RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-worsened-america-rage-virus-for-which-theres-no-vaccine-lockdown-vaccine-mandates-ron-desantis-stanford-masking-2670cd39?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

EXCERPTS

Three years ago, I was in St. Pete Beach, Fla., as the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic was accelerating. On Monday I waited an hour for a seat in Skidder’s Restaurant. Then Gov. Ron DeSantis closed bars and limited restaurants to 50% capacity. By Wednesday evening, I had the back porch of the Wharf Restaurant to myself, my only company a seagull perched on a piling, eyeing my fried oysters.

On the drive back to Indiana I found exit-ramp restaurants closed to dine-in patrons. Families had to eat grumpily in their minivans. At home the usually bustling Greenwood Park Mall parking lot was empty. Some employees received “essential workers” letters from their companies allowing them to go to their jobs, but thousands of presumably inessential employees found their incomes drying up.

As horrific as Covid-19 was as a physical illness, it was even worse as a social pathogen. The virus leapt from the body to the body politic. People were arrested for exercising in public, holding church services and refusing to wear masks. Others lost jobs for refusing the vaccine. Confrontations between maskers and antimaskers went viral. Schools were closed, damaging kids’ development. In Canada nearly two years into the pandemic, the government froze the bank accounts of people daring to demonstrate against its Covid-abatement efforts.

Vaccine mandates poured gasoline on the smoldering distrust of media outlets and science that had seemed rife with political ideology even before the outbreak. The mandates provoked resistance to even common-sense disease-limiting practices.

And the disease was quickly politicized. Progressives found an opportunity to expand government management of health—by force if necessary. For conservatives this seemed to prove they were right to distrust activist government. Donald Trump was encouraging ingestion of horse dewormer and household cleansers. Joe Biden was forcing deadly shots on children. Or so some claimed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-energy-department-covid-lab-china-national-security-john-kirby-299ee360?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

White House spokespersons played the press corps like a Stradivarius on Monday as they ducked questions about Sunday’s report that the Energy Department has concluded the Covid virus probably originated in a Chinese laboratory.

“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how Covid started,” said John Kirby, the White House national-security spokesman. “There is just not an intelligence community consensus.”

So what? When was the last time there was an intelligence community consensus on anything? No reporter asked Mr. Kirby that question, but we don’t mind doing so.

By its very nature, intelligence is usually murky and open to different interpretations. That’s why agencies attach terms like “low confidence” or “moderate confidence” to their judgments. A difference in agency views can be useful because it means there is less chance of groupthink influencing policy choices.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-years-late-the-lancet-recognizes-natural-immunity-great-barrington-declaration-tech-censor-antibodies-mandates-b3ba912c?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Lancet medical journal this month published a review of 65 studies that concluded prior infection with Covid—i.e., natural immunity—is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines. The most surprising news was that the study made the mainstream press.

“Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds,” NBC reported on Feb. 16. The study found that prior infection offered 78.6% protection against reinfection from the original Wuhan, Alpha or Delta variants at 40 weeks, which slipped to 36.1% against Omicron. Protection against severe illness remained around 90% across all variants after 40 weeks. These results exceed what other studies have found for two and even three mRNA doses.

This comes after nearly three years of public-health officials’ dismissing the same hypothesis. But now that experts at the University of Washington have confirmed it in a leading—and left-leaning—journal, it’s fit to print.

The Lancet study’s vindication of natural immunity fits a pandemic pattern: The public-health clerisy rejects an argument that ostensibly threatens its authority; eventually it’s forced to soften its position in the face of incontrovertible evidence; and yet not once does it acknowledge its opponents were right.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2023/02/23/trans-meds-increase-heart-attacks-and-strokes-sevenfold-but-the-left-still-pushes-them-on-kids-n1673171

What happens when men hoover up estrogen and women scarf testosterone? Aww, you know!

Specialists at Pennsylvania’s Mercy Catholic Medical Center are reporting that transgendered people taking hormones face serious risks of heart attack, stroke, and myocarditis.

The study compared transgender people who do and do not take hormones, hormone blockers, or any other medication associated with those looking to “change their gender.”

Those transgendered people — many of them teens — who take the drugs are facing a handful of bad news, including:

They are seven times more likely to have a stroke.
They are six times more likely to have a myocardial infarction.
They have a five-times higher risk of pulmonary embolism, which blocks the arteries in the lungs.

“It’s all about risks and benefits,” Dr. Ibrahim Ahmed, lead author of the study, reported. “Starting transitioning is a big part of a person’s life and helping them feel more themselves, but hormone replacement therapy also has a lot of side effects.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/23/congress-to-probe-covid-vaccines-and-its-about-time/

One of the key functions of Congress is to oversee how our government’s many branches do their jobs. It’s a central part of holding those in power accountable. That’s why it’s good news that the new Republican House has decided to investigate the COVID-19 vaccines, which turned out to be deadlier, and far less effective, than promised.

This is not one of the “gotcha” committees, such as the ones run by the Democrats during the last session of Congress that amounted to little more than political sideshows with no real serious intent of reform or improving government.

Instead, as reported by The Epoch Times, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will investigate possible side effects of the vaccines, how and why they were approved by government regulators, and why they were forced on the public. The previous Democratic Congress was too busy investigating President Donald Trump and spending trillions on “stimulus” to do the job.

Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Weeks said the investigation’s goal is to prepare for future similar pandemics, “and that includes perfecting our vaccine development. In order to do so, we must have complete transparency in vaccine research, clinical trials and adverse reactions, and manufacturing.”

She added, “I expect our oversight hearings will shed light on the FDA approval process, the potential for side effects, and ultimately the success rate and safety of the vaccine — each of which will help us to navigate future global health emergencies.”

To which we say, it’s about time.

As others, we’ve been shocked by recent revelations from peer-reviewed studies that show the mRNA vaccines were less effective and possibly even harmful for large groups of people, while the almost-fetishized forced-wearing of masks had basically zero effect on the spread of the disease.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cdcs-long-covid-deception-depression-anxiety-vaccine-mandate-university-gwu-testing-mental-health-48bdd11b?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Many liberals label themselves “pro-science” as if that’s a political position. Then again, so many putatively scientific studies seem intended to promote progressive policies rather than advance scientific knowledge. Such studies then get amplified by the media and self-appointed experts on social media.

Consider a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that claims to find that nearly 36% of Covid cases among students, faculty and staff at George Washington University resulted in “long Covid.” The study suggests that young, healthy people face a high risk of chronic debilitating symptoms after infection despite being at low risk of getting severely ill with the virus.

The study also finds that the unvaccinated were at more than twice as high a risk of developing long Covid as those fully vaccinated who had gotten boosters. This sounds plausible. But drill down, and it becomes clear that the evidence is too thin to draw any conclusions.

Like many colleges, George Washington University held classes online during the first year of the pandemic even as some students returned to campus. Those on campus were required to undergo weekly Covid testing. During the 2021-22 school year, classrooms reopened but students were required to be vaccinated and later boosted.

The college recorded 4,800 Covid cases between August 2020‒and February 2022. Those who tested positive were later asked to complete 15- to 20-minute surveys about their health and behavioral changes. Only one-third completed the surveys, and those who did might have been more likely to report lingering health problems—a phenomenon known as nonresponse bias.

The study suffers from two other major methodological problems. First, it doesn’t include a control group of students and faculty that weren’t infected. The finding that nearly 36% reported long Covid symptoms is meaningless without such a sample to determine how common such symptoms were among people who never had Covid.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/1-in-45000

We have known almost since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic that young people face much lower risks from Covid than the elderly.

But Dutch researchers now have offered what should be the last word on the issue, using data from a national registry to show that even people in their thirties and forties have a risk from Covid almost too low to measure.

The researchers compared the results from a nationwide sample of Covid infections in the Netherlands at several points in 2020 and 2021 to nationwide excess death totals. To determine the Covid death rate, they assumed all the excess deaths resulted from Covid infections.

This method likely overstates Covid deaths. Some extra deaths were likely drug overdoses, suicides, or untreated heart attacks and other lockdown-related health problems. In addition, the sampling technique they used may have understated infections.

Put those issues aside, since they don’t change the most important finding. The researchers determined the death rate from Covid infections was about 1 percent overall in the Netherlands during 2020. (Again, that figure almost certainly is high.)

The researchers then did what governments and Covid hysterics have tried not to do for three years. They explicitly stratified deaths by age, from under 10 to over 80.

The results are… enlightening.

The chart below measures infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from the second Covid wave in the Netherlands, in fall 2020. That stretch probably marks the truest measure of Covid’s lethality. It occurred after the ventilator and nursing home catastrophes of the first wave but before the short-lived happy vaccine valley of spring 2021, when the mRNAs sharply reduced infections.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2023/02/15/medical-tyranny-the-feds-are-tracking-the-unvaccinated-and-you-wont-believe-who-is-telling-them-to-do-it-n1670857

Some of you may recall that I previously referred to the COVID-19 lockdowns — and various other responses to the bat stew flu — as a “dress rehearsal for communism.”

I was wrong; it’s showtime!

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) — at the behest of the World Health Organization (WHO) — is now tracking Americans who have chosen to dodge the ineffective vaccine and those who are partially vaccinated.

FACT-O-RAMA! The WHO is an unelected, gloabalist commie-dominated group supposedly dedicated to tackling worldwide health situations. It has ties to the United Nations and is completely beset by the Chinese commies.

How do we know the Chi-comms have infiltrated the WHO?

The WHO echoed China’s nonsense that COVID can’t be transferred from person to person.
It also snubbed Taiwan’s request to join the WHO as an observer.

World-renowned Dr. Robert Malone, who was “canceled” for sounding the alarm about all things COVID, reported that the no-longer-secret surveillance program that the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) — which is a part of the CDC — originated has begun not only tracking those who have been partially or completely unvaccinated. But why?

Doctors working at hospitals and clinics are now expected to ask patients if they’ve been vaccinated — and if not, why not — and report the answers to the NCHS. The only doctors who aren’t expected to comply are the ones who are in private practice and do not accept insurance.