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WHO (secretly) changed their definition of “Herd Immunity”

The World Health Organization has changed the definition of “herd immunity” on the Covid section of their website, inserting the claim that it is a “concept used in vaccination”, and requires a vaccine to be achieved.

Both of these statements are total falsehoods, which is demonstrated by the WHO’s own website back in June, and every dictionary definition of “herd immunity” you can find.

To quote the WHO’s own original definition:

Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or a natural immunity developed through previous infection.

This definition was posted on the WHO’s website on June 9th of this year, and conforms with the general usage of the term for generations.

Then, on October 15th, we woke up to find the words on the side of the barn had changed. The definition has been altered to this:

‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.

No explanation is offered for the change, in fact note of the change is made on the website at all.

Indeed all the previous versions of the website have been totally wiped from the wayback machine. A telling thing to do, in and of itself.

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Local Governments Play Scrooge To Stop People from Helping the Needy

It wouldn’t truly be the Christmas season here at Reason without a report about officials trying to shut down a project to help the needy. This year’s tale comes from Roslindale, a suburb of Boston.

There, as the coronavirus pandemic played out, residents looked for ways to help the needy in their neighborhood. A group of volunteers started putting together a community food pantry, salvaging groceries from local stores before they’d be tossed out as waste. A local therapist agreed to host the group’s fridge and freezer in her backyard. The group was serving more than 50 people every Friday.

Then local officials came calling. The Boston Inspectional Services Department warned the volunteers that they were operating an “illegal food pantry” and that they could, if they continued, face $1,000 fines and a year in prison.

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Details Emerge on How Zoom Censored Users in America for Communist China

An executive at the popular video-conferencing app Zoom was charged by the DOJ with conspiring to terminate Zoom meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre at the behest of the Chinese government. The incident is a troubling signal of the lengths companies based in America will go to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market.

MSNBC reports that on December 18, prosecutors from the U.S. justice department charged a China-based executive for the video-conferencing company Zoom with conspiring to terminate Zoom meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre at the request of the Chinese government.

Breitbart News recently reported that Zoom executive Xinjiang Jin, who worked as the company’s government affairs liaison, contacted employees at Zoom’s headquarter about the anniversary of the massacre on June 4th. Jin told his colleagues in the U.S. that the “internet police” in China had increased pressure on the company to censor politically sensitive content of Chinese users no matter where in the world they were.

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Zhang Zhan: China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports

In a video interview with an independent filmmaker before her arrest, Ms Zhang said she decided to travel to Wuhan in February after reading an online post by a resident about life in the city during the outbreak.

Once there, she began documenting what she saw on the streets and hospitals in livestreams and essays, despite threats by authorities, and her reports were widely shared on social media.

The rights group Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders said her reports also covered the detention of other independent journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking accountability.

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Nashville bomber Anthony Quinn Warner reportedly thought he’d be ‘hailed a hero’

Nashville RV bomber Anthony Quinn Warner was “heavily into conspiracy theories” about 5G networks — and thought he’d be “hailed a hero” for targeting a huge AT&T network, according to a report.

The 63-year-old loner — who died in his massive Christmas Day suicide blast — may have turned against the telecommunications industry after the 2011 death of his father, who worked for a company that later merged with AT&T, a source close to the investigation told the Daily Mail.

He was believed to be “heavily into conspiracy theories,” especially over fears that 5G networks were killing people, the source said.

“The unofficial motive thus far is the suspect believed 5G was the root of all deaths in the region and he’d be hailed a hero,” the source told the outlet.

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The New York Times Helped a Vindictive Teen Destroy a Classmate Who Uttered a Racial Slur When She Was 15

Jimmy Galligan is an 18-year-old college freshman from Leesburg, Virginia. He may also be cancel culture’s Count of Monte Cristo.

Some months ago, Galligan—who is biracial—posted a years’ old, three-second video of a white, female classmate using a racial slur. Galligan had sat on the video for a long time, waiting for the moment it would do the most damage. After the girl—a cheerleader named Mimi Groves—was accepted to the University of Tennessee, the time had come.

“I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,” said Galligan.

The video depicted Groves, who was 15 at the time, and had just obtained her learner’s permit, saying “I can drive, [slur].” The remark was not directed at anyone in particular. The brief video clip featuring it circulated on Snapchat until it was obtained and saved by Galligan, who had grown furious at how often he heard his white classmates using the N-word.

Galligan shared it publicly in June. In response, Groves lost her spot on UT’s cheerleading squad. Then the university pressured her to withdraw from the school entirely. The admissions office had apparently received hundreds of messages from irate alumni demanding blood. Groves is now attending a community college.

This story is a powerful example of several social phenomena: the militant streak in social justice activism, the naivety of today’s teens and their not-actually-disappearing Snapchat messages, social media’s hunger for mob justice, and even the capacity for elaborate cruelty that has always existed among high schoolers. But the wildest thing about this incident is that most people will learn about it by reading The New York Times.

“A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning.” That’s the title of the Times‘s article on the subject, published the day after Christmas. Reporter Dan Levin tries to add considerable context by detailing a history of alleged unpleasantness at Heritage High School, which Groves and Galligan attended. It sits in a wealthy, predominantly white county where “slave auctions were once held on the courthouse grounds.”

“In interviews, current and former students of color described an environment rife with racial insensitivity, including casual uses of slurs,” notes Levin. “A report commissioned last year by the school district documented a pattern of school leaders ignoring the widespread use of racial slurs by both students and teachers, fostering a ‘growing sense of despair’ among students of color, some of whom faced disproportionate disciplinary measures compared with white students.”

Levin connects the outcry from aggrieved students to the broader Black Lives Matter movement and protests that occurred this summer following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. But nowhere does his article reckon with a very basic fact: The New York Times has opted to assist a teenager’s desperate quest to ruin the life of a young woman who said something stupid when she was 15.

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