COVID-19 vaccine trial participants report aches, fevers and chills

Some participants for leading COVID-19 vaccine trials have reported experiencing grueling side effects after receiving the shot — such as high fever, body aches, headaches and exhaustion.

Five participants — three in Moderna’s study and two in Pfizer’s late-stage trials — said the uncomfortable side effects usually went away within a day, but some were surprised by how severe they were, CNBC reported.

“If this proves to work, people are going to have to toughen up,” one of the Moderna participants, a North Carolina woman in her 50s who declined to be identified, told the outlet.

“The first dose is no big deal. And then the second dose will definitely put you down for the day for sure. … You will need to take a day off after the second dose.”

She said she didn’t experience a fever but had a bad migraine that left her exhausted and struggling to focus, the outlet reported. But the next day, she woke up feeling better after taking Excedrin.

While she was uncomfortable, the side effects outweigh the risks of becoming infected with the virus, she said.

Keep reading

Will the Pandemic Panic Card Win in 2020?

People want to be safe,” Joe Biden repeatedly declared in Tuesday night’s debate. The 2020 presidential race could turn into a referendum on whether vastly increasing government power can provide “freedom from fear.” This has been a recurring theme in recent American history that consistently brings out the worst in both politicians and voters. 

The 2020 presidential campaign thus far has plenty of unpleasant parallels to 9/11 and the 2004 election. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were the biggest intelligence failure by U.S. government agencies since Pearl Harbor. The Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ignored bushels of evidence of an international conspiracy and a bucket of warnings that Arabs with terrorist connections were receiving pilot training inside the U.S. Yet, after the attacks terrified the nation, polls speedily showed a doubling in the percentage of Americans who trusted government to “do the right thing.” The media fanned this blind faith as if it was the high road to public safety. President George W. Bush exploited that credulity to seize far more power and to deceive the nation into war against Iraq. 

While Bush is now being lionized by the establishment media (thanks to his criticisms of Trump), few people recall that he ran the most fear-mongering presidential reelection campaign in modern American history. Bush 2004 campaign ads showed firemen carrying a flag-draped corpse from the rubble at Ground Zero in New York and a pack of wolves coming to attack home viewers as an announcer warned that “weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm.” One commentator suggested that the ad hinted that voters would be eaten by wolves if John Kerry won.

Just before 2004 Election Day a senior GOP strategist told the New York Daily News that “anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush.” People who saw terrorism as the biggest issue in the 2004 election voted for Bush by a 6 to 1 margin. Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy, observed that the Bush campaign was “using the fear factor almost exclusively. This is a highly researched decision with all the tools of public opinion management. It’s nothing but a reflection that it works.” 

Like the federal failures preceding the 9/11 attacks, the Covid pandemic was far more damaging because of testing and other blunders by the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration. The World Health Organization spurred disastrous policies by forecasting a mortality that was 50 times higher than the rate the U.S. experienced. The pointless, punitive lockdowns imposed by governors and mayors disrupted hundreds of millions of American lives while doing little or nothing to curb the spread of the virus to seven million Americans. In the same way that Bush lionized federal agencies after 9/11 despite their failures to prevent the attacks, Biden and his media allies are pushing for blind faith in “data and science” – regardless of the debacles we have seen this year. 

Keep reading

Yale Prof Calls Trump’s COVID Plan, “A Lazy Man’s Ethnic Cleansing”

Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor, took to Twitter in early September to claim that COVID-19 is a “lazy man’s” ethnic cleansing.

In the Twitter thread, Snyder first tweeted, “Coronavirus in America: A lazy man’s ethnic cleansing #OurMalady #TrumpGenocide #TrumpLiedPeopleDied #TrumpKilledAmericans Kushner’s team: “because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically.”

Keep reading

Engineering Contagion: UPMC, Corona-Thrax And “The Darkest Winter”

The recently obtained documents reveal that the BSL-3 lab that is part of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research is conducting eyebrow-raising research involving combining SARS-CoV-2 with Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax infection. Per the documents, anthrax is being genetically engineered by a researcher, whose name was redacted in the release, so that it will express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is the part of the coronavirus that allows it to gain access into human cells. The researcher asserts that “the [genetically engineered anthrax/SARS-CoV-2 hybrid] can [be] used as a host strain to make SARS-CoV-2 recombinant S protein vaccine,” and the creation of said vaccine is the officially stated purpose of the research project. The documents were produced by the University of Pittsburgh’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which held an emergency meeting on June 22nd of this year to “discuss specific protocols involving research with the coronavirus,” which included a vote on the aforementioned proposal.

Keep reading

Mayor Bill de Blasio Announces Mask Patrols to Fine Offenders: ‘That Will Happen Aggressively’

Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced on Tuesday that the city will “aggressively” move to enforce mask mandates and fine those who refuse to wear a face covering.

The mayor spoke about the continued actions in the city to combat the Chinese coronavirus, citing hundreds of additional city agency personnel handing out masks, encouraging testing, and “pushing back against misinformation.”

De Blasio also announced an additional enforcement measure: mask patrols.

“Anyone who is not wearing a face covering will be offered one, will be reminded it is required, and anyone who refuses to wear a face covering will be told that if they don’t put one on they will be fined, and anyone who still refuses will be fined,” he explained, noting that it will “happen aggressively.”

Keep reading