Tag: influenza

San Francisco Bay Area Reinstates Mask Mandates as Flu Season Approaches

As COVID-19 cases increase, mask mandates are being reinstated in several counties around California.

Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area will be required to wear masks in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and other healthcare facilities as flu and cold season begin, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The mandate will take effect from Nov. 1 to either Mar. 31 or April 30, 2025, the outlet reports.

Health officials are implementing the mandate as an attempt to decrease the risk of spreading COVID, the flu and other respiratory viruses during the winter and early spring in medical settings.

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Govt. Researchers: Flu Shots Not Effective in Elderly, After All

An important and definitive “mainstream” government study done nearly two decades ago got little attention because the science came down on the wrong side. 

It found that after decades and billions of dollars spent promoting flu shots for the elderly, the mass vaccination program did not result in saving lives. In fact, the death rate among the elderly increased substantially.

The authors of the study admitted a pro-vaccine bias going into the study. Here was the history as described to me: Public health experts long assumed flu shots were effective in the elderly. But, paradoxically, all the best studies done on the question failed to demonstrate a benefit. Instead of considering that they, the experts, could be wrong–instead of believing the scientific data–the public health experts assumed the studies were wrong. After all, flu shots have to work, right?

So the NIH launched an effort to do “the” definitive study that would actually prove, for the first time, once and for all, that flu shots were beneficial to the elderly. The government would gather some of the brightest scientific minds for the research, and adjust for all kinds of factors that could be masking that presumed benefit.

But when they finished, no matter how they crunched the numbers, the data kept telling the same story: flu shots were of no benefit to the elderly—or anyone else, it seemed. Quite the opposite. The death rate increased markedly after widespread flu vaccination among older Americans. The scientists finally had to acknowledge that decades of public health thought had been mistaken.

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Paper showing COVID and flu vaccines do NOT reduce hospitalization was published today

Today was a good day.

Two breakthroughs:

  1. My paper showing the COVID and flu vaccines do not work was published in PrePrints today. The paper shows that the COVID and flu vaccines don’t reduce hospitalization at all. Zero. Zip. Nada. It uses VA data published in JAMA by a top epidemiologist to expose the truth. No hospitalization benefit implies no death benefit because there is no precedent in medicine for no hospitalization benefit yielding a death benefit. So they lied to us about the benefits. It was ALL downside risk with the shots.
  2. I was able to confirm that the Medicare data shows that the mortality rate of the shots depends on brand. Statistically significant. Yet, nobody in the world is looking at this. Not at the local level, not the state level, not the national level. They all look the other way. I guess it’s time for another paper?

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‘The Level of Foolishness Here is Unprecedented’: Researchers Pitch ‘One-and-Done’ COVID-Flu Vaccine for Babies

Researchers are pitching a new vaccine that, according to Forbes, could give infants long-lasting protection from COVID-19 and flu with a single “one-and-done” shot — perhaps even leading to a “universal vaccine.”

The research article, published on April 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by scientists at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), described how a single dose of a vaccine using “small interfering RNA” (siRNA) molecules demonstrated a “rapid and long-lasting protective immunity” against a lethal virus challenge in immune-deficient mice.

The researchers proposed that an siRNA-based flu vaccine could protect infants without relying on maternal antibodies, according to a UCR press release.

They are considering a nasal spray delivery method instead of the typical intramuscular shot, as “respiratory infections move through the nose, so a spray might be an easier delivery system.”

Experts who spoke with The Defender raised concerns about the lack of human trials and the novel technology’s safety and long-term effects on vulnerable populations.

“The level of foolishness here is unprecedented,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense. “The immune systems of infants ​​simply cannot tolerate this type of infective agent,” he said. “It will lead to breakthrough infections and higher levels of mortality.”

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The 1918 ‘Pandemic’ & the Viral Theory – ‘The Unproven Notion of Airborne Viral Illness That has Enslaved Humanity to the Corrupt Medical Cartel.’

There are multiple lines of evidence to dispute the classic viral disease paradigm, including historical records,  biological evidence (or lack thereof) and clinical “experiments” according to Dr Lee Merritt. Yet, while this is true, there are many self professed “awake” individuals who although are willing to accept that we have been continually lied to on a grand scale to enable our enslavement, will not open their minds even to the possibility that one of those lies has been the unproven viral disease paradigm.

Orthopaedic surgeon and past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr Merritt writes “I hear it all the time.  From Physicians, “How can you say viruses don’t exist? I treat people with viral illness all the time.”  Or from patients, “My whole family got really sick—so there must be viruses!” Dr Merritt adds “Let’s be clear.  There is disease, as in “Dis-Ease”.  People get sick and some die of the sickness.  And I can admit to the ability of harvesting tissue from one animal and injecting it into another species and causing disease– as Judy Mikovits describes it—“infection by injection”.  But that does not prove the existence of invisible, sub-microscopic unicorns that fly from one person’s nose to another as the CAUSE of that disease. 

“It is the unproven notion of airborne viral illness that has enslaved humanity to the corrupt  medical cartel.“

“What better psychological wedge can be implemented against humanity than making people afraid of invisible emanations from other people?” she asks.

In this article Dr. Merritt discusses the largest clinical case study of all time—the 1918 worldwide influenza outbreak.

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Influenza Vaccines Only 42 Percent Effective in Adults This Year

The influenza vaccines currently being administered in the United States are estimated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be 42 percent effective in adults. This is an interim estimate for the 2023-2024 “flu season” published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on Feb. 29, 2024.1 2 3

By “effective,” the CDC is referring to reducing the risk of influenza-related hospitalizations or “medically attended influenza virus infection, not actually preventing influenza infections—notably influenza A (H1N1) and B (Victoria lineage).1 In its report, the agency stated:

These findings indicate that the 2023–24 seasonal influenza vaccine is effective at reducing the risk of influenza-associated outpatient visits and hospitalization.1

Less Than 25 Percent of Suspected ILI Cases are Influenza

Most influenza-like-illness (ILI) which occurs during the “flu season” is not actually caused by  type A or type B influenza. Studies show that less than 25 percent of suspected ILI cases turn out to be influenza after lab testing. There are many other respiratory infections that look like influenza but are caused by other types of viruses and bacteria.2.4

According to Sascha Ellington, PhD, leader of the CDC’s influenza prevention and control team, the 42 percent influenza vaccine effectiveness rate falls within the “range” that the CDC “typically” sees when the vaccine is a “good match with the [influenza] viruses that are circulating.” This season’s rate thus far lags behind the estimated 54 percent effectiveness rate for the flu shot in 2022-2023, but it is better than the 36 percent rate for 2021-2022.1 2 3 5 6

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CDC: Last Year’s Flu Shot Was Less Than 50% Effective For Children And Adolescents

During the 2022–2023 flu season, the influenza vaccine was less than 50 percent effective at preventing emergency department/urgent care visits and hospitalizations among children and adolescents, according to a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The analysis, published Nov. 16, 2023, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, found the seasonal influenza vaccine was only 48 percent effective overall at reducing the risk of influenza-A-associated emergency department (ED) or urgent care (UC) visits, and only 40 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations.

Researchers analyzed acute respiratory illness-associated ED and UC visits or hospitalizations at 55 hospitals and 107 ED or UC sites within the VISION vaccine effectiveness network—a multistate collaboration with the CDC. Children and adolescents 6 months to 17 years were tested for influenza between October 2022 and March 2023.

Researchers estimated influenza A vaccine effectiveness using a test-negative design—a popular method for determining vaccine efficacy that uses the same clinical case definition for both cases and controls and distinguishes which patients are in each group with subsequent laboratory testing. In other words, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine was estimated by comparing influenza vaccination status in patients testing positive for influenza with those testing negative for influenza.

According to the study, 13,547 of 44,787 qualified ED/UC visits and 263 of 1,862 hospitalizations were positive for influenza A. Among ED/UC patients, 15.2 percent of influenza-positive cases and 27.1 percent of influenza-negative cases were vaccinated.

The vaccine was 44 to 52 percent effective—or 48 percent effective “overall,” 47 to 58 percent effective among children aged 6 months to 4 years, and 30 to 45 percent effective among those aged 9 to 17 years old.

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FDA Warns White House Recommendation to Get COVID-19 Booster and Flu Shot At the Same Time May Increase Risk of a Stroke

After three years of the pandemic, looks like the “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-vaxxers” were right again.

Last week, a small official study reveals that receiving both the flu shot and Pfizer’s Covid bivalent booster at the same time may increase the risk of stroke.

On December 2022, FDA admitted that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine had been linked to blood clotting in older individuals based on the results of one of the largest studies of elderly persons aged 65 years and above.

On January 2023, CDC and FDA announced that it is going to investigate the link between Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 booster and ischemic strokes in people aged 65 and older.

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Massive Peer-Reviewed Mask Study Shows ‘Little To No Difference’ In Preventing COVID, Flu Infection

A massive international research collaboration that analyzed several dozen rigorous studies focusing on “physical interventions” against COVID-19 and influenza found that they provide little to no protection against infection or illness rates.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, is the strongest science to date refuting the basis for mask mandates worldwide.

And of course, the CDC still recommends masking in areas with “high” rates of transmission (fewer than 4% of US counties, as Just the News notes), along with indoor masking in areas with “medium” rates of transmission (27%).

Masks are still required in educational institutions in Democratic strongholds such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington and California, according to the Daily Mail. Boston Public Schools denied its “temporary masking protocol” in early January was a “mandate,” following a public letter against the policy by student Enrique Abud Evereteze.

South Korea is still requiring masks on public transport and in medical facilities after dropping COVID mandates in most indoor settings, including gyms, Monday, Reuters reported. -Just the News

According to the Cochrane study, which included the work of researchers at institutions in the  U.K., Canada, Australia, Italy and Saudi Arabia, a total of 78 studies were analyzed. Most recent additions to the meta-analysis were 11 new randomized controlled trials.

As unlisted study author Carl Heneghan – who directs the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford noted on Twitter: “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks.”

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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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