Women ‘People With Cervices’; Professor Slams ‘Anti-Biological’ Lesson (THE DAILY SIGNAL)
  • UPenn doctor: ‘Anti-racist’ policies are wrecking American medicine (NEW YORK POST)
  • Woke College Officials Who Booted Defiant Math Professor Get Worst News Yet from a Federal Court (WESTERN JOURNAL)
  • Medical School Professors are Scared to Mention Gender to Woke Students (LIBERTY PLANET)
  • Doctor warns ‘woke’ agenda gaining foothold in medical colleges: ‘Diversity above merit’ (FOX NEWS)

ETC ET AL

 

Woman Offered $100,000 To Take Off Her Mask

Published by Papa Giorgio

(See Steve Kirsch’s post on the story) Tech millionaire Steve Kirsch tweeted that he offered $100,000 to his Delta first class seatmate to remove her mask for the entire flight, despite his explanation that masks don’t work. The tweet has been viewed over 20 million times, and he claimed that the seatmate works for a pharmaceutical company.

GUTFELD & GUESTS

The Atlantic Investigates CDC’s Latest Mask Claims

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted December 2021)

I heard this on the radio… I do not know which show, but I read about it shortly thereafter at TOWNHALL; it deals with the new favorite study cited by the CDC showing masks prevent spread among children. The CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, even double downed on the mask study from Arizona — even though the ATLANTIC (“The CDC’s Flawed Case for Wearing Masks in School”) trashed it:

When the Director mentions studies in other countries… she is referring to the Bangladesh study, but that will be dealt with momentarily. Here is an excerpt from TOWNHALL’S article:

The Atlantic called out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for some of the data it relied upon to  push its case for masking in schools, arguing the agency’s position is “based on very shaky science.”

“Scientists generally agree that, according to the research literature, wearing masks can help protect people from the coronavirus, but the precise extent of that protection, particularly in schools, remains unknown—and it might be very small,” author David Zweig argued. 

The data that currently exists has led to a wide array of position on masking children in schools, Zweig pointed out—from the World Health Organization being against the masking of kids under the age of 6 to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control also opposed to masking children in primary school. The CDC, however, forces masks upon children as young as 2.

To help make this case, CDC Director Rochelle Walenksy in September touted a study based on Arizona public schools claiming that those without a mask mandate were 3.5 times as likely to have an outbreak of Covid-19 than those that forced masking. Walensky repeated the study’s claim in multiple settings in the weeks and months afterwards.

But the Arizona study at the center of the CDC’s back-to-school blitz turns out to have been profoundly misleading. “You can’t learn anything about the effects of school mask mandates from this study,” Jonathan Ketcham, a public-health economist at Arizona State University, told me. His view echoed the assessment of eight other experts who reviewed the research, and with whom I spoke for this article. Masks may well help prevent the spread of COVID, some of these experts told me, and there may well be contexts in which they should be required in schools. But the data being touted by the CDC—which showed a dramatic more-than-tripling of risk for unmasked students—ought to be excluded from this debate. The Arizona study’s lead authors stand by their work, and so does the CDC. But the critics were forthright in their harsh assessments. Noah Haber, an interdisciplinary scientist and a co-author of a systematic review of COVID-19 mitigation policies, called the research “so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public discourse.”

This is not the only study cited by Walensky in support of masking students, but it’s among the most important, having been deployed repeatedly to justify a policy affecting millions of children—and having been widely covered in the press. The agency’s decision to trumpet the study’s dubious findings, and subsequent lack of transparency, raise questions about its commitment to science-guided policy. (The Atlantic)

After detailing the numerous issues with the study, Zweig said the government continuing to tout it is “especially demoralizing.”

“How did research with so many obvious flaws make its way through all the layers of internal technical review? And why was it promoted so aggressively by the agency’s director?” he wondered. 

Not surprisingly, Walensky’s office declined to comment……

Other sites likewise write on this unraveling of a study founded not in science but in pseudo-science:

  • The Study That Convinced the CDC To Support Mask Mandates in Schools Is Junk Science (REASON)
  • Atlantic: Study On School Masking Promoted By The CDC Is ‘Unreliable’ (HOT AIR)
  • Walensky’s Junk Science On Masks And Other Commentary (NEW YORK POST)

INTERMISSION…..

Fact Checker Tries to Debunk Study Proving Masks Didn’t Work in Europe, Fails Miserably

An article from The National Pulse went viral last month that reported on a European study that concluded masks were not effective in preventing the transmission of COVID-19 when it was most needed, and even showed a positive correlation between mask usage and COVID deaths.

The peer reviewed study “Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe” was published in Cureus Journal of Medical Science in April of this year, and was authored by Beny Spira, an Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo.

The National Pulse’s Natalie Winters, explained in her summary of the study that:

Countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage,” found a new study, whose data and analysis instead discovered a “moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths.”

“Data from 35 European countries on morbidity, mortality, and mask usage during a six-month period were analyzed and crossed,” continued the study, which encompassed a total of 602 million people.

“The findings presented in this short communication suggest that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage in the six-month period that encompassed the second European wave of COVID-19,” Spira summarized.

“The lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission.”

The study also found  the aforementioned positive correlation between mask wearing and deaths. “Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences,” though the positive relationship between mask usage and cases wasn’t statistically significant.

So in summary, the study’s main takeaway found a lack of negative correlation between mask wearing and a reduction in COVID transmission, and so absent was a negative relationship that a “moderate” positive one for COVID deaths was actually present……

(the rest of the article discusses the failed “fact check”)

New Lancet Study Destroys the CDC’s Justification for School Mask Mandates

Specifically, the study not only replicates the CDC study, which found a “negative association” between masks and pediatric cases of Covid-19, it also extends the study to include more districts over a longer period of time. In the end, the new study had nearly “six times as much data as the original study.”

“Replicating the CDC study shows similar results; however, incorporating a larger sample and longer period showed no significant relationship between mask mandates and case rates,” the study finds. “These results persisted when using regression methods to control for differences across districts. Interpretation: School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval. Our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables. Randomized studies can more reliably inform public health policy.”….

…..INTERMISSION “UPDATE” OVER

The other study relied upon to push masks, despite there being well over “150 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms“, is one cited a couple months back that I already dealt with a bit — but will repost some information on it here as it is related.

….The data suggests that the elderly benefit from community masking, and the elderly are at the greatest risk from COVID-19. But while the results were statistically significant, they were fairly limited. The study found just a 0.7% absolute decrease in COVID-19 symptoms in the cloth mask villages, and a 1.1% absolute decrease in the surgical mask villages.

[….]

The study also provided no insight into the question of masking for children. Children under age 12 remain the only population in the U.S. unable to get vaccinated, and whether or not to mandate masks in schools is the primary debate happening currently with regard to masking. The data suggests that masking kids may marginally benefit the adults around them, who have by now chosen whether or not to get vaccinated, but says nothing as to whether masking will benefit the kids themselves in a significant way.

Critics of the study also pointed out that, based on the 95% confidence intervals reported, it’s possible the cloth masks had zero effect. 

The study shows that community masking helps slow the spread of COVID-19 by a relatively small amount among the elderly in a community with little-to-no vaccinated people. In the U.S., where most adults are vaccinated, and the most vulnerable were prioritized for vaccination and other mitigation efforts are available (ventilation, more advanced medical care, etc.), the meaning is less clear.

(DAILY CALLER)

And of course we can’t forget the Director’s completely false statement about masks being 80% affective (see LIFESITE):

And a Michigan study of schools that had mask rules and those schools that required no masking was also devastating to the “masks help” narrative:

  • The latest reporting actually shows that schools with “few/no mask rules” had fewer 7-day average cases per 100,000 than schools where masks are required or schools with “partial mask rules.” (THE BLAZE)

IN UNRELATED NEWS

Masks are worse for the environment than Styrofoam cups!

ACLU Fights Against Freedom of Choice

Published by Papa Giorgio

This craziness is via ACE OF SPADES…. had to share:

The ACLU — the American Civil Rights Union, supposedly — is challenging Youngkin’s optional masking order which… gives the right to choose masking, or choose not to mask, to Virginia citizens.

Or, as the Washington Post dysphemizes it (the opposite of euphemizes): “mandates choice.”

Imposes freedom!

The ACLU is now against the imposition of burdensome freedom and dangerous rights.

For those keeping track, the ACLU is now fighting on behalf of schools — government bodies — to take away the rights of citizen parents and citizen students.

Fired-Up Virginia Mom Paddles School Board

Published by Papa Giorgio

Clay Travis and Buck Sexton want you to hear what this fired-up mom had to say at a Virginia school board meeting. You don’t want to mess with this mama bear.

Here is her FULL SPEECH!

Clay and Buck note the author of the Atlantic whom they had on to interview a couple weeks back wrote this in said article:

To our knowledge, the CDC has performed three studies to determine whether masking children in school reduces COVID-19 transmission. The first is a study of elementary schools in Georgia, conducted before vaccines became available, which found that masking teachers was associated with a statistically significant decrease in COVID-19 transmission, but masking students was not—a finding that the CDC’s masking guidelines do not account for.

A second and more recent study of Arizona schools in Maricopa and Pima Counties concluded that schools without mask mandates were more likely to have COVID-19 outbreaks than schools with mask mandates. Yet more than 90 percent of schools in the “no mask mandate” group were in Maricopa County, an area that has significantly lower vaccination rates than Pima County. This study had other serious shortcomings, including failure to quantify the size of outbreaks and failure to report testing protocols for the students.

The third CDC study found that U.S. counties without mask mandates saw larger increases in pediatric COVID-19 cases after schools opened, but again did not control for important differences in vaccination rates. The CDC has cited several other studies conducted in the previous school year to support its claim that masks are a key school-safety measure. However, none of these studies, including ones conducted in North Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, and Missouri, isolated the impact of masks specifically, because all students were required to mask and no comparisons were made with schools that did not require masks.

Therefore, the overall takeaway from these studies—that schools with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates—is not justified by the data that have been gathered. In two of these studies, this conclusion is undercut by the fact that background vaccination rates, both of staff and of the surrounding community, were not controlled for or taken into consideration. At the time these studies were conducted, when breakthrough infections were much less common, this was a hugely important confounding variable undermining the CDC’s conclusions that masks in schools provide a concrete benefit in controlling COVID-19 spread: Communities with higher vaccination rates had less COVID-19 transmission everywhere, including in schools, and those same communities were more likely to have mask mandates.

[….]

Other studies—not randomized trials—have looked at the effects of masks in schools, and their results do not support pervasive, endless masking at school. A study from Brown University, analyzing 2020–21 data from schools in New York, Massachusetts, and Florida, found no correlation between student cases and mask mandates, but did see decreased cases associated with teacher vaccination. A study published in Science looking at individual mitigation measures in schools last winter found that, although teacher masking reduced COVID-19 positivity, student masking did not have a significant effect.

Even though the first half of this school year was dominated by the highly transmissible Delta variant, the picture in more recent studies looks similar. In Tennessee, two neighboring counties with similar vaccination rates, Davidson and Williamson, have virtually overlapping case-rate trends in their school-age populations, despite one having a mask mandate and one having a mask opt-out rate of about 23 percent. One would expect a quarter of the students opting out of masking to affect transmission rates if masks played any significant role in controlling COVID-19 spread, but that was not the case. Another recent analysis of data from Cass County, North Dakota, comparing school districts with and without mask mandates, concluded that mask-optional districts had lower prevalence of COVID-19 cases among students this fall. Analyses of COVID-19 cases in Alachua County, Florida, also suggest no differences in mask-required versus mask-optional schools. Similarly, the U.K. recently reported finding no statistically significant difference in absences traced to COVID-19 between secondary schools with mask mandates and those without mandates.

Despite how widespread all-day masking of children in school is, the short-term and long-term consequences of this practice are not well understood, in part because no one has successfully collected large-scale systematic data and few researchers have tried. Mental and social-emotional outcomes are hard to observe and measure, and can take years to manifest. Initial data, however, are not reassuring. Recent prospective studies from Greece and Italy found evidence that masking is a barrier to speech recognition, hearing, and communication, and that masks impede children’s ability to decode facial expressions, dampening children’s perceived trustworthiness of faces. Research has also suggested that hearing-impaired children have difficulty discerning individual sounds; opaque masks, of course, prevent lip-reading. Some teachers, parents, and speech pathologists have reported that masks can make learning difficult for some of America’s most vulnerable children, including those with cognitive delays, speech and hearing issues, and autism. Masks may also hinder language and speech development—especially important for students who do not speak English at home. Masks may impede emotion recognition, even in adults, but particularly in children. This fall, when children were asked, many said that prolonged mask wearing is uncomfortable and that they dislike it……….

(THE ATLANTIC)

Of Whistleblowers, School Closures, and Masks (Covid Lies)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Three stories I posted on RPT’s Facebook Page:

Pfizer Whistleblower

(I assume this is a whistleblower Democrats don’t like.) BMJ listens to evidence from whistleblower over the Pfizer vaccine trial.

Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight. (British Medical Journal)

In autumn 2020 Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Albert Bourla, released an open letter to the billions of people around the world who were investing their hopes in a safe and effective covid-19 vaccine to end the pandemic. “As I’ve said before, we are operating at the speed of science,” Bourla wrote, explaining to the public when they could expect a Pfizer vaccine to be authorised in the United States.

But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.

[…..]

Concerns Raised

In her 25 September email to the FDA Jackson wrote that Ventavia had enrolled more than 1000 participants at three sites. The full trial (registered under NCT04368728) enrolled around 44 000 participants across 153 sites that included numerous commercial companies and academic centres. She then listed a dozen concerns she had witnessed, including:

  • Participants placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff

  • Lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events

  • Protocol deviations not being reported

  • Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures

  • Mislabelled laboratory specimens, and

  • Targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting these types of problems.

Within hours Jackson received an email from the FDA thanking her for her concerns and notifying her that the FDA could not comment on any investigation that might result. A few days later Jackson received a call from an FDA inspector to discuss her report but was told that no further information could be provided. She heard nothing further in relation to her report.

In Pfizer’s briefing document submitted to an FDA advisory committee meeting held on 10 December 2020 to discuss Pfizer’s application for emergency use authorisation of its covid-19 vaccine, the company made no mention of problems at the Ventavia site. The next day the FDA issued the authorisation of the vaccine.8

In August this year, after the full approval of Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA published a summary of its inspections of the company’s pivotal trial. Nine of the trial’s 153 sites were inspected. Ventavia’s sites were not listed among the nine, and no inspections of sites where adults were recruited took place in the eight months after the December 2020 emergency authorisation. The FDA’s inspection officer noted: “The data integrity and verification portion of the BIMO [bioresearch monitoring] inspections were limited because the study was ongoing, and the data required for verification and comparison were not yet available to the IND [investigational new drug].”

Other Employees’ Accounts

In recent months Jackson has reconnected with several former Ventavia employees who all left or were fired from the company. One of them was one of the officials who had taken part in the late September meeting. In a text message sent in June the former official apologised, saying that “everything that you complained about was spot on.”

Two former Ventavia employees spoke to The BMJ anonymously for fear of reprisal and loss of job prospects in the tightly knit research community. Both confirmed broad aspects of Jackson’s complaint. One said that she had worked on over four dozen clinical trials in her career, including many large trials, but had never experienced such a “helter skelter” work environment as with Ventavia on Pfizer’s trial.

“I’ve never had to do what they were asking me to do, ever,” she told The BMJ. “It just seemed like something a little different from normal—the things that were allowed and expected.”

She added that during her time at Ventavia the company expected a federal audit but that this never came.

After Jackson left the company problems persisted at Ventavia, this employee said. In several cases Ventavia lacked enough employees to swab all trial participants who reported covid-like symptoms, to test for infection. Laboratory confirmed symptomatic covid-19 was the trial’s primary endpoint, the employee noted. (An FDA review memorandum released in August this year states that across the full trial swabs were not taken from 477 people with suspected cases of symptomatic covid-19.)

“I don’t think it was good clean data,” the employee said of the data Ventavia generated for the Pfizer trial. “It’s a crazy mess.”

A second employee also described an environment at Ventavia unlike any she had experienced in her 20 years doing research. She told The BMJ that, shortly after Ventavia fired Jackson, Pfizer was notified of problems at Ventavia with the vaccine trial and that an audit took place.

Since Jackson reported problems with Ventavia to the FDA in September 2020, Pfizer has hired Ventavia as a research subcontractor on four other vaccine clinical trials (covid-19 vaccine in children and young adults, pregnant women, and a booster dose, as well an RSV vaccine trial; NCT04816643, NCT04754594, NCT04955626, NCT05035212). The advisory committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is set to discuss the covid-19 paediatric vaccine trial on 2 November.

SCHOOL CLOSURES

School closures ‘did not significantly reduce Covid spread’ – The Telegraph (Michigan University Study – TELEGRAPH [takes a few seconds to load] & EVIDENCE NOT FEAR)

  • There is “no evidence” that school closures significantly reduced the spread of Covid, a study has found.

The research, published in the journal Nature Medicine, used data from Japan, where each municipality is responsible for the closure of schools in their areas.

…”Empirically, we find no evidence that school closures in Japan caused a significant reduction in the number of coronavirus cases,” they said.

“If opening schools leads to the spread of Covid-19, spikes of cases would occur in the control group; however, these were not observed. The implication is the same: school closures do not help reduce the spread of Covid-19 significantly.”

…Separate research, published earlier this year, found the UK had closed schools for longer than anywhere in Europe other than Italy over the past 18 months.

CDC MASK LIES


80% Effective? CDC Chief Floats Argument For Permanent Mask Mandate (WND)

….Kyle Lamb, a data researcher for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the state with the lowest rate of COVID infection, took issue with Walensky.

“There is not a single study in the entire world that has been produced during the pandemic, or especially before, that shows masks reduce infections by 80%,” he said on Twitter.

“This is the most comically bad misinformation I have ever seen. CDC has been reduced to outright lies.”

Yale Law School professor Samantha Godwin said the CDC director has made “a specific empirical claim for which no data exists.”

“Misinformation breeds justified distrust,” she said on Twitter.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, noted everyone is “dunking on” Walensky’s “preposterous tweet about mask efficacy.”

“But it’s an improvement since last year when the former CDC director said masks were better than vaccines,” he said, referring to Dr. Robert Redfield. “At this rate, they’ll get it right in 2050 or so.”

The CDC’s stance on masks has changed since the beginning of the pandemic.​ In March 2020, the agency said masks “are usually not recommended” in “non-health care settings.”

The same month, the World Health Organization recommended people not wear face masks unless they are sick with COVID-19 or caring for someone who is sick. Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said in March 2020 that there “is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit.

“In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,” he said.

Similarly, in a March 2020 interview with “60 Minutes,” White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci warned of “unintended consequences,” saying there’s “no reason to be walking around with a mask” in “the middle of an outbreak.”

In May 2020, a CDC study on the use of measures such as face masks in pandemic influenza concluded “evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission.”

Fauci and others argue the science has evolved. However, a study earlier this year by the University of Louisville was among many that found that state mask mandates did not help slow the spread of COVID-19. A CDC study in October 2020 indicated that Americans were adhering to mask mandates, but the requirements didn’t appear to have slowed or stopped the spread of the coronavirus. And further, it found, mask-wearing has negative effects. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has compiled a page of “Mask Facts” showing that the consensus prior to the coronavirus pandemic was that the effectiveness of mask-wearing by the general public in slowing the spread of a virus is unproven, and there’s evidence it does more harm than good.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden are among the many European nations not requiring masks for school children. Norway has never recommended face masks for schools, and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health explicitly advises against masking primary school-aged children. In Sweden, masks are no longer recommended on public transit, even at rush hour.

In most of the United Kingdom, the New York Times reported, elementary school children and their teachers were not required to wear masks during the delta surge there earlier this year.

A study of masked German schoolchildren published June 30 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics found carbon dioxide content in “inhaled air” was at least three-fold higher than German law allows. Complaints by children regarding mask-wearing registered in a German database included irritability, headache and reluctance to go to school. The JAMA paper cited the “dead-space volume of the masks, which collects exhaled carbon dioxide quickly after a short time.”

An analysis published in Nature magazine found that N95 masks do offer some protection from airborne viral diseases, but the common surgical mask, which has holes bigger than the SARS-CoV-2 virus, loses any efficacy after about 20 minutes because of the buildup of vapor from breathing…..

Seat Belt Analogy (Masks and Vaccines)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I wanted to post some responses what has been becoming a popular argument. For instance I came across this graphic on a friends Facebook:

It came up with a family member’s conversations as well. So I wanted to make accessible some responses.

MASKS AND SEATBELTS:

The first example in this section comes from ECONLOG’S Bryan Caplan (Professor of Economics at George Mason University):

….The obvious place to start is: Almost no one thought that wearing masks was a good thing before Covid-19.  Yet contagious respiratory diseases that kill have been around longer than humans.  So if the “In exchange for slight inconvenience and discomfort, we save lives,” argument were airtight, we should have been wearing masks all along – and should plan on doing so forever.  Which seems crazy.

You could reply, “That’s a straw man.  The real argument is that masks pass a cost-benefit test.”  If so, that leaves anti-maskers with two obvious margins to think about.

1. The degree of effectiveness.  The most popular version of this objection is that masks don’t save lives.  But once you start doing cost-benefit analysis, it is sufficient to claim that masks don’t save enough lives.  The evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) is surprisingly supportive of this position.  (And if you deem the RCTs subpar, please join me in calling for large-scale Voluntary Human Experimentation to settle the question once and for all).  Ultimately, however, I still suspect that masks reduce contagion by 10-15%.

2. The degree of inconvenience and discomfort. Many people plainly don’t much mind wearing a mask.  But despite Social Desirability Bias against convenience and comfort, plenty of others plainly do mind.

[….]

3. The degree of dehumanization. Personally, I only find masks marginally uncomfortable.  But I hate wearing them, and I dislike being around people who wear them.  Why?  Because a big part of being human is showing other people our faces – and seeing their faces in return.  Smiling at a stranger.  Seeing your child laugh.  Pretending to be angry.  Seeing another person’s puzzlement.  Masks take most of those experiences away.  At the same time, they moderately reduce audibility.  Which further dehumanizes us.  How many times during Covid have you struggled to understand another person?  To be heard?  Indeed, how many times have you simply abandoned a conversation because of masks?  I say the dehumanization is at least five times as bad as the mere discomfort.  And if you reply, “Want to see other people’s faces and hear other people’s voices?  Just Zoom!,”  I will shake my head in sorrow that you’re dehumanized enough to say such a thing.

Am I just being a big baby about this?  I think not.  Suppose humanity could eliminate all disease by wearing bags over our heads forever.  Would you be willing to go through life not seeing the faces of your children?  Would you want your child to go through life not seeing the faces of their friends?  Well, during Covid we’ve moved at least 25% in that dystopian direction.  The word “hellscape” is not out of place.  I’ve never been a fan of the veiling of women, but I had to live through Covid to realize how horribly dehumanizing the custom really is.

What if the choice was between masks and a 50% annual chance of death?  The reasonable reaction would probably be, “Fine, we’ll be severely dehumanized, but we’ll survive.  Just like war.  I guess I’ll take it until a better deal comes along.”  When the choice is between masks and a 0.5% annual chance of death, however, the reasonable reaction is rather, “I’ll take my chances and live like a human being.”  Indeed, once you’re old enough, even a 50% annual chance of death starts to look like a good deal.  My considered judgment: If another Covid strikes when I’m 80, I do not want my grandchildren to wear masks around me.  I want to enjoy their laughter while I still can…..

The masks are dehumanizing, seatbelts are not. The argument against women being forced to wear burkas in many counties in the Middle-East is that they dehumanizes them.

One of the main points is that almost every study shows a very slight improvement at best. Here, for instance is a CDC study showing how ineffective they are — much more-so than seatbelts.

Here is the CDC STUDY: “Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures”

In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946–July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks (RR 0.78, 95% CI 0.51–1.20; I2 = 30%, p = 0.25) (Figure 2). …. None of the household studies reported a significant reduction in secondary laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the face mask group (11–13,15,17,34,35)….

[….]

Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza….

Here is CITY JOURNAL’S last two paragraph’s of an excellent article: DO MASKS WORK?

In sum, of the 14 RCTs that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless—whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone—or actually counterproductive. Of the three studies that provided statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis that was not contradicted within the same study, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than hand hygiene alone, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than nothing, and one found that cloth masks were less effective than surgical masks.

Hiram Powers, the nineteenth-century neoclassical sculptor, keenly observed, “The eye is the window to the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth.” The best available scientific evidence suggests that the American people, credulously trusting their public-health officials, have been blocking the door to the soul without blocking the transmission of the novel coronavirus.

MORE EXAMPLES:

Here are two short videos via BILL MAHER making sense:

Some posts by American Institute for Economic Research (AIER):

MASKS and VACCINES:

This from NATIONAL REVIEW:

…Princeton’s notorious utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer now joins Ezekiel “Mandate” Emanuel in an internationally syndicated column urging that everyone be legally required to take the COVID jab.

Singer justifies this imposition by comparing the proposal to laws that require people to wear seat belts in cars. From, “Why Vaccination Should be Compulsory:”

We are now hearing demands for the freedom to be unvaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. Brady Ellison, a member of the United States Olympic archery team, says his decision not to get vaccinated was “one hundred percent a personal choice,” insisting that “anyone that says otherwise is taking away people’s freedoms.”

The oddity, here, is that laws requiring us to wear seat belts really are quite straightforwardly infringing on freedom, whereas laws requiring people to be vaccinated if they are going to be in places where they could infect other people are restricting one kind of freedom in order to protect the freedom of others to go about their business safely.

Good grief. There is a huge difference between a law that requires wrapping a cloth belt around one’s body while in a moving car and injecting chemicals into one’s system. Yes, both acts involve attempts to promote public safety. But the former’s interference with liberty is de minimus, while the latter is one of the most potentially portentous that can be asked of people.

In free societies, legal mandates must be reasonable. A national vaccination mandate — which would be unprecedented — fails that test.

Why aren’t near-universal mandates “reasonable?” Well, young people almost never become seriously ill from COVID — although a very few certainly do. But there is also some evidence of a very slight — but potentially serious — risk from the vaccines for the young. If we care about freedom, surely, for the young, vaccination may be the preferred — but should not be the mandatory — course.

There is also significant evidence that people who recovered from COVID already have significant natural resistance to the disease. That being so, is it reasonable to force people with antibodies to involuntarily inject substances into their bodies, particularly since there is a very slight potential for serious bodily injury or death from the vaccine? No.

Finally, the people most at risk of serious disease are the unvaccinated. People who choose to go unprotected are risking mostly themselves. Allowing them to face that risk is more reasonable than violating their personal autonomy…..

(read the rest)

NAMELY LIBERTY notes two major flaws in the argument:

  1. Unlike vaccine injury, there is no genetic risk to seat belt injury; unlike vaccines, the risk of seatbelt injure is random, and is therefore truly share among all people.  People injured by one vaccine likely have a higher probability of serious adverse health outcomes from additional vaccines.
  2. Unlike vaccines, seat belts routinely are subject to recall due to injury lawsuits, providing essential product quality feedback to seat belt and automobile manufacturers.  By contrast, vaccine manufacturers are immune to liability lawsuits.  Instead, families of individuals killed or injured by vaccines have to sue the US government – specifically the Department of Health of Human Services, via the Vaccine injury Compensation Program.  Liability for vaccine injury was removed for vaccine manufacturers and for medical doctors and nurses in 1986 with the National Vaccine Injury Act.  No vaccine injury damages visited upon vaccine manufacturers compel them to improve their product.  Instead, vaccine manufacturers and the HHS are incentived to deny that vaccine injuries and death occur.

As noted elsewhere, there is good evidence that there have been 150,000 deaths from the vaccines so far (million dollar research grant up for grabs to disprove), in the only studies done a week after the first or second dose, there is evidence that 30-40% of the people autopsied died from the vaccines.

In an excellent refutation, POOR ROGER’S ALMANNAC (love the name) puts to rest this analogy:

….However, there are a few things wrong with this argument.

  • The State owns the roads. It licenses drivers and autos to use those roads. It develops and enforces the rules which all drivers are expected to adhere to and, if they do not, it punishes them for the infractions. Whether you agree or disagree with State ownership of roads is irrelevant and a completely separate issue. The State owns them, it can do with them whatever it wants. This is a property rights question and should not be confused with a public health crisis in a pandemic.
  • The State does not own our bodies or faces. It does not own the air we breathe. It does not own the space in which we live or move. These are all ours, personally and privately, to use as we see fit, within certain restrictions, such as, not violating someone else’s air, body, or space. The State has no business trying to restrict, regulate, or order what we do with our air, our bodies, and our spaces. This, too, is a property rights issue and, as such, must be kept in perspective.
  • Seat belts are intended for one purpose only–to afford some measure of protection to the wearer in the event that an accident occurs. There are decades of data which prove that a person who wears a seat belt has a better chance of survival in an accident than a person who does not. This cannot be denied. However, a seat belt only protects one person–the wearer. It is useless and has no value to anyone else.
  • Face masks (I am told) are meant to protect, not only the wearer, but also those people the wearer comes into close proximity or contact with. If they protected only the wearer, the comparison with seat belts might be a little more palatable, but that is not the assertion. “You must wear them to protect others!” is the narrative. This moves the argument from one of property rights to the moral sphere, which are absolutely not the same.
  • Seat belts are of value only to the wearer AND ONLY THEN if an accident occurs. Under normal driving, the belt offers nothing more than, well, for want of a better word, assurance. However, if an accident does occur, it can be the difference between life and death. The key thing to remember, though, is that a motorist MUST be involved in an accident BEFORE value is received from the seat belt.
  • If a face mask and seat belt use are synonomous, then it must follow that face masks are valuable ONLY to the wearer AND ONLY THEN if he/she is “accidentally” infected. Wait a minute, though. Isn’t the argument that the mask is supposed to prevent the infection (accident), not to offer insurance against harm in the event of one. Not only are face masks dissimilar to seat belts in the persons they protect, but also in the manner of protection.

To be honest, if an automobile analogy is to be made with respect to face masks, it would be more useful to equate the mask to a Tesla self-driving auto, which (I am told) is supposed to protect not only those within the car, but other motorists within the vicinity as well. Considering Tesla’s “safety record” (I use that term loosely), this comparison might hold up quite well, since face masks also do not perform to the expectation of those who believe in them.

Seat belts do. No comparison.

Oh, by the way, I nearly missed this. Whether we are talking about seat belts or masks does not matter. The State can make all the rules it wants to and try as hard as it can to enforce those rules, but at the end of the day, it cannot prevent auto accidents from happening nor can it prevent someone from getting sick by catching a cold or flu virus. The State certainly cannot prevent a death, regardless of the cause, when the Grim Reaper calls.

God can. Perhaps we should be talking about misplaced faith.

Some Covid-Minded Facebook Debate (Plus, an RPT BONUS)

Published by Papa Giorgio

JUMP TO:

This is essentially part two of a previous post, and is really a commentary or a piecing together of conversation on Doc J’s Facebook. Here is the Original Post (OP) and where I decided to dive in – in the discussion strain.

As I said previously… I probably agree with Doc J on most things encompassing the worldview we hold. The Judeo-Christian framework of viewing nature, our belief in God, and the like. I recommend his books as they are well researched and written.

…all the being said… let’s continue…

This comment by TD G. caught my eye, and I want to preproduce it here as it signifies my position as well:

I’m taking a stand against a wicked govt, establishment, and world which I don’t trust is looking out for my best interests or being honest with me. You seem to be enamored with the nanny state and trust it like it’s your “Big Brother”.

They are using this virus and treatment to take control of the food industry (not that food is important), the medical industry (same), small businesses (same), the military (ditto), international travel, domestic flying, employment (not that having a means to provide for one’s family is as important as a virus with a 98-99% survival rate), health care, public assembly, free speech, buying groceries, education, etc.

Yet you continue pushing drugs like a guy on the street corner without consideration that the things I listed are far, FAR more dangerous and deadly than covid.

We’ll be as oppressed as the Red Chinese or USSR, but we won’t have as much covid! A 99% survival rate instead of 98!

This is still an issue with me — this next response by DOC J — and I will explain a bit more in this post as I go along than I did in the strain:

  • [responding to TD G] As long as I have been monitoring case fatality rate, the survival rate is rounded to 98% not 99%. But you are more afraid of a vaccine with a survival rate of 99.9999%.

I jump in to support TD G. a bit, and, keep in mind this is a multi-part post on FB that I will separate by line here:

TD G. the Doctor who admitted me to the ER Saturday also came up to my observation floor to discharge me. We had a good 30-minute talk each time. He noted that he sees all the markers (D-dimer test) in Covid patients for micro blood clots. [He did say he sees it less in vaccinated patients than unvaccinated — I do not want to put words in his mouth] He sees the same for people coming in after vaccination not feeling well.   John Stokes (NCAA golfer) is just the latest example of heart issues related to the vaccine. My buddy (a Federal Firefighter) story about that 28 year drill Sgt essentially dying shortly after his 2nd shot from a widow maker (if it weren’t for all the people around who could perform CPR — broken ribs and sternum because CPR was done the entire trip to the hospital). Marion Gruber, director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and Phil Krause, deputy director, will leave their positions in October and November, respectively, have said they are leaving because of disagreements over the booster. And my favorite, with very little autopsies done, the few that have been done within a week or two of the 1st or 2nd shot show a causal relation in about 30-to-40 percent. Plus everything TD said.

99.999%

DOC J keeps saying the survival rate of the vaccines is 99.999. But if he were honest, he would say it may be much lower [quoting my previous post, and added a tad more of the quote here]:

When DOC J says
  • “So the virus is far more fearful than the vaccine could possibly be,” he added. “Otherwise, we’re living in a magic universe if somehow a vaccine is more dangerous than a fast-multiplying virus.”
  • If the vaccine was “as bad” as conspiratorial websites say it is, he said, “we should be seeing millions of people dropping like flies, but we don’t even see the thousands of people.”

I am not a “conspiratorial website,” to be clear. And in fact, I often rant against conspiracies. And I agree, I do not think they are as bad as some say… however, I also do not think they are as safe as Doc Sarfati makes them out to be either. (For reasons already stated and to be stated, below.)

The people who have died from blood clots, heart attacks, and the like, after a 1st or 2nd dose have not had the proper medical evaluations to justify such “matter of fact” statements.

In reality, we do not know the REAL RATES of deadly side-effects so to examine the topic fully.

AUTOPSIES

AGAIN,

  • In short, Dr. Schirmacher performed autopsies on 40 people who had died within two weeks of receiving a Covid jab. Of those, 30%-40% could be directly attributed to the “vaccines.” He is calling for more autopsies of those who die shortly after getting injected to see if his numbers pan out. But Germany has thus far been reluctant to act. Meanwhile, the report of this highly respected pathologist and pro-vaccine doctor is being suppressed. (NOQ REPORT)

I don’t think this is a big conspiracy. In fact, the reasons why autopsies are not done that often is a combination of (a) the acceptance en masse of the change in death certificates by the CDC in April of last year as well as (b) a financial interest:

  • Unfortunately, autopsy rates have fallen from 25% to less than 5% over the past four decades. It never was a revenue producer for anyone except malpractice attorneys (WND).

The only other autopsy to dat is in the medical journal (PMC) regarding an 80-year old patient: First case of postmortem study in a patient vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2

Related as well to the already noted article about hospitals postponing elective surgeries via the Long Beach Business Journal is this detailed article by way of Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn LDI)

  • Hospitals lost more than $20 billion in revenue when the pandemic led to an unprecedented nationwide shutdown in elective surgical procedures from March to May 2020.

INFO BREAK

The CDC estimates that 83% of the American population has contracted Covid-19 (NEWSWEEK) — before the Delta variant. Eighty-three percent of 331.5 million is 275.1 million. Total deaths [although I highly disagree with this number] is 684,000. So the IFR rate for Covid AS A WHOLE is 0.25% of the population who most likely has got Covid. Similar to my MARCH 2020 numbers, understanding the numbers like this help us cut through the media B.S.

Plus, I argue that much like how we calculate flu seasons… we shouldn’t calculate the total to dat, rather, we should have a data set from the 2020-2021 Covid season. Because we know Covid was here in September of 2019, which would put us separate from 2019-2020 season of Covid. Someone needs to do what I did to the age groups and-or the 2020-2021 season. We are currently in the 2021-2022 season.

  • 2019-2020
  • 2020-2021
  • 2021-2022 (current)

These are the years the numbers should be broken down from. If we are going to do a similar thing with Covid as the CDC does with the flu. And, if you do this, say, compare the 2017-2018 Flu outbreak to the 2020-2021 Covid numbers to the IFR, the numbers would be almost identical.

For instance, this graph (which you can enlarge by clicking it) even states what I have above:

  • The number of cases displayed reflects how many have been tested & confirmed so far. It does NOT include the potentially many undetected people who are currently infected with COVID-19, whether asymptomatic or undiagnosed.

So again, that 1.8 fatality rate shown in most media broadcasts is not correct. Even the numbers from the UK do not reflect the IFR:

And this, collected over at PECKFORD 42:

THE INFECTION FATALITY RATE

According to the World Health Organisation, the mean infection fatality rate (“IFR”) for COVID-19 is less than 0.2%. This is the percentage of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who die. That data has now been fleshed out in more detail in a recent paper. Across all countries, the median IFR and the infection survival rate were as follows (rounded to two decimal places):

That is the extent of the problem that public health policies like lockdowns and mandatory vaccines are solving for. And this is the first elephant no one is talking about…..

BREAK OVER

DOC J responds to me lightly:

  • Sean G, My figures come from VAERS-reported deaths divided by the total number of people vaccinated. It’s not that hard. As usual, everything you fear from the vax you should fear a thousand times more from the virus. This includes blood clots and D-dimer. (Linked paper from JULY 2020: D-dimer level is associated with the severity of COVID-19)

I respond:

DOC J as an example. The autopsies done by Dr. Schirmacher were not reported to VAERS. So there is an under reporting happening that was the point of the two instances of autopsies noted in my post.

ABC DETROIT

[I am posting more of PJ-MEDIA’S excellent article here than I did in my response for my readers]

ABC in Detroit got a lot more than it bargained for when it asked its viewers on Facebook this question:
  • After the vaccines were available to everyone, did you lose an unvaccinated loved one to COVID-19? If you’re willing to share your family’s story, please DM us your contact information. We may reach out for a story we’re working on.

The post garnered more than 100,000 responses, almost all of which talked about family members the readers say were either injured or died after receiving the COVID vaccine. None of the reports can be verified, but the sheer number of responses is anecdotally interesting. The “ratio,” as the kids say, is epic. 

Audrey Tarrance Ravenna wrote, “After the vaccines were available, 3 family members did their duty and got vaccinated. One suffered 2 strokes, one suffered neurological problems/tremors, one suffered a pulmonary embolism. All three died.” She went on to add that she doesn’t know anyone who has had COVID except herself and she survived.

Dee Ann L Voth wrote, “My friend passed away from covid and she was fully vaccinated!” Amanda Anderson added, “My dad passed away in July after a stroke. I often wonder if it was from the vaccine.”

Jacki Thomas asked, “Have they reached out to anyone to research those who lost loved ones after or with the vaccinations yet??? Crickets?”

Tammi Marie Watts Staffer said, “My friend’s father was paralyzed after his first vax.” Scott Donaldson wrote, “My stepdad’s mom passed very shortly after Moderna.”

Kristy Branch wrote, “My 78-year-old father was pretty health [sic]…he got the Moderna now he’s walking with the walker [because] he keeps falling he’s weak he shakes and he has bathroom issues now I tried to get him not to do it… but he believed you crooked lying people from the news.”

Jen Roberton pointed out that the news station isn’t making any effort to get the other side of the story and it shows. “This is the response I expected. The media is asking the wrong questions.”

Lani Rose reported, “My son’s classmate lost her mother from heart complications due to the vaccine.” Lauren Greer replied to Rose, saying, “I lost my aunt! She never had heart issues before and suddenly after the vaccine, she died from complications with myocarditis??”

Holly Mulkey wrote, “My mom passed away in her sleep the day she got the vaccine. Her autopsy showed enlarged heart.”

Anna Mattheson wrote, “My friend David 40-years-old 2 days after vaccination heart failure and passed away.”

Jasmine Shirley said, “I have an appointment with a cardiologist due to some very random heart issues that started a week or two after my first shot.”

Kimberly Delvero wrote, “What about the vaccinated loved ones that were lost??????…. No one wants to talk about that??? It’s all about the unvaccinated and keeping the fear going…absolutely ridiculous!”

The comments go on and on like this for pages and pages. With this kind of response, you would think that a curious media would look into these claims, talk to doctors, look at autopsies, and give even the slightest bit of attention to people who are experiencing unexplained tragedies. Instead, they are looking the other way and digging for stories so they can pin the pandemic on the unvaccinated. We saw the news orchestrate a fake story about “ivermectin overdoses” in order to smear the vaccine-hesitant just this month!

Perhaps, instead of demonizing people who have fears about the vaccine based on personal experience and questions about possible side effects, the media could take some time to talk to them and investigate their claims. Getting to the bottom of what is happening and why might actually help alleviate fears of vaccination. But by ignoring all these stories, the media is causing distrust of the vaccine and the establishment……

(PJ-MEDIA)

TD G. comments again:

  • [speaking to DOC J] When I used VAERS as a source, you thought it was untrustworthy. Now suddenly they are gospel?

When I saw this comment, I mentally noted that this is probably the case, that is, DOC J may have bemoaned the VAERS database previously; however, he is either just using the source of his “opponents” [we are all friends in this and the afterlife] to make a point. A tactic in good conversation showing often that “fleshed out” the position is still weak or contradictory. OR, he is being forced with the mounting evidence to look at this database more seriously. Either way, he is backed in the proverbial, rhetorical corner.

HOSPITALIZATIONS

I add some more information newly released that lends more information to the debate. The debate not just here but the broader debate in the public. [Again, expanding my quote from RIGHT SCOOP]:

A new report out today, written up by the Atlantic, suggests that nearly half of all COVID hospitalizations are, in reality, patients who found out they had COVID after they were admitted for something else or only had mild symptoms:

Here’s more from the Atlantic:

[….]

The authors of the paper out this week took a different tack to answer a similar question, this time for adults. Instead of meticulously looking at why a few hundred patients were admitted to a pair of hospitals, they analyzed the electronic records for nearly 50,000 COVID hospital admissions at the more than 100 VA hospitals across the country. Then they checked to see whether each patient required supplemental oxygen or had a blood oxygen level below 94 percent. (The latter criterion is based on the National Institutes of Health definition of “severe COVID.”) If either of these conditions was met, the authors classified that patient as having moderate to severe disease; otherwise, the case was considered mild or asymptomatic.

The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.

This increase was even bigger for vaccinated hospital patients, of whom 57 percent had mild or asymptomatic disease. But unvaccinated patients have also been showing up with less severe symptoms, on average, than earlier in the pandemic: The study found that 45 percent of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21. According to Shira Doron, an infectious-disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston, and one of the study’s co-authors, the latter finding may be explained by the fact that unvaccinated patients in the vaccine era tend to be a younger cohort who are less vulnerable to COVID and may be more likely to have been infected in the past.

Color me shocked that COVID hospitalizations might only be half as much as being claimed. It sounds similar to what we saw last year in the conflated tallies of those who died “because of COVID” versus those who died “with COVID”.

This prompted JIM G. to respond with a good bit of information. Mind, you, this is jot the JIM G. I get into frequent discussions with on different subject.

  • SEAN G, Some have said that most who are coming to the hospitals now are the unvaccinated. One reason for this is because the hospitals count a person that has taken the jab less than 14 days as an “unvaccinated”.

I just wish to finish up this post with other side news I came across on Facebook.

AN RPT BONUS

HUMOR

Facebook, which banned me for 3-days today – but then realized they were wrong. I took the previous graphic that got me banned and remade it better:

ADMISSIONS

And here I need to apologize to Alex Berenson’s UNREPORTED TRUTHS. Why? Because I am grabbing his entire post as I think it is important. The link is at the bottom of his post, if you wish to go to the source:

The FDA just released its briefing book for Pfizer’s request for a third dose of Comirnaty (or is that BNT162b2? No matter! It’s approved either way, sorta).

It is every bit the mess we all expected.

Let’s go to the highlights:

Pfizer basically hasn’t bothered to test the booster AT ALL in the people actually at risk – it conducted a single “Phase 1” trial that covered 12 people over 65. The main Phase 2/3 booster trial (beware efforts to cover multiple “phases” of drug research at once, you want it bad you get it bad) included no one over 55.

No one.

As in NONE.

Which makes total sense – why test the booster in people who actually need it because they’re at high risk from the ro? Nothing good can come of that.

So that’s our trial design.

Now safety:

Of the 300 people who received the booster, one had a heart attack two months later. No worries, Pfizer concluded it wasn’t related. Yay!

Five percent of recipients had enlarged lymph nodes.

How about effectiveness?

Well, we don’t have enough data – or any data, really – telling us how well the booster will work.

But the FDA made Pfizer go back and review its data from the pivotal clinical trial from last year. Pfizer compared people who received the vaccine with those who received the placebo and THEN the vaccine (the best we can do at this point, since Pfizer blew up the trial by giving placebo subjects the vaccine, double-yay!)

Pfizer concluded that your annual risk of getting Covid-19 IF YOU ARE VACCINATED is about 7 percent.

Further:

“An additional analysis appears to indicate that incidence of COVID-19 generally increased in each group of study participants with increasing time post-Dose 2 at the start of the analysis period.”

Oh.

But don’t worry, Uncle Joe already told you you can get your booster on September 20. If it’s good enough for our fearless leader, it should be good enough for the FDA, amirite?

SCIENCE!

Ouch!

MEDIA

Here are two media pieces I watched today:

  • This CBS produced 60 Minutes was from 1979 | Mary Tyler Moore, Swine Flu Shot August 19, 2021

And here is an absolutely hilarious video by Tucker Carlson that had me belly rolling in bed this morning:

  • Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host weighs in on the left’s hypocrisy regarding the government dictation of personal health decisions.

Lol.

KABUKI THEATRE

A friend noted the following:

  • Not trying to minimize the impact of Covid. But the “pandemic” has really been hijacked for political motives. Look at this Kabuki theater. Before and After the cameras were turned on.

GOOD ARTICLE