Tag: coronavirus

Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders

In early august, the first kids in America went back to school during the pandemic. Many of these openings happened in areas where cases were high or growing: in Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Parents, teachers, and scientists feared what might happen next. The New York Times reported that, in parts of Georgia, a school of 1,000 kids could expect to see 20 or 30 people arrive with COVID-19 during week one. Many assumed that school infections would balloon and spread outward to the broader community, triggering new waves. On social media, people shared pictures of high schools with crowded hallways and no masking as if to say I told you so.

Fear and bad press slowed down or canceled school reopenings elsewhere. Many large urban school districts chose not to open for in-person instruction, even in places with relatively low positivity rates. Chicago, L.A., Houston—all remote, at least so far.

It’s now October. We are starting to get an evidence-based picture of how school reopenings and remote learning are going (those photos of hallways don’t count), and the evidence is pointing in one direction. Schools do not, in fact, appear to be a major spreader of COVID-19.

Keep reading

Dutch Government Will Not Mandate Masks, Says ‘No Proven Effectiveness’

The Dutch government announced this week that it will not be mandating that citizens wear masks to halt the spread of COVID-19, arguing that their effectiveness remains unproven.

Speaking at a press conference at The Hague, the Netherlands’ Minister for Medical Care Tamara van Ark said that a recent review by the country’s National Institute for Health (RIVM) showed that social distancing rules prove more effective at combatting the virus than masks.

“Because from a medical perspective there is no proven effectiveness of masks, the Cabinet has decided that there will be no national obligation for wearing non-medical masks” Van Ark said, as reported by U.S. News and World Report.

Though RIVM chief Jaap van Dissel acknowledged studies indicating that masks may be useful in slowing the spread of COVID-19, he argued that incorrectly worn masks coupled with weak social distancing guidelines could help the virus spread.

Keep reading

COVID-19 Is ‘Unrestricted Bioweapon’: Whistleblower Releases Second Paper Alleging ‘Large-Scale, Organized Scientific Fraud’

Li-Meng Yan, A Chinese virologist (MD, PhD) who worked in a WHO reference lab and fled her position at the University of Hong Kong, has published a second co-authored report, alleging that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, was not only created in a Wuhan lab, it’s an “unrestricted bioweapon” which was intentionally released.

“We used biological evidence and in-depth analyses to show that SARS-CoV-2 must be a laboratory product, which was created by using a template virus (ZC45/ZXC21) owned by military research laboratories under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government,” reads the paper.

SARS-CoV2 is a product of laboratory modification, which can be created in approximately six months using a template virus owned by a laboratory of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The fact that data fabrications were used to cover up the true origin of SARS-CoV 2 further implicates that the laboratory modification here is beyond simple gain-of-function research.

The scale and the coordinated nature of this scientific fraud signifies the degree of corruption in the fields of academic research and public health. As a result of such corruption, damages have been made both tot he reputation of the scientific community and to the well-being of the global community.

The report also claims that the RaTG13 virus which Wuhan “Batwoman” Dr. Zhengli Shi and colleagues say they obtained in bat feces in 2013 (and which is 96% identical to SARS-CoV-2), is fraudulent and also man made.

Since its publication, the RaTG13 virus has served as the founding evidence for the theory that SARS-CoV-2 must have a natural origin. However, no live virus or an intact genome of RaTG13 have ever been isolated or recovered. Therefore, the only proof for the “existence” of RaTG13 in nature is its genomic sequence published on GenBank.

The report goes on to say that the RaTG13 genome could easily be fabricated, and that “an entry on GenBank, which in this case is equivalent to the existence of an assembled viral genomic sequence and its associated sequencing reads, is not a definitive proof that this viral genome is correct or real,” and that the process for sequencing DNA itself “leaves room for potential fraud.”

Keep reading

Vaccine suppliers given indemnity for ‘inevitable’ side effects

The Morrison government has given the suppliers of two COVID-19 vaccines indemnity against liability for rare side effects that experts say are “inevitable” when a vaccine is rolled out.

But the government will not set up a statutory compensation scheme, which the president of the Australian Medical Association, Omar Khorshid, said meant Australians who suffered “extremely rare” side effects from the vaccines would face a tough battle to seek compensation.

Keep reading

California governor’s office tells diners to wear masks “in between bites”

The California governor’s office put out a tweet on Saturday advising that restaurant-goers keep their masks on while dining. “Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend?” the tweet reads. “Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites. Do your part to keep those around you healthy.”

In California, masks are required for anyone going outside their home, as well as workers in customer-facing businesses, offices, factories, and health care professionals, among others, according to the state’s COVID-19 guidance.

Keep reading

COVID & The Escalation Of Medical Tyranny

The coronavirus crisis has served as a powerful tool in highlighting many of the faults that previously existed in society. It exposed which politicians have an inherent need to control and which ones are guided by humility. It reminded us of the political power that lies in fear, and how crucial it is to be skeptical of prevailing narratives. It emphasized the different economic realities for those who live paycheck to paycheck and those who benefit from economic financialization.

It should also make perfectly clear the danger of handing over healthcare to the state.

Already we have seen agents of the state, at various levels, seek to leverage a viral medical crisis to expand their power. Governors and local officials have sought to use vague “emergency” powers to lock down businesses and to create criminal penalties, and have then attacked any attempts by judiciaries to rein in their actions. Judges have sought to leverage the power they hold in deciding child custody to force citizens to make medical decisions they disagree with. Anointed government experts, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, in spite of his own inconsistencies, have been held up as the final word on science, at the expense of the voices of other credible scientists.

Whether by design or by the instinctual reaction, we have seen a concerted effort of government authorities—amplified by a corporate press with a particularly vivid political agenda, and supported by the credentials of an academic landscape that suffers from ideological capture—to weaponize a centralized scientific narrative for the purpose of achieving certain policy ends. It is appropriate that some have dubbed this union “the Cathedral,” as we have seen the divine right of kings renewed in the divine right of approved scientists.

None of this should be a surprise.

Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray N. Rothbard, and others have long warned of the dangers of “scientism.” As Jonathan Newman has noted on this site, we’ve seen it play out increasingly in American pop culture with the fetishizing of figures like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye.

Now, luckily, the current healthcare system has limits on the degree to which we, as individuals, must submit to the power of the “scientific consensus.” How long, however, will that doctor-patient relationship remain sacred?

Keep reading

Secretive HHS AI Platform to Predict US Covid-19 Outbreaks Weeks in Advance

Two weeks ago, on September 24, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a solicitation for the creation of a new “early warning system” that would “detect and track traces of the [corona]virus in community wastewater, compile the data, [and] conduct predictive analysis” in order to “guide reopening and mitigation strategies, and also serve as leading indicator for local re-emergence events to enable rapid containment.” HHS was seeking a contractor to design the new Covid-19 detection system, hoping, it said, to have this new system operational in at least forty-two US states by the end of year.

The first phase of the proposed project would involve testing and reporting from approximately one hundred wastewater treatment plants across the United States, covering an estimated 10 percent of the population. HHS, per the solicitation, reserves the option to expand the program to include up to 320 wastewater treatment plants, covering around 30 percent of the population. The solicitation claimed that wastewater testing would allow HHS officials to predict new Covid-19 cases five to eleven days before an outbreak.

The initiative appears to be an expansion of a “new public health tool” announced last month by HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the National Wastewater Surveillance System. This tool was originally intended to “help public health officials to better understand the extent of COVID-19 infections in communities.” Per the recent HHS solicitation, however, the wastewater surveillance system will now be used to predict outbreaks before they occur and to guide “rapid containment” efforts in “at-risk” communities.

At the core of this new early warning system based on wastewater surveillance is a secretive data platform that HHS launched earlier this year called HHS Protect. HHS describes Protect as “a secure platform for authentication, amalgamation, and sharing of healthcare information” that combines “more than 200 disparate data sources” from federal, state, and local governments as well as the private health-care industry.

Keep reading

Biden Fundraiser Jane Fonda Says COVID-19 Is ‘God’s Gift to the Left’

Joe Biden fundraiser and long-time left-wing actress Jane Fonda is insisting that COVID-19, which has killed over 211,000 Americans, devastated the lives and livelihoods of countless more, and tanked the global economy, is “God’s gift to the left.”

“I just think that COVID is God’s gift to the Left,” Jane Fonda said. “That’s a terrible thing to say. I think it was a very difficult thing to send down to us, but it has ripped the band-aid off who [Trump] is and what he stands for and what is being done to average people and working people in this country.”

Keep reading