“Chief Of World-Renowned Medical Journal Has Repeatedly Bashed US, Praised China For Coronavirus Response”
“The editor of The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, has a long history of praising the Chinese government, including during the coronavirus pandemic.
Richard Horton’s pro-China and anti-U.S. remarks were used in a Facebook ad sponsored by CGTN, the Chinese state-controlled TV network.
In 2015, Horton received a Friendship award from China’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, which recruited scientists and experts to help China’s technological advancement.
The Beijing-controlled agency contributed funding to several studies published in The Lancet.
One of China Global Television Network’s most recent ads on Facebook is of an interview that the state-controlled propaganda network conducted about the coronavirus pandemic with the editor of The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals.
The editor, Richard Horton, largely praised the Chinese government’s response to the pandemic while blasting the U.S. in the May 2020 interview, which garnered around 900,000 impressions at a cost of around $500, according to Facebook data.
“I think we have a great deal to thank China for, about the way that it handled the outbreak,” Horton said in the interview.
Horton, who is British, also criticized U.S. politicians for “being so openly critical” of China and the World Health Organization.
“The U.S. has wasted the whole of February and early March, said Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet,” reads the caption from CGTN, which the U.S. government requires to register as a foreign agent of China.
“He said it is disappointing to see American politicians giving credence to conspiracy theories and promoting unproven treatments,” the CGTN caption also said.”
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Except they weren’t, and he’s lying and he knows it.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was vilified for rejecting harsh lockdowns. But Florida’s Covid-19 numbers are better than California’s or New York’s, and its economy thrives, writes @AllysiaFinleyhttps://t.co/KFMbG3bcVw
“Gottlieb Versus Fauci: Scientists At Odds Over Governors Reopening States During The Pandemic”
“Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Dr. Anthony Fauci both gave remarks to the media on Friday. It is notable that both men who have been featured prominently throughout the pandemic for their scientific and medical advice are at odds now on reopening the country. For those keeping score at home, Gottlieb advises that the governors who are opening up their states are doing the right thing while Fauci is already sounding doom and gloom warnings of a fourth spike in coronavirus cases.
Like clockwork, Fauci is doing his usual thing – a holiday is approaching and he is doing what he can to discourage families and friends from socializing. During a White House briefing on the coronavirus on Friday, Fauci warned that despite the number of vaccinations being administered throughout the United States, we may soon be hit with a fourth spike of COVID-19 cases. Most states are showing a drop in hospitalizations and rate of positivity, which is why governors are relaxing strict lockdown measures. In other words, governors are following the science which the Party of Science has regularly stated is what must be done. Fauci wants to get out in front of the Easter holiday.
The recent plateau in cases from record-high post-holiday rates is actually a sign that Americans should mask up and brace for another potential boom in infections, Fauci said while citing past coronavirus data trends at a White House press briefing.
“We’ve just now recently experienced the worst surge,” Fauci said. “The issue is that we are starting to plateau. That plateau is about 60,000 to 70,000 cases a day. When you have that much viral activity in a plateau, it almost invariably means that you are at risk of another spike.
“Many countries in Europe have seen just that — over the past week, an increase in cases by 9 percent, something we desperately want to avoid,” he added.
By contrast, when coronavirus cases leveled off after the first wave of infections last spring, the national daily caseload was roughly a third of what it is today, he said.
“Many of us will recall very, very vividly — in the end of the winter and the beginning of the spring — we had a surge that was dominated by the New York metropolitan area. After the surge, what we came down to was a baseline of about 20,000 cases per day. That is a very high baseline, relatively speaking,” he said.
It is understandable that Fauci doesn’t want to encourage Americans to let our guard down in keeping ourselves and our loved ones as safe as possible against the coronavirus. As we remember, last Easter was the first traditional holiday celebrated by families and friends that was canceled due to lockdowns. It sure sounds like Fauci would like to continue the same this year. Even with the White House’s plan to get all Americans vaccinated by May, Fauci advises that mitigation measures continue. Those measures include wearing face masks, social distancing, and hand washing – the same basic measures we’ve been told for over a year. At first, it was to flatten the curve, now it seems the goalposts are shifting again with Fauci. Perhaps he expects us to live like we are now indefinitely.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb is more a man of common sense. As Fauci discourages governors from reopening their states, Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, says governors are doing the right thing. He’d like to see mask mandates remain in place but otherwise, it is the right thing to do to ease restrictions on businesses. In comparing the actions of the governors of Texas and Mississippi to the action taken by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, he said Lamont has the right idea. Unlike the governors of Texas and Mississippi, Lamont did not lift the face mask mandate in Connecticut. Gottlieb, by the way, lives in Connecticut and served on a pandemic advisory team for Lamont. Connecticut isn’t 100% open now, as Texas is, for example, there are still some capacity limits in effect for restaurants and other public venues.
“I think it’s the kind of thing we need to be doing around the country, is at least providing a map of where we’re heading if the situation continues to improve without taking our foot off the brake all at once,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019.
Gottlieb — a member of Pfizer’s board, which makes a Covid vaccine — said the emerging virus strains are important to watch for states that plan to ease restrictions. The B117 variant, first discovered in the U.K., is growing in Connecticut, Gottlieb said. “If the situation changes, I’m sure they’ll reassess it.”
Gottlieb said he personally would continue avoiding eating indoors, a stance he has maintained during the pandemic. “I’m going to be going out to restaurants I’m sure over the course of March, but I’m going to be eating outside,” Gottlieb said. “It just doesn’t seem like a risk worth taking to me.”
The success of vaccination programs makes a difference, according to Gottlieb.”
They didn’t think I would know the dragon’s true name.
The Dragon Comes Hunting
On the night of September 14, 2018, I got a call from Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker. My high school friend Brett Kavanaugh had been nominated for the Supreme Court on July 9. Farrow was calling to tell me that Brett and I had been named in a letter claiming “sexual misconduct in the 1980s.” At the time of Farrow’s call the accuser had not been named. She turned out to be Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor in California.
A September 16 piece in the Washington Post followed. In it Ford claimed that Brett had sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school in 1982. Ford also claimed that I was in the room where the assault allegedly took place and that I witnessed everything before jumping in and breaking things up.
Their plan was simple. For the entire summer of 2018 Ford had been working with an opposition researcher named Keith Koegler. According to The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, Koegeler had “spent many hours that summer poring over news coverage of the nomination process, biographical information about Kavanaugh, and writings and videos produced by Mark Judge. In combing through YouTube, articles, and social networks, Koegler had learned more about the house parties … and the lexicon of 1980s Georgetown Prep than he had ever thought he would care to know.”
Koegler and others had set things up, and the next step seemed preordained: hit me with an unexpected allegation (Farrow) and get me to start talking. Then entangle my life, which has included a struggle with alcoholism when I was younger, with the life of Brett Kavanaugh, who had a much different journey than I. It was an oppo research hit whose lynchpin was me crumbling, babbling, and using my life to take my friend down, even if he had nothing to do with my struggles. Reading accounts of Ford’s behavior it becomes clear why she never went to the police or released her therapist’s notes (which never mention Brett Kavanaugh) and why she kept asking for delays. She was waiting for me to crack.
A Lesson from a Sci-Fi Classic
In her classic 1968 novel A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin creates an incredible fantasy world that also has layers of spiritual and psychological meaning. In Earthsea, every living thing has a hidden true name that defines its essence. Knowing something’s true name provides remarkable power. You can control a person, an animal or even minerals. Wizards in the book spend months studying the true names of every living thing.
In the best part of the story, the young wizard Ged sails to the island of Pendor to confront a dragon, who has been destroying local villages. The dragon speaks in a sinister, solicitous way, offering to help Ged while simultaneously mocking him – “twisting the true words to false ends, catching the unwary in a maze of mirror words each of which reflects the truth and none of which leads anywhere.”
“The latest $1.9 trillion omnibus spending bill pending in Congress is in addition to last year’s $3.4 trillion COVID-related health and economic stimulus spending bills. Estimates of this new massive bailout put the actual appropriation of taxpayer funding related to health costs at a meaningless nine percent of the total new bloat.
What will we get for the $1.9 trillion in new deficit spending? This is all nothing more than a crafty direct federal taxpayer subvention to blue states and large urban corridors that otherwise could never justify any other state’s taxpayer bailout for their years of irresponsible, profligate government waste.
Take for example California, whose commanding government employee unions control every facet of that state’s budget allocations and whose public pension plans, the most generous in the nation, now demand extraordinary funding at all levels of government. This political turkey has now come home to roost.
But California, like New York and Illinois, have another big problem. Their state’s productive classes — you know, the people who actually create the wealth and economic vitality that permit such largess — are now leaving those states in droves rendering enormous potential tax deficits in their wake. What to do?
Call in the cavalry — or in this case, “F-Troop”. Dr. Fauci, the goofy corporal of functional health bureaucrats, has dutifully continued his Lockdown Fears Tour sufficient to permit his enablers in Washington D.C. to craft a wildly off-the-reservation so-called stimulus spending proposal designed to transfer the wealth of responsible working states to cover the big government malfeasance of the irresponsible ones.
If you still wonder why states like California, New York, and Illinois continue on a path of lockdowns despite a year’s worth of health data verifying the converse, one need only look only at Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal to understand the want of blue states to keep their citizens restricted, frustrated and on the dole.
After a full year of governments at all levels first began shutting down our economies for “30 days to slow the virus spread”, only the bluest of states continue to restrict their population’s ability to earn a living. And despite sound research showing the counterproductive health consequences of lockdowns, those blue state’s motivations for continuing their restrictive edicts are becoming ever more evident.
There is a growing, observable contrast developing in the country between the positive health outcomes in states which have been working and re-opening their economies and the coastal deep blue states who remain under strict lockdowns. Those who continue to remain closed for business are being exposed as having unnecessarily done more harm to their citizenry than the virus.
In fact, once you understand the true nature of the $1.9 trillion proposal — to channel the nation’s tax dollars to Democrat-controlled blue states and left-wing institutions — you will begin to get a handle on the immoral overreach that defines this stimulus plan and the corrupt manner in which they continue to trade on public fear to maintain the health lie undergirding this preposterous debt-busting pork-barrel bill.”
In the ‘nothing new under the sun’ category, Olasky reminds us that some things seem to repeat themselves in history; a long but worthy read with a lesson on keeping some perspective.
MEDIA | This isn’t the first time U.S. media has played the sycophant
by Marvin Olasky
Posted 3/02/21, 12:50 pm
Many conservatives are depressed about liberalism’s power—but the situation has been much worse at other times. Would you trade, politically, March 2021 for March 1933, when amid the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt took over and expanded the federal government enormously, with Congress cementing into law his wishes or guesses, without debate or amendment?
Popular support for Franklin Roosevelt during his first term was great. One congressman compared him to Jesus Christ, not unfavorably. A poll among New York schoolchildren showed God running a poor second to him. Rep. John Young Brown of Kentucky said he would “as soon start a mutiny in the face of a foreign foe as start a mutiny today against the program of the President of the United States.” Forty-one popular songs trilled his praises. …
… Few reporters were willing to talk back. The San Francisco journalist publication Scoop said, regarding press and president, “the nation’s reporters will smile contentedly as long as F.R. sits on the throne.” Joseph Medill Patterson, who published the nation’s most-read newspaper, the New York Daily News, promised in 1933, “Whatever President Roosevelt does or doesn’t do, we’re going to be for him.”
Frank Kent, a 56-year-old Baltimore Sun writer and syndicated columnist in 1933, was one of the rare journalists who pushed back. He complained that “a tremendous propaganda emanated from Washington. … Anyone who did not fall in line was regarded as ‘rocking the boat,’ or ‘pulling back on prosperity.’”
Kent muttered in one of his columns about “government propaganda … never has anyone seen anything like it. … The publicity men are so numerous that they stumble over each other. … The making of favorable news is one of the principal Administration activities, and more real efficiency is there shown than in any other department.”
Kent voted for Roosevelt in 1932, only to be appalled by the “fine fake game” the president’s administration played as it flooded the country with puff pieces and articles designed for newspaper publication: “Much of the publicity is so arranged that it has the appearance of entirely spontaneous and wholly untainted news, but it is all thought out and planned with the utmost care.” …
… Since many of our readers complain vociferously (for good reason) about today’s journalism, Mr. Jones reminds us that some reporters were courageous, but others were villainous in what were not good old days. The movie’s villain in chief: Walter Duranty of The New York Times. (I haven’t mentioned him in these pages since 2014, and I have a 7-year itch.)
Duranty, Moscow correspondent for the Times during the 1920s and 1930s, was the father of all those who covered and praised the rise to power of Mao in the 1940s and Castro in the 1950s. Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize—America’s top journalism award—in 1932 for his work’s “scholarship, profundity, impartiality and exceptional clarity, and an example of the best type of foreign correspondence.” …
… At the end of Duranty’s tour of duty in Moscow, he said it had been a tour of love: “Looking backward over the fourteen years I have spent in Russia, I cannot escape the conclusion that this period has been a heroic chapter in the life of Humanity.” Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize led to other honors, along with a well-fed retirement in Southern California during which he continued to worship capital H “Humanity” rather than capital G “God.” He had a well-attended funeral in 1957.
How bad is press bias and our new regime in Washington? The United States survived Duranty, and Roosevelt’s liberal reforms may have kept the country from moving into a revolutionary situation. Amity Shlaes, though, argues in her excellent The Forgotten Man (2008) that FDR’s expansion of government and constant experimentation prolonged the Depression, and she’s probably right.
So when Joe Biden dons the mantle of Roosevelt and proposes expansion of current federal programs, WORLD will try to remind you of lessons from history. For example: I’ve written some books on poverty-fighting, so I like the Earned Income Tax Credit that creates more incentives to work, but we’re buying trouble if we pay more people not to work. FDR himself acknowledged the danger of welfare programs becoming “a habit with the country.” …
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Only 9% for actual Covid relief. Two trillion more on the backs of our children and grandchildren. It’s a money-laundering bill that is basically a payoff for the stolen election.
Then there is the totally unconstitutional Against the People Act 2021, which permanently enshrines fraud into all future federal elections. And the supposed “Equity Act.” And the release of thousands of illegals into the country via open borders. The Republic is spiraling out of control…
Even with Olasky’s comparisons I don’t think it is a valid one. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris…they have an agenda and it is quite clear. Take their guns, mandate the heck out of our citizenry, reparations to people who just want a handout due to the color of their skin…they have never been “oppressed”. I have the daughters of a friend screaming “racism” “bigotry” “holding us down”…just because of the color of their skin. They live in a 700,000 dollar house…they have never left home…they are 27 and 29. Their college was paid for due to their Dad’s “disability” in the service…he hurt his knee after jumping off the back of a truck….his college was paid for and he is now on 100% disability but he has worked as a teacher his entire adult life. This administration will soon be coming after the church for believing in the Bible and what it says about homosexuality…that’s hate speech according to them. Open borders and handing them free services upon the backs of hard working tax payers wasn’t happening in the 30’s.
You really cannot compare Biden with Roosevelt. Biden is clearly mentally diminished whether that be dementia or some other debilitating condition. We are in a bad way in this country.
There are good things happening at the state level in some states which are putting a block on some of the Federal actions. We need to pray for our state legislators.
I don’t know that he was “comparing” exactly, but reminding us that history is an ebb and flow and that some themes really do repeat themselves (and then, if God wills, right themselves later on).
Being in journalism, I’ve been guilty of having the urgency of “now” front and center in my worldview too often. I just thought it was helpful a helpful reminder for me that we’re not the only generation to have seen hard times, even just in the U.S. (and we won’t be the last, God willing and the nation survives a bit longer!).
I did find the piece interesting in as much as what was happening back in the Roosevelt days. Olasky was asking if we would trade today for yesteryear politically. We were talking the other morning of dark days in history in which we would not want to go. I just think a comparison of the politics of today is very much different.
Chief of Cherokee Nation Says ‘It’s Time’ for Jeep to Stop Using Name
The CEO of Jeep’s parent company now says he is open to ending the company’s use of the name.
UPDATE 3/4/2021: The Wall Street Journal reports that the CEO of Stellantis, Jeep’s parent company, now says he is open to ending the company’s use of the Cherokee name, and that conversation with Cherokee nation on the issue is ongoing. A representative from Jeep declined to make further comment on the matter, and representatives with the Cherokee Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I couldn’t read the WSJ article but I checked the stats — Florida’s stats are no better than New York or California. On a per capita basis it has a higher rate than New York with half the number of tests per capita. Interestingly, the Dakotas have the highest rate per capita. New York has a higher death rate but California’s rate is lower than Florida. One could say the measures taken by California and NewYork but not Florida have had no noticeable effect but even then we can’t be sure and there are other variables. The fact the Dakotas have such a high rate despite the lack of an urban population points out that protective measures do make a difference.
Republicans and Democrats supported the CARES act which spent twice as much as the current bill. Much of what was in the CARES act is in this act. Cruz was pontificating about aliens receiving the 1400$ cash subsidy when the Democrats pointed out the wording for the subsidy was exactly the same as in the previous act which he voted for. No aliens received a subsidy.
Most of the money flows to cities because thats where the people are and “blue” states generally have a larger population but on a per capita basis rural states receive more money from the federal government. The cities and “blue” states also pay a greater share of taxes.
Olasky is right — there’s an ebb and flow and history does repeat, no need to panic.
There is of course a difference between Biden and FDR. FDR was far more to the left, had a far greater belief in the role of government and was far more willing to steamroll over any opposition. Biden is a centrist. The paper press in the 30s was far less “objective” than they are today. Relax, nobody is coming for your guns, the border is more secure than it was in the 30s, etc, etc
From the 5:45 link: “As of Feb. 19, 41,977,401 COVID vaccinations had been given with 966 deaths reported following vaccination, which is approximately a rate of .0023 percent.” That’s two per 100,000 to immunize against a disease that kills more than two per 100 of those it infects. Statistically that’s not bad odds.
PS Since the shots started with the most vulnerable, the oldest people, you’re going to have a measurable number of deaths among unvaccinated members of that population. I once edited a book about insurance in which the author included a chart of life expectancy at each age. To understand the chart, the numbers said 50% of people of that age would die in that number of years. For instance, they might estimate that someone who is now 10 has 67 years of life expectancy, or 50% of today’s 10-year-olds will die by age 77 and 50% will still be alive at 77. If you make it to 20, your life average life expectancy may be 78. The life expectancy at 99 years was 6 months. Basically if you are giving the shots to people 80 and above, and you give it to one million of them, some of those million extreme elderly will die in the next week whether or not they receive the shot. (Obviously some might have died from the shot itself, and not everyone who received the shot was extremely old. But your 85-year-old neighbor dying two days after receiving the shot may or may not have died without it–at that age, sudden death is not unusual.)
MARCH 7, 2021 3:21
Austria suspends AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine batch after death
By Reuters Staff
ZURICH, March 7 (Reuters) – Austrian authorities have suspended inoculations with a batch of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine as a precaution while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after the shots, a health agency said on Sunday.
“The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) has received two reports in a temporal connection with a vaccination from the same batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the district clinic of Zwettl” in Lower Austria province, it said.
One 49-year-old woman died as a result of severe coagulation disorders, while a 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism and is recovering, it said. A pulmonary embolism is an acute lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot.
“Currently there is no evidence of a causal relationship with the vaccination,” BASG said. …
Cheryl: The 966 represents 5 % of the total number of adverse events reports, but those are just the ones that are actually reported. VAERS doesn’t catch all incidents and many go unreported (90% underreported if flu shot stats are used). This with a 99.5-99.8% survival rate without the vaccine (so why do we even need a vaccine for a virus with that kind of survival rate?). Isn’t it alarming that 82% of the deaths (all age groups) occurred within 20 days of getting the shot?
This vaccine has had less than a year to be tested, versus the 5-10 years that a vaccine normally takes (it’s being tested now on an unsuspecting public). There are far too many unknowns. This isn’t actually even a vaccine, but rather gene therapy that wasn’t even approved by the FDA. It’s politics playing medicine – a very dangerous game.
The Spiritual Problem at the Heart of Christian Vaccine Refusal
Why are so many white Evangelicals reluctant to consider the health of their community?
David French
I have some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the good news, because that news is very good. Across the United States, vaccine hesitancy is going down, and it’s going down relatively fast. For example, according to a recently released Pew Research Center survey, 69 percent of Americans have indicated that they’ve either already taken the vaccine or will definitely or probably take it in the future. That’s up from 60 percent last November and way up from the absolute low of 51 percent in September 2020, during the height of the presidential campaign.
And the Pew survey isn’t an outlier. A Yahoo News/YouGov survey also found that willingness to take the vaccine had rebounded to pre-election levels, with 60 percent of registered voters indicating willingness to take the vaccine.
All this is good news, but it needs to continue and accelerate. After all, we don’t really know the magic percentage needed for herd immunity. Yet if the trends can continue, vaccine hesitancy may well be seen as a short-term artifact of an intensely mistrustful and polarized time.
So what’s the bad news? The bad news is that vaccine hesitancy breaks down sharply along partisan and religious lines, and that hesitancy is so profound in white Evangelical communities that it could disrupt the quest for herd immunity. On a partisan basis, white Republicans are among those least likely to take the vaccine.
…
… White evangelicals are the least likely to say they should consider the health effects on their community when making a decision to be vaccinated. Only 48% of white evangelicals said they would consider the community health effects “a lot” when deciding to be vaccinated. That compares with 70% of Black Protestants, 65% of Catholics and 68% of unaffiliated Americans.
Given these stark statistics, if there is one thing that readers should take away from this newsletter, it’s that Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is both an information problem and a spiritual problem. …
… First, about trust—unless you are in the impossibly tiny minority of people who fully understand the science of the vaccine, we’re all trusting somebody. The question is whom we are trusting and why.
In conversations about the vaccine, I’ve heard a number of people declare, “I’m just less trusting than you.” In reality, these people still trust. They just trust claims and assertions elsewhere—either from a favorite internet voice, a local pastor, or a Bible study full of close friends who have shared counter-cultural health tips and advice for years.
… the task for the competing voice—the voice that calls for trust in the CDC and the array of Christian institutions and voices calling for Christians to take the vaccine—is to also speak and live in a way that loves and cares for the people you hope to persuade. …
… America’s Evangelical Christian communities are often full of the most radically generous people you’ll ever meet—just watch my Southern Baptist friends activate when a natural disaster strikes. And they’re hardly the only ones. My father-in-law volunteers for the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort, and it’s truly impressive. At the same time, however, in the arena of law and culture, all too many Christians are adopting a posture that declares “Don’t tell me what to do” far more than it asks “How can I serve you?” …
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COVID-19 pill effective in preliminary testing may be ‘holy grail’ of pandemic, Dr. Marc Siegel says
Dr. Siegel predicts the at-home therapeutic could come to market in four to five months
A new possible medication to treat coronavirus-positive patients could be enough to turn the pandemic on its head, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel revealed Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
First-stage testing of the experimental COVID-19 pill called Molnupiravir, by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, showed promising signs of effectiveness in reducing the virus in patients.
“It may be the holy grail on this because it was just studied in phase two trials and it literally stopped the virus in its tracks,” he explained. “And there wasn’t any virus found in the patients that were studied.” …
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Tychicus, I don’t know where you get the “99.5-99.8% survival rate without the vaccine,” but it doesn’t come close to matching numbers I’ve seen, and it doesn’t take into account that the death rate is far higher for seniors, and it also ignores the percentages who have serious side effects other than death.
No vaccine is totally safe, which is why I don’t take vaccines lightly. But when its risk is much less than that of the disease–as sure seems to be the case with this one–it’s worth getting the vaccine if you are at risk of getting the virus.
These vaccines may seem to have been developed quickly, but that is because they have built on top of existing medical knowledge. The trials consisted of many, many more people than the usual vaccine trial.
Most of those reactions are very temporary, 24 – 48 hours. People are warned that they may feel ill for a day or two after the shot (especially after the second one), because their immune systems are doing what they should do.
My daughter is a nurse in a nursing home who saw a huge death rate from Covid cases – enough that some staff was laid off since they had so many fewer residents. She was very grateful to see her patients get the vaccine.
Yep, mild and temporary, I felt very tired and had a slight headache — similar symptoms reported by several of my friends and relatives. Gone in 1-2 days. It means your immune system is waking up.
The Second COVID-19 Shot Is a Rude Reawakening for Immune Cells
Side effects are just a sign that protection is kicking in as it should.
KATHERINE J. WU
FEBRUARY 2, 2021
… Dose No. 2 is more likely to pack a punch—in large part because the effects of the second shot build iteratively on the first. My husband, who’s a neurologist at Yale New Haven Hospital, is one of many who had a worse experience with his second shot than his first. …
But much like any other learning process, in this one repetition is key. When hit with the second injection, the immune system recognizes the onslaught, and starts to take it even more seriously. The body’s encore act, uncomfortable though it might be, is evidence that the immune system is solidifying its defenses against the virus.
“By the second vaccine, it’s already amped up and ready to go,” Jasmine Marcelin, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told me. Fortunately, side effects resolve quickly, whereas COVID-19 can bring on debilitating, months-long symptoms and has killed more than 2 million people.
When the immune system detects a virus, it will dispatch cells and molecules to memorize its features so it can be fought off more swiftly in the future. Vaccines impart these same lessons without involving the disease-causing pathogen itself—the immunological equivalent of training wheels or water wings. …
… The innate immune system acts fast. But its actions aren’t very long-lived or discerning: These cells just clobber anything that looks a little weird. Within a day or two of the injection, they start to lose steam. Cytokine production sputters; side effects start to fade. Around this time, innate immune cells start to pass the baton to another division of the immune system, called adaptive immunity, which includes sniperlike molecules and cells, such as antibodies and T cells, that will launch an attack on specific pathogens if they try to infect the body again. …
… People shouldn’t be perturbed by a lack of vaccine side effects either. As our bodies churn through new information, “some people’s immune systems are louder than others’,” Marcelin said. But the quiet ones are still hard at work.
My husband’s immune system certainly fell into the diva category. The night after his second shot, he pinwheeled between cold and hot, alternately bundling himself in blankets and tossing them away. The flux seemed to bleed a bit into his emotional valence too. After snoozing on the couch for several hours, he perked up and couldn’t stop laughing at a picture of an orange cat curled up next to a box of similarly crescent-shaped croissants.
But within 24 hours of his shot, he was feeling well enough to run (yes, run) to work and finish an 11-hour shift. In a couple of weeks, he’ll join the millions of other Americans who, thanks to a pair of injections, will be cloaked in an extra layer of armor against the coronavirus.
As he told me Wednesday night, shivering through the cushion of two comforters: “This is a million times better than getting COVID.”
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I found the French article disturbing in the sense that only 48% white evangelicals would consider the community health in their decision. Radical individualism is part and parcel of the Calvinist strain of Protestantism but at the same time there traditionally is a consideration for all other indiviudals i,e. the community. This is not the attitude of the evangelicals I grew up with.
When my daughter was young, anti-vaxxers tended to be people into alternative medicine and alternative religion who distrusted government and corporations. Now in the school system, its people from the large non-denominational churches who ask for a religious exemption to mandatory vaccines. And its the same group who strongly opposed the HPV vaccine adminster to grade seven students — somehow a vaccine caused teens to be sexually active. All other religious groups — Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, other Protestants — had no problems with the vaccines.
French is correct in that both the alternative religion anti-vaxxers of the 2000s and todays evangelicals lack trust in science, government and corporations. Strange as the latter group tends to support capitalism. The constant trashing of climate science, evolution, etc has its effect and transfers to the science of medicine. Those who have doubts about science in one area are easily persuaded by friends to consider an other point of view they found on the internet.
Every year grade seven are given a vaccine for HPV, hepitatis and menegititis. And every year a few of the 60-70 students will have an adverse effect but usually its a sore arm and maybe a headache — all a sign that your immune system is working. The second hepatitis shot seems to be the one that has the greatest effect so I’m not suprised the second covid shot will be worse.
Tychicus, your 4:50: you understand that that doesn’t mean that 5% of those vaccinated died, but that 5% of those with reported side effects died? Big, big difference. The death rate is .0023 percent, much lower than the risk of death from the virus.
hwesseli, your 7:20 throws in a whole bunch of different things as being anti-science. For background, my eighth-grade yearbook listed my chosen future career as zoologist and my childhood best friend became and entomologist. I’ve had a very strong interest in science all my life–and partly it is because I’m studying the Second Book of God, His creation. One can be both anti-evolution and very strongly pro-science. Evolution isn’t “science”; it’s a conjecture about history.
Also, as a girl raised in a poor Christian home that got the necessary shots but couldn’t afford unnecessary medical care, if my parents had taken their very limited funds to pay for expensive HPV vaccines, it would have seemed a very strong act of distrust. Different parents make different decisions for their children, and I’m OK with that. But in my mind, getting your child an HPV shot “just in case” is like putting your daughter on the Pill “just in case” or sending your son out with condoms in his wallet “just in case.” It’s saying, “I’ve told you that fornication is a very serious sin against God, but because I really don’t trust you, I’m going to act as though you will disobey God and your father and me. I’d rather you not commit this sin . . . but I know you probably will.” No, the vaccine doesn’t “cause” the child to be sexually active, but it comes too close to “condoning” and assuming sexual activity. Whether or not to let your child get the vaccine is, in other ways, a private parenting decision. For me, all vaccines carry risks, and this one was also expensive . . . and the reason it is given is the assumption teens will be sexually active. I wouldn’t give it to my child, because I wouldn’t set my child up for failure and sin.
I understand viewing creation as the second book. From this tradition, Protestantism has had a long history of science and care for the environment. Its difficult then to go from this tradition to an evangelical rejection of vaccines. The science is simple and not controversial. I threw in climate change and evolution as perhaps a reason why there’s been break down in trust of the scientific community among evangelicals. I find the whole situation strange especially the disregard for community health esp in regards to covid, the social conservatives I grew up with would never disregard the community nor would they distrust vaccines.
All vaccines including HPV are free here — vaccines are given at school (with parents permission of course), its easier that way and ensures that vaccines are more effective as almost everyone gets them. I don’t see HPV vaccines as condoning sexual activity nor is it assuming the chld will be sexually active as a teen. We need to give teens more credit. HPV is extremely common and in some cases leads to some cancers. You only need to have sex once to get it. A person could’ve waited unitl marriage but if their spouse had a previous relationship or marriage that just might be enough. And in some cases HPV can be passed along without intercourse. To deny HPV vaccines can also be seen as not trusting your child — you are signfying that by removing the threat of a STI you think your child will engage in sexual activity so best deny the vaccine. As I said, we need to give teens more credit, they know there’s more to sex than STIs. I did find it interesting that only conservative Christians viewed the HPV vaccine as a “just in case” you won’t listen, the Muslim girls all got the HPV shot without any discussion (although one Arab girl said it was because no one trusted Arab boys to behave)
My daughter received the HPV shot in grade seven as did everyone in her class (including boys). Its helps create immunity for everyone. I didn’t view this as condoning sexual activity for my then 12 year old. The vaccine made no difference in how she behaved, she didn’t start dating til she was 16. At the age of 22 she’s only had two serious boyfriends, and I highly doubt she was promisuous as she’s rarely been single since 16. By the secular standards in this city especially in the art/music community, she’s almost a saint.
Cheryl: The risk is greater with the ‘vaccine’. Also, it is 87 times more deadly than the flu vaccine given in 2019 (.0023 divided by .0000265). Even if you should get infected, there are very effective medicines available for treatment (though the media, Big Pharma, and social media sites are working overtime to hide those treatments).
Even more importantly, COVID-19 mRNA shots are legally not vaccines. How can they be if the virus has not even been completely identified? it’s important to know what is actually in the ‘vaccine’. The inoculation resides in your body as permanent Gene Therapy with no means to turn it back. They are modifying our immune systems when science has not entirely understood how our immune apparatus actually functions. So why would you want to subject your body to that kind of experimentation!
It’s a way of getting mandated vaccines for adults (and the responsible companies aren’t even liable), as a means toward more nefarious ends…
This interview with Dr. Merritt is very good and informative on the issue…
Wandering Views 
Of course…..
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https://twitter.com/rymayor/status/1367926454961442821
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Follow the CCP bought and paid for “experts”…..
https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/04/lancet-richard-horton-china-propaganda-coronavirus/
“Chief Of World-Renowned Medical Journal Has Repeatedly Bashed US, Praised China For Coronavirus Response”
“The editor of The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, has a long history of praising the Chinese government, including during the coronavirus pandemic.
Richard Horton’s pro-China and anti-U.S. remarks were used in a Facebook ad sponsored by CGTN, the Chinese state-controlled TV network.
In 2015, Horton received a Friendship award from China’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, which recruited scientists and experts to help China’s technological advancement.
The Beijing-controlled agency contributed funding to several studies published in The Lancet.
One of China Global Television Network’s most recent ads on Facebook is of an interview that the state-controlled propaganda network conducted about the coronavirus pandemic with the editor of The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals.
The editor, Richard Horton, largely praised the Chinese government’s response to the pandemic while blasting the U.S. in the May 2020 interview, which garnered around 900,000 impressions at a cost of around $500, according to Facebook data.
“I think we have a great deal to thank China for, about the way that it handled the outbreak,” Horton said in the interview.
Horton, who is British, also criticized U.S. politicians for “being so openly critical” of China and the World Health Organization.
“The U.S. has wasted the whole of February and early March, said Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet,” reads the caption from CGTN, which the U.S. government requires to register as a foreign agent of China.
“He said it is disappointing to see American politicians giving credence to conspiracy theories and promoting unproven treatments,” the CGTN caption also said.”
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Except they weren’t, and he’s lying and he knows it.
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True.
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Let them fight!
https://hotair.com/archives/karen-townsend/2021/03/06/gottlieb-versus-fauci-scientists-odds-governors-reopening-states-pandemic/
“Gottlieb Versus Fauci: Scientists At Odds Over Governors Reopening States During The Pandemic”
“Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Dr. Anthony Fauci both gave remarks to the media on Friday. It is notable that both men who have been featured prominently throughout the pandemic for their scientific and medical advice are at odds now on reopening the country. For those keeping score at home, Gottlieb advises that the governors who are opening up their states are doing the right thing while Fauci is already sounding doom and gloom warnings of a fourth spike in coronavirus cases.
Like clockwork, Fauci is doing his usual thing – a holiday is approaching and he is doing what he can to discourage families and friends from socializing. During a White House briefing on the coronavirus on Friday, Fauci warned that despite the number of vaccinations being administered throughout the United States, we may soon be hit with a fourth spike of COVID-19 cases. Most states are showing a drop in hospitalizations and rate of positivity, which is why governors are relaxing strict lockdown measures. In other words, governors are following the science which the Party of Science has regularly stated is what must be done. Fauci wants to get out in front of the Easter holiday.
The recent plateau in cases from record-high post-holiday rates is actually a sign that Americans should mask up and brace for another potential boom in infections, Fauci said while citing past coronavirus data trends at a White House press briefing.
“We’ve just now recently experienced the worst surge,” Fauci said. “The issue is that we are starting to plateau. That plateau is about 60,000 to 70,000 cases a day. When you have that much viral activity in a plateau, it almost invariably means that you are at risk of another spike.
“Many countries in Europe have seen just that — over the past week, an increase in cases by 9 percent, something we desperately want to avoid,” he added.
By contrast, when coronavirus cases leveled off after the first wave of infections last spring, the national daily caseload was roughly a third of what it is today, he said.
“Many of us will recall very, very vividly — in the end of the winter and the beginning of the spring — we had a surge that was dominated by the New York metropolitan area. After the surge, what we came down to was a baseline of about 20,000 cases per day. That is a very high baseline, relatively speaking,” he said.
It is understandable that Fauci doesn’t want to encourage Americans to let our guard down in keeping ourselves and our loved ones as safe as possible against the coronavirus. As we remember, last Easter was the first traditional holiday celebrated by families and friends that was canceled due to lockdowns. It sure sounds like Fauci would like to continue the same this year. Even with the White House’s plan to get all Americans vaccinated by May, Fauci advises that mitigation measures continue. Those measures include wearing face masks, social distancing, and hand washing – the same basic measures we’ve been told for over a year. At first, it was to flatten the curve, now it seems the goalposts are shifting again with Fauci. Perhaps he expects us to live like we are now indefinitely.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb is more a man of common sense. As Fauci discourages governors from reopening their states, Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, says governors are doing the right thing. He’d like to see mask mandates remain in place but otherwise, it is the right thing to do to ease restrictions on businesses. In comparing the actions of the governors of Texas and Mississippi to the action taken by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, he said Lamont has the right idea. Unlike the governors of Texas and Mississippi, Lamont did not lift the face mask mandate in Connecticut. Gottlieb, by the way, lives in Connecticut and served on a pandemic advisory team for Lamont. Connecticut isn’t 100% open now, as Texas is, for example, there are still some capacity limits in effect for restaurants and other public venues.
“I think it’s the kind of thing we need to be doing around the country, is at least providing a map of where we’re heading if the situation continues to improve without taking our foot off the brake all at once,” said Gottlieb, who led the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019.
Gottlieb — a member of Pfizer’s board, which makes a Covid vaccine — said the emerging virus strains are important to watch for states that plan to ease restrictions. The B117 variant, first discovered in the U.K., is growing in Connecticut, Gottlieb said. “If the situation changes, I’m sure they’ll reassess it.”
Gottlieb said he personally would continue avoiding eating indoors, a stance he has maintained during the pandemic. “I’m going to be going out to restaurants I’m sure over the course of March, but I’m going to be eating outside,” Gottlieb said. “It just doesn’t seem like a risk worth taking to me.”
The success of vaccination programs makes a difference, according to Gottlieb.”
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Make sure you thank Trump. 🙂
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Democrats are the scummiest type of politicians.
Here’s yet more proof.
https://stream.org/i-knew-the-name-of-the-dragon/
“There was one thing they weren’t expecting.
They didn’t think I would know the dragon’s true name.
The Dragon Comes Hunting
On the night of September 14, 2018, I got a call from Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker. My high school friend Brett Kavanaugh had been nominated for the Supreme Court on July 9. Farrow was calling to tell me that Brett and I had been named in a letter claiming “sexual misconduct in the 1980s.” At the time of Farrow’s call the accuser had not been named. She turned out to be Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor in California.
A September 16 piece in the Washington Post followed. In it Ford claimed that Brett had sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school in 1982. Ford also claimed that I was in the room where the assault allegedly took place and that I witnessed everything before jumping in and breaking things up.
Their plan was simple. For the entire summer of 2018 Ford had been working with an opposition researcher named Keith Koegler. According to The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, Koegeler had “spent many hours that summer poring over news coverage of the nomination process, biographical information about Kavanaugh, and writings and videos produced by Mark Judge. In combing through YouTube, articles, and social networks, Koegler had learned more about the house parties … and the lexicon of 1980s Georgetown Prep than he had ever thought he would care to know.”
Koegler and others had set things up, and the next step seemed preordained: hit me with an unexpected allegation (Farrow) and get me to start talking. Then entangle my life, which has included a struggle with alcoholism when I was younger, with the life of Brett Kavanaugh, who had a much different journey than I. It was an oppo research hit whose lynchpin was me crumbling, babbling, and using my life to take my friend down, even if he had nothing to do with my struggles. Reading accounts of Ford’s behavior it becomes clear why she never went to the police or released her therapist’s notes (which never mention Brett Kavanaugh) and why she kept asking for delays. She was waiting for me to crack.
A Lesson from a Sci-Fi Classic
In her classic 1968 novel A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin creates an incredible fantasy world that also has layers of spiritual and psychological meaning. In Earthsea, every living thing has a hidden true name that defines its essence. Knowing something’s true name provides remarkable power. You can control a person, an animal or even minerals. Wizards in the book spend months studying the true names of every living thing.
In the best part of the story, the young wizard Ged sails to the island of Pendor to confront a dragon, who has been destroying local villages. The dragon speaks in a sinister, solicitous way, offering to help Ged while simultaneously mocking him – “twisting the true words to false ends, catching the unwary in a maze of mirror words each of which reflects the truth and none of which leads anywhere.”
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If you didn’t vote for Trump, slap yourself.
Again.
Harder this time…..
“The latest $1.9 trillion omnibus spending bill pending in Congress is in addition to last year’s $3.4 trillion COVID-related health and economic stimulus spending bills. Estimates of this new massive bailout put the actual appropriation of taxpayer funding related to health costs at a meaningless nine percent of the total new bloat.
What will we get for the $1.9 trillion in new deficit spending? This is all nothing more than a crafty direct federal taxpayer subvention to blue states and large urban corridors that otherwise could never justify any other state’s taxpayer bailout for their years of irresponsible, profligate government waste.
Take for example California, whose commanding government employee unions control every facet of that state’s budget allocations and whose public pension plans, the most generous in the nation, now demand extraordinary funding at all levels of government. This political turkey has now come home to roost.
But California, like New York and Illinois, have another big problem. Their state’s productive classes — you know, the people who actually create the wealth and economic vitality that permit such largess — are now leaving those states in droves rendering enormous potential tax deficits in their wake. What to do?
Call in the cavalry — or in this case, “F-Troop”. Dr. Fauci, the goofy corporal of functional health bureaucrats, has dutifully continued his Lockdown Fears Tour sufficient to permit his enablers in Washington D.C. to craft a wildly off-the-reservation so-called stimulus spending proposal designed to transfer the wealth of responsible working states to cover the big government malfeasance of the irresponsible ones.
If you still wonder why states like California, New York, and Illinois continue on a path of lockdowns despite a year’s worth of health data verifying the converse, one need only look only at Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal to understand the want of blue states to keep their citizens restricted, frustrated and on the dole.
After a full year of governments at all levels first began shutting down our economies for “30 days to slow the virus spread”, only the bluest of states continue to restrict their population’s ability to earn a living. And despite sound research showing the counterproductive health consequences of lockdowns, those blue state’s motivations for continuing their restrictive edicts are becoming ever more evident.
There is a growing, observable contrast developing in the country between the positive health outcomes in states which have been working and re-opening their economies and the coastal deep blue states who remain under strict lockdowns. Those who continue to remain closed for business are being exposed as having unnecessarily done more harm to their citizenry than the virus.
In fact, once you understand the true nature of the $1.9 trillion proposal — to channel the nation’s tax dollars to Democrat-controlled blue states and left-wing institutions — you will begin to get a handle on the immoral overreach that defines this stimulus plan and the corrupt manner in which they continue to trade on public fear to maintain the health lie undergirding this preposterous debt-busting pork-barrel bill.”
———
Own that @#$%
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In the ‘nothing new under the sun’ category, Olasky reminds us that some things seem to repeat themselves in history; a long but worthy read with a lesson on keeping some perspective.
https://world.wng.org/content/we_ve_been_here_before
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MEDIA | This isn’t the first time U.S. media has played the sycophant
by Marvin Olasky
Posted 3/02/21, 12:50 pm
Many conservatives are depressed about liberalism’s power—but the situation has been much worse at other times. Would you trade, politically, March 2021 for March 1933, when amid the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt took over and expanded the federal government enormously, with Congress cementing into law his wishes or guesses, without debate or amendment?
Popular support for Franklin Roosevelt during his first term was great. One congressman compared him to Jesus Christ, not unfavorably. A poll among New York schoolchildren showed God running a poor second to him. Rep. John Young Brown of Kentucky said he would “as soon start a mutiny in the face of a foreign foe as start a mutiny today against the program of the President of the United States.” Forty-one popular songs trilled his praises. …
… Few reporters were willing to talk back. The San Francisco journalist publication Scoop said, regarding press and president, “the nation’s reporters will smile contentedly as long as F.R. sits on the throne.” Joseph Medill Patterson, who published the nation’s most-read newspaper, the New York Daily News, promised in 1933, “Whatever President Roosevelt does or doesn’t do, we’re going to be for him.”
Frank Kent, a 56-year-old Baltimore Sun writer and syndicated columnist in 1933, was one of the rare journalists who pushed back. He complained that “a tremendous propaganda emanated from Washington. … Anyone who did not fall in line was regarded as ‘rocking the boat,’ or ‘pulling back on prosperity.’”
Kent muttered in one of his columns about “government propaganda … never has anyone seen anything like it. … The publicity men are so numerous that they stumble over each other. … The making of favorable news is one of the principal Administration activities, and more real efficiency is there shown than in any other department.”
Kent voted for Roosevelt in 1932, only to be appalled by the “fine fake game” the president’s administration played as it flooded the country with puff pieces and articles designed for newspaper publication: “Much of the publicity is so arranged that it has the appearance of entirely spontaneous and wholly untainted news, but it is all thought out and planned with the utmost care.” …
… Since many of our readers complain vociferously (for good reason) about today’s journalism, Mr. Jones reminds us that some reporters were courageous, but others were villainous in what were not good old days. The movie’s villain in chief: Walter Duranty of The New York Times. (I haven’t mentioned him in these pages since 2014, and I have a 7-year itch.)
Duranty, Moscow correspondent for the Times during the 1920s and 1930s, was the father of all those who covered and praised the rise to power of Mao in the 1940s and Castro in the 1950s. Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize—America’s top journalism award—in 1932 for his work’s “scholarship, profundity, impartiality and exceptional clarity, and an example of the best type of foreign correspondence.” …
… At the end of Duranty’s tour of duty in Moscow, he said it had been a tour of love: “Looking backward over the fourteen years I have spent in Russia, I cannot escape the conclusion that this period has been a heroic chapter in the life of Humanity.” Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize led to other honors, along with a well-fed retirement in Southern California during which he continued to worship capital H “Humanity” rather than capital G “God.” He had a well-attended funeral in 1957.
How bad is press bias and our new regime in Washington? The United States survived Duranty, and Roosevelt’s liberal reforms may have kept the country from moving into a revolutionary situation. Amity Shlaes, though, argues in her excellent The Forgotten Man (2008) that FDR’s expansion of government and constant experimentation prolonged the Depression, and she’s probably right.
So when Joe Biden dons the mantle of Roosevelt and proposes expansion of current federal programs, WORLD will try to remind you of lessons from history. For example: I’ve written some books on poverty-fighting, so I like the Earned Income Tax Credit that creates more incentives to work, but we’re buying trouble if we pay more people not to work. FDR himself acknowledged the danger of welfare programs becoming “a habit with the country.” …
____________________________
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Only 9% for actual Covid relief. Two trillion more on the backs of our children and grandchildren. It’s a money-laundering bill that is basically a payoff for the stolen election.
Then there is the totally unconstitutional Against the People Act 2021, which permanently enshrines fraud into all future federal elections. And the supposed “Equity Act.” And the release of thousands of illegals into the country via open borders. The Republic is spiraling out of control…
We are inching closer than ever toward Civil War…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/senate-approves-1-9-trillion-covid-19-stimulus-package-on-party-line-vote_3723337.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-03-06-2
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Yeah……
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Even with Olasky’s comparisons I don’t think it is a valid one. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris…they have an agenda and it is quite clear. Take their guns, mandate the heck out of our citizenry, reparations to people who just want a handout due to the color of their skin…they have never been “oppressed”. I have the daughters of a friend screaming “racism” “bigotry” “holding us down”…just because of the color of their skin. They live in a 700,000 dollar house…they have never left home…they are 27 and 29. Their college was paid for due to their Dad’s “disability” in the service…he hurt his knee after jumping off the back of a truck….his college was paid for and he is now on 100% disability but he has worked as a teacher his entire adult life. This administration will soon be coming after the church for believing in the Bible and what it says about homosexuality…that’s hate speech according to them. Open borders and handing them free services upon the backs of hard working tax payers wasn’t happening in the 30’s.
You really cannot compare Biden with Roosevelt. Biden is clearly mentally diminished whether that be dementia or some other debilitating condition. We are in a bad way in this country.
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There are good things happening at the state level in some states which are putting a block on some of the Federal actions. We need to pray for our state legislators.
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I don’t know that he was “comparing” exactly, but reminding us that history is an ebb and flow and that some themes really do repeat themselves (and then, if God wills, right themselves later on).
Being in journalism, I’ve been guilty of having the urgency of “now” front and center in my worldview too often. I just thought it was helpful a helpful reminder for me that we’re not the only generation to have seen hard times, even just in the U.S. (and we won’t be the last, God willing and the nation survives a bit longer!).
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The issues may be different (or sometimes not so much), the personalities and media culture different (yet sometimes similar)
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I did find the piece interesting in as much as what was happening back in the Roosevelt days. Olasky was asking if we would trade today for yesteryear politically. We were talking the other morning of dark days in history in which we would not want to go. I just think a comparison of the politics of today is very much different.
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My ‘new’ Jeep is now politically incorrect
Chief of Cherokee Nation Says ‘It’s Time’ for Jeep to Stop Using Name
The CEO of Jeep’s parent company now says he is open to ending the company’s use of the name.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35568468/cherokee-nation-jeep-stop-using-name/
UPDATE 3/4/2021: The Wall Street Journal reports that the CEO of Stellantis, Jeep’s parent company, now says he is open to ending the company’s use of the Cherokee name, and that conversation with Cherokee nation on the issue is ongoing. A representative from Jeep declined to make further comment on the matter, and representatives with the Cherokee Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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I couldn’t read the WSJ article but I checked the stats — Florida’s stats are no better than New York or California. On a per capita basis it has a higher rate than New York with half the number of tests per capita. Interestingly, the Dakotas have the highest rate per capita. New York has a higher death rate but California’s rate is lower than Florida. One could say the measures taken by California and NewYork but not Florida have had no noticeable effect but even then we can’t be sure and there are other variables. The fact the Dakotas have such a high rate despite the lack of an urban population points out that protective measures do make a difference.
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Republicans and Democrats supported the CARES act which spent twice as much as the current bill. Much of what was in the CARES act is in this act. Cruz was pontificating about aliens receiving the 1400$ cash subsidy when the Democrats pointed out the wording for the subsidy was exactly the same as in the previous act which he voted for. No aliens received a subsidy.
Most of the money flows to cities because thats where the people are and “blue” states generally have a larger population but on a per capita basis rural states receive more money from the federal government. The cities and “blue” states also pay a greater share of taxes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700
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Olasky is right — there’s an ebb and flow and history does repeat, no need to panic.
There is of course a difference between Biden and FDR. FDR was far more to the left, had a far greater belief in the role of government and was far more willing to steamroll over any opposition. Biden is a centrist. The paper press in the 30s was far less “objective” than they are today. Relax, nobody is coming for your guns, the border is more secure than it was in the 30s, etc, etc
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Excellent article – very sobering and disheartening…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/adverse-incident-reports-show-966-deaths-following-vaccination-for-covid-19_3723384.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-07
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From the 5:45 link: “As of Feb. 19, 41,977,401 COVID vaccinations had been given with 966 deaths reported following vaccination, which is approximately a rate of .0023 percent.” That’s two per 100,000 to immunize against a disease that kills more than two per 100 of those it infects. Statistically that’s not bad odds.
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An AstraZeneca spokesman: “There have been no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine.” So much for that!
This is only the beginning…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/austria-suspends-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-batch-after-death_3723690.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-03-07-2
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PS Since the shots started with the most vulnerable, the oldest people, you’re going to have a measurable number of deaths among unvaccinated members of that population. I once edited a book about insurance in which the author included a chart of life expectancy at each age. To understand the chart, the numbers said 50% of people of that age would die in that number of years. For instance, they might estimate that someone who is now 10 has 67 years of life expectancy, or 50% of today’s 10-year-olds will die by age 77 and 50% will still be alive at 77. If you make it to 20, your life average life expectancy may be 78. The life expectancy at 99 years was 6 months. Basically if you are giving the shots to people 80 and above, and you give it to one million of them, some of those million extreme elderly will die in the next week whether or not they receive the shot. (Obviously some might have died from the shot itself, and not everyone who received the shot was extremely old. But your 85-year-old neighbor dying two days after receiving the shot may or may not have died without it–at that age, sudden death is not unusual.)
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Here’s a Reuters piece on it, just fyi:
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-austria-nurse/austria-suspends-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-batch-after-death-idUSL8N2L506P
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MARCH 7, 2021 3:21
Austria suspends AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine batch after death
By Reuters Staff
ZURICH, March 7 (Reuters) – Austrian authorities have suspended inoculations with a batch of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine as a precaution while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after the shots, a health agency said on Sunday.
“The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) has received two reports in a temporal connection with a vaccination from the same batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the district clinic of Zwettl” in Lower Austria province, it said.
One 49-year-old woman died as a result of severe coagulation disorders, while a 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism and is recovering, it said. A pulmonary embolism is an acute lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot.
“Currently there is no evidence of a causal relationship with the vaccination,” BASG said. …
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Cheryl: The 966 represents 5 % of the total number of adverse events reports, but those are just the ones that are actually reported. VAERS doesn’t catch all incidents and many go unreported (90% underreported if flu shot stats are used). This with a 99.5-99.8% survival rate without the vaccine (so why do we even need a vaccine for a virus with that kind of survival rate?). Isn’t it alarming that 82% of the deaths (all age groups) occurred within 20 days of getting the shot?
This vaccine has had less than a year to be tested, versus the 5-10 years that a vaccine normally takes (it’s being tested now on an unsuspecting public). There are far too many unknowns. This isn’t actually even a vaccine, but rather gene therapy that wasn’t even approved by the FDA. It’s politics playing medicine – a very dangerous game.
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A much different take from fellow Christian David French (yes, I know he’s despised by a few here)
https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-spiritual-problem-at-the-heart
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The Spiritual Problem at the Heart of Christian Vaccine Refusal
Why are so many white Evangelicals reluctant to consider the health of their community?
David French
I have some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the good news, because that news is very good. Across the United States, vaccine hesitancy is going down, and it’s going down relatively fast. For example, according to a recently released Pew Research Center survey, 69 percent of Americans have indicated that they’ve either already taken the vaccine or will definitely or probably take it in the future. That’s up from 60 percent last November and way up from the absolute low of 51 percent in September 2020, during the height of the presidential campaign.
And the Pew survey isn’t an outlier. A Yahoo News/YouGov survey also found that willingness to take the vaccine had rebounded to pre-election levels, with 60 percent of registered voters indicating willingness to take the vaccine.
All this is good news, but it needs to continue and accelerate. After all, we don’t really know the magic percentage needed for herd immunity. Yet if the trends can continue, vaccine hesitancy may well be seen as a short-term artifact of an intensely mistrustful and polarized time.
So what’s the bad news? The bad news is that vaccine hesitancy breaks down sharply along partisan and religious lines, and that hesitancy is so profound in white Evangelical communities that it could disrupt the quest for herd immunity. On a partisan basis, white Republicans are among those least likely to take the vaccine.
…
… White evangelicals are the least likely to say they should consider the health effects on their community when making a decision to be vaccinated. Only 48% of white evangelicals said they would consider the community health effects “a lot” when deciding to be vaccinated. That compares with 70% of Black Protestants, 65% of Catholics and 68% of unaffiliated Americans.
Given these stark statistics, if there is one thing that readers should take away from this newsletter, it’s that Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is both an information problem and a spiritual problem. …
… First, about trust—unless you are in the impossibly tiny minority of people who fully understand the science of the vaccine, we’re all trusting somebody. The question is whom we are trusting and why.
In conversations about the vaccine, I’ve heard a number of people declare, “I’m just less trusting than you.” In reality, these people still trust. They just trust claims and assertions elsewhere—either from a favorite internet voice, a local pastor, or a Bible study full of close friends who have shared counter-cultural health tips and advice for years.
… the task for the competing voice—the voice that calls for trust in the CDC and the array of Christian institutions and voices calling for Christians to take the vaccine—is to also speak and live in a way that loves and cares for the people you hope to persuade. …
… America’s Evangelical Christian communities are often full of the most radically generous people you’ll ever meet—just watch my Southern Baptist friends activate when a natural disaster strikes. And they’re hardly the only ones. My father-in-law volunteers for the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort, and it’s truly impressive. At the same time, however, in the arena of law and culture, all too many Christians are adopting a posture that declares “Don’t tell me what to do” far more than it asks “How can I serve you?” …
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And “how can I serve you?” is not, I’d suggest, talking about the government in this case — but about our neighbor and community.
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Meanwhile, some more good news on the horizon?:
https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-pill-preliminary-testing-dr-marc-siegel
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COVID-19 pill effective in preliminary testing may be ‘holy grail’ of pandemic, Dr. Marc Siegel says
Dr. Siegel predicts the at-home therapeutic could come to market in four to five months
A new possible medication to treat coronavirus-positive patients could be enough to turn the pandemic on its head, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel revealed Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
First-stage testing of the experimental COVID-19 pill called Molnupiravir, by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, showed promising signs of effectiveness in reducing the virus in patients.
“It may be the holy grail on this because it was just studied in phase two trials and it literally stopped the virus in its tracks,” he explained. “And there wasn’t any virus found in the patients that were studied.” …
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Tychicus, I don’t know where you get the “99.5-99.8% survival rate without the vaccine,” but it doesn’t come close to matching numbers I’ve seen, and it doesn’t take into account that the death rate is far higher for seniors, and it also ignores the percentages who have serious side effects other than death.
No vaccine is totally safe, which is why I don’t take vaccines lightly. But when its risk is much less than that of the disease–as sure seems to be the case with this one–it’s worth getting the vaccine if you are at risk of getting the virus.
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These vaccines may seem to have been developed quickly, but that is because they have built on top of existing medical knowledge. The trials consisted of many, many more people than the usual vaccine trial.
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Cheryl – I would add (as I know you would agree) “or if anyone close to you is at risk.”
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Here are totals from VAERS (as of Feb 20) . Out of 15,923 REPORTED EVENTS, here are the TOP 20 POSSIBLE REACTIONS TO THE COVID-19 ‘VACCINES’:
Headache, 3231 (20.29%)
Fatigue, 2349 (14.75%)
Fever, 2276 (14.29%)
Chills, 2205 (13.85%)
Dizziness, 2158 (13.55%)
Pain, 2065 (12.97%)
Nausea, 2035 (12.78%)
Injection Site Pain, 1447 (9.09%)
Pain In Extremity, 1311 (8.23%)
Shortness Of Breath, 1182 (7.42%)
COVID+ Test Result, 1065 (6.69%)
Muscle Pain, 1022 (6.42%)
Pins-And-Needles, 927 (5.82%)
Itching, 857 (5.38%)
Rash, 797 (5.01%)
Joint Pain, 793 (4.98%)
DEATH, 776 (4.87%)
Vomiting, 745 (4.68%)
Numbness, 717 (4.50%)
Cough, 674 (4.23%)
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Most of those reactions are very temporary, 24 – 48 hours. People are warned that they may feel ill for a day or two after the shot (especially after the second one), because their immune systems are doing what they should do.
My daughter is a nurse in a nursing home who saw a huge death rate from Covid cases – enough that some staff was laid off since they had so many fewer residents. She was very grateful to see her patients get the vaccine.
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Yep, mild and temporary, I felt very tired and had a slight headache — similar symptoms reported by several of my friends and relatives. Gone in 1-2 days. It means your immune system is waking up.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/second-vaccine-side-effects/617892/
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The Second COVID-19 Shot Is a Rude Reawakening for Immune Cells
Side effects are just a sign that protection is kicking in as it should.
KATHERINE J. WU
FEBRUARY 2, 2021
… Dose No. 2 is more likely to pack a punch—in large part because the effects of the second shot build iteratively on the first. My husband, who’s a neurologist at Yale New Haven Hospital, is one of many who had a worse experience with his second shot than his first. …
But much like any other learning process, in this one repetition is key. When hit with the second injection, the immune system recognizes the onslaught, and starts to take it even more seriously. The body’s encore act, uncomfortable though it might be, is evidence that the immune system is solidifying its defenses against the virus.
“By the second vaccine, it’s already amped up and ready to go,” Jasmine Marcelin, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told me. Fortunately, side effects resolve quickly, whereas COVID-19 can bring on debilitating, months-long symptoms and has killed more than 2 million people.
When the immune system detects a virus, it will dispatch cells and molecules to memorize its features so it can be fought off more swiftly in the future. Vaccines impart these same lessons without involving the disease-causing pathogen itself—the immunological equivalent of training wheels or water wings. …
… The innate immune system acts fast. But its actions aren’t very long-lived or discerning: These cells just clobber anything that looks a little weird. Within a day or two of the injection, they start to lose steam. Cytokine production sputters; side effects start to fade. Around this time, innate immune cells start to pass the baton to another division of the immune system, called adaptive immunity, which includes sniperlike molecules and cells, such as antibodies and T cells, that will launch an attack on specific pathogens if they try to infect the body again. …
… People shouldn’t be perturbed by a lack of vaccine side effects either. As our bodies churn through new information, “some people’s immune systems are louder than others’,” Marcelin said. But the quiet ones are still hard at work.
My husband’s immune system certainly fell into the diva category. The night after his second shot, he pinwheeled between cold and hot, alternately bundling himself in blankets and tossing them away. The flux seemed to bleed a bit into his emotional valence too. After snoozing on the couch for several hours, he perked up and couldn’t stop laughing at a picture of an orange cat curled up next to a box of similarly crescent-shaped croissants.
But within 24 hours of his shot, he was feeling well enough to run (yes, run) to work and finish an 11-hour shift. In a couple of weeks, he’ll join the millions of other Americans who, thanks to a pair of injections, will be cloaked in an extra layer of armor against the coronavirus.
As he told me Wednesday night, shivering through the cushion of two comforters: “This is a million times better than getting COVID.”
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I found the French article disturbing in the sense that only 48% white evangelicals would consider the community health in their decision. Radical individualism is part and parcel of the Calvinist strain of Protestantism but at the same time there traditionally is a consideration for all other indiviudals i,e. the community. This is not the attitude of the evangelicals I grew up with.
When my daughter was young, anti-vaxxers tended to be people into alternative medicine and alternative religion who distrusted government and corporations. Now in the school system, its people from the large non-denominational churches who ask for a religious exemption to mandatory vaccines. And its the same group who strongly opposed the HPV vaccine adminster to grade seven students — somehow a vaccine caused teens to be sexually active. All other religious groups — Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, other Protestants — had no problems with the vaccines.
French is correct in that both the alternative religion anti-vaxxers of the 2000s and todays evangelicals lack trust in science, government and corporations. Strange as the latter group tends to support capitalism. The constant trashing of climate science, evolution, etc has its effect and transfers to the science of medicine. Those who have doubts about science in one area are easily persuaded by friends to consider an other point of view they found on the internet.
Every year grade seven are given a vaccine for HPV, hepitatis and menegititis. And every year a few of the 60-70 students will have an adverse effect but usually its a sore arm and maybe a headache — all a sign that your immune system is working. The second hepatitis shot seems to be the one that has the greatest effect so I’m not suprised the second covid shot will be worse.
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Tychicus, your 4:50: you understand that that doesn’t mean that 5% of those vaccinated died, but that 5% of those with reported side effects died? Big, big difference. The death rate is .0023 percent, much lower than the risk of death from the virus.
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hwesseli, your 7:20 throws in a whole bunch of different things as being anti-science. For background, my eighth-grade yearbook listed my chosen future career as zoologist and my childhood best friend became and entomologist. I’ve had a very strong interest in science all my life–and partly it is because I’m studying the Second Book of God, His creation. One can be both anti-evolution and very strongly pro-science. Evolution isn’t “science”; it’s a conjecture about history.
Also, as a girl raised in a poor Christian home that got the necessary shots but couldn’t afford unnecessary medical care, if my parents had taken their very limited funds to pay for expensive HPV vaccines, it would have seemed a very strong act of distrust. Different parents make different decisions for their children, and I’m OK with that. But in my mind, getting your child an HPV shot “just in case” is like putting your daughter on the Pill “just in case” or sending your son out with condoms in his wallet “just in case.” It’s saying, “I’ve told you that fornication is a very serious sin against God, but because I really don’t trust you, I’m going to act as though you will disobey God and your father and me. I’d rather you not commit this sin . . . but I know you probably will.” No, the vaccine doesn’t “cause” the child to be sexually active, but it comes too close to “condoning” and assuming sexual activity. Whether or not to let your child get the vaccine is, in other ways, a private parenting decision. For me, all vaccines carry risks, and this one was also expensive . . . and the reason it is given is the assumption teens will be sexually active. I wouldn’t give it to my child, because I wouldn’t set my child up for failure and sin.
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I understand viewing creation as the second book. From this tradition, Protestantism has had a long history of science and care for the environment. Its difficult then to go from this tradition to an evangelical rejection of vaccines. The science is simple and not controversial. I threw in climate change and evolution as perhaps a reason why there’s been break down in trust of the scientific community among evangelicals. I find the whole situation strange especially the disregard for community health esp in regards to covid, the social conservatives I grew up with would never disregard the community nor would they distrust vaccines.
All vaccines including HPV are free here — vaccines are given at school (with parents permission of course), its easier that way and ensures that vaccines are more effective as almost everyone gets them. I don’t see HPV vaccines as condoning sexual activity nor is it assuming the chld will be sexually active as a teen. We need to give teens more credit. HPV is extremely common and in some cases leads to some cancers. You only need to have sex once to get it. A person could’ve waited unitl marriage but if their spouse had a previous relationship or marriage that just might be enough. And in some cases HPV can be passed along without intercourse. To deny HPV vaccines can also be seen as not trusting your child — you are signfying that by removing the threat of a STI you think your child will engage in sexual activity so best deny the vaccine. As I said, we need to give teens more credit, they know there’s more to sex than STIs. I did find it interesting that only conservative Christians viewed the HPV vaccine as a “just in case” you won’t listen, the Muslim girls all got the HPV shot without any discussion (although one Arab girl said it was because no one trusted Arab boys to behave)
My daughter received the HPV shot in grade seven as did everyone in her class (including boys). Its helps create immunity for everyone. I didn’t view this as condoning sexual activity for my then 12 year old. The vaccine made no difference in how she behaved, she didn’t start dating til she was 16. At the age of 22 she’s only had two serious boyfriends, and I highly doubt she was promisuous as she’s rarely been single since 16. By the secular standards in this city especially in the art/music community, she’s almost a saint.
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Cheryl: The risk is greater with the ‘vaccine’. Also, it is 87 times more deadly than the flu vaccine given in 2019 (.0023 divided by .0000265). Even if you should get infected, there are very effective medicines available for treatment (though the media, Big Pharma, and social media sites are working overtime to hide those treatments).
Even more importantly, COVID-19 mRNA shots are legally not vaccines. How can they be if the virus has not even been completely identified? it’s important to know what is actually in the ‘vaccine’. The inoculation resides in your body as permanent Gene Therapy with no means to turn it back. They are modifying our immune systems when science has not entirely understood how our immune apparatus actually functions. So why would you want to subject your body to that kind of experimentation!
It’s a way of getting mandated vaccines for adults (and the responsible companies aren’t even liable), as a means toward more nefarious ends…
This interview with Dr. Merritt is very good and informative on the issue…
https://rumble.com/vdx7u5-beware-of-covid-vaccine-warns-top-doctor.html
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