Politics of Covid-19

[GURPS]

What NBC News Did with Their Story on COVID Delta Variant Is a Classic Burying the Lede Exercise



The Delta variant is here. Flee for your lives! Except don’t. Variants of COVID were always going to be an inevitability. It’s the liberal media who treat them like invincible pathogens. No, even worse—breaking news. They weaponized it to keep the population scared and pro-lockdown, and then the vaccines rolled out. Cases dropped. The death toll dropped. States are reopening. The mask mandate is gone. The Fourth of July festivities are back this summer in Washington DC. The pandemic is over, but the media is still trying to shove hardcore COVID panic porn down our throats. I don’t consent to that, neither should you. In fact, NBC News’ piece about the Delta variant is undercut in less than seven paragraphs [emphasis mine]:

The so-called delta variant of the coronavirus now accounts for nearly 10 percent of new cases in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.
The agency on Monday declared the variant, which was first detected in India, a "variant of concern," a designation given when there is increased evidence of factors such as transmissibility or severity or reduced effectiveness of vaccines or treatments.
The change in classification "is based on mounting evidence that the Delta variant spreads more easily and causes more severe cases when compared to other variants, including B.1.1.7 (Alpha)," the CDC said in a statement to NBC News. The alpha variant was first detected in the United Kingdom, and in April, it became the dominant strain in the U.S.
Data for the two-week period ending June 5 predicts that the delta variant accounts for 9.9 percent of cases in the U.S., the CDC said. For the two-week period ending May 22, that figure was 2.7 percent.
Experts who track viral activity weren't surprised by the increase in the proportion of delta cases in the U.S.
"Because [delta] has an advantage in terms of transmissibility, it takes over," said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP at Columbia University and professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. "It's just a matter of time."
The vaccines available in the U.S. are effective against the delta variant, as well as other circulating variants. Two doses are required for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, while the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires just one.

 

[GURPS]

Scientist Backing Probe Into Wuhan Lab: We Waited Because We Didn’t Want ‘To Be Associated With Trump’

The report noted that numerous experts in the field have said that little-to-no evidence has emerged over the last year or so and that the only thing that has changed is the “context and circumstances” around the debate of the pandemic’s origins.

The report continued:


Chan said there had been trepidation among some scientists about publicly discussing the lab leak hypothesis for fear that their words could be misconstrued or used to support racist rhetoric about how the coronavirus emerged. Trump fueled accusations that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab in the city where the first Covid-19 cases were reported, was connected to the outbreak…


“At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn’t want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins,” Chan claimed in the interview.



what a bunch of weak **** suckers ... oh no we cannot admit the truth #BecasueOrangeManBad

Scientists as well as the Press are culpable in the deaths of millions for being a bunch of scared little bitches or or pushing the Criticism of China is racist Narrative ... the lot of them should be put up against a wall

 

[GURPS]

New Report Shows How Lockdowns Destroyed The Middle Class


Data from Harvard University, Brown University, and the Gates Foundation show dramatically different job market recovery for “high wage,” “middle-wage,” and “low wage” workers.

Between January 2020 and March 2021, Americans earning above $60,000 observed a 2.4% overall increase in employment. Meanwhile, workers earning below $60,000 and workers earning below $27,000 saw 4.5% and 23.6% decreases, respectively.

While Americans in the “Professional & Business Services” sector saw a 0.5% decrease in employment, the “Retail & Transportation,” “Education & Health Services,” and “Leisure & Hospitality” witnessed dips of 3.5%, 6.4%, and 20.7%.

 

[GURPS]

Scientist Waited to Legitimize Lab-Leak Theory Out of Fear She Would Be '‘Associated with Trump’


Emails acquired by the watchdog group Right to Know also indicated that Daszak attempted to obscure his role in whipping support for the statement among fellow scientists, six of whom later became members of the WHO investigative team which dismissed the lab-leak theory as “extremely unlikely.”

Gilles Demaneuf, a New Zealand–based data scientist who objected in a February letter to Daszak’s lack of intellectual honesty and transparency, was one of the first scientists to speak out against the silencing of dissent and articulate what a real investigation into COVID’s origins might entail. Demaneuf was disturbed by Daszak’s failure to disclose his conflict of interest and the way he appointed himself chief representative of the independent investigative team, painting a false picture of unanimous consensus among them, and he vocalized it.

“He had a conflict of interest and then he acted on this conflict of interest,” Demaneuf told National Review in reference to Daszak. “This is someone with a conflict of interest acting in a very specific way, which is basically to shut down a line of investigation.”

Demaneuf joined senior Atlantic Institute fellow and WHO adviser Jamie Metzel and 24 fellow scientists in writing their own letter calling for a thorough investigation of the lab-leak theory.

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

Former Trump Official Slices Fauci Apart Over Hydroxychloroquine Fiasco


Donald Trump scored a major win over the liberal media. It’s a moral victory as he’s no longer president, but he can add another notch to the handle of the club that has beaten the media establishment bloody for years. Its face must be a bloody crater by this point. Hydroxychloroquine has finally been proven as an effective treatment for COVID. Russian collusion was a hoax. The Russian bounty story in Afghanistan was another whopper. Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op. And Hunter Biden’s laptop is real.

The hydroxychloroquine one is significant since it was weaponized heavily against the Trump administration. The president was trying to save lives and all the media did was attack him. It’s why they’re the opposition press. And Dr. Anthony Fauci’s refusal to endorse the treatment caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. That’s the allegation that Peter Navarro, Trump’s director for now-defunct Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said he had around 60 million tablets of this stuff that could have been used to treat some 5-6 million patients. Fauci refused to budge. Navarro did not hold back, calling Fauci an “SOB,” saying that he kept to his line that hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness was based on anecdotal evidence. Not true. Navarro slapped scores of studies noting its effectiveness.

 

[GURPS]

Following the Scientists Who Were Destroying America Just to Spite Trump


Scientists are supposed to follow the scientific method, observing natural phenomena, collecting data, forming a hypothesis to explain these observations, then refining the hypotheses as new data emerges. Instead, with both climate science and COVID the process has been reversed, ignoring or jiggering the data to conform with a predetermined hypothesis, rejecting new or contrary data simply because scientists did not like or approve of the source of the contrary data.

[clip]

As Forest Gump would say, “just like that,” scientists are now curious over the lab leak hypothesis, after adamantly denying it for well over a year, and want to investigate further, according to a letter published by 18 scientists. As NBC reported,

And while public discussion of a potential lab leak has shifted significantly in recent months, as more people pay attention to a theory that was originally promulgated by former President Donald Trump and his followers, the scientific evidence has remained unchanged, according to interviews with five virologists who have experience in microbiology, infectious disease ecology and viral evolution.

Note “the scientific evidence has remained unchanged”. So what did change? The President changed.

There had been trepidation among some scientists about publicly discussing the lab leak hypothesis for fear that their words could be misconstrued or used to support racist rhetoric about how the coronavirus emerged.
At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins.

Unbelievable. These scientists ignored science over fear of somehow being associated with Trump or proving him correct. What is the state of scientific thought if following the science can be construed as racist?

What else did scientists ignore or suppress simply to spite Trump and not give him any credit for his insights on the virus and pandemic? With all the fancy degrees after their names, doctors and scientists have boiled down science to something quite simple. If Trump says X is true, the scientific community says X is false, regardless of the science or the implications. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

Were the faulty case and death count methodologies fudged to make the pandemic appear worse to hurt Trump’s credibility and reelection prospects? Were the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin poo-pooed simply because Trump suggested them as potential therapeutics?

How many people could have avoided hospitalization and death if these inexpensive and safe drugs were made available rather than banned, threatening the medical licenses of physicians daring to prescribe them, and firing or ostracizing those promoting their use? Or deplatforming their websites, as Amazon recently did to America’s Frontline Doctors.




The Press, Progressives, and Scientists are complicit in the deaths of millions because they vilified Trump just because

 

[GURPS]

Judge In Florida Cruise Line Lawsuit Reminds CDC It Isn’t Congress


A Tampa federal judge pushed back on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-panic power grab on Friday, granting the state of Florida’s request for a preliminary injunction against the agency in a lawsuit challenging the CDC’s mandate that cruise lines require passengers to be vaccinated.

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In Friday’s ruling, Merryday ordered that the CDC’s requirements would “persist as only a non-binding ‘consideration,’ ‘recommendation’ or ‘guideline’” beginning July 18. At that point, cruise ships could sail without being forced to meet the CDC’s instructions. Merryday added the CDC could propose new, narrower instructions that were “within CDC’s authority” by July 2.

He concluded Florida is “highly likely” to win its legal argument that the CDC’s conditional sail orders “exceed the authority [Congress] delegated” through 42 U.S. Code § 264, the statute allowing the CDC to issue regulations to prevent diseases. If such sweeping restrictions are within the authority of that statute, Merryday continued, then the statute itself “likely constitutes an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to CDC.” In other words, the CDC isn’t Congress and shouldn’t be acting like it.

“The CDC has been wrong all along, and they knew it,” DeSantis said in response to the ruling. “The CDC and the Biden administration concocted a plan to sink the cruise industry, hiding behind bureaucratic delay and lawsuits.” The court order, he added, was a victory “for every state that wants to preserve its rights in the face of unprecedented federal overreach.”

 

[GURPS]

China Apologist Peter Daszak Has Some Explaining to Do



On the menu today: Peter Daszak recuses himself from the COVID-19 Commission established by the medical journal The Lancet, after accusations that he hid his conflicts of interest in the past. That’s barely enough, because back in February, he was doing interviews with Chinese-state-run media backing up Beijing’s implausible theory that COVID-19 was imported to Wuhan from Cambodia, Thailand, or Japan. Meanwhile, at home, Democrats run into brick walls of reality, and we wonder why anyone believes Michael Wolff’s tall tales anymore.

Peter Daszak: Hey, Maybe COVID-19 Started in Cambodia, Thailand, or Japan

It will probably not surprise you to learn that Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, is the favorite American COVID-19 expert of Chinese-state-run media. But it may surprise you to hear that in an interview with the state-run Global Times earlier this year, Daszak echoed the supremely implausible claim of the Chinese government that SARS-CoV-2 originated in another country and was somehow imported into Wuhan. “There was a virus from Thailand close to the SARS-CoV-2, and also Japan and Cambodia. Ecohealth Alliance is already starting our work in tracing their origins.”

This week, Daszak recused himself from the COVID-19 Commission established by the medical journal The Lancet — not over his public embrace of China’s implausible blame-shifting theories, but because of complaints he didn’t disclose past conflicts of interest in his contributions to that journal.

 

[GURPS]

Even creepier COVID tracking: Google silently pushed app to users’ phones [Updated]

Over the weekend, Google and the state of Massachusetts managed to make creepy COVID tracking apps even creepier by automatically installing them on people's Android phones. Numerous reports on Reddit, Hacker News, and in-app reviews claim that "MassNotify," Massachusetts' COVID tracking app, silently installed on their Android device without user consent.

Google gave the following statement to 9to5Google, and the company does not deny silently installing an app.

We have been working with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to allow users to activate the Exposure Notifications System directly from their Android phone settings. This functionality is built into the device settings and is automatically distributed by the Google Play Store, so users don’t have to download a separate app. COVID-19 Exposure Notifications are enabled only if a user proactively turns it on. Users decide whether to enable this functionality and whether to share information through the system to help warn others of possible exposure.

Google's statement doesn't really address the issue of auto-installing an app without asking. The "functionality" of COVID exposure-tracking apps are built into Google Play Services as an API that government apps can use for their tracking initiatives and can be "automatically distributed by the Google Play Store."

 

[GURPS]

New Study Finds Lockdowns Didn’t Save Any Lives And May Have Killed More People Than Doing Nothing


A new study from the Rand Corporation and the University of Southern California titled “The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And Policy Responses On Excess Mortality,” found that the lockdowns that were mandated in response to the Wuhan virus outbreak didn’t save lives, and even worse, they may have actually resulted in more deaths than would have occurred if shelter-in-place policies had not been mandated.

The paper, out this month, found that “following the implementation of shelter-in-place policies, excess mortality increases,” noting that “The increase in excess mortality is statistically significant in the immediate weeks following [shelter-in-place] implementation.”

“We failed to find that countries or U.S. states that implemented [shelter-in-place] policies earlier, and in which [shelter-in-place] policies had longer to operate, had lower excess deaths than countries-slash-U.S. states that were slower to implement [shelter-in-place] policies,” the researchers reported. “We also failed to observe differences in excess death trends before and after the implementation of [shelter-in-place] policies based on pre-[shelter-in-place] COVID-19 death rates.”

 

[HGMilstead]

I think this thread needs a few dozen more linked articles (that few if anyone replies to). Can someone please post some more, and quickly?!

 

[GURPS]

The Counter Jumped ..... Did Sapdus Say something

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

I think this thread needs a few dozen more linked articles (that few if anyone replies to). Can someone please post some more, and quickly?!

What you think.

 

[GURPS]

The Human and Financial Cost of Ignoring Generic Therapeutics In Favor Of Novel Vaccines


This is where the conversation turns to cheap, safe, and effective generic drugs. By comparison to the expensive vaccines, which appear to work but also carry unknown long-term effects, one clinical study looked at treating mild cases of Covid with a once-daily regimen of 12mg of Ivermectin for five days. There is also the first generic drug to be touted as a safe prophylactic and treatment, though its name dropping by then-President Trump relegated hydroxychloroquine to medication non grata.

Had the U.S. government opted to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies that could manufacture hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin and offered them as both preventative doses and after-the-fact treatment courses, not only would the financial cost been reduced, but in the abeyance between poo-pooing hydroxychloroquine publicly – though fraudulent Democrats like Senator Amy Klobuchar quietly allowed it to save her husband – and now tacitly approved its use, untold lives would have been saved.

Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, at times a lone voice in an ocean of medical insanity, suggested last year that as many as 100,000 deaths could have been avoided altogether by adopting cheap generics early in the pandemic, specifically hydroxychloroquine. Subsequent studies, including one published in just the last month, continue to confirm its efficacy. This is to say nothing of the practically non-existent, long-term effects of the generics and the entirely unknown and as-of-yet unknowable long-term effects of mRNA vaccines.

As it stands, the scientific response has been nothing more than political maneuvering. In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the aforementioned Risch and Joseph Ladapo (of American Frontline Doctors – the same group that were censored last summer for speaking on the U.S. Capitol steps) correctly observed that the medical establishment served the purposes not of medicine, but that of politics. In its erroneous handlings of Covid-19 responses, public officials tasked with saving Americans achieved just the opposite. Lockdowns, masks, and most certainly patient care, were all known to be inept, and yet each was practiced so as to promulgate fear within, and control over, a witless American populace. They specifically look at the genuine concerns over alleged vaccine side effects and the utter disregard from most medical practitioners.

 

[HGMilstead]

If I may ...

What you think.

Then why did you reply?

 

[Gilligan]

Then why did you reply?

How's the weather in Houston, sport?

 

[GURPS]

We Must Resist Resurgence Of Lockdown Lunacy Over COVID Delta Variant


Los Angeles County health officials reinstated mask recommendations for individuals regardless of vaccination status, despite vaccine efficacy against the new variant, which originated from India.

“The Delta variant is the mildest one we’ve seen so far, and even though it’ll proportionately take up a greater number of cases — and we expect this in the United States — it has a very low mortality, appears to be the most treatable strain that we’ve seen so far,” McCullough explained. “We’re going to keep patients out of the hospital at a very low risk of mortality.”

Dr. Harvey Risch of the Yale School of Public Health said corporate outlets and government officials are “dramatically” overreacting to the new variant.

 

[Grumpy]

 

[stgislander]

Cue Larry to put a hold on rescinding the Covid State of Emergency in 3... 2....