Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 5

[ecosophia]

The semi-open posts  I've hosted here on the Covid-19 narrative, the inadequately tested experimental drugs for it, and the whole cascading mess surrounding them have continued to field a huge number of comments, so I'm opening another space for discussion. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 

3. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The Canadian government has announced a 75 million dollar program to settle claims from people who died as a consequence of the coronavirus vaccines. This doesn't cover injuries, hospitalizations, just deaths. Either there's a massive amount of graft, these are way more dangerous in the short term than I thought, or the Canadian government is busy preparing for a crisis when some long term issue comes out.

Or all three of course....

https://torontosun.com/news/national/burial-costs-covered-for-canadians-killed-by-approved-vaccines

[(Anonymous)]

Even if the payout is only 10,000 dollars it's still only planning for around 2% of our population to be affected. Which is still a lot, but if we use more reasonable numbers then the number of people it's planning for is lower.

Still, it is quite concerning to see regardless....

[(Anonymous)]

Reposted at JMG's request.
-----------------------------
The following is a comment on the Naked Capitalism site. The commenter, who goes by the handle IM Doc, is a doctor in a smallish hospital in a smallish town. He’s had a lot of experience with all this. The bottom half of his (long) comment here might be of interest.
—————————————–
IM Doc
September 4, 2021 at 3:17 pm
I have been doing a great deal of research about a past pandemic which I have never spent much time investigating – the Great Russian Flu of the 1890s. This has always been thought to be an actual influenza – but recent genetic and virologic studies are showing us that this was very likely the introduction of Coronavirus OC43 to the world.
Many many physicians at the time were chronicling that the symptoms of this “flu” were different than any other influenza had ever been. Even Sir William Osler, in written statements in his textbooks of Internal Medicine, was of the notion that the symptoms exhibited by patients during that pandemic of the 1890s were really not like the normal flu. His books were written in the decades immediately leading up to the “real” influenza pandemic of 1918. And the one symptom that over and over described by numerous physicians that were writing at the time, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was depression. This just does not happen to any degree in true INFLUENZA and many remarked on the difference.
It must be noted that the word “depression” is a rather modern word and a modern construct. This construct is from our very reductionist, form-filling out, check the boxes modern medicine. “Depression” today is a drop bucket of multiple different diagnoses of the past. FYI, there are many things like this in medicine, not just depression.
Conan Doyle and Osler would have used more prominently the diagnosis “melancholia” to describe what we commonly use as “depression” today. But interestingly enough, contemporaneous medical writers of the 1890s often used a completely different word with a completely different diagnostic meaning to describe what they were seeing in patients of that pandemic. That word is ACEDIA. I have seen it used repeatedly in my research of the pandemic of the 1890s.
The difference is completely lost on us today – but it is actually a very important distinction. ACEDIA is an old medieval concept which is very difficult to describe. Basically it means a depression of the soul. A SPIRITUAL depression. While melancholia was more of a behavioral depression. Mainly having to do with living with consequences of behavior or reaction to events in a patient’s life.
Interestingly, when I am really talking to these POST COVID patients today – it is indeed more consistent with the spiritual and soul exhaustion of ACEDIA – and not behavioral or reactive like most depressions are. I have occasionally seen this ACEDIA type of depression before, but it is now just one patient after the other. I am also seeing ACEDIA like depression repeatedly in patients who have never had COVID. It is a sign of the times. In the days of Osler and Conan Doyle, they had no way to test patients for the presence of the virus and just assumed everyone had been infected by the miasma. I think today I am seeing this in POST COVID patients and non-infected as well.
The writers of that era in the 1890s were unequivocal in what they were seeing in their coronavirus pandemic – an epidemic of ACEDIA in those who had had the illness. I find it profoundly fascinating that the exact same type of thing is happening in our coronavirus patients and our COVID world today.

IM Doc's post on naked capitalism archived on my blog

[temporaryreality]

I'll also chime in here to note that I'm going through the most likely of Naked Capitalism's posts since 12/2020 to extract all of IM Doc's comments and the few "front-page" pieces he's written or been quoted extensively in and am posting them on my dreamwidth blog. I'm currently up to February and have March cued up to post shortly. Click on my username to be taken to the top post (they're displayed in reverse date-order). I'm also directing comments on those posts over to here, where the conversation will be of greater benefit.

List of "Died Unexpectedly"

[(Anonymous)]

I am trying to compile a list of newsworthy people dying "unexpectedly". I am noticing many of them lately. Do you also see the same? Please use this thread to mention any case you come across.


1. "Daniel Kaminsky, Internet Security Savior, Dies at 42"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/technology/daniel-kaminsky-dead.html

Here is his twitter showing he took vaccine shortly before that -

https://twitter.com/dakami/status/1381716799905886210



2. "Doctor who helped guide COVID-19 vaccination policy in Massachusetts dies unexpectedly"

https://www.wcvb.com/article/dr-robert-finberg-covid-vaccine-investigator-umass-professor-dies-unexpectedly/37445483


3. "Sidharth Shukla Dies: Popular Bollywood Actor & Reality TV Star Was 40"

https://deadline.com/2021/09/sidharth-shukla-dies-bollywod-actor-reality-tv-star-40-1234826157/


4. "Irish community in mourning as tributes paid to talented young sportsman after 'untimely' death"

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/irish-community-mourning-tributes-paid-24786114


5. "Biman Bangladesh Pilot Dies After Inflight Medical Emergency"

https://simpleflying.com/biman-bangladesh-pilot-dies/


6. "New Zealand hip hop artist Louie Knuxx has died while running in Melbourne at the age of 42, with the coroner set to investigate"

https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/new-zealand-hip-hop-artist-louie-knuxx-has-died-in-melbourne/

Re: List of "Died Unexpectedly"

[tamanous2020]

I'm noticing the same thing as well. It seems there's been a spate of young teenagers/adult athletes in the UK and Ireland just dropping dead on the football fields.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really have anything to add right now, but I would like to thank you for the moderation you do! Given between the various forums you maintain you probably manage at least 1,000 comments every week, I am quite impressed; and very grateful for the spaces you provide, as well as the discussions you facilitate.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to second that, thank you JMG!!

Entity Involvement

[(Anonymous)]

I was reading through the last covid post and saw that the discussion of entity involvement had come up. When the pandemic first started to gain steam Poke Runyon did a show about a book about malevolent djinn that is apparently a plagiarized and butchered version of a Solomonic work. The authors stated intent on publishing the book was to release these malevolent spirits to further the woke left hand path agenda. Many of the djinn spread sickness and disease and naturally the part of the work left out were the angelic forces that subdue the spirits. When I read that post this immediately came to mind and had a ring of significance.

Re: Entity Involvement

[(Anonymous)]

I'm gratified to see that I'm far from the only one who suspects the involvement of malevolent djinn (hungry ghosts, wicked faeries). I really do believe that we have allowed these beings to turn our society into Thanksgiving Dinner at grandma's house every day for them.

Immune tolerance hypothesis

[(Anonymous)]

Something strange is clearly going on with regard to the vaccines, aside from the high risk of adverse effects. Despite evidence that they provide protection against symptomatic infection and severe illness, many countries with the highest vaccination rates have the highest illness and hospitalization rates, and the current wave of infection is both much stronger than would be expected in the northern hemisphere summer and also failing to drop off rapidly after a peak as occurred with past waves and the first Delta wave in India. In Israel, where a booster campaign is well underway, positive cases continued to rise even as hospitalizations leveled off, and the case rate is now among the highest of any country on Earth.


Over the past few days I have developed a hypothesis that could help to explain:

--High disease prevalence in regions with high uptake of genetic vaccines.

--Increasing disease prevalence following widespread booster vaccination in Israel.

--High ratios of unvaccinated to vaccinated hospital patients.

--Much better vaccine protection against severe illness than against infection.

--Maintained vaccine protection against severe illness over time despite waning immunity.

--Inferior vaccine protection against infection compared to natural immunity, despite comparable levels of neutralizing antibodies and T/B-cell activation.

--Higher rates of asymptomatic infection among vaccinated people despite limited testing.

--Political refusal to test asymptomatic vaccinated people for infection under most circumstances.


The hypothesis is that genetic vaccines are inducing partial immune tolerance to spike protein, likely through a regulatory T-cell response. If any commenters know immunologists or vaccinologists, I would be very interested to hear their thoughts with regard to this idea.


Tolerance is the collective term for a variety of mechanisms used by the human immune system to prevent autoimmunity. Primary tolerance occurs during immune cell development in the bone marrow, and acts to weed out developing immune cells that generate autoreactive antibodies or other autoimmune responses. Secondary tolerance, which is the main focus here, acts to mitigate the effects of autoreactive responses that are already in existence. One of the mechanisms of secondary tolerance is the development of regulatory T-cells, which act to tone down immune responses to particular antigens.


Viruses can exploit tolerance in order to evade the immune system, and this notably occurs with HIV. The viral envelope protein is sufficiently similar in form to a human protein (histone H2A) that an effective antibody response is blocked by tolerance mechanisms, and people with certain autoimmune conditions compromising these tolerance mechanisms actually mount a more effective antibody response against HIV. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0952791516301522)


Increasing tolerance to a pathogen can paradoxically decrease severe disease, when severe disease involves an immune overreaction/cytokine storm rather than actual viral tissue damage. Such is the case with most cases of severe Covid-19 that lead to hospitalization and death. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33391477/) However, this protective effect comes with trade-offs. When coronavirus-family infections were studied in mice, regulatory T-cells prevented severe immunogenic illness but increased the risk of viral persistence and chronic infection. Furthermore, regulatory T-cell activation can non-specifically dampen immune response to other pathogens, leading to increased incidence of secondary infections. (https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/4/5/833/htm)


The main biochemical difference between genetic vaccines and conventional vaccines is that the former present protein antigens to the immune system on the surface of human cells, while the latter present antigens on inactivated viruses or other inert injected particles. Furthermore, when genetic vaccines “infect” a large number of muscle cells, or vessel wall cells, or heart cells, causing them to produce spike protein, the immune system creates conflicting signals. The generated antibodies say “kill that foreign object!” while the self-recognition systems say “that thing just showed up on a bunch of our cells, must be OK!” For this reason, we might expect genetic vaccines to be more likely to induce anti-autoimmunity tolerance mechanisms.


Interestingly, there is an mRNA vaccine in development that is specifically designed to induce tolerance as a treatment for autoimmune disease through activation of regulatory T-cells. The Nature paper describing that work curiously includes the following paragraph: “Sahin and colleagues have clearly demonstrated the potential of RNA lipoplex vaccines to deliver a non-inflammatory form of an mRNA vaccine encoding a self antigen to prevent and limit autoimmune disease in mice. It is noteworthy that m1Ψ-containing mRNA is also used for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, indicating that the pro- versus anti-inflammatory nature of m1Ψ mRNA vaccines can be modulated depending on the specific antigen and specific encapsulating lipid formulation. In the case of the BNT162b2 vaccine for COVID-19, the antigen is a foreign protein formulated in an immunostimulatory lipid nanoparticle. In the present study, the antigen is a self protein delivered in a non-immunogenic lipoplex formulation, and an extra mRNA purification step removes any residual immunostimulatory molecules. This method allows antigen presentation in the absence of inflammation and co-stimulation, preferential expansion of pre-existing T(reg) cells, and possibly also their de novo development.” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-021-00880-0)



In other words, they claim that the immune response to an mRNA vaccine can be switched between tolerance and immunity by choosing a self or foreign protein and selecting a pro- or anti-inflammatory lipid formulation for the encapsulation. I highly doubt that it’s that simple, and I strongly suspect that unintentional induction of partial tolerance is a likely side effect of any genetic vaccine.



Conveniently, in the case of Covid-19, it turns out that tolerance is protective against severe disease, and indeed some treatment efforts have focused specifically on enhancing immune tolerance (https://journals.ekb.eg/article_92759.html). However, immune tolerance may also be associated with prolonged virus shedding (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30273-X/fulltext). If the genetic vaccines do indeed induce partial immune tolerance, that could help to explain their impressive efficacy against the sort of immune overreaction that leads to hospitalization and death, while also explaining their comparative weakness in preventing infection and transmission of the virus. If “long covid” is, as many scientists suspect, partially induced by autoreactive antibodies, then it would also make sense that genetic vaccines could reduce or eliminate those symptoms by inducing tolerance. This could help to explain the phenomenon that vaccination sometimes alleviates long covid, and also reduces the incidence of long covid in breakthrough infections.


This is an eminently testable hypothesis that can be explored by examining regulatory T-cell responses (or other immune tolerance responses) following vaccination. To date, I can find no evidence that anyone has done this, but I would hope that it will happen in the near future, and the results will be illuminating.


Tolerance is not an on/off phenomenon but rather a wide spectrum ranging from the complete immune acceptance of most of our own proteins to the extreme reactogenicity of a serious peanut or bee sting allergy. Tolerance mechanisms can coexist with immunity mechanisms, such that tolerance begins to become apparent as the level of neutralizing antibodies declines. And to be clear, I am not hypothesizing that the genetic Covid-19 vaccines function by virtue of inducing tolerance. It has been well-demonstrated that they induce a strong neutralizing antibody response. I am instead suggesting that they may *also* be inducing partial tolerance, and that this effect may help to explain strong protection against severe (immune overreaction) disease, high rates of illness transmission in high-vax areas, and possibly also significant declines in immunity after 4-6 months despite continuing high antibody levels.


If indeed the genetic Covid-19 vaccines are inducing partial tolerance, we can make certain predictions:



1. Genetic vaccines will be extremely effective at preventing severe disease, but much less effective in terms of preventing infection. (True)

2. As vaccine immunity wanes, protection against cytokine-storm-type severe disease will be maintained. (Seems to be true)

3. As vaccine immunity wanes, vaccinated people will increasingly carry and spread the virus, and population-level viral prevalence will rise in areas with a high uptake of genetic vaccines. (True) Vaccinated people will be more likely to be asymptomatic carriers. (True, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00460-6/fulltext)

4. This will lead to a significant wave of illness transmission which will disproportionately affect unvaccinated people (who are not protected against severe disease). (True right now across the US and much of the world)

5. Booster shots will further increase tolerance, leading to an increased level of disease prevalence across the population. (True in Israel)

6. As immunity wanes and new antibody-resistant variants emerge, vaccinated people will be more vulnerable to long-term/chronic infection with high viral loads. Due to the protective effects of tolerance this will likely manifest not as typical severe Covid-19 illness (pneumonia, ventilators, cytokine storms, multiorgan failure) but rather as spike protein toxicity. So we should watch for an increase in clotting, strokes, heart attacks, myocarditis, neurological problems, etc. Vaccinated patients dying of these conditions may not be tested for Covid-19 and so likely will not be counted as covid deaths, and the myth of vaccine efficacy may persist based on the original definition of “preventing severe Covid-19 disease” even as we experience a wave of mysterious illness and death. Furthermore, vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to other infections due to regulatory-T-cell mediated general immune suppression. Should ADE develop, with non-neutralizing antibodies facilitating enhanced infection or direct infection of immune cells, tolerance could well lead to further exacerbation. However tolerance could also provide protection against cytokine storm-type reactions and accelerate the evolution of SARS-CoV2 into an endemic human pathogen, so the long-term effect of tolerance is uncertain.

7. Contrary to the shrill claims of the fearful, vaccinated people will present a much greater danger than unvaccinated people in terms of asymptomatic transmission and evolution of new variants.

8. There are likely to be significant differences between the vaccines. In particular, the two-shot series would be expected to induce greater tolerance, and possibly also greater tolerance will be evident in countries with a shorter interval between the two shots. Countries that utilized inactivated-virus vaccines are probably less likely to see tolerance effects, although they may still encounter ADE or other problems down the road.


This hypothesis presents a scenario of vaccine failure that first appears as success (because tolerance prevents severe disease), that explains the trends currently observed (unexpectedly high illness rates in high-vax areas), and that potentially portends a troubling future without invoking the still-hypothetical ADE. As with JMG’s original hypothesis, time will tell…

Mark L

Re: Immune tolerance hypothesis

[ahriman]

Just a note: data out of England seems to suggest the while it might help protect against severe disease, it actually is quite bad with preventing death - severe disease numbers are better for vaxxed, but seem worse wrt deaths

[tamanous2020]

An interesting note is the 10% spike in automobile fatalities in Q1 2021 right as the vaccines were being rolled out.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/09/03/covid-19-road-death-surge-continues/

While correlation is not causation, this was one of the markers I was paying attention to in regards to the vaccine clotting, or other long term health issues, which would get past the censors.

[(Anonymous)]

As an essential worker i noticed that at least where i live when things started to open up the year or so of practice most people missed out on the road was obvious. It would be interesting to note if the vaccine was involved but i wouldn’t look farther than a set back in familiarity on the road.

Potemkin government

[(Anonymous)]

I live near Washington, D.C. and most people here work for the US government in one way or another. The new thing that the government is implementing for building access is being referred to as an “attestation form” although the actual form that I saw has “Certification of Vaccination” as the title. The form I saw has an Office of Management and Budget control number and an expiration date in February of 2022. You are asked to check off one of 4 boxes and sign the form. The four boxes are: 1) I am fully vaccinated, 2) I am not yet fully vaccinated 3) I have not been vaccinated, and 4) I decline to respond.
A person I know was visiting a US Federal Government building last week and was required to fill out the form to enter. He was told by the guard at the door, no form, no entry, and apparently that applies to everyone including employees, contractors, and visitors. He told the guard, I am not vaccinated and the guard replied, “I don’t want to know.” He filled out the form, checking the 4th box, “I decline to respond” and tried to hand the form back to the guard. The guard refused to take the form and said, “Just keep it with you, in case anyone asks.” No one did.
The form is 4 pages long and it says, among other things, that if you check any box other than “I am fully vaccinated” then you are required to have taken a test within the past 72 hours showing you are negative for Covid 19. But the government agency the person was visiting doesn’t do any testing and no one asked for any test results. It appeared that the guards at the door are not allowed to ask for test results. The person told me that he had taken a Covid test within the required 72 hours in case anyone asked. He said you can buy a two pack of tests at CVS for around $25 and it is easy: you just pour a solution into a tray (or something like that) and get a result. I said, but you have to stick the Q-tip thing up your nose, right? He said, uh yeah, sure….
I was given a briefing by another government agency who is planning to implement the “attestation form” and was told that home testing would be fine for anyone who was required to be tested and that the Biden administration has said that it will pay for all testing. I can only imagine the Rube Goldberg mechanisms that will be put in place for the test reimbursement scheme. Companies will probably have to hire another admin person to process expense claims for home tests purchased for people who visit government buildings.
One last thing: in the briefing that I got on the attestation form, the briefer admitted that Covid cases were way up in government buildings, and many were “breakthrough” cases, i.e., people who were fully vaccinated are getting sick. Someone asked, what if I fill out the attestation form saying I am vaccinated and then I get sick? The response was, “Your status doesn’t change.”
It looks like the government knows they have to appear to be doing something about the rise in Covid cases in their buildings and they can’t mandate vaccination (except for the military, and we have yet to see how that will work out – the requirement date is this month. It is not looking good). So the government is doing this form, which is meaningless, and mandating testing, which is done at home by people who may or may not actually be testing themselves, and they are not testing the vaccinated, who may be sick and be spreading Covid to others. Potemkin government.

Re: Potemkin government

[(Anonymous)]

Fascinating.

I took a trip to the USA last month. The requirement at the time (probably still for the nonce) was that anyone boarding an airplane bound for the USA has to have a negative test certificate dated withing 72 hours before the departure time. I got a certificate from a local clinic, but it was just a letter signed by some doctor somewhere. In retrospect, I could have saved some money by just writing my own certificate (signed, Joe Schmoe, MD).

The company I work for also gave me a home test kit to submit before I went back to work after my trip. I filled up the test tube with rainwater. It came back negative.

I have long suspected that one of the main points of all the testing (aside from fanning the flames of fear and inflating case numbers) is to give lots of money to the pharmaco-medical industry.

[(Anonymous)]

I just read this. It's a selection from a thread where medical professionals compare their stats concerning survival for delta variant. It looks grim.

https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1718271.html

[(Anonymous)]

It does indeed look grim. Do we have any idea how true it is?

Because we've seen numerous examples of horror stories being flat out made up out of whole cloth. The Rolling Stone article on ivermectin is just the most recent example.

[(Anonymous)]

One thing I find super perplexing is the apparent lack of curiosity about why medical and emergency workers are willing to walk away from their jobs over mandates. In our local neighborhood forums I read about how nurses ‘should know better,’ and just get their shot. Many of the comments are very harsh and judgmental. This is disheartening.

I personally would love to know what their experiences are. I did ask a firefighter recently what he was experiencing out there, and he remarked that there was an increase in all types of emergency calls. I wish I had asked him for more specifics.

I am no longer working now, but early on the nursing home where I worked had a Covid outbreak. Everyone got it. And actually most residents were fine. Age didn’t even seem to be the biggest risk factor. We had a 101 year old woman with mild symptoms. And residents with diabetes, stroke were also fine. The residents who died were either end of life or in an active disease process that they were already not recovering well from. I would be so curious to know who is showing up at the ER.

Tamar

[(Anonymous)]

That's one of the data points which made me decide it's probably not safe to take the shots: when medical workers would rather lose their jobs than take something, there's something very wrong with it....

Variation on a Theme

[escorcher]

If this article is to be believed, it looks like the most active iteration of Sars CoV-2 worldwide has moved on from just plain old Delta:

https://defyccc.com/delta-ay-3-ay-4/

Am guessing this is one step nearer more concerning potential vaccine protection issues. The continuation of the Mu iteration could 'up the ante' too, I guess, if any kind of combination was to happen between the two flavours.
Just a reminder, although vaccines may well push on the development of these iterations, there is also plenty of evidence that long haul treatment of immunocompromised individuals using plasma antibodies has done the same e.g.:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210831/Development-of-SARS-CoV-2-antibody-escape-variants-in-an-immunocompromised-individual.aspx

Arguably, it's likely it's this that has had a greater impact on the development of this disease up to now than vaccinations.

HIV/AIDS

[(Anonymous)]

Anyone have a history of the last crisis via a magical lens ? Maybe we can learn from history

[(Anonymous)]

Do things appear to have gotten a bit more tense lately?

About 2 weeks ago I went into town for the periodic shopping run. Yeah, I'll skip the mask when I can. Then I noticed people using the phrase "God bless" more than usual.

Last Saturday, I went on the usual errands and the vibe was just nasty. It had the same feeling like a fight or worse was going to break out.

Note, this is in Washington state, US.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm in eastern Ontario and have also felt the same: things have gotten a lot worse in the past few days. I'd attributed it to tension over our election, but if you're sensing it too, then it might be a lot larger...

[d_mekel]

We know 2 people that were recently rushed to the ER because they thought they were having a heart attack. Both were vaccinated. This is a 5-10 mile radius for where these people are located, and both that my wife knows first hand. 1 was a male, the other a female.

One odd point about the female is she is a yoga instructor that is very aware of her body and how it works. Surprisingly, she believes it was vaccine related because she has never had any issues before. Test showed it was inflammation around the heart. Doctor's blew off the idea of it being vaccine related.

[(Anonymous)]

What was the doctor's argument for why?

Biden's Speech

[stcathalexandria]

I've been feeling like things have settled into a live-and-let-live around me with maybe 10% of people masked and no vaccination restrictions or requirements anywhere in my county. Then I see Biden is giving a speech this week to announce measures to deal with coronavirus. All I can think is "can't he just shut up and go away?" We've got no end goal in sight and I feel like I'm living the plot of Atlas Shrugged with more and more measures being enacted under child-like names to promote fairness and hire as many bureaucrats as possible to manage peoples' lives.

Any ideas what Biden might propose in his speech? How much damage can one man do in the ten minutes he is lucid?

Re: Biden's Speech

[(Anonymous)]

I really hope this goes away soon, but I'm preparing for it to last for years...

What if this never ends?

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, thanks again for providing this little island of sanity!

I would like to ask everybody about one possible future.
North Korea has some of the lowest energy consumption per capita in the world and yet it maintains an incredible totalitarian dictatorship where the whole population is regimented (they have 30 castes). Even famine and cannibalism did not damage the system.
That tells me that it is possible to maintain totalitarian govts using very low levels of energy. Of course, the implicit support of a majority of population is required. And that's where propaganda and indoctrination does wonders.

So, do you think it's possible for the "new normal" to come to fruition and survive decades into the energy descent?
I can see most elites supporting this and even believing themselves to be the good guys - after all the alternative is a series of unmanaged crises, wars and famines. At least this way they can decide who lives and who dies - which I bet in their minds is the most humane thing.

Just to clarify - this does not require a grand conspiracy. It's just a logical top down controlled slowdown of economies while maintaining the current social hierarchy in place. Most people would support it, just like in NK. In the beginning they would not want to lose their privileges, in the end they would be afraid for their heads.

Re: What if this never ends?

[weilong]

Well, the Soviet Union and Mao's China managed it with considerably lower levels of energy and surveillance technology than we have now. So it certainly seems possible.

As a wise man once said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. However, there are a lot of indications that decentralization is the wave of the future. I hope that the current push for totalitarian control is just the death throes of a system on its way out. On the other hand, even that could last for quite a long time, and decentralized systems could still be very unpleasant in many places. It's going to get interesting, that much is for sure.

The rapid diminishment of “Vaccine” effectiveness

[(Anonymous)]

Article discussing rapid loss of immunity response after inoculation:
https://www.healthcarehygienemagazine.com/nursing-home-residents-healthcare-workers-lose-more-than-80-percent-of-their-covid-19-immunity-six-months-after-pfizer-vaccine/

I had to look around a fair bit to find a version of that article that did NOT have the cacomagic creepy images of people being stabbed with inoculation needles that seem so ubiquitous in Covid-themed articles; the above article is certified needle-free.

An extract: “By six months after vaccination, the blood of 70% of these nursing home residents had “very poor ability to neutralize the coronavirus infection in laboratory experiments…”” The article mentions the researchers could see reduced antibody response as soon as two weeks after the second inoculation!

San Diego California Report for the Month of August

[(Anonymous)]

I grabbed the stats off the San Diego County Health Department's coronavirus site cumulative to August 31 and compared the data to the August 3 snapshot to see what happened in the month.
(https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/community_epidemiology/dc/2019-nCoV/status.html)

So far so good. No mass sicknesses or dieoffs or anything. The hospitalization and death rates for all demographics are still a fraction of what they were last January.

The San Diego site's link "Demographics of Vaccinated San Diego Residents" states that 77% of residents have at least one shot in them. This may be resulting in the same reduced severity of coronavirus for vaccinated people in San Diego, that I saw in the UK Health Service's Report 21, Table 5
(https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1012644/Technical_Briefing_21.pdf)

However, this Sunday I also discovered the moth in the circuitry of San Diego County's site. In their other link "Summary of Cases By Vaccination Status", they show "Fully Vaccinated" and "Not Fully Vaccinated" groups-- but in the tiny fine print at the bottom of this page, reveal that "Not Fully Vaccinated" includes those who have 1 shot!

So, are 1-shotters "vaccinated" or not??

There is no data I can find anywhere for fully uninjected people in San Diego, as far as hospitalization and death rates. For the "Cases By Vaccination Status", it's entirely possible that most of the "Not Fully" cases had 1 shot; i.e. that most cases are occurring in more-or-less-vaccinated people. I just can't tell.

FWIW, even the 2-shotters ("Fully vaccinated") are up to 18% of cases in the county overall in August; as much as 43% of cases for the 50-somethings. For 60-somethings and 70-somethings, "Fully Vaccinated" account for 32% and 38% of the cases in those groups, respectively.

This is a definite increase for those groups, from the month of July when it was 10% overall, with 70-somethings as high as 21%. But I can't tell from San Diego's 1-shotter-confounded data whether this could be due to a rise in the percentage of "Fully Vaccinated" from July.
(At end of July, 73% of San Diegans had 1 or 2 shots; at end of August it was 77%.)

- Cicada Grove

Re: San Diego California Report for the Month of August

[ahriman]

The quality of reporting about the group that goes from first shot to two weeks after vaccination is poor at best - in the US. I am actually not tracking that group - even in the UK, where data is good - simply because I have no time for it. But some people suggest that there might be issues with mortality during that period.

Also note that the definition of case - at the federal level - is... complicated. As they don't track "breakthrough" infections on vaxxed unless you end up in hospital. They do track asymptomatic non-vaxxed infections. This is enough to make the number of cases much higher in the unvaxxed population - due to a statistical artefact. To complicate things further most state-level authorities do track both.

Also the number of cases is tied to the number of tests. So exactly what is a "case" is a can of worms.

So: I do not track cases at all - only very roughly. I do track hospitalizations and deaths.

If you want to track the group that goes between first shot and 14 days after 2nd shot, be mindful of the above.

If you are willing to use international data - consider using the report from England: it has everything you need - I believe - and seems to be trustworthy.

[(Anonymous)]

Good essay from Yves Smith at naked capitalism -

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/the-bizarre-civil-war-stoking-impulses-of-the-professional-managerial-class-in-the-us.html

PCR cycles

[(Anonymous)]

I found out last week that the various PCR tests being run at the facility where I currently work are being run at 45 cycles. As I understand it, the likelihood of false positives grows exponentially above 28-30 cycles. This, I thought, is an interesting point for consideration.

We already know that the PCR test does not distinguish between live and dead viral RNA. I suspect that this means that some people may continue to test positive for several weeks after they're no longer infectious.

I thought that some of you might find this interesting.

Brother Josephus

Re: PCR cycles

[drhooves]

Thanks for the data point. Is this the same test that's being replaced at the end of this year?

https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert-Changes_CDC_RT-PCR_SARS-CoV-2_Testing_1.html

It's been pretty apparent to me that "the numbers" have been manipulated early and often. And along with the incentive for hospitals to receive at least a 20% add-on for each Covid-19 case and much more for the use of a ventilator, it seems pretty obvious that getting accurate data points is difficult.

Sort of like vaccinating control group members in clinical trials...

Russian Wikipedia on the Pfizer Shot

[(Anonymous)]

A friend sent me this link to the Russian-language Wikipedia site:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0_Pfizer/BioNTech_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B2_COVID-19

You can follow the bouncing ball in Google Translate, if you like:
(https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT)

Here are some of the interesting highlights:

"The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine (BNT162b2) is an mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19, developed by the German biotechnology company BioNTech in collaboration with the American Pfizer and the Chinese Fosun Pharma".

Huh. I didn't know about Fosun Pharma. This deal is mentioned in the English language Wikis for the Pfizer and for Fosun Pharma, but just deemphasized. So Pfizer is being distributed into China after all, but as "comirnaty" under Fosun's aegis.

Then we have:

"According to the FDA report on the Pfizer vaccine, there were 3,410 cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the total number of investigators: 1,594 cases occurred in the vaccinated group, 1,816 in the placebo group, and since there are 20 times more suspected cases than confirmed cases. this category of disease cannot be simply ignored. A rough estimate of the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine after excluding cases that occurred within 7 days of vaccination (409 for Pfizer vaccine versus 287 for placebo) gives a value of 29%. Obviously, the higher the false-negative rate, the greater the decrease in the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine, but the true rate of false negative test results is unknown. The FDA Pfizer Vaccine Review Table indicates that 371 people were excluded from efficacy analyzes due to "significant protocol deviations within 7 days or earlier after dose 2." This imbalance between the randomized groups in the number of excluded individuals: 311 in the vaccinated group versus 60 in the placebo group raises questions about the nature of the protocol deviations in the Pfizer study, and why five times more participants were excluded from the vaccinated group. An additional disclosure concern stems from the fact that there is a high level of use of pain relievers and antipyretics in the vaccine population. Pfizer has reported eight confirmed cases of symptomatic COVID-19 in people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 at baseline (1 in the vaccinated group, 7 in the placebo group), while there are no more than 31 re-infections worldwide. which is statistically doubtful given the number of subjects with an average follow-up period of two months. It is noted that the Pfizer protocol was not drawn up by independent experts, but prepared by three employees of the company."

And finally, they go into side effects (this section is Wikipedia-tagged as "incomplete"):

"Side Effects

"The most common side effects in subjects aged 18 to 55 after the second injection were (numbers in brackets for placebo control group)

- pain at injection site: 77.8% (11.7%)
- fatigue: 59.4% (22.8%)
- headache: 51.7% (24.1%)
- muscle pain: 37.3% (8.2%)
- chills: 35.1% (3.8%)
- joint pain: 21.9% (5.2%)
- high fever: 15.8% (0.5%)
"

This section goes on to list several incidents where old and sick people died shortly after receiving the shot in Norway, Germany, France, Israel, and Spain. They also recount a healthy Floridian dying of a hemorrhagic stroke after the shot, a dozen Israelis suffering facial paralysis after injection, and hundreds of cases of myocarditis in Israel and the U.S.

- Cicada Grove

3 "G"s in Austria (and some other areas in Europe)

[(Anonymous)]

My sincere gratitude to both our host and all of the commenters.

The one thing it seems everyone can agree on in these strange days is that, across the world, governments have reacted to covid in a highly heterogeneous and changeable manner. Who knows what the situation will be from one place to another, and how it will have changed next week? Or next month?

A report from Austria. An acquaintance who lives in a neighboring country happened to spend a few days there recently as a tourist. Austria is using a system called the 3 G's, the g's being from the first letters of the words in German-- so, to get into a restaurant or museum you are either (1) vaccinated (geimpft) (2) have a recent negative covid test (getestet) or (3) proof of having recovered from covid (genesen).

My friend is not vaccinated, so he had his PCR test results with him. This was just a certificate, a PDF, attached to an email (with a QR code) from the laboratory that made the test. He reports that during a period of some 3 days he ate in several different restaurants, rode on 2 gondolas, and visited several museums. He was asked to show a "G" document -- in his case, the proof of recent negative test-- "getestet" -- only once, in a cafe, when the waitress asked to see it before passing out menus. He took out his smartphone, found the email attachment of the PDF, and showed it to her. She glanced at it, enough, apparently, to check the date and the negative result. She didn't ask for his ID nor did she try the QR code.

By the way, if you know how to take a screen shot, and can use Word, the PCR test PDF is ridiculously easy to forge.

So it might, at first, not seem like that big a deal, with the 3 G system everyone can go everywhere they ordinarily would in the public sphere and testing-- for now-- is easy to get and free.

However, that could change. Many people are calling for making the unvaccinated pay for their PCR tests.

On the other hand, how about break-through infections? Maybe the vaccinated should get PCR tests, too? That's what occurs to me...

It seems possible anyway to go most places without too much of a problem (not counting the inconvenience of having to get a PCR test), however, who knows about the police doing random checks and issuing fines for those people in, say, restaurants, without health documentation-- as they are currently doing in France.

This brought to my mind an old blog post over at OF TWO MINDS back in December 2020 on vaccine passports.

= = =

OF TWO MINDS by Charles Hugh Smith
"About Those Vaccine ID Cards...
December 3, 2020
An idea that's simple as an abstraction--vaccine ID cards--turns out to be extremely difficult once real-world operational realities must be dealt with.

Authorities around the world have made it clear that they will do "whatever it takes" to vaccinate their citizenry with one of the first available vaccines. Authoritarian states may mandate universal vaccinations while less authoritarian states will favor a "carrot and stick" approach of offering benefits to the vaccinated and exclusions from employment, education, travel and most of everyday life for those who refuse to be vaccinated.

To identify the vaccinated and unvaccinated, many nations are planning to issue ID cards or "vaccine passports." As an abstraction, this seems straightforward, but if we start digging into the actual operational requirements of this mass ID card issuance and distribution, a number of common-sense issues arise...."

CONTINUE READING AT https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/vaccine-card12-20.html

= = =

Smith makes some good points, and especially so in hindsight. But once such systems, however problematic, are in place, whether "GGG" or some form of health passport, or whatever documentation, the proprietary software sold to various governments, the bureaucrats hired, and a tidy stream of municipal government revenue forthcoming from fines, it's going to be very difficult to change-- whether it makes sense or not.

But this may start to fall apart when the vaccinated people don't all get their booster shots as apparently will soon be required. Among other reasons to expect it to fall apart.

I really wonder what this look like by December.

FLOBBERWURM

Re: 3 "G"s in Austria (and some other areas in Europe)

[drhooves]

This brings up the interesting point of "enforcement". I remember this post by Charles, and he's been right so far - outside of a strict security check, it'll be difficult to enforce this. And so far the Biden administration is imploring the private sector to do this, since we know "rule of law" is not what it used to be.

On Thursday the President will address the nation on "new" strategies to combat the pandemic, and they are hinting at schools and government environments for changes - since .gov already has the upper hand there. I'm sure the word "please" will be used often.

Considering what a debacle the Real ID program turned into, which simply requires more proof of actual citizenship to obtain government issued ID cards, it doesn't look good. I find it difficult to believe .gov can implement vaccine passports that stay current with boosters which are not fraught with errors and easy to forge.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't it odd that now now one cares about the vaccines anymore? As soon as it was proven that Delta wasn't scary enough and vaccine mandates/approvals and such are being reigned back, lo and behold the Mu variant comes out and it's even more contagious and deadly and now the vaccinated need booster shots.

I feel that a breaking point has been reached, people have spent their last few brain cells and have lost patience with whatever and whoever has been En vogue, much to the detriment of a few movements and individuals. It's rather laughable how things have been turning out.

[(Anonymous)]

I just hope it gets through to the government before too long...

Justin Trudeau pelted by rocks...

[(Anonymous)]

By a griup of anti-vaccine protesters:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/justin-trudeau-pelted-stones-campaign-event

Forbes article on the effects of Covid restrictions on schoolchildren.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to share this article on the effects of masks, social distancing, and other Covid-19 restrictions on schoolchildren. Apparently, the article was pulled from its original source, Forbes -- ostensibly for telling too much truth -- but it has been archived here:

https://archive.ph/9MeFZ

Re: Forbes article on the effects of Covid restrictions on schoolchildren.

[(Anonymous)]

I've given up on trying to convince people that what's being done to children is going to cause serious long term issues: people are insisting children can survive anything we're doing. Which is true, but misses the point. They may survive, but how many of them will have long term issues with social skills? How many will have to fight terror when hearing anyone sneeze for the rest of their lives? How many will never recover emotionally from the years of isolation?