Trust the ‘experts’…
Tag: coronavirus
After Testing it With COVID, Experts Weigh ‘Authoritarianism’ to Fight Climate Change Too
A recent study published in American Political Science Review, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University, begins with a teasing question: “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?”
For many, the answer is clearly no, concedes the study’s author—Ross Mittiga, an assistant professor of political theory at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. But Mittiga, in the abstract to the study, suggests otherwise:
“While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach.”
‘Explicitly Argues for Authoritarian Governance’?
The study caught the eye of Alexander Wuttke, a Twitter user who studies political behavior at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
“In my reading, it explicitly argues that we must put climate action over democracy and adopt authoritarian governance if democracies fail to act on climate change,” tweeted Wuttke.
In an extensive thread, Wuttke explained why he disagrees with Mittiga.
“I am genuinely puzzled about the origins of this anti-democratic intuition that seems to give rise to the entire endeavor of exploring whether we should sacrifice democracy for the sake of a higher good,” Wuttke says at one point. “The article argues that crises not only can legitimize but may require authoritarian governance. This is not true. Democracies have fought the pandemic without giving up being democratic.”
Nearly 700 Days into ‘2 Weeks to Flatten the Curve’ And The Only Thing That’s Reduced is Your Freedom
On March 16, 2020, the Trump administration released a 15-day plan to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the US. That was 663 days ago. We are now nearly two years, 2 presidents, 6 trillion dollars, and countless stolen rights into slowing the spread.
Over the last two years, one of the largest power grabs in the history of the world has taken place as fearful citizens willingly surrendered their rights to the state for the promise of safety. But that safety never came and it never will.
What did come, however, was a slew of arbitrary and often ridiculous mandates and decrees from politicians who think that government force can stop a pandemic. Despite the economically devastating draconian lockdowns that killed countless small businesses, vaccine passports, and mask mandates, COVID-19 returned — with a vengeance.
One of the most heavily vaccinated places on the planet, with the strictest vaccine mandates in the country, New York City, accounted for nearly 10% of all cases in the U.S. But that is not all. Even as states across the country continue to close schools, force citizens to wear masks and fire people for refusing the jab, the U.S. set a record for the highest daily case count in the entire world — at 1 million.
Bill Filed In Washington Would Authorize ‘Strike Force’ To ‘Involuntarily Detain’ Unvaccinated Families: ‘They Have Already Set Up The Internment Camps’
The Washington State Board of Health may soon amend state law to authorize the involuntary detainment of residents as young as 5 years old in Covid-19 “internment camps” for failing to comply with the state’s experimental vaccine mandate.
WAC 246-100-040, a proposed revision to include Covid protocol under the state’s Communicable and Certain Other Diseases act, outlines “Procedures for isolation or quarantine.” The measure would allow local health officers at “his other sole discretion” to “issue an emergency detention order causing a person or group of persons to be immediately detained for purposes of isolation or quarantine.”
Health officers are required to provide documentation proving unvaccinated residents subject to detention have denied “requests for medical examination, testing, treatment, counseling, vaccination, decontamination of persons or animals, isolation, quarantine and inspection and closure of facilities” prior to involuntarily confinement in quarantine facilities, the resolution states.
The amended law would also allow health officers to deploy law enforcement officials to assist with the arrest of uncompliant Washington residents.
PolitiFact Slams Liberal Justice Sotomayor For Claiming 100K Kids In ‘Serious Condition’ With COVID
PolitiFact slammed liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for claiming during oral arguments over the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate on Friday that more than 100,000 children were in “serious condition” due to the coronavirus.
“We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators” due to coronavirus, Sotomayor said.
PolitiFact rated the statement as “False,” writing in-part:
While the number of coronavirus-positive pediatric hospitalizations has risen with the spread of the omicron variant, Sotomayor’s number was way off.
At the time she made this comment, federal data showed that fewer than 5,000 coronavirus-positive children were in the hospital. In fact, fewer than 83,000 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19 — cumulatively — since August 2020.
There are over 100,000 cases among children, but scientists say that few of those are severe.
Air Force Rejects Medical Exemption Request to COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Despite Documented Allergy
The Air Force has rejected a medical exemption application to the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate from a reservist despite the member presenting proof that she has an allergy to one of the vaccine’s components.
The reservist went to a clinic in Texas and underwent allergy testing to components of the vaccine, according to a letter from a doctor that was submitted to the Air Force this week.
“She developed a positive reaction to intradermal testing to Polysorbate, indicating the potential for a significant allergic reaction to future COVID-19 vaccination,” the doctor wrote in the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The Epoch Times.
“I respectfully recommend that the patient be granted a medical waiver for the COVID-19 vaccine,” he added.
Just days later, though, the military said the request wasn’t being granted.
In a letter to the lawyer representing the reservist, military officials said medical exemptions are not given to people who are “claiming an allergy to a preservative in the vaccine without having had the vaccine.”
“What it comes down to is you must take at least one COVID vaccine and have had an adverse reaction before you can claim an allergy to it,” officials said.
That stance clashes with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, which states that contraindications to a COVID-19 vaccine include a “known diagnosed allergy to a component” of the vaccines.
The agency does state that a polysorbate allergy is only a contraindication to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, designating it as a “precaution” for the other two vaccines authorized in the United States. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines do not contain polysorbate but do contain polyethylene glycol; the compounds are related and cross-reactive hypersensitivity may occur between them.
The agency advises people with such an allergy to consult with an allergist or immunologist.
The Air Force did not respond to requests for comment.
Misinformed or lying?
Angry volcano gods…
“Many on Ventilators” – Justice Sotomayor Falsely Claims Over 100,000 Children in Serious Condition Because of Covid
The US Supreme Court on Friday is considering a halt on Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates that affect more than 80 million Americans.
The highest court of the land began hearing oral arguments on two of Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.
The Biden regime mandated all companies with 100+ employees to either test workers or prove they are vaccinated through a loophole issued by OSHA.
Biden also mandated healthcare workers at places receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding to prove they are vaccinated.
During oral arguments on Friday, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor falsely claimed that over 100,000 children are in serious condition because of Covid.
“Many are on ventilators,” Sotomayor said.
This is a lie.
The CDC on Friday said 4 in 100,000 children admitted to hospitals are infected with Covid.
The children are in the hospital with Covid, not necessarily because of Covid and they are less likely to need ventilators:
More than four in 100,000 children aged 4 years or younger admitted to hospitals were infected with the coronavirus as of Jan. 1 — double the rate reported a month ago, and about three times the rate this time last year.
Children infected with the variant are still at much less risk of becoming severely ill than adults, and even young children seem less likely to need ventilators than those admitted during previous surges, experts said.
“We have not yet seen a signal that there is any increased severity in this age demographic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C.’s director, told reporters at a news briefing on Friday. She noted that similar worries about the Delta variant had proved to be unfounded.
“The Supreme Court should quickly issue a public correction to this incorrect information.” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said.
Could Omicron be even LESS deadly than seasonal flu? Scientists believe ultra-infectious strain may kill 100 TIMES fewer people than Delta (and mortality rates were ALREADY similar to influenza before the variant emerged)
Omicron could be even less deadly than flu, scientists believe in a boost to hopes that the worst of the pandemic is over.
Some experts have always maintained that the coronavirus would eventually morph into a seasonal cold-like virus as the world develops immunity through vaccines and natural infection. But the emergence of the highly-mutated Omicron variant appears to have sped the process up.
MailOnline analysis shows Covid killed one in 33 people who tested positive at the peak of the devastating second wave last January, compared to just one in 670 now. But experts believe the figure could be even lower because of Omicron.
The case fatality rate — the proportion of confirmed infections that end in death — for seasonal influenza is 0.1, the equivalent of one in 1,000.
Meanwhile, researchers at Washington University modelling the next stage of the pandemic expect Omicron to kill up to 99 per cent fewer people than Delta, in another hint it could be less deadly than flu.
No accurate infection-fatality rate (IFR), which is always just a fraction of the CFR because it reflects deaths among everyone who catches the virus, has yet been published for Delta.
But UK Government advisers estimated the overall figure stood at around 0.25 per cent before Omicron burst onto the scene, down from highs of around 1.5 per cent before the advent of life-saving vaccines.
If Omicron is 99 per cent less lethal than Delta, it suggests the current IFR could be as low as 0.0025 per cent, the equivalent of one in 40,000, although experts say this is unlikely. Instead, the Washington modelling estimates the figure actually sits in the region of 0.07 per cent, meaning approximately one in 1,430 people who get infected will succumb to the illness.
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