Tag: pandemic

Why Elite Libertarians Failed so Miserably on COVID

A priest friend of mine has been writing for three years against his fellow clerics who went along with the COVID regime, shut their churches, masked their parishioners, and then pushed shots on those who didn’t need them. He said that they forgot the first principle: be not afraid. And the second principle too: put not your faith in princes.

An academic friend of mine has been blasting his colleagues for just as long. He is even the author of a book “Treason of the Experts.”

Many conservatives who had sound opinions on lockdowns and vaccine mandates have gone after National Review and the Trump administration for their apostasies that gave us the biggest expansion of government power probably in world history.

Naomi Wolf has been relentless in calling out the left for their attacks on free association and free speech, in addition to their acquiescence to Big Pharma.

Each of these people say that they have a moral obligation to call out their own tribe.

Now to my own tribe: the libertarians.

For three years, I’ve been reluctant to say anything about the elephant in the room, the near-complete failure of libertarians to stand up to the lockdown and mandate regime. It was a moment in history that was tailor-made for them. Everything in their training taught them to be suspicious of government power and relentless in the defense of liberty.

Instead they mostly went silent. Worse, they became the Praetorian Guard of the lockdown Caesars, giving them cover when they deserved it least. The “radical” libertarians defaulted to a completely conventional careerism, even to the point of manufacturing rationales for terrible attacks on the most vulnerable.

Most organizations associated with the Atlas Network said nothing at all and still have said anything. The Mont Pelerin Society couldn’t muster the words either. Plenty of Twitter libertarians (and Reason Magazine) cheered masking as privacy-protecting disease-spread inhibitors while blasting me for criticizing them. Not even the Libertarian Party spoke out in 2020, a failure which led to a total upheaval in the party last year. Now, the anti-lockdowners are running the show.

Many if not most of the top intellectuals in the libertarian space were completely wrong and totally flopped when it mattered most. A book could be written on all the ridiculous excuses they marshaled to defend the worst attack on liberty in our lifetimes. Yes, many came around later and today pretend like that were right all along but the receipts are everywhere on what they said and did when it actually mattered.

Why haven’t I called them out? I convinced myself that they don’t really matter, so such a focus on internal strife achieves nothing. Maybe that’s right. It seems more true now than ever since they simply made themselves irrelevant by staying silent when voices of liberty were most needed. Now no one seems to care about them even as donor dollars are rightly drying up. My perception was that they (once we) mattered once upon a time, in any case.

In addition, my level of fury about the situation has been so intense that I did not think I could even pen a calm and persuasive article (even if I’ve attacked experts in general).

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The Four Pillars of Medical Ethics Were Destroyed in the Covid Response

Much like a Bill of Rights, a principal function of any Code of Ethics is to set limits, to check the inevitable lust for power, the libido dominandi, that human beings tend to demonstrate when they obtain authority and status over others, regardless of the context.

Though it may be difficult to believe in the aftermath of COVID, the medical profession does possess a Code of Ethics. The four fundamental concepts of Medical Ethics – its 4 Pillars – are Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-maleficence, and Justice.

Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-maleficence, and Justice

These ethical concepts are thoroughly established in the profession of medicine. I learned them as a medical student, much as a young Catholic learns the Apostle’s Creed. As a medical professor, I taught them to my students, and I made sure my students knew them. I believed then (and still do) that physicians must know the ethical tenets of their profession, because if they do not know them, they cannot follow them.

These ethical concepts are indeed well-established, but they are more than that. They are also valid, legitimate, and sound. They are based on historical lessons, learned the hard way from past abuses foisted upon unsuspecting and defenseless patients by governments, health care systems, corporations, and doctors. Those painful, shameful lessons arose not only from the actions of rogue states like Nazi Germany, but also from our own United States: witness Project MK-Ultra and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

The 4 Pillars of Medical Ethics protect patients from abuse. They also allow physicians the moral framework to follow their consciences and exercise their individual judgment – provided, of course, that physicians possess the character to do so. However, like human decency itself, the 4 Pillars were completely disregarded by those in authority during COVID.

The demolition of these core principles was deliberate. It originated at the highest levels of COVID policymaking, which itself had been effectively converted from a public health initiative to a national security/military operation in the United States in March 2020, producing the concomitant shift in ethical standards one would expect from such a change. As we examine the machinations leading to the demise of each of the 4 Pillars of Medical Ethics during COVID, we will define each of these four fundamental tenets, and then discuss how each was abused.

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COVID Vaccines Linked to Untreatable Eyeball Clots, Reveals Massive Study.

Amajor scientific journal has published research linking COVID vaccinations to retinal vascular occlusion, with vaccinated individuals at “significantly” greater risk of developing blood clots than unvaccinated individuals.

The paper published in Nature harvested data on some 95,156,967 people. Of those, 7.3 million met the criteria for inclusion in the study.

Controlling for confounding variables such as people on anticoagulants, certain contraceptives, and other medications, the researchers were left with 745,041 vaccinated and 3.8 million unvaccinated subjects to compare. They found that “two years after vaccination, the chances of all subtypes… of retinal vascular occlusion increased significantly in the vaccinated cohort.”

Retinal vein occlusion, or RVO, has generally been associated with “people with diabetes, and possibly high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, or other health problems that affect blood flow,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.

It can be a very serious condition, sometimes leading to the formation of abnormal new blood vessels that can “cause pain and a dangerous increase in pressure inside the eye” or even blindness.

There is currently no treatment available that can unblock retinal veins, with treatments for the symptoms of RVO including things like injecting anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) drugs and corticosteroids directly into the eyeball.

“The overall risk of retinal vascular occlusion in the vaccinated cohort was 2.19 times higher than that in the unvaccinated cohort at 2 years,” the Nature paper observed, with “no disparity was detected between brand and dose of vaccines.”

Nevertheless, they insisted that “[a]dditional research is required to draw a solid conclusion regarding the association between retinal vascular occlusion and COVID-19 vaccines.”

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Surgeon General Vivek Murthy Refuses To Acknowledge the Government’s Misrepresentation of Mask Research

In a recent interview with The New York Times, former White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci conceded that face masks had, at best, a modest overall impact on coronavirus transmission during the pandemic. “From a broad public-health standpoint, at the population level, masks work at the margins—maybe 10 percent,” he said. “But for an individual who religiously wears a mask, a well-fitted KN95 or N95, it’s not at the margin. It really does work.”

This week CNN’s Erin Burnett asked Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about Fauci’s gloss, which she said might be perceived as “an extremely significant statement,” because “we were told it didn’t matter what kind of mask [we wore].” She also noted that children were required to wear masks in schools and day care centers, adding that “none of them wore them the right way.” The contrast between that frequently mandatory advice and what Fauci is saying now, Burnett suggested, is “upsetting to a lot of people.”

Murthy’s response illustrates the persistent difficulty that public health officials have in speaking honestly about this subject. He conceded that shifting government health advice “can be disconcerting” but said “sometimes guidance does evolve over time as you learn more.” He also allowed that the pandemic “has been incredibly hard for a lot of people, especially kids and parents.” And he mentioned “greater loneliness and isolation” as one consequence of the pandemic, saying the Biden administration is working on “a national strategy to address loneliness.”

The one thing Murthy did not address was the substance of Burnett’s question. Fauci’s current summary of the evidence, she noted, contradicts what public health officials told us during the pandemic. “Do you understand,” Burnett asked, why people might view that contradiction as “extremely significant” and “upsetting”? Murthy evidently does not understand that, even though it goes to the heart of the government’s credibility when it purports to tell us what science says about the effectiveness of disease control measures.

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Proof that the Vaccines Were a Military-Backed Countermeasure

Here is a high-level review of the manufacturing contracts between US DOD and Moderna. 

Moderna’s injection, mRNA-1273 is co-owned with the US Government, as the company has been funded by the defense research grants for years and also received intellectual property transfers from the US Government, in addition to preclinical and clinical research work conducted for Moderna by the NIH Vaccine Research Center. The NIH and Moderna each have a separate Investigational New Drug number for this product.

Moderna entered 2 types of contracts with the US Government for Spikevax injection:

  • “Vaccine” contract and amendments that specifies R&D projects that the US Government ordered and paid for. Note that in Pfizer’s case no R&D activities were ordered or paid for by the US Government, as these were excluded from the scope of the contract.
  • “Manufacturing” contract(s) that ordered a large-scale manufacturing. This is different from Pfizer manufacturing contracts as the words “demonstration” and “prototype” are not used. I believe this is because OTA contracts must be for prototypes but FAR contracting doesn’t have to be.

Note on redactions. In both Moderna and Pfizer’s contracts many areas are redacted indicating a reason for redaction – the “redaction codes.” Redacted content has been given codes b (4) and b (6), standing for:

(b) (4) Disclosure of information that would affect the application of advanced technology in a U.S. weapons system,

and

(b) (6) Disclosure of information, including information of foreign governments, that would cause serious harm to relations between the United States and a foreign government or to ongoing diplomatic activities of the United States.

There are several versions of the contract available, plus amendments. The first version was signed on August 9, 2020 and the last available version is June 15, 2021. In one of them the name of the signatory on the Moderna side was redacted with (b)(6). In another version it’s unredacted – it was Hamilton Bennett, a senior director of vaccine access and partnerships. 

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Doctors sound alarm over mysterious outbreak of brain infections in Nevada kids – and they believe it’s linked to COVID lockdowns

Health officials are sounding the alarm over a spike in rare and serious brain abscesses in children in and around Las Vegas, Nevada.

Experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the spate of cases, while doctors across America say they are also seeing a rise in cases. 

The number of brain abscesses in minors tripled in Nevada last year, shooting up from an average of four or five a year to 18.

Dr Taryn Bragg, a pediatric neurosurgeon and associate professor at the University of Utah who treats the cases, told CNN she had ‘never seen anything like it’ in her 20 years’ experience.

Physicians are not sure what has caused the rise, but said it could be due to weakened immunity to infections due to Covid measures such as lockdowns. 

Dr Bragg was able to spot the pattern and notify local public health officials because she is the only pediatric neurosurgeon for Nevada. 

After March 2022, she said there was a ‘huge increase’ in brain abscesses, which is ‘unusual’, particularly as ‘the similarities in terms of the presentation of cases was striking’.

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US Officials Reject Compensation for People Diagnosed With COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries

U.S. authorities rejected multiple people who sought compensation for COVID-19 vaccine injuries, despite diagnoses from doctors, documents show.

Letters from U.S. officials reviewed by The Epoch Times show officials contradicting doctors who treated patients as they turned down requests for payment.

Cody Flint, an agricultural pilot, was diagnosed by four doctors with a severe adverse reaction to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Shortly after being vaccinated, Flint experienced intense head pressure, which led to problems such as perilymphatic fistula, the doctors said.

Flint sent a slew of medical files, including evidence of the diagnoses, to the U.S. Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which compensates people who prove they were injured by a COVID-19 shot.

But administrators for the program rejected Flint’s application in a denial letter, saying they “did not find the requisite evidence that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination caused” the conditions from which he suffers.

Flint, in his 30s, felt his first symptoms within an hour of vaccination. An onslaught of severe symptoms followed while he was flying two days later.

“One second I went from having burning in the back of my neck and tunnel vision to the very next second I was slumped over in my airplane. The best way I know to describe it, it was like a bomb went off inside my head,” Flint said.

CICP administrators told him that “compelling, reliable and valid medical and scientific evidence does not support a causal association between the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, perilymphatic fistulas, increased intracranial pressure, Eustachian tube dysfunction, hearing loss, or loss of eyesight.”

They also tried to pin the problems on barotrauma. Colloquially known as airplane ear, barotrauma happens when air pressure suddenly changes, and is common as planes climb higher in the sky. Barotrauma causes the fistulas and symptoms of the fistulas “began while flying,” administrators wrote.

Flint and his doctors asserted in appeal letters that the barotrauma theory doesn’t hold up because Flint flies low as he dusts crops. Flint’s condition is “not from barotrauma,” Flint’s doctors told the CICP. “As an agricultural pilot, he does not fly more than a couple of hundred feet off the ground which is not of a magnitude to where he is at risk for barotrauma.”

“Elevated intracranial pressure has been recognized as a complication of COVID vaccination, and given the sequence of events, more probable than not, it is the cause of Mr. Flint’s elevated intracranial pressure, which had been documented on lumbar puncture,” they added. “The elevated intracranial pressure led to his perilymphatic fistula. Elevated intracranial pressure is a cause for perilymphatic fistula and more probable.”

The CICP determination was reviewed by a panel that sided with administrators. The panel found that the COVID-19 vaccine “did not cause Mr. Flint to develop bilateral perlympathic fistulas and related symptoms,” Suma Nair, an administrator, told Flint in a final denial letter. “There is no compelling causal connection between the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and the symptomology Mr. Flint experienced; the more likely cause of Mr. Flint’s symptoms is trauma from flying a plane, which would have developed over time.”

Administrators cited no studies or other evidence in their letters.

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ABC News Admits It Censored RFK Jr. Interview For “False Claims About Covid-19 Vaccines”

In a remarkable video, ABC News presented a pre-recorded interview with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, telling viewers that parts of what was said had been edited out because he said something about the COVID vaccine that the news network disagrees with.

The interview was aired with clear edits made during parts where Kennedy spoke about his views on vaccines.

The interviewer Linsey Davis asked RFK Jr. about his belief that vaccination was linked to autism, which he began to explain before she jumped in and claimed that has all been debunked. The footage then skipped to a different topic entirely.

After the interview concluded, Davis told viewers “We should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the Covid-19 vaccines.”

She claimed “Data shows that the Covid-19 vaccine has prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.”

“He also made misleading claims about the relationship between vaccination and autism,” Davis further asserted, adding “Research shows that vaccines and the ingredients used in the vaccines do not cause autism, including multiple studies involving more than a million children and major medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the advocacy group Autism Speaks.”

“We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview,” Davis explained.

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Anthony Fauci Still Is Not Being Honest with You

Dr. Anthony Fauci is not happy with what he regards as the popular distortions of his pandemic record.

In a sprawling exit interview with New York Times reporter David Wallace-Wells, the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — whose remit extended well beyond his station — makes little effort to hide his bitterness. Confronted with the criticism that so much of the public-health guidance in this period was less about epidemiology and more reflective of the Biden White House’s “economic, political, and social” priorities, Fauci bristled at the implication:

Certainly there could have been a better understanding of why people were emphasizing the economy. But when people say, “Fauci shut down the economy” — it wasn’t Fauci. The C.D.C. was the organization that made those recommendations. I happened to be perceived as the personification of the recommendations. But show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did. I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that. But I never criticized the people who had to make the decisions one way or the other.

On a human level, Fauci’s irritations are understandable. He resents the suggestion that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could or even should behave like a political body, which is why it was absurd for the Biden White House to hold fast to the notion that Congress had provided the CDC with the authority to, for example, abrogate the rights of American property owners by implementing a moratorium on eviction.

That’s not Fauci’s fault exactly, but nor did the doctor register his dissatisfaction with the mid-pandemic status quo that so empowered him. We don’t have a document with Fauci’s signature on it authorizing the shuttering of schools and businesses. We do, however, have an extensive record of his public statements indicating that shuttering schools and businesses was the right course of action.

“If you have a situation where you don’t have a real good control over an outbreak and you allow children together, they will likely get infected,” Fauci warned in April 2020. The doctor proffered this definitive observation in response to a reporter who asked him if Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to allow in-person education on school grounds was wise. “People under 25 have died of the coronavirus disease in the United States of America.” What conclusion would a school administrator who, like so much of the nation, hung on Fauci’s every word in the early stages of the pandemic take away from this admonition but that in-person education was an unnecessary risk?

As early as May of that year, Fauci all but ruled out the prospect of a safe return to schoolrooms the following autumn. “The idea of having treatments available, or a vaccination, to facilitate the reentry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far,” he insisted.

That summer, Fauci engaged in a public-relations campaign with the aim of scaring young people into withdrawing from the outside world in areas of the country with high Covid-19 transmission rates. “You have a responsibility to yourself, because I think thinking that young people have no deleterious consequences is not true,” he scolded America’s youth. “We’re seeing more and more complications in young people.”

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Miscarriages and Dead Infants Were Described in a Secret FDA Review but Hidden From The Public

A new document was released to ICAN this April, thanks to a FOIA legal action that compelled the government to provide Pfizer documents they tried to keep secret for 75 years. Indeed, they had a good reason to hide it.

That document is called “PREGNANCY AND LACTATION CUMULATIVE REVIEW.” Many findings in it validate several concerns of COVID vaccine skeptics.

Pfizer identified 458 pregnancies where mothers were vaccinated (with and without adverse events).

Of the 673 case reports identified in the search, 458 involved BNT162b2 exposure during pregnancy (mother/fetus) and 215 involved exposure during breast-feeding.

In 210 out of the 458 cases, maternal exposure … was reported either with no associated AEs or with AE off-label use/product use issue for either the mother or the baby.

What happened to those pregnancies?

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