covid-19

For real, bruh! Trust the science! /  by Nathan Jones

Former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Rochelle Walensky testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and the Subcommittee on Health hearing about the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic on Capitol Hill on February 8, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Alex Gutentag, reporting for Public :

CDC Covered Up COVID Vaccine Myocarditis Risk, Show Emails And Reports

US government had reviewed Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System cases of post-vaccine myocarditis when CDC’s director falsely claimed, “we have not seen any reports”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is encouraging everyone six months and older to get the newest COVID-19 booster. The benefits for children and young people far outweigh the risks, argues CDC Director Mandy Cohen. “Teen boys have been up to five times as likely to have heart inflammation after having a COVID infection than after getting vaccinated,” Cohen said.

But the best available evidence does not back up Cohen’s claims. The CDC director is relying on a highly flawed study published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly (MMWR).

It’s true that this study found teen boys ages 12-17 had two to six times greater risk of heart complications after COVID infection compared to after vaccination.

But the study only looked at electronic health records, which were limited to teenagers who had been admitted to the hospital or who visited a doctor. This means the subjects of the study were not representative of the total number of teen boys who got COVID, the vast majority of whom never went to the doctor.

And other papers show vastly different results.

A study from the American Heart Association on myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) found that, “In men younger than 40 years old, the number of excess myocarditis events per million people was higher after a second dose of mRNA-1273 than after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.”

A Nordic study of 23 million people found that for young men ages 16 to 24, post-vaccination myocarditis rates were six to 28 times higher than myocarditis rates after COVID infection. The study also found that there were zero myocarditis cases after COVID infection in males ages 12-15.

The consequences of vaccine-caused myocarditis can be serious. A review of clinical records found that ninety-six percent of people under 30 diagnosed with post-vaccination myocarditis were hospitalized. For some patients, symptoms persist. In one study from the US military, seven out of 23 myocarditis patients “continued to have chest discomfort” weeks after vaccination.

Although Cohen insists that children are at high risk of serious illness, the mean Infection Fatality Rate of COVID for people under 20 years old is 0.0003%, and hospitals have grossly inflated the reported number of children with severe COVID. One paper found that hospital records overcounted the number of pediatric COVID hospitalizations by at least 40 percent.

The CDC’s recommendation that everyone aged 6 months and older get another booster is simply not scientifically or medically sound. The agency received but did not respond to Public’s requests for comment about its misrepresentation of myocarditis risks.

What’s more, a mounting body of evidence shows that the CDC and the White House chose to ignore and cover up evidence of a significant myocarditis safety signal in early 2021, putting young people at risk of serious adverse events. How did this happen?

I am reminded here of the inimitable C. S. Lewis, who said (emphasis mine):

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Also filed under “Trust the science!” – Fauci Diverted US Government Away from Lab Leak Theory of Covid Origin

Trust the science, bruh! /  by Nathan Jones

Dr. Anthony Fauci (C) speaks as US President Donald Trump listens during a press conference on COVID-19 in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 13, 2020, two days before the publication of the “Proximal Origin” paper dismissing the lab leak theory of Covid’s origin. (Photo by Chen Mengtong/China News Service via Getty Images)

As we enter a new phase of Covid freak-out, it’s well worth remembering how little we ought to trust the “experts.” As Matt Taibbi, Alex Gutentag, and Michael Schellenberger reveal:

Fauci Diverted US Government Away From Lab Leak Theory Of Covid’s Origin

The former director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, visited CIA headquarters to “influence” its review of COVID-19 origins, the House Oversight Committee reported yesterday.

Last month, Committee Chair Brad Wenstrup made headlines when he revealed that seven CIA analysts “with significant scientific expertise" on the agency’s Covid-19 Discovery Team (CDT) received performance bonuses after changing a report to downplay concerns about a possible lab origin of the virus.

Now, a months-long investigation by Racket and Public, which included interviews with the CIA whistleblower behind last month’s revelations and others in a position to know, reveals that Fauci not only visited the CIA but also pushed the controversial“Proximal Origin of SARS CoV-2” paper, published by Nature Medicine, in meetings at the State Department and the White House.

Previous reporting already showed that Fauci “prompted” the “Proximal Origin” paper, according to its authors. Lead author Kristian Andersen expressed grave doubts about the natural origin theory even months after Nature Medicine published the paper. And they described themselves as pressured by “higher ups,” referring to individuals in the White House and other government agencies.

Now, the new information from multiple sources, including a CIA whistleblower, a senior government investigator, and a senior official, suggests a broad effort by Fauci to go agency-by-agency, from the White House to the State Department to the CIA, in an effort to steer government officials away from looking into the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a lab.

“Fauci’s expert opinions were a significant consideration and were part of our classified assessment,” said the CIA whistleblower, a decorated and long-serving CIA officer with expertise in Asia. “His opinion substantially altered the conclusions that were subsequently drawn.”

Fauci had reasons to push scientists and intelligence analysts to believe the virus had a zoonotic origin since his agency had issued a grant to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

The Wenstrup press release noted that the whistleblower’s information suggested Fauci was escorted in “without record of entry.” According to the CIA whistleblower, the CIA purposely did not “badge” Fauci in and out of the building so as to hide any record that he had been there.

“Fauci came to our building, to promote the natural origin of the virus,” the CIA whistleblower said. “He knew what was going on. I mean, you see all the redacted documents that are coming out. He was covering his ass and he was trying to do it with the Intel community… I know he came multiple times and he was treated like a rockstar by the Weapons and Counter Proliferation Mission Center. And, he pushed the Kristian Anderson paper.”

Public Health Needs a Taste of Its Own Medicine /  by Nathan Jones

The inimitable Vinay Prasad:

Post-COVID we need to seriously talk about setting restrictions. But not on people. We need to place restrictions on public health and things done in the name of public health. We cannot allow individuals who are poor at weighing risk and benefit and uncertainty to coerce human beings, disproportionately the young and powerless (waiters/ servers) to participate in interventions that have no data supporting them, for years on end.