Covid19 News from Planet Waves — June 2021 entries

OffGuardian: Pseudopandemic | Added June 30

Covid 19 was and is a pseudopandemic. It was the gross exaggeration of the threat posed by a low mortality respiratory illness, comparable to influenza.

The pseudopandemic was a psychological operation (psy-op) designed to terrorise the public. The objective was to accustom the people to draconian system of government oppression by familiarising them with the mechanisms of a biosecurity state.

The pseudopandemic was based upon an influenza like illness which, regardless of its origin, was not and is not a disease which can legitimately be considered the cause of a “pandemic.” The only way it could ever be described as such was by the removal of any reference to mortality from the World Health Organisation’s definition.

COVID 19 is a disease which has a mortality age distribution profile indistinguishable from standard mortality. Unlike influenza, which disproportionately impacts the young, in terms of threat to life, COVID 19 was and is a wholly unremarkable illness.

Were it not for political theatrics and mainstream media propaganda, which began in China, no one, outside of the medical profession and COVID 19 sufferers, would have remarked on this disease.

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In new U.S. military study, heart inflammation after second mRNA shot is almost three times more likely than previously expected | Added June 30

Members of the U.S. military who were vaccinated against COVID-19 showed higher-than-expected rates of heart inflammation, although the condition was still extremely rare, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The study found that 23 previously healthy males with an average age of 25 complained of chest pain within four days of receiving a COVID-19 shot. The incident rate was higher than some previous estimates would have anticipated, it said.

All the patients, who at the time of the study’s publication had recovered or were recovering from myocarditis – an inflammation of the heart muscle – had received shots made by either Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE) or Moderna Inc (MRNA.O).

U.S. health regulators last week added a warning to the literature that accompanies those mRNA vaccines to flag the rare risk of heart inflammation seen primarily in young males. But they said the benefit of the shots in preventing COVID-19 clearly continues to outweigh the risk. read more

The study, which was published in the JAMA Cardiology medical journal, said 19 of the patients were current military members who had received their second vaccine dose. The others had either received one dose or were retired from the military.

General population estimates would have predicted eight or fewer cases of myocarditis from the 436,000 male military members who received two COVID-19 shots, the study said.

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Variety: L.A. Officials ‘Strongly Recommend’ Everyone Wear Masks Indoors Regardless of Vaccination Status | Added June

Note the final quote here about the Delta variant, which seems to suggest the narrative going forward: “We gotta roll back the reopenings because of all the unvaccinated.”

Meanwhile, of course, none of the shots have even been given a full approval by the F.D.A. but are still only authorized for emergency use.

From Variety:

On Monday, the Los Angles County Department of Public Health announced it “strongly recommends everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure” in light of the increasingly transmissible Delta variant.

The precautionary recommendation comes just two weeks after the full reopening of California’s economy. Across the country, the Delta variant is responsible for about one in every five new infections. Last week, the rate was approximately one in every 10. However, it appears that fully vaccinated people appear to be well-protected from the Delta variant. In L.A. County, 10 of the 123 people identified with the Delta variant were fully vaccinated. Of the small number of fully vaccinated people who got sick with the Delta variant, the experiences have been mild, and none of the fully vaccinated were hospitalized.

“While COVID-19 vaccine provides very effective protection preventing hospitalizations and deaths against the Delta variant, the strain is proving to be more transmissible and is expected to become more prevalent,” public health director Barbara Ferrer said. “Mask wearing remains an effective tool for reducing transmission, especially indoors where the virus may be easily spread through inhalation of aerosols emitted by an infected person.”

“This is a pandemic of unvaccinated people,” she emphasized.

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‘People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses.’ WHO urges fully vaccinated to wear masks anyway due to delta variant | Added June 29

From CNBC:

The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe.

“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters.

“Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission,” Simao added. “People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”

The health organization’s comments come as some countries, including the United States, have largely done away with masks and pandemic-related restrictions as the Covid vaccines have helped drive down the number of new infections and deaths.

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AP News: Amish put faith in God’s will and herd immunity over vaccine | Added June 29

From AP News:

Many think they don’t need the COVID-19 vaccine now because they’ve already gotten sick and believe their communities have reached herd immunity, according to health care providers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, home to nearly two-thirds of the estimated 345,000 Amish in the U.S.

“That’s the No. 1 reason we hear,” said Alice Yoder, director of community health at Lancaster General Health, a network of hospitals and clinics.

Experts say the low vaccination rates are a reflection of both the nature of the Amish and the general vaccine hesitancy found in many rural parts of the country.

Because many Amish work and shop alongside their neighbors and hire them as drivers, they hear the skepticism, the worries about side effects and the misinformation surrounding the vaccine from the “English,” or non-Amish, world around them even though they shun most modern conveniences.

“They’re not getting that from the media. They’re not watching TV or reading it on the internet. They’re getting it from their English neighbors,” said Donald Kraybill, a leading expert on the Amish. “In many ways, they are simply reflecting rural America and the same attitudes.”

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James Corbett’s A Brief History of Hopium | Added June 29

Via OffGuardian:

James Corbett’s latest documentary investigates the history of “hopium”, the phenomenon by which the relentlessly cynical and dishonest political class can string along an increasingly desperate public with the promise of change that never comes.

From the dawn of democracy through the modern-day hope merchants of Obama, Clinton and Joe Biden…this is the Brief History of Hopium.

A full transcript, audio-only version and download options are available here.

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SCMP: Chinese Covid-19 genetic data in US archive was removed in June 2020, virologist finds | Added June 29

From South China Morning Post:

The removed data had been collected in early 2020 in Wuhan, the coronavirus’ initial epicentre, where a number of cases were linked to Huanan market. Photo: Simon Song

Virus sequences from early Covid-19 patients in China were removed from a US database last year at the request of the scientist who submitted them, according to the US National Institutes of Health.

The NIH confirmed on Wednesday that its staff had removed the sequences in June 2020, three months after they had been uploaded to the online US government-run genetic sequence archive. Archive rules allow researchers to ask to withdraw their submissions.

It made the disclosure after virologist Jesse Bloom, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, said he recovered genetic sequences that were collected by a team from Wuhan University in January and February 2020 but had been removed.

The sequences – from Wuhan, the coronavirus outbreak’s initial epicentre – could hint at more undisclosed data and helpshed light on the outbreak’s early stages, Bloom said.

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Jon Rappoport: Martyrdom Meets Fascism | Added June 29

From Jon Rappoport:

I have a stack of articles I’ve yet to publish. I wrote this one on April 21, 2021.

Collectivism: “Everybody is connected to everybody. Government decides how they’re connected, and what they must do, to contribute to the Greater Whole.”

Anytime someone tells you…

You can’t exercise your freedom…

Because every move you make adversely affects someone else…

Know you’re looking at a con.

“By walking out on the street in New York without a mask, yawning, stretching your arms, looking at the sky, you’re devastating the life of a man in Bombay.”

It’s the wet dream of every little Collectivist. “We really ARE all in this together. Finally.”

Meanwhile, every corrupt politician sees the opportunity to tell lies and issue edicts on a larger stage. The curtain is going up, and he can sink his teeth into a leading role. He can bloviate to his heart’s content about The Good. He’s fighting a war and he doesn’t have to expose himself to a single bullet from the enemy. He’s Mussolini and he has medical backup.

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Legal action in red states could bring vaccine mandates at universities to court | Added June 28

From Politico:

Conservative state lawmakers are moving to block public and private universities from requiring returning students to have proof of Covid vaccinations or get the vaccine itself, in a push that could complicate President Joe Biden’s effort to get shots to young adults.

Executive orders or legislation in states like Arizona and Florida ban universities from mandating students show proof of vaccination status and come as the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus is surging. College-age Americans have the lowest vaccination rates and are least likely to make plans to get a shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The states’ moves potentially set up a series of court fights over who has the power to police campus health just as schools prepare to reopen for in-person instruction. Already, a group of Indiana University students has sued over the school’s fall vaccine requirement, forcing the state’s attorney general to weigh in. The battles could extend to as many as 16 states because some of the bans don’t explicitly single out universities and instead target “governmental entities” that could apply to state colleges.

“It’s likely to be broadly interpreted, and I suspect universities will be cautious in these states,” said Dorit Reiss, vaccine law expert at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

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Latest CDC VAERS Data Show Reported Injuries Surpass 11,000 in Ages 12 to 17 Following COVID Vaccines — read from CHD | Added June 28

Data released today show that between Dec. 14, 2020 and June 18, 2021, a total of 387,087 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 6,113 deaths — an increase of 120 deaths over the previous week. There were 31,240 serious injury reports, up 1,369 compared with last week.

In the U.S. 316.1 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of June 18. This includes: 131 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 173 million doses of Pfizer and 12 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine.

Of the 6,113 deaths reported as of June 18, 23% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 16% occurred within 24 hours and 38% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

This week’s data for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

11,584 total adverse events, including 578 rated as serious and nine reported deaths among 12- to 17-year-olds. Four deaths (or 44%) were cardiac-related and three were sudden, unexplained deaths.
The most recent reported death includes a 13-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 1406840) who died two days after receiving a Pfizer vaccine. Other deaths include three 15-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1187918, 1382906 and 1242573) and two 16-year-olds (VAERS I.D. 1225942 and 1386841) and one 17-year-old (VAERS I.D. 1199455).
The report of a 15-year-old male (VAERS I.D. 1383620) who reportedly died after receiving a Pfizer vaccine was removed from the database on June 18. It was a duplicate of VAERS I.D. 1382096. Two of the nine deaths were suicides.
1,589 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds with 99% of cases
attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 1.2% to Moderna and 0.3% (or two cases) to J&J.
237 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 234 attributed to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.
42 reports of blood clotting disorders, all attributed to Pfizer.

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DISCUSS: Latest anti-lockdown protests hit London — read and discuss at OffGuardian | Added June 28

Another huge wave of people took to the streets of London today, protesting the Covid restrictions, proposed vaccine passports, injections for children and other dystopian aspects of our authoritarian new normal.

Similar protests have been happening regularly since the imposition of Lockdown in March last year, including last month when well over 100,000 people (some estimates said 1million+) turned up.

The march was practically ignored by the mainstream, with the BBC reporting a turnout of “hundreds” despite video evidence showing at least 1000x that number.

Today’s crowd was no smaller, maybe even larger, and certainly just as passionate…

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London protests: Thousands march through capital in day of protest — read from BBC | Added June 28

From BBC:

Thousands of demonstrators have marched through London in a day of protests.

Anti-lockdown and climate change demonstrations took place across Westminster, Lambeth and Southwark alongside some smaller protests.

AND

Demonstrators packed the streets outside Downing Street.

Flares were set off while crowds shouted “shame on you” followed by prolonged booing.

Some protesters were seen throwing tennis balls at the Houses of Parliament.

One protester, who did not wish to be named, said: “They have little messages on them. Most of them are not very nice.”

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From Associated Press:

Russia mandates shots against Covid-19 | Added June 28

They tried grocery giveaways and lotteries for new cars and apartments. But an ambitious plan of vaccinating 30 million Russians by mid-June still has fallen short by a third.

So now, many regional governments across the vast country are obligating some workers to get vaccinated and requiring the shots to enter certain businesses, like restaurants.

As many Western countries lift coronavirus restrictions and plan a return to normal life after mass vaccinations, Russia is battling a surge of infections — even though it was the first in the world to authorize a vaccine and among the first to start administering it in December.

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OffGuardian: Canadian surgeon FIRED for voicing safety concerns over Covid jabs for children | Added June 26

Dr Francis Christian, practising surgeon and clinical professor of general surgery at the University of Saskatchewan, has been immediately suspended from all teaching and will be permanently removed from his role as of September.

Dr Christian has been a surgeon for more than 20 years and began working in Saskatoon in 2007. He was appointed Director of the Surgical Humanities Program and Director of Quality and Patient Safety in 2018 and co-founded the Surgical Humanities Program. Dr. Christian is also the Editor of the Journal of The Surgical Humanities.

On June 17th Dr Christian released a statement to over 200 of his colleagues, expressing concern over the lack of informed consent involved in Canada’s “Covid19 vaccination” program, especially regarding children. (You read a PDF of that statement here.)

To be clear, Dr Christian’s position is hardly an extreme one.

He believes the virus is real, he believes in vaccination as a general principle, he believes the elderly and vulnerable may benefit from the Covid “vaccine”…he simply doesn’t agree it should be used on children, and feels parents are not being given enough information for properly informed consent.

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Gavin Newsom recall election to proceed | Added June 26

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Only 43 voters who signed the petition to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom withdrew their names over the past few months, far fewer than opponents of the election would have needed to prevent it from taking place.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber confirmed Wednesday that recall organizers still had enough support to move forward with a special election this year on whether to remove Newsom from office before his term ends in 2023.

In a letter, she notified the state Department of Finance to begin its analysis of the cost of the election, which must take place before a date can be set for the vote.

“The proponents of the recall effort against Governor Gavin Newsom have submitted a sufficient number of valid signatures to initiate a recall election,” she wrote.

Recall organizers submitted their petitions in the spring, but California law gave voters another 30 business days to let their local election officials know if they wanted to withdraw their signatures.

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International study looks at 20,000 year old coronavirus epidemic | Added June 26

From Phys.org:

An international study has discovered a coronavirus epidemic broke out in the East Asia region more than 20,000 years ago, with traces of the outbreak evident in the genetic makeup of people from that area.

Professor Kirill Alexandrov from CSIRO-QUT Synthetic Biology Alliance and QUT’s Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health, is part of a team of researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of California San Francisco, and the University of Adelaide who have published their findings in the journal Current Biology.

In the past 20 years, there have been three outbreaks of epidemic severe coronaviruses: SARS-CoV leading to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which originated in China in 2002 and killed more than 800 people; MERS-CoV leading to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which killed more than 850 people, and SARS-CoV-2 leading to COVID-19, which has killed 3.8 million people.

But this study of the evolution of the human genome has revealed another large coronavirus epidemic broke out thousands of years earlier.

“The modern human genome contains evolutionary information tracing back tens of thousands of years, like studying the rings of a tree gives us insight into the conditions it experienced as it grew,” Professor Alexandrov said.

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Jon Rappoport: Freedom vs. The Machine; geneticists and their weapons | Added June 26

From Jon Rappoport:

Genetic determinism: the belief that an individual’s character, thoughts, and actions are the result of his genes.

Freedom means: being free from, and outside of, ironclad cause and effect.

Which side of the argument will win? Nothing is riding on this…except the future of the human race.

For the past 150 years, genetics has been emerging and taking center stage as the pre-eminent philosophy of life on planet Earth.

For most people, philosophy is of zero concern. They refuse to believe it can influence their lives in any way.

However, we currently have the RNA COVID genetic treatments called vaccines, targeting billions of people. According to the bought-off experts, these destructive treatments are working, in machine-like fashion, to protect us from a phantom virus.

The genetics on which the vaccines are based occupy a distinct philosophic position: our thoughts and actions are the effects of our genes; scientists can interfere with that structure and replace it with another genetic framework, which in turn will impose new all-consuming actions, thoughts, and biological alterations upon us.

One new machine taking over from an older machine.

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CHD: 13-Year-Old Michigan Boy Dies 3 Days After Second Dose of Pfizer Vaccine, Aunt Says ‘Moral, Ethical, Health’ Questions Need Answers | Added June 25

Initial autopsy results showed the previously healthy boy suffered from myocarditis, an inflammatory heart condition CDC officials have acknowledged is “likely” linked to mRNA COVID vaccines.

A 13-year-old Michigan boy died June 16, three days after he received his second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

Preliminary autopsy results indicated that following his vaccination, Jacob Clynick’s heart became enlarged and was surrounded by fluid — symptoms similar to those documented in other teen boys who experienced myocarditis following COVID vaccination.

On June 20, Clynick’s aunt, Tami Burages, posted a tweet with a photo of her nephew’s vaccination card and this statement, though she has since removed this tweet:

“A week ago today my brother’s 13-year-old son had his 2nd covid shot. Less than 3 days later he died. The initial autopsy results (done Friday) were that his heart was enlarged and there was some fluid surrounding it. He had no known health problems. Was on no medications.”

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NIH deleted early sequences from its database at the request of Chinese researchers | Added June 25

What does this mean for the programming of the first PCR tests?

Chinese researchers directed the U.S. National Institutes of Health to delete gene sequences of early Covid-19 cases from a key scientific database, raising concerns that scientists studying the origin of the pandemic may lack access to key pieces of information.

The NIH confirmed that it deleted the sequences after receiving a request from a Chinese researcher who had submitted them three months earlier.

“Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal of the data,” the NIH said in a statement.

The removal of the sequencing data is described in a new paper posted online Tuesday by Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The paper, which hasn’t been peer reviewed, says the missing data include sequences from virus samples collected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January and February of 2020 from patients hospitalized with or suspected of having Covid-19.

AND

According to the NIH statement, the scientist who submitted the sequences requested in June 2020 that they be deleted because they had been updated and were to be posted to another, unspecified database. The investigator said they wanted the older version to be removed to avoid confusion, according to the NIH.

Chinese researchers initially submitted the sequences to the NIH database in March 2020 and published information about them in a paper on a preprint server, according to the NIH. The paper described the use of an advanced sequencing technology to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The researchers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

AND

The deleted sequences are fragments, and “it’s the full genome sequences that have typically been the most informative,” said Joel Wertheim, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, San Diego and an author of a recent paper on the early pandemic.

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From Associated Press:

CDC announces “final extension” of eviction moratorium; evictions to resume July 31 | Added June 25

The Biden administration on Thursday extended the nationwide ban on evictions for a month to help millions of tenants unable to make rent payments during the coronavirus pandemic, but said this is the last time it plans to do so.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, extended the evictions moratorium from June 30 until July 31. The CDC said “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”

A Biden administration official said the last month would be used for an “all hands on deck” multiagency campaign to prevent a wave of evictions. One of the reasons the moratorium was put in place was to prevent further spread of COVID-19 by people put out on the streets and into shelters.

By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of June 7, roughly 3.2 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

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From American Institute for Economic Research:

Lest we forget, rational thoughts from an economist on how initial corona-myths die | Added June 25

Thank you, Loreen Costa.

Too bad people who “follow the science” so rarely understand how to follow the (manipulation? massaging of?) statistics by political actors, those same statistics which are the bread and butter of boring ol’ economics researchers. We might never have had to witness the unraveling of the socio-economic underpinnings of functional contemporary society.

As more is revealed regarding more and more former so-called “conspiracy theories” it’s worth remembering how we heard very little from the authorities on this past Spring’s adjusted information on surface transmission. Never a big announcement; it alway seems to be a quiet edit on a website.

So! Regarding future “adjustments”: Unless we demand a reckoning, do we really think we’ll hear apologies for the devastation wrought by censorship and the poor policymaking resulting from accretion of power in so few hands?

Here’s an oldie but a goodie from AIER, April 2021.

Oh well, apparently all that hand wringing about surfaces was a tad overdone. Last week the CDC announced that the risk of contracting the virus by touching a “contaminated” surface was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 10,000. Another myth born of Covid-hysteria has bitten the dust.

AND

No doubt the fear expressed by the scrubbers and washers has proven overdone and unwarranted in retrospect, which speaks to why freedom of action during “crises” is so important. In other words, those who threw caution to the wind and who couldn’t be bothered to disinfect everything were just as important as the corona-obsessed when it came to finding answers. Arguably more important. The “deniers” provided information about virus spread that the “believers” could not. Get it?

In this case, the deniers who lived their lives were correct. Avoiding all contact proved idiotic. The “doubters” had science on their side.

It’s all yet again a reminder that hysterical certitude isn’t the same as knowledge. Emotion is its own form of denial.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Dr. Tom Cowan: The Dark Side of Medicine — on Living 4D with Paul Chek | Added June 25

To understand what’s wrong with modern medicine demands looking at everything with an open mind, leaving no stone unturned and being willing to go wherever the real evidence takes you. Unravel the myths about modern medicine and get to the real truths with Dr. Tom Cowan in this open-minded Living 4D conversation.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

From Dr. Joseph Mercola via Children’s Health Defense:

Mercola: COVID Delta Variant Reignites Fear — How Real Is the Threat? | Added June 24

According to the regional director of the European office of the World Health Organization, Hans Henri Kluge, a new coronavirus variant called “Delta” (its scientific name being B.1.617.2 and originating in India) is “poised to take hold” in Europe, which may necessitate renewed lockdowns.

In a June 10 article, The Hill reported that the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant “can spread quickly and infect those who have received one of two vaccine doses at higher rates than the fully vaccinated.”

According to Kluge, Europe is facing the same situation as they did back in the winter of 2020, when cases rapidly rose, resulting in “a devastating resurgence, lockdowns and loss of life.” “Let’s not make that mistake again,” Kluge said during the press conference.

Indian variant refuels fear

The Delta variant is now the dominant strain in the UK, where a surge in cases, supposedly, has occurred predominantly among younger people between the ages of 12 and 20.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Want a jab with your Big Mac? McDonald’s to offer Covid injections and free food in Southern California | Added June 24

From ABC 7:

Starting Monday, you’ll be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine and some free food at some Southern California McDonald’s locations.

McDonald’s is teaming up with the California Department of Public Health to offer shots at more than 70 of its restaurants across the state, including nearly 50 pop-up clinics in high-traffic, high-visibility areas across Southern California.”People who receive a vaccine at McDonald’s will also get a coupon for one free menu item as a thank you for doing their part,” said McDonald’s in a web post. “No appointment or health insurance is required and walk-ups are welcome at all locations.”

You can find the pop-up clinics at select restaurants in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Summit News: Google Funded Virus Research by Wuhan Lab-Linked Scientist | Added June 24

From Summit News:

After spending much of the past year suppressing information related to the Wuhan lab leak, it has now emerged that Google funded virus research carried out by Wuhan-linked scientist Peter Daszak.

Yes, really.

Until recently, those who dared voice their contention that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology found themselves being censored and in some cases banned by Google-owned YouTube.

Now we realize why.

Google had been funding the Wuhan lab-linked organization led by Daszak – EcoHealth Alliance – for over a decade.

“The tech giant’s charity arm, Google.org, has repeatedly provided financial backing for research and studies carried out by scandal-hit Daszak and his New York-based EcoHealth Alliance,” reports the Daily Mail.

“The financial ties, which were first reported by The National Pulse, are disclosed in various scientific studies dating back to at least 2010.”

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

OffGuardian: Illegal DNRs, ventilators & involuntary euthanasia | Added June 24

The rise in the use of Do Not Resuscitate orders (DNRs), and the suggestion that patients are being compelled to sign them, or even having them signed on their behalf in secret, has been one of the more concerning narratives to come out of the last year of “pandemic”.

As early as April of 2020, entirely mainstream publications, such as the Health Service Journal (HSJ), were running articles expressing concern over the “unprecedented” rise in “illegal” DNR orders for those with learning disabilities.

In June 2020 the Independent picked up the story, citing some troubling examples found by charity workers and family members:

“In one example, a man in his fifties with sight loss was admitted to hospital after a choking episode and was incorrectly diagnosed with coronavirus. He was discharged the next day with a DNR form giving the reason as his “blindness and severe learning disabilities”

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

WHO updates guidance to say ‘Children should not be vaccinated at the moment’ | Added June 23

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest guidance clarifying who should get the COVID vaccine states, “Children should not be vaccinated for the moment.”

According to the WHO website: “There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults.”

The WHO had previously said vaccinating children against COVID was not a priority given the limited global supply of doses, Fox News reported.

During a social media session June 3, Dr. Kate O’Brien, a pediatrician and director of the WHO’s vaccines department, said children should not be a focus of COVID immunization programs, even as increasing numbers of wealthy countries authorize the shots for teens and children.

“Children are at [a] very, very low risk of actually getting COVID disease,” said O’Brien. She said the rationale for immunizing children was to stop transmission rather than to protect them from getting sick or dying.

O’Brien added it wasn’t necessary to vaccinate children before sending them back to school safely.

“Immunization of children in order to send them back to school is not the predominant requirement for them to go back to school safely,” O’Brien said. “They can go back to school safely if what we’re doing is immunizing those who are around them who are at risk.”

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From The Epoch Times:

Blaming Peter Daszak, The Lancet updates statement previously condemning Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory | Added June 23

Medical journal The Lancet on June 21 updated a statement that it published in 2020 dubbing the hypothesis that COVID-19 may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, a “conspiracy theory,” as the possibility gains wider recognition.

During the onset of the pandemic, the “lab leak” theory was disputed in a statement published by a group of 27 scientists in the prestigious medical journal. Published on March 7 last year, that letter became one of the most influential documents in the early days of the pandemic that shaped the discussion on the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Titled “Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19,” the letter stated: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors, and prejudice that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against this virus,” the 27 scientists wrote.

In the science publication’s update on June 21, it declared that one of the leading virologists who had signed the original letter, U.S. researcher Peter Daszak, had failed to disclose “competing interests” as required by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

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Reuters: U.S. employers wrestle with COVID vaccine requirements in regulatory “hairball” | Added June 23

America’s largest garlic farm needs 1,000 workers to harvest its annual crop, but faces an unexpected hurdle in this year’s recruitment drive: it now must document and track the COVID-19 vaccine status of these seasonal laborers.

Employers in California’s Santa Clara County, including Christopher Ranch, are required as of June 1 to ascertain if their workers have been vaccinated and check in every 14 days on those who say they have not or who decline to answer.

The timing of the order, in the middle of the busy harvest season, couldn’t be worse.

Ken Christopher, the farm’s executive vice president, said the company has to develop a system to check who has been vaccinated while observing privacy laws and monitoring workers’ adherence to safety protocols and testing.

“If the government wants to mandate (a vaccine), that’s one thing,” Christopher said. “But then requiring us to police it, that feels very unconventional.”

Workers in the Silicon Valley county who aren’t vaccinated or refuse to reveal their status to their employer must remain masked and should follow other protocols, such as limiting long-distance work travel and submitting to regular COVID-19 testing.

Employment lawyers said companies are watching closely how rules play out nationally, as they look to bring workers back safely and to dispense with mask protocols. But doing so may require identifying those who got a COVID-19 shot with badges or bracelets, raising discrimination issues and complicating hiring in a tightening labor market as the pandemic eases.

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Obstetrician to be reprimanded for hypothesizing that neurological effects of shots against Covid-19 may include psychosis | Added June 23

Times of Israel:

The Health Ministry said Thursday it would summon a doctor for a reprimand after she suggested that a man who allegedly murdered his wife last week did so as a result of psychosis induced by the coronavirus vaccine.

The woman, an obstetrician, made the comments during a discussion on a WhatsApp group with some 250 participants, Channel 12 News reported.

Members of the group were discussing the negative effects the coronavirus lockdowns have had on people, and at a certain point the conversation turned to the murder of Diana Raz (lockdowns have been blamed for exacerbating domestic tensions and violence).

The doctor, who works at Ramat Gan’s Sheba Medical Center, then offered: “Regarding the murder yesterday, as strange as it may sound, there have been psychotic and neurological conditions as a result of the vaccine, this case is too strange.”

By many accounts, Raz’s relationship with her husband Amir Raz was, at least outwardly, a healthy one, prior to him allegedly stabbing and then shooting her dead during an argument. Raz has confessed and told investigators he could not explain his actions.

AND

The Health Ministry expressed outrage at the doctor’s suggestion.

“A physician without relevant training made miserable and bizarre comments,” a statement from the ministry said. “The claim is of course utterly false…the doctor will be summoned for an inquiry. Health workers are expected to be cautious of spreading fake news.”

The doctor herself told Channel 12 she was sorry for her comments, and asserted she had merely been hypothesizing and had been misunderstood, but did not explain how.

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Manufacturing (New Normal) ‘Reality’ | Added June 23

Editor’s Note: Through the crisis, the OffGuardian has done an exemplary job providing news, scientific analysis and viewpoints. In this article, they discuss the development of the ‘new normal’, which is a planned, constructed reality in development from the first days of the ‘pandemic’. — Eric Francis

Via OffGuardian:

The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it.

This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse.

You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its paranoid image … to replace reality with its own “reality.”

We are right in the middle of this process currently, which is why everything feels so batshit crazy. The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.”

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Delta variant reportedly spreading in ‘undervaccinated’ population in US | Added June 23

Editor’s Note: The issue of so-called variants is a ruse. We can say that because the original claimed virus, SARS-CoV-2, was never isolated, purified, sequenced or subjected to the scientific methods for causation of disease (those of Koch and Rivers). No country has a sample. The PCR test used to find these variants has never met the gold standard, and tests around the world use an edited version of the in silico virus MN908947.3, not a virus that exists in nature. Therefore, there can be no variants. It is our position that variants are an advertisement for the ‘vaccine’, which is itself untested and still in Phase 3 (out of 4) trials until 2023. — Eric Francis

From Japan Times:

Early evidence suggests that the highly contagious delta variant, which has prompted concern worldwide as it leads to new surges of COVID-19 across the globe, is spreading in undervaccinated pockets of the U.S.

The genomics firm Helix analyzed about 20,000 samples from COVID-19 tests across more than 700 U.S. counties. It found that cases of the variant first documented in India appear to be growing far faster in counties with lower vaccination rates than in areas that have higher rates.

The ongoing spread of the variant in pockets of low vaccine uptake are troubling because they create more opportunities for the virus to thrive and mutate. The longer the virus spreads, the more chances it has to create easier inroads into human cells, and potentially take on deadlier forms.

“Delta is driving surges around the world, and I suspect it’s going to be the same here,” said William Lee, the vice president of science at Helix. Delta is growing more than twice as fast as gamma, the variant first seen in Brazil, in undervaccinated communities.

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NYT: Biden is considering a one-month extension of the federal eviction freeze. | Added June 22

The White House is considering extending by one month a federal moratorium on evictions scheduled to expire on June 30, in a bid to buy more time to distribute emergency housing aid, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

The freeze, instituted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last fall to stave off an anticipated wave of evictions spurred by the economic downturn during the pandemic, has significantly limited the economic damage to low-income and working-class renters, according to local officials and tenants’ rights groups.

But the moratorium was never considered more than a stopgap, and landlords have prevailed in several recent federal court cases challenging the legal justification for the C.D.C.’s order — the public health risk posed by the dislocation of tenants during the pandemic.

Local officials have been bracing for a rise in evictions as the federal moratorium and similar state and city orders expire this summer. In some cases, that scramble to assist tenants has dovetailed with the broader goal of improving affordability that is now a core part of the Democratic Party’s agenda.

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Three men who own corporate America | Added June 22

Editor’s Note: Jon Rappoport is an acclaimed investigative reporter and a good friend to Planet Waves. He is one of the reporters to first document evidence that the government cannot produce an actual virus called SARS-Co-V-2. He was also one of the people who documented the problems with the HIV theory of AIDS in the 1980s. — Eric Francis

From Jon Rappoport:

I’m reprinting this article I wrote in July, 2020. Before I do, here is an analogy.

Let’s say you own a company. You’re public, meaning you issue stock for sale.

Suddenly, the fake pandemic hits. The governor of the state issues restrictions, including lockdowns. You have to close your doors. You’re going to take a staggering financial hit.

Your first reaction? Anger. Seething anger. You’re determined to fight back. You call your lawyer to work out a plan.

“Wait a minute,” he says. “I have some bad news. Do you know who is now the majority shareholder of your company? Bill Gates. And he has voting rights. If you object to the lockdowns, he’ll roast you alive. You’ll be out on your ass…”

Buckle up. Here we go.

Continue reading here

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NYT: India’s ‘black fungus’ epidemic spreads in the wake of Covid crisis. | Added June 21

Here is another instance where short-sighted interventions for Covid, as the one and only danger in the universe, have created arguably worse problems.

We saw estimates for numbers of fatalities for Covid cases in India early on, but New Delhi’s federal health ministry has not yet made public the death count for the mucormycosis epidemic.

Has anyone determined that patients hospitalized for Covid in India were not already affected by the black fungus?

The number of so-called black fungus cases in India shot up to more than 30,000 from negligible levels in just three weeks. The deadly disease has sickened former coronavirus patients across the country, and doctors believe that hospitals desperate to keep Covid-19 patients alive made choices that left them vulnerable.

Indian states have recorded more than 2,100 deaths, according to news reports. The federal health ministry in New Delhi, which is tracking nationwide cases to allot scarce and expensive antifungal medicine, has not released the number of fatalities.

The coronavirus pandemic has drawn stark lines between rich nations and poor, and the mucormycosis epidemic in India stands as the latest manifestation. During the second wave, which struck India in April, its creaky, underfunded medical system lacked beds, oxygen and other necessities as infections and deaths soared.

The mucormycosis epidemic adds even more urgency to the difficult task of protecting India’s 1.4 billion people, only a fraction of whom have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. They remain vulnerable to a third wave and the consequences that could follow.

“Mucormycosis will tail off and go back to baseline as the Covid cases subside,” said Dr. Dileep Mavalankar, an epidemiologist. “But it may come back in the third wave unless we find out why it is happening.”

AND

The steroids may have also dangerously increased blood sugar levels, leaving people with diabetes vulnerable to mucormycosis. It could also increase the chance of blood clots, leading to malnourished tissue, which the “fungus attacks,” said Dr. Bela Prajapati, who oversees treatment for nearly 400 patients with mucormycosis.

Desperate doctors may not have had the chance to ask patients whether they had diabetes or other conditions before resorting to steroids.

“Doctors hardly had any time to do patient management,” Dr. Chakrabarti said. “They were all looking at how to take care of the respiratory tract.”

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Lawsuits against employers mandating Covid-19 shots continue to be cast as unreasonable | Added June 21

A May report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit that conducts research on key health policy issues, found nearly a third — 32% — of unvaccinated adults are waiting for full FDA approval of a vaccine before getting it.

And this is shocking news?

From ABC News:

Tens of millions of Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and with that, workplaces around the country are opening up once again.

But the rules that some employers and others have put into place mandating vaccines that are still not fully authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, have sparked showdowns with employees.

Lawsuits have been filed against a Texas hospital, a Los Angeles school district, a North Carolina sheriff and a New Mexico detention center, to name a few.

And with a portion of the population hesitant to get vaccinated, including some who outright refuse, there may be more showdowns down the line. A May report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit that conducts research on key health policy issues, found nearly a third — 32% — of unvaccinated adults are waiting for full FDA approval of a vaccine before getting it.

The central argument in the suits is the vaccines are allegedly “experimental” because they only have emergency authorization — and therefore, they cannot be mandated.

Allison Hoffman, a professor of law at University of Pennsylvania who specializes in health law, told ABC News these complaints “are not very strong legal arguments,” noting that employers can legally require workers to get the shots because the FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) means the shot is safe enough for the public.

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Brazil reports it has reached 500,000 deaths related to Covid-19, second only to U.S. count | Added June 21

From BBC:

The number of deaths related to Covid-19 has passed 500,000 in Brazil, the second-highest in the world, as experts say the outbreak could worsen amid slow vaccination and the start of winter.

The virus continues to spread as President Jair Bolsonaro refuses to back measures like social distancing.

The health institute Fiocruz says the situation is “critical”. Only 11% of adults are fully vaccinated.

Tens of thousands of Brazilians joined anti-government protests on Saturday.

President Bolsonaro has been heavily criticised for not implementing a co-ordinated national response and for his scepticism toward vaccines, lockdowns and mask-wearing requirements, which he has sought to loosen.

The country has reported, on average, 70,000 cases and 2,000 deaths daily in the past week. Most of the new infections and deaths were among people aged 20-59, Fiocruz said, warning that the start of winter in the southern hemisphere, next week, could result in more infections.

On Saturday, protests against President Bolsonaro were held in cities across the country, with demonstrators accusing him of delaying the purchase of vaccines while prioritising unproven treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine.

In rallies in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and elsewhere, furious Brazilians carried banners with slogans like “Bolsonaro must go” or simply “500,000”.

“His position on Covid and his denialism are absurd. He has abandoned reality and common sense. There is no explaining this, it is surreal,” Robert Almeida, a 50-year-old marching in Rio, told AFP.

Protester Denise Azevedo told Reuters: “Herd immunity won’t do any good. The only immunity you can get is with the vaccine. There is no early treatment. I have lost many friends, almost lost a cousin… people are orphans, fatherless, motherless, and childless.”

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From The Los Angeles Times:

L.A. Times: COVID vaccine ‘passports’ in the U.S.: Here’s what we’re getting and why | Added June 21

The European Union is about to launch a digital pass system that will let residents prove they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, recovered from the disease or recently tested negative for the virus, allowing them to travel freely among all 27 member nations.

For months, Israelis used a similar digital pass system, showing their vaccination status to enter restaurants, gyms and other venues. Australia has rolled out a digital proof of vaccination certificate, and Japan plans to issue one as soon as this summer.

But don’t expect the United States to go that way.

With the federal government unwilling to take the politically charged step of creating or endorsing a universal digital health pass or app, several companies are trying to fill the void. That might mean Americans will need several digital passes, like so many credit cards in a wallet. It could also mean employers, businesses and venue operators will each have to decide which works for them — or might not bother using any at all.

AND

In addition, the U.S. does not have a national database for immunization records that could act as the source of vaccination data for use in digital passes. A national system to create a unique identification number to link the health records of every American has been banned since 1998, spearheaded by then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who said such a system would be an unwarranted privacy intrusion.

AND

New York is the only state in the nation offering government-issued digital proof of COVID-19 vaccination or of a negative coronavirus test result, known as the Excelsior Pass. It was designed by IBM with health data provided by the state’s and New York City’s vaccine databases. Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium have begun accepting it, though they also accept the CDC-approved paper vaccination cards.

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WaPo: The post-covid luxury spending boom has begun. | Added June 19

Travel agent Dottie Williford’s phone won’t stop buzzing: Her high-end clients in Raleigh, N.C., are eager to explore the world again. She stayed up until midnight recently to book two $20,000 cabins on a luxury cruise to the Bahamas in July. The high-end cruise ship normally sails the Mediterranean but was brought back to the Bahamas as Americans feel safer traveling closer to home. Tickets sold out by 9 a.m.

“People don’t usually spend $20,000 to go to the Bahamas, but my clients are,” Williford said. “The first things to sell out were the top category on the ship.”

The luxury travel boom is one of the clearest signs of a budding spending surge by wealthy Americans that is likely to tilt the balance of the economy even further toward the well-off and may deepen economic disparities already heightened by the global pandemic.

The spending tsunami, though good news for an economy still salving the financial wounds of the coronavirus, underscores how the wealthy can propel economic recoveries. As the rich have amassed more spending power, U.S. recoveries from recessions depend on a jump in their discretionary spending, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post. This represents a direct challenge to President Biden’s stated goals of rebuilding “our economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”

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As cities open up mayors across the US turn to focusing on rising crime | Added June 19

Even as the pandemic recedes and cities reopen, local leaders across the United States face another crisis: a crime wave with no signs of ending.

Mayors are trying to quell a surge of homicides, assaults and carjackings that began during the pandemic and has cast a chill over the recovery. Homicide rates in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year, according to criminologists.

Some city officials have touted progressive strategies focused on community policing in neighborhoods where trust between officers and residents has frayed. Others have deployed more traditional tactics like increasing surveillance cameras in troubled areas and enforcing curfews in city parks to clear out crowds, as the police did in Washington Square Park in Manhattan in recent days.

In Chicago, which fully reopened on Friday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot made clear that her focus was on reducing violence over the summer, and that her administration would focus resources on 15 high-crime pockets of the city as part of that effort.

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Former Biden adviser Andy Slavitt claims DELTA variant is like ‘ COVID on steroids’ | Added June 19

From The Hill:

Former White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response Andy Slavitt said the delta variant is “like COVID on steroids” and urged Americans to get vaccinated.

“If you haven’t been vaccinated, or you live in a community where there’s a lot of people who haven’t been vaccinated, this is a more virulent strain,” Slavitt told CNN on Wednesday. “This is like COVID on steroids.”

“You could be around people for less time and still get exposed. So it’s yet another reason why people should, if they haven’t been vaccinated, should think about getting vaccinated,” Slavitt continued.

However, he added that “if you have been vaccinated, you’ve got very little to worry about.”Slavitt also said there could be additional COVID-19 outbreaks as the fall approaches in communities where vaccination rates are lower, citing some areas in the Southeast.

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CBS: Biden touts 300 million COVID-19 vaccinations in 150 days | Added June 19

From CBS:

President Joe Biden announced the U.S. has reached a new milestone in the battle against COVID-19: “Today, we will have reached the mark of 300 million shots in arms in just 150 days,” he said in brief remarks at the White House Friday, on the 150th day of his presidency.

“We’re heading into a very different summer than last year,” he said, calling it a “bright summer” and a “summer of joy,” after noting that the U.S. has reached the 300 million shots benchmark “months ahead of what most anyone thought was possible when we started.”

However, the president’s self-imposed July 4 deadline for 70% of American adults to have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine is approaching soon. In order to hit that target, as of Thursday, the U.S. would have to be giving roughly 717,000 first doses per day. At this point, approximately 347,000 doses per day are being administered, and not all of the people receiving them are adults.

The president said that now, the rates of death and hospitalization “are drastically down in places where people are getting vaccinated.” But he added that these numbers are not diminishing in states with lower vaccination rates and “are actually going up in some places,” noting that the U.S. had crossed the threshold of 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 a few days ago.

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Reuters: Chickens, cows, apartments offered up in Asia’s vaccination lucky draws | Added June 19

Chickens, cows, paid leave, even a million-dollar apartment, these are the prizes on offer from Thailand to Indonesia to Hong Kong for those who get vaccinated against COVID-19 as nations across Asia combat vaccine hesitancy.

As more transmissible variants of the virus have driven a surge in cases in Southeast Asia in recent weeks, authorities have started offering chances in lucky draws for vaccinations.

In Thailand’s Mae Chaem district in northern Chiang Mai, where most residents are cattle farmers, authorities launched a cow raffle this month that is proving to be a hit.

“This is the best gift ever,” said 65-year-old Inkham Thongkham, upon winning a one-year-old female cow worth 10,000 baht ($320) after he received his coronavirus vaccine.

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New York State bans fans who received AztraZeneca shot from ‘Springsteen On Broadway’ | Added June 18

The original version of this article, the morning it was published, indicated shots by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson had been “approved” by the FDA, which at this moment in time is patently false.

Later in the day, the language was edited to “authorized,” which is true, with no notice of the correction.

From Deadline:

In what could be a harbinger for Broadway’s post-Covid protocol, Springsteen on Broadway has announced that audience members must be vaccinated with an FDA-authorized vaccine, a policy no doubt disappointing to the many Canadians and Europeans who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Producers of Springsteen on Broadway announced Tuesday night that the show, which will begin performances on June 26 to become Broadway’s first post-shutdown arrival, will require the FDA-authorized vaccines. To date, the FDA has authorized vaccines by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson.

The news hasn’t gone over particularly well in the countries where AstraZeneca is in use. The Toronto Star headlined its Wednesday report “Burn in the U.S.A.”

Among the countries that have used the AstraZeneca vaccine are Canada, Australia, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Indonesia and Spain, among others.

The Springsteen on Broadway website, which lists the Covid protocols for the production at the St. James Theatre, states that audience members over 16 must be fully vaccinated and 14 days out from the final dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Children under 16 must be accompanied by a vaccinated adult and also must provide proof of a negative antigen Covid-19 test taken within 6 hours of the performance start time or negative PCR Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of the performance start time.

The website further indicates that the vaccine requirements are being made “at the direction of New York State.”

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WaPo: Nearly 900 people got expired Pfizer-BioNTech shots in New York City | Added June 18

Just under 900 people received expired doses of a coronavirus vaccine this month at a New York City clinic, health officials said.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is urging the 899 people, who were given Pfizer-BioNTech shots between June 5 and 10 at the former NFL Experience building in Times Square, to get another dose as soon as possible. Experts say the expired doses are not dangerous, but their effectiveness could be in question.

“While there is no safety risk for the patients, the re-administration is being carried out to ensure that the individuals are fully protected,” a spokesman said. “Those patients have received emails, phone calls, and are also being sent letters to make sure they are aware of this situation.”

A representative for the vaccine distributor, ATC Vaccination Services, said in a statement that the company apologizes “for the inconvenience to those receiving the vaccine batch in question.” The statement stressed that there was no danger posed by the doses of the coronavirus vaccine developed by U.S. firm Pfizer with German partner BioNTech, which were considered expired because they spent too much time in a freezer to meet guidelines for full efficacy.

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From Business Insider:

Cuomo lifts New York’s Covid-19 restrictions on the anniversary of his father’s death | Added June 18

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced on Tuesday that “we can now return to life as we know it” because the state had hit his vaccination-rate threshold.

Earlier this month, Cuomo said he would lift “virtually all” COVID-19 restrictions once 70% of New Yorkers had received at least one dose of a vaccine.

Cuomo said on Tuesday that restrictions would be “relaxed as of today, effective immediately.”

“Remember June 15th. Remember today, because it is the day that New York rose again,” Cuomo said at Manhattan’s One World Trade Center, adding that June 15 was also his late father and former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s birthday.

AND

The Tuesday event was a joyous one for Cuomo, who harked back to his COVID-19 briefings when he would announce which day it was. Cuomo has since been besieged by several scandals and faces an impeachment investigation, but he has remained in office, passed a budget, and touted his pandemic response.

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From Los Angeles Times:

L.A. Times: Napa County records first death of fully vaccinated person from COVID-19 | Added June 18

Napa County reported its first COVID-19 death of a fully vaccinated resident earlier this month, even as the chance of experiencing a breakthrough infection remains exceedingly rare, public health officials said.

The Napa woman was older than 65 and had underlying health conditions, county officials said. She died June 2 after a prolonged hospital battle.

She had received the Moderna vaccine and had her second dose at least 30 days before testing positive for COVID-19, said Napa County spokeswoman Leah Greenbaum, citing information from the county’s epidemiology group.

AND

“No vaccine is 100% effective, but this does not diminish the urgency and importance of getting vaccinated, especially as more variant strains emerge,” Napa County Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Relucio said in a statement, adding that overall, the vaccines “provide exceptional protection against death and illness.”

Still, breakthrough infections do occur. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they’re expected, “especially before population immunity reaches sufficient levels to further decrease transmission,” a recent report states.

AND

Though concerning, breakthrough infections tend to cause less severe cases of COVID-19 compared to infections in people who are not vaccinated, Jones-Lopez said.

“It’s really almost two completely different diseases,” he said, comparing COVID-19 cases before and after vaccinations.

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China’s CDC chief: US should be looked at in regard to Covid origins | Added June 17

A senior Chinese epidemiologist said the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of COVID-19 after a study showed the disease could have been circulating there as early as December 2019, state media said on Thursday.

The study, published this week by the U.S. National Institutes for Health (NIH), showed that at least seven people in five U.S. states were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, weeks before the United States reported its first official cases.

A China-World Health Organization (WHO) joint study published in March said COVID-19 most likely originated in the country’s wildlife trade, with the virus passing into humans from bats via an intermediary species.

But Beijing has promoted the theory that COVID-19 entered China from overseas via contaminated frozen food, while a number of foreign politicians are also calling for more investigations into the possibility it leaked from a laboratory.

Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-owned tabloid the Global Times that attention should shift to the United States, which was slow to test people in the early stages of the outbreak, and is also the home of many biological laboratories.

“All bio-weapons related subjects that the country has should be subject to scrutiny,” he was quoted as saying.

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The Hill: CDC says vaccine link to heart inflammation is stronger than previously thought | Added June 17

From The Hill:

Last Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there is a stronger correlation between the coronavirus vaccine and heart inflammation.

Males under the age of 30 may face heart complications after receiving a full shot, Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, said during a Food and Drug Administration advisory group, NBC News reported.

Although it has not been officially confirmed to be an associated problem, the agency is investigating 226 cases of myocarditis, the inflammation of the myocardium in the heart, and pericarditis, the inflammation of the pericardium, among young, vaccinated men. Myocarditis and pericarditis share the same symptoms, including fever, fatigue, shortness of breath and a particular type of chest pain.

In most cases, an investigation would have been warranted if there were fewer than 100 cases, NBC News reported.

Myocarditis following vaccination tends to skew younger, with its victims being teenagers and men in their early 20s. It is important to note that myocarditis cases represent a small fraction of young men who received the shot and experienced no immediate after effects.

“We clearly have an imbalance there,” Shimabukuro told NBC News.

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OffGuardian report on UK ‘quarantine hotels’ | Added June 17

A short video was recently brought to our attention on twitter. It shows a man and woman (off-camera) pulling up to a chainlink fence around a concrete yard and engaging in a brief conversation with a man on the other side.

The man is one of several dozen people walking in slow, counter-clockwise circuits around what appears to be an un-used car park. He’s polite to the strangers, discussing how tight security is, how many guards there are on each floor, and how often they’re allowed outside for this “exercise”.

At that point a security guard comes up and tells the man he’s not allowed to talk through the fence, and a brief argument ensues. The guard tells the people in the car that they cannot talk to anyone inside the facility without permission from “the office”. After moments of insisting the guard desists, likely to report the incident to his supervisor.

The couple in the car and the stranger behind the fence part on friendly terms, with the man remarking that he paid seventeen-hundred and fifty pounds to stay there.

Because this isn’t a prison or detention facility, it’s a “quarantine hotel”.

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NYT: Fake coronavirus tests may have helped fuel Indian outbreaks. | Added June 17

The Indian authorities launched an investigation after an internal government report concluded that some private agencies responsible for coronavirus testing on pilgrims at a sprawling Hindu festival forged at least 100,000 results.

The festival, Kumbh Mela, which ran throughout April, is widely believed to be responsible for a coronavirus surge in many parts of India, as the pilgrims returning from the festival tested positive days after returning to their villages.

The festival drew millions of faithful to the town of Haridwar on the banks of the river Ganges in the northern state of Uttarakhand.

“We have constituted a four-members committee that will submit its report in two weeks,” Dr. Arjun Singh Sengar, a Haridwar health officer who was in charge of testing for Kumbh Mela, said in an interview. “Initial investigations are pointing toward lapses and fake results.”

Dr. Sengar said that out of 251,000 tests in his district, only 2,273 were positive.

But health experts questioned those numbers, saying the state government underreported positive cases. That suggested it was safe to take part in the pilgrimage, despite evidence that the largely unmasked crowds provided an ideal environment for the virus to spread.

According to a sprawling government report on the lab that conducted rapid antigen tests during the festival, at least 100,000 test results out of 400,000 were fake.

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From The Los Angeles Times:

LA Times: California reopens to joy, celebrations: ‘It’s one of the best days of my life’ | Added June 16

California is back.

As of Tuesday morning, coronavirus-related capacity restrictions and physical distancing requirements were lifted at almost all businesses and other institutions. State residents who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 can now go without face masks in most nonwork situations.

The day comes after 15 months of fear, frustration, upheaval and misery and was made possible through collective sacrifice and scientific achievement — but only after the pandemic left a deep scar on the state’s collective psyche.

For tens of millions of Californians and countless businesses, the reopening signals new hope of brighter days as the shadow cast by COVID-19 shrinks.

While Tuesday may eventually take root in the wider public consciousness as the day California declared victory over the coronavirus, the toll the battle exacted remains staggering.

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Most virus restrictions lifted in New York | Added June 16

Restaurants will no longer be forced to space tables six feet apart or use physical partitions; movie theaters will be allowed to pack their auditoriums without spacing seats apart; and entering commercial buildings won’t require a temperature check.

With 70 percent of adults in New York having received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday that effective immediately the state was ready to “return to life as we know it.” Nearly all restrictions on businesses and social gatherings have been eliminated, he announced at a news conference.

The changes, which will take effect immediately, mark yet another milestone in the economic recovery of a state that was once an epicenter of the pandemic, and are expected to bring back the type of scenes familiar to most New Yorkers in prepandemic times.

With the order, the state, in most cases, will end capacity limits and no longer require social distancing, disinfection protocols and health screenings, instead making it optional for businesses to impose such health precautions on their premises.

“This is a momentous day and we deserve it because it has been a long, long road,” Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday.

In addition to the changes in protocols at restaurants, movie theaters and commercial buildings, barber shops and hair salons won’t need to ask their customers for contact tracing information and gyms and fitness centers won’t need to abide by strict disinfecting protocols to clean their exercise equipment.

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Via The Seattle Times:

Mainstream media catches up and reports on early U.S. cases of Covid-19 from Christmas 2019 | Added June 16

A new analysis of blood samples from 24,000 Americans taken early last year is the latest and largest study to suggest that the new coronavirus popped up in the U.S. in December 2019 — weeks before cases were first recognized by health officials.

The analysis is not definitive, and some experts remain skeptical, but federal health officials are increasingly accepting a timeline in which small numbers of COVID-19 infections may have occurred in the U.S. before the world ever became aware of a dangerous new virus erupting in China.

“The studies are pretty consistent,” said Natalie Thornburg of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There was probably very rare and sporadic cases here earlier than we were aware of. But it was not widespread and didn’t become widespread until late February,” said Thornburg, principal investigator of the CDC’s respiratory virus immunology team.

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From The Corbett Report:

Meet the World Economic Forum | Added June 16

The World Economic Forum does not run the world, but in this time of The Great Reset and The Fourth Industrial Revolution you’d be forgiven for thinking so. Today on The Corbett Report podcast, join James for a wild ride through the murky origins of the WEF’s past into the nightmarish future it is seeking to bring about . . . and how we can use this information to better understand and derail its agenda.

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‘Freedom day’ postponed — England’s reopening scheduled for June 21 now pushed back four weeks | Added June 15

With a rapid and successful vaccine campaign on track, the path seemed clear not long ago for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to scrap all of England’s coronavirus rules on June 21, ending curbs that he resisted imposing in the first place.

But on Monday, Mr. Johnson postponed by four weeks the moment dubbed “freedom day” by the tabloids after a spike in cases of a highly transmissible new variant that may cause more serious disease than earlier variants. Restaurants and pubs in England, while open, will still have to observe social distancing rules indoors, limiting capacity, and nightclubs and theaters will remain firmly closed.

The decision, which will be reviewed in two weeks, sent a warning to the world that even well-vaccinated nations remain at risk and angered a noisy caucus of libertarian lawmakers within Mr. Johnson’s own party.

At present, overall new cases in Britain are averaging around 8,000 per day and are doubling every week in the worst affected areas. Hospital admissions have begun rising. And the impact of the Delta variant across the country has already incited alarm in other European countries including Germany, which has introduced a travel ban.

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The robot dogs are back — police in Hawaii spend Covid relief funds on Boston Dynamics robot | Added June 15

From Futurism:

The Honolulu Police Department seems to have taken some creative liberties with the extra cash it got through the CARES Act: It seems unlikely that the supporters of the federal pandemic relief bill had the department’s new $150,000 Boston Dynamics robot dog “Spot” in mind when they wrote and signed it into law.

“Toys, toys, toys,” one anonymous officer told the Honolulu Civil Beat, which originally reported on the expenditure. “Everything we could buy, we would buy.”

Members of the community have criticized the purchase, especially since the robot has primarily been used as a walking thermometer to monitor people experiencing homelessness for coronavirus symptoms while they self-quarantine in a tent city.

The police department didn’t even seem to shop around, Gizmodo notes, since a developer Spot model is available for half as much as the Honolulu police spent on theirs.

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Self amplifying nasal spray Covid-19 ‘vaccine’ in the works in Spain | Added June 15

From The Local:

Spain’s main scientific body is working on self-amplifying RNA-based vaccines which allow for lower doses to be used as the vaccine multiplies by 5,000 once inside the body, creating a type of sterilising immunity that prevents people from falling ill but also from infecting others.

This self-amplifying feature would allow for this ‘made in Spain’ Covid vaccine to be a single dose and developers could manufacture far more doses as a result of this self-amplifying capacity.

Spanish researchers are also considering making the vaccine’s administration intranasal, which gives greater protection in the respiratory tract, the main gateway for the coronavirus.

This would probably take the form of nasal spray rather than an injection. Similar inoculations are being developed in other countries such as Russia and France.

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California to offer vacation packages as Covid injection incentives | Added June 15

Via Las Vegas Sun:

California will offer six “dream vacation” incentives to spur more people to get coronavirus vaccinations, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday on the eve of the state awarding of $15 million in cash prizes.

Aside from boosting California’s vaccination rate as it lifts most pandemic restrictions Tuesday, the latest promotion aims to jump-start the Golden State’s travel and tourism industry after more than a year in virtual hibernation because of stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions.

The tourism industry “had a sledgehammer taken to it,” Newsom said.

Tourism revenues nose-dived from a record $145 billion in 2019 to $65 billion last year as California enacted some of the nation’s toughest restrictions.

But Newsom said it’s safe to return as the state of nearly 40 million people boasts among the nation’s lowest virus transmission rates.

In San Francisco, 80% of eligible city residents have received at least one dose of vaccine, and nearly 70% are fully vaccinated, becoming the first major American city to hit that threshold, Mayor London Breed said Monday.

Newsom spoke in San Francisco, site of one of the six vacation packages offered by various donors through Visit California, the state’s nonprofit travel promotion arm.

Others will include Anaheim in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego and at a luxury hotel in Palm Springs. Newsom hastily added that he has never visited the luxury hotel, a caveat that comes after he was widely criticized for patronizing an exclusive Napa Valley restaurant during the pandemic.

Goodies in the package include floor seats at an NBA game with the LA Lakers and tickets to Disneyland, Legoland, SeaWorld and a symphony, he said.

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CNBC: Bank of America CEO details back-to-office plan | Added June 15

From CNBC:

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on Monday detailed the financial firm’s approach to bringing employees back to the office, telling CNBC that those who have received the coronavirus vaccine are the priority for now.

In an interview on “Squawk Box,” Moynihan said Bank of America began to ask staff whether they had received a Covid shot a few months ago.

“About 60,000 people in the U.S. … have told us that status,” Moynihan said, adding that the number stands around 70,000 for employees outside the U.S.

“Now we’re in the process of inviting those people back to work. We give them 30 days-plus notice,” he said. “The basic concept is from now to Labor Day or mid-September, you’re kind of in that transition mode. The idea is the vaccinated teammates should be back to work after Labor Day.”

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Judge rules Houston Methodist can fire employees for refusing the jab | Added June 14

Thank you, Ro Dann.

Safety is irrelevant in a mandated experimental vaccine? Is that not just crazy?

From USA Today:

In the first federal ruling on vaccine mandates, a Houston judge has dismissed a lawsuit by hospital employees who declined the COVID-19 shot – a decision that could have a ripple effect across the nation.

The case involved Houston Methodist, which was the first hospital system in the country to require that all its employees get vaccinated. U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes ruled Saturday that federal law does not prevent employers from issuing that mandate.

After months of warnings, Houston Methodist had put more than 170 of its 26,000 employees on unpaid suspension Monday. They were told they would be fired it they weren’t vaccinated by June 21.

The hospital had made it clear it meant what it said: It fired the director of corporate risk – Bob Nevens – and another manager in April when they did not meet the earlier deadline for bosses.

In recent weeks, a few other major hospitals have followed Houston Methodist’s lead, including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Louisville, New York Presbyterian and several major hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area.

Houston Methodist’s CEO Marc Boom predicts more hospitals soon will enact vaccine mandates. Many hospitals and employers were waiting for legal clarification before acting.

“We can now put this behind us and continue our focus on unparalleled safety, quality, service and innovation,” Boom said after the ruling. “Our employees and physicians made their decisions for our patients, who are always at the center of everything we do.”

The lawsuit was filed by 117 workers led by Jennifer Bridges, a nurse at Houston Methodist’s Baytown hospital who declined the vaccine because she considers it experimental and dangerous. The judge disagreed, writing: “This claim is false, and it is also irrelevant.”

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OffGuardian: Vaccine Euphoria | Added June 14

What is all the excitement about? People everywhere celebrating a vax jab with social media pics of their vaccine card, stickers that proudly state “I Got Vaccinated!!” and thumbs up congratulations all around as if the recipients just had a baby or won the lottery.

I’m surprised people aren’t giving out cigars with “It’s a Covid Jab!” printed on the wrapping.

There hasn’t been this sort of celebration since World War II blood drives resulting in the proud display of a window plaque that read “I Did My Part for the War Effort!” Indeed you did, my friend, indeed you did! You did your part for the war effort!

What war? Oh right, the war against Covid-19, or more accurately, the war against Mother Nature.

Mother Nature? How’s that? We’ve been in a rather silent war with that esteemed lady for quite some time. Only recently it has become rather noisy, and now, with Covid-19, it has reached a deafening pitch. Why would that sort of war excite people? And what does getting the vaccine have anything to do with a war against nature?

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From The Washington Post:

CDC relaxes mandate on masks in outdoor transportation hubs for those with shots | Added June 14

People who are fully vaccinated no longer have to wear masks in outdoor transportation settings, including at airports, train stations, ferry docks and on vehicles with outdoor spaces, according to updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“CDC has removed the requirement to wear a mask in outdoor areas of conveyances and transportation hubs because of the lower risk of transmission outdoors,” the agency said in a notice posted Thursday.

The update is part of an effort by federal health officials to more closely align recommendations for those have been fully vaccinated. In dropping the requirement for mask-wearing when outdoors, the CDC cited research showing there is a low risk of virus transmission in those settings.

However, the CDC emphasized that all individuals, regardless of vaccination status, must continue to wear masks when indoors and on all modes of transportation into, within or out of the United States. That includes in airports, on airplanes, in subway cars and on trains. The CDC also recommends that those who have not been fully vaccinated wear masks while outdoors to “protect themselves and others who are not fully vaccinated.”

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Newsweek: Adults Refusing Vaccine More Comfortable Going to Restaurants, Bars Than Fully Vaccinated | Added June 14

From Newsweek:

American adults who won’t get the coronavirus vaccine are more likely to be “comfortable” with going to a restaurant, bar or large event than those who have been fully vaccinated, according to a new poll.

A CBS News/YouGov poll, released Sunday, found that 59 percent of adults who won’t get vaccinated said they were comfortable going to a large event, compared to 42 percent of fully vaccinated adults.

Adults who won’t get vaccinated were also comparatively more comfortable with going to bars and restaurants. About 79 percent of unvaccinated adults said they were comfortable, compared to 75 percent of fully vaccinated adults.

As of July 12, 173,391,711, or 52.8 percent, of Americans have received at least one dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine and 143,119,077, or 43.6 percent, have been fully vaccinated.

In recent weeks, new COVID-19 cases have plummeted in most parts of the country, even in some areas with a higher population of vaccine-skeptic individuals. But nearly all the states that have not seen a sharp decline in cases have administered fewer vaccinations than the national average.

AND

Fifty percent of adults who won’t get vaccinated or were still deciding listed “still too untested” as their top reason for not getting the shot. Additionally, 43 percent were “worried about side effects,” 40 percent said they “don’t trust the government,” and 33 percent said they “don’t trust the scientists/drug companies.”

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WSJ: Covid-19 Deaths This Year Have Already Eclipsed 2020’s Toll | Added June 12

More people have died from Covid-19 already this year than in all of 2020, according to official counts, highlighting how the global pandemic is far from over even as vaccines beat back the virus in wealthy nations.

It took less than six months for the globe to record more than 1.88 million Covid-19 deaths this year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University. The university’s count for 2021 edged just ahead of the 2020 death toll on Thursday.

These numbers underscore how unevenly the pandemic spread around the globe, often hitting poorer nations later, but before they had access to the vaccines that have benefited Europe and the U.S. That pattern has led to a worsening divide between developed and developing nations as President Biden and the leaders of the other Group of Seven advanced economies prepare to gather in England to discuss next steps in the pandemic response.

While Western nations such as the U.S., Canada and the U.K. celebrate low caseloads and declining deaths thanks to mass vaccinations, the intensified pandemic in parts of Asia and Latin America propelled global deaths higher.

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NYT awarded Pulitzer Prize for Covid coverage | Added June 12

Pulitzer Prizes were awarded on Friday to news organizations that provided in-depth coverage of the dramatic turns of 2020, a year dominated by a pandemic that left millions dead and a national conversation on race after the murder of George Floyd.

The prize for public service, considered the most prestigious of the Pulitzers, went to The New York Times for its data-heavy coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, an award shared by many departments at the newspaper. The board called The Times’s coverage “courageous, prescient and sweeping.”

The Pulitzer board also recognized journalism that examined law enforcement practices during a year of worldwide street protests inspired, in part, by the murder of Mr. Floyd, a Black man, by a police officer in Minneapolis

The award for national reporting recognized an investigative series on police dogs used as weapons, often against innocent citizens, a collaborative venture by four news organizations: The Marshall Project, a nonprofit outlet focused on criminal justice; AL.com, an Alabama news site; IndyStar, of Indianapolis; and the Invisible Institute, a journalism company based on the South Side of Chicago.

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Mastercard Foundation promises to donate $1.3 billion for vaccines in Africa | Added June 12

Mastercard’s charitable arm has promised to donate $1.3 billion for vaccines in Africa, one of the largest corporate donations of the pandemic, as the continent struggles to contain a surge of infections.

The Mastercard Foundation said on Tuesday that its donation would be deployed over three years “in partnership” with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It said the goals were to strengthen the agency’s capacity, “lay the groundwork” for local vaccine manufacturing, acquire vaccines for at least 50 million people and help deliver shots to millions more.

“Ensuring inclusivity in vaccine access, and building Africa’s capacity to manufacture its own vaccines, is not just good for the continent, it’s the only sustainable path out of the pandemic and into a health-secure future,” John N. Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in the statement announcing the donation.

Africa is battling a sharp, sudden rise in coronavirus infections and deaths that experts believe is linked to the rise of new variants. The latest hot spots include Botswana, Namibia and Tunisia, according to a New York Times database.

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‘Joints for Jabs’ promotion started in Washington to encourage Covid-19 injections | Added June 12

From ABC News:

Adults can claim a complimentary joint of marijuana in Washington state this week when they receive a COVID-19 vaccine shot.

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board announced Monday that the promotion, called “Joints for Jabs,” was effective immediately and would run through July 12. During the afforded time period, state-licensed cannabis retailers are permitted to give one free pre-rolled joint to customers who are 21 or older when they receive their first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at an active, on-site vaccination clinic. Customers can only claim the complimentary joint from the retail location during the same visit as receiving the jab, according to the board.

The board said it has “received multiple requests from cannabis retail licensees to engage in promotions to support state vaccination efforts.” The board recently allowed for a beer, wine or cocktail to be provided at no cost for those 21 or older who are vaccinated by June 30.

More than 44% of the Evergreen State’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the latest data from the Washington State Department of Health. Meanwhile, over 42% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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From The Last American Vagabond:

Houston hospital employees and supporters protest after employees fired for refusing Covid-19 shots | Added June 11

On Monday afternoon, employees of the Houston Methodist hospital system were joined by supporters from around the Houston area as they were suspended without pay for saying no to COVID-19 injections. The employees are now suing Houston Methodist in an effort to fight against COVID19 mandates.

The Houston Methodist hospital operates eight hospitals with more than 26,000 employees. On March 31, Methodist CEO Dr. Marc Boom announced that the shots – which have not received approval by the US Food and Drug Administration – would be mandatory for all employees. Houston Methodist hospital employees were told to take the shots by June 7th or lose their jobs. Methodist also required hospital managers to have at least one COVID shot by April 15th. Those who chose not to receive the treatments by Monday now have 2 final weeks before they will officially be fired.

“Mandating the vaccine was not a decision we made lightly. … Because science has proven that the Covid-19 vaccines are not only safe, but extremely effective, it became an easier decision to make,” Boom wrote in a letter to staff in April.

Despite reassurances from Boom, 117 employees filed suit against Houston Methodist for “forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment” by requiring an experimental treatment which has only been authorized for emergency use.

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Mass testing and lockdowns in parts of the Chinese province of Guangdong | Added June 11

From CNBC:

Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong are carrying out mass testing and have locked down areas to try to control a flare up of coronavirus cases in Guangzhou.

The city has cited the Delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India, as a driver behind the uptick in cases it has reported since the latter part of May. The Delta strain is known to be highly transmissible.

Guangzhou, a city of over 15 million people and the provincial capital, has reported 96 of the over 100 cases in Guangdong province in this latest outbreak.

China, where the coronavirus first emerged last year, quickly got the epidemic under control and has had very few cases over the past 12 months. However, clusters have emerged in parts of the country including major cities like capital Beijing and finance hub Shanghai.

The Guangzhou cases are potentially even more concerning because they involve the Delta strain of the coronavirus, which can spread very quickly.

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Futurism: Amazon Caught Selling Fake COVID Vaccination Cards | Added June 11

From Futurism:

Amazon was found to be selling fake COVID-19 vaccination cards on its platform by watchdog Media Matters for America.

The news comes after Media Matters senior researcher Olivia Little discovered that handmade and vintage goods platform Etsy was also selling phony cards, claiming to be issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Etsy has struggled to contain listings including misinformation during the pandemic, as Little reported earlier this month.

Both marketplaces removed the listings after they were discovered, but the repeat instances show that platforms are having little success containing the flood of misinformation and fraud related to the pandemic.

The story is also symptomatic of a much larger issue. With several states outright banning the use of vaccine passports, distinguishing between those who have had their jabs and those who haven’t has become practically impossible.

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WSJ: Poor Countries to Urge G-7 Members to Share More Covid-19 Vaccines | Added June 11

Public-health officials and leaders in developing-world countries are expected to press the Group of Seven countries to commit to large donations of Covid-19 vaccines and billions in financing at a summit later this week, saying the developing world needs more help to emerge from the worst of the pandemic.

High vaccination rates are helping wealthier nations recover from the health crisis, with coronavirus case numbers falling sharply and economies bouncing back.

But even as rich countries begin vaccinating low-risk people such as teenagers, many poor countries are far behind in their inoculation efforts, hobbling their economies and raising the risk that those regions could spawn more dangerous variants of the virus.

A number of rich countries, including the U.S., have pledged tens of millions of doses for poor nations. Nonetheless, pressure is building on the leaders of the G-7, which comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., to commit to doing more at a summit starting Friday in the U.K.

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Mobile device | Thank you for sponsoring Planet Waves FM | Live Music Stream by Vision Quest – Fabulous!

Maybe that lab release theory was not so batty after all. Or maybe it’s another scam.

Revenge of the Bats: Lab Release Conspiracy Theory Sprouts Wings | Added June 4

SPECIAL Interview: Investigative reporter Bill Huston takes on Dunkin’ Donuts over masks in Endicott, NY and wins the whole country — more than 8,000 stores drop the mask requirement after he threatens to make them arrest him

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Wired sings the praises of the incipient ‘mRNA vaccine revolution’ | Added June 10

From Wired:

NO ONE EXPECTED the first Covid-19 vaccine to be as good as it was. “We were hoping for around 70 per cent, that’s a success,” says Dr Ann Falsey, a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, New York, who ran a 150-person trial site for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in 2020.

Even Uğur Şahin, the co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, who had shepherded the drug from its earliest stages, had some doubts. All the preliminary laboratory tests looked good; since he saw them in June, he would routinely tell people that “immunologically, this is a near-perfect vaccine.” But that doesn’t always mean it will work against “the beast, the thing out there” in the real world. It wasn’t until November 9, 2020, three months into the final clinical trial, that he finally got the good news. “More than 90 per cent effective,” he says. “I knew this was a game changer. We have a vaccine.”

“We were overjoyed,” Falsey says. “It seemed too good to be true. No respiratory vaccine has ever had that kind of efficacy.”

The arrival of a vaccine before the close of the year was an unexpected turn of events. Early in the pandemic, the conventional wisdom was that, even with all the stops pulled, a vaccine would take at least a year and a half to develop. Talking heads often referenced that the previous fastest-ever vaccine developed, for mumps back in 1967, took four years. Modern vaccines often stretch out past a decade of development. BioNTech – and US-based Moderna, which announced similar results later the same week – shattered that conventional timeline.

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NYT: Cruise lines want to sail out of Florida, but a vaccine passport ban stands in the way. | Added June 10

Cruise lines are starting to make plans to sail this summer out of Florida, which one company called “the cruise capital of the world.” But the state’s ban on vaccine passports complicates how ships can navigate its ports.

Some cruise lines, such as Norwegian Cruise Line, plan to sail with fully vaccinated crews and ensure that guests are also fully vaccinated. But while the federal government says employers can make on-site employees get vaccinated, a Florida state law prohibits businesses from requiring a vaccine passport, or proof of Covid-19 vaccination, in exchange for services.

The law has local officials concerned that their cities lose out if cruise lines decide to skip Florida ports, as Frank Del Rio, chief executive of Norwegian Cruise Line, recently threatened to do as a last resort.

On Monday, the company announced that it planned to set sail this summer from New York, Los Angeles and two Florida cities, Port Canaveral and Miami. The cruise line, however, did not specify how it planned to sail out of Florida.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Anti-cruise ship protests in Venice as tourism returns to the city | Added June 10

From the Guardian:

Tourists have started to fill the narrow lanes of Venice again after coronavirus travel restrictions were eased in mid-May. Before the pandemic, the city hosted an estimated 28 million visitors a year.

Cruise ships have always been a bone of contention in the city, with those against them arguing that they have damaged the lagoon and eroded the foundations of buildings in the Unesco world heritage site. But the travel and cruise industries have also contributed to the local economy – around 5,000 people are usually employed at Venice’s cruise terminal.

“The reason why we’re sending ships to Venice this year, which is another year plagued by Covid-19, is because we’ve been asked many times by the local community to please come back,” said Francesco Galietti, the director of the Italy unit for the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).

Any progress towards finding a solution, which must be agreed by the federal government along with local and regional governments and port authorities, has been hampered by political volatility.

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Maine Centers for Disease Control reports 8 injected residents died of Covid-19 | Added June 10

Via Yahoo News:

The Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that eight residents who were fully vaccinated against coronavirus have died with COVID-19, including some who were inoculated while receiving end-of-life care. A coronavirus infection acquired 14 days post-final vaccination dose is considered a “breakthrough case.”

As of June 4, the state had reported 387 such cases. Breakthrough cases are expected, the CDC has previously said, and there may be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized or die from the virus.

A spokesperson from Maine’s CDC explained that the eight people’s deaths “met the criteria to be COVID-19 related after fully vaccinated,” but noted that these individuals “died with COVID-19, not ‘of COVID-19.’”

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OffGuardian: WHO Chief Scientist Served with Legal Notice for Disinformation and Suppression of Evidence | Added June 10

On 25 May 2021, the Indian Bar Association (IBA) served a 51-page legal notice on Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), for:

[H]er act of spreading disinformation and misguiding the people of India, in order to fulfil her agenda.”

The Mumbai-based IBA is an association of lawyers who strive to bring transparency and accountability to the Indian justice system. It is actively involved in the dissemination of legal knowledge and provides guidance and support to advocates and ordinary people in their fight for justice.

The legal notice says Dr Swaminathan has been:

Running a disinformation campaign against Ivermectin by deliberate suppression of effectiveness of drug Ivermectin as prophylaxis and for treatment of COVID-19, despite the existence of large amounts of clinical data compiled and presented by esteemed, highly qualified, experienced medical doctors and scientists,”

And:

Issuing statements in social media and mainstream media, thereby influencing the public against the use of Ivermectin and attacking the credibility of acclaimed bodies/institutes like ICMR and AIIMS, Delhi, which have included ‘Ivermectin’ in the ‘National Guidelines for COVID-19 management’.”

The IBA states that legal action is being taken against Dr Swaminathan in order to stop her from causing further damage to the lives of citizens of India.

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CHD: 3 Ways Fauci Emails Expose Trail of Manipulation and Deception | Added June 9

The lead author of a seminal paper promoting the theory that SARS-Co-V-2 evolved in nature deleted 5,000 tweets — and then his entire Twitter account on June 6 — after a trove of emails obtained by BuzzFeed News revealed the researcher, who originally believed the virus originated in a lab, changed his mind after corresponding with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Emails show Dr. Kristian Andersen, author of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published March 17, 2020 in Nature, was thanked by Fauci after he flipped his position on the origin of COVID. Five months later, Andersen received nearly $2 million in government funding for virus research.

The emails also show Fauci admitted masks are best suited for sick people to help stop the spread of the virus and are not effective in protecting healthy people from COVID, and that those who have had COVID have natural immunity, so they don’t need the vaccine.

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Decline in demand, as well as temporary suspension, leads to millions of J&J shots expiring this month | Added June 9

From WSJ:

Hospitals, state health departments and the federal government are racing to decide how to use up millions of Johnson & Johnson’s JNJ -0.88% Covid-19 vaccine doses that are set to expire this month.

The prospect of so many doses going to waste in the U.S. when developing nations are desperate for shots would add pressure on the Biden administration to share stockpiled vaccines. But there are few practical solutions to administering them quickly in the U.S. or distributing them in time to foreign countries, according to those involved in the vaccination drive.

The stockpile is, in part, an unintended consequence of the U.S.’s decision in April to temporarily suspend administration of J&J doses to assess a rare blood-clot risk. The pause forced states and providers to cancel large blocks of appointments that were never rescheduled, leaving a surplus of supply, and in some areas increasing hesitancy over the J&J vaccine’s safety, according to industry officials.

AND

Pennsylvania’s Department of Health said it worked with the CDC and Chester County to try to transfer the county’s 50,000 expiring J&J doses to Oregon. The deal fell through when Oregon experienced a decline in demand and no longer wanted them, a Pennsylvania health department spokesman said.

The full extent of expiring Covid-19 vaccines is unknown because providers aren’t required to report it to the federal government, said Jessica Daley, a pharmacist and executive at Premier Inc., a large group-purchasing organization for hospitals.

Premier is asking members whether they have expiring vaccines, and at least a dozen have said they have expiring J&J doses, Ms. Daley said. “It’s not as simple as just moving the vaccine somewhere else,” she said.

Some states say they have asked the U.S. government whether doses can be shipped to developing nations. Doing so faces significant logistical and legal hurdles, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, because those countries are wary of using vaccines after expiration dates and may not be able to administer them quickly.

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WaPo: Malaria is far deadlier in Africa than the coronavirus. Why is the vaccine taking so long? | Added June 9

Before the pandemic rush, the mumps inoculation held the record for fastest lab-to-authorization time: Four years, achieved in the late ’60s.

The coronavirus shots completed in months were aided by extensive research already conducted on similar viruses, as well as advances in manufacturing. But it was enormous sums of money that got them over the finish line.

The United States alone poured more than $9 billion into coronavirus vaccine development. The world spent $7.3 billion into malaria-related research and development from 2007 to 2018, according to the WHO.

Researchers blame the disparity on market forces: The countries most devastated by malaria tend to be the poorest.

“You’re not going to get malaria in England anymore, or the U.S., so richer countries, which have the research budgets to tackle these tropical diseases, have to spend the right amount of money to make an impact,” said Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute. “It does seem odd that malaria, at least for Africa, is not considered an equivalent priority when there’s this huge number of children dying every year.”

The slowest stage of vaccine creation is what the Burkina Faso team is tackling now: efficacy and safety tests on people. Usually, that involves three phases, each larger and pricier than the last.

The pandemic doses took the same testing journey — just simultaneously. Pharmaceutical companies, flooded with cash, chose to absorb the financial risk of doing so.

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From Pennsylvania Capital-Star:

Vote in Pennsylvania House brings Gov. Wolf’s Covid-19 disaster emergency closer to its end | Added June 9

Using the powers that Pennsylvania voters gave to the Legislature during last month’s statewide referendum vote, the Pennsylvania House voted Tuesday evening to permanently end Wolf’s COVID-19 disaster emergency, and the executive powers that come with it, along party lines, 113-90.

Republican lawmakers cheered and gave a standing ovation after it passed, one loudly yelling “freedom.”

If passed by the state Senate, the resolution would take effect immediately. Wolf cannot veto it.

AND

Wolf already has lifted pandemic-related businesses occupancy restrictions, and stay-at-home orders haven’t been in place since last spring.

The state’s mask order is issued under a separate authority, legal experts say, and likely could not be ended

But if COVID cases were to spike again, Wolf would be prevented from issuing another disaster emergency and ordering businesses to close or people to stay home again.

Lawmakers were only able to take Tuesday’s vote after Pennsylvania voters approved two constitutional referendums limiting Wolf’s — and all future governors — disaster powers.

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Report from OffGuardian: The Wuhan “lab-leak” story: more fear porn | Added June 8

The media – both alternative and mainstream – are all talking about the possibility that the virus which allegedly causes Covid19 was leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan, and may have been developed as a bio-weapon.

We published, just last week, a fact-check article looking at the evidence for and against it.

Suffice to say, there’s very little evidence to support the idea the virus known as Sars-Cov-2 was developed in a lab. And, given its low death rate, no reason at all to fear it even if it were.

Nevertheless, the story doesn’t seem to be going away, especially with the release of the Fauci emails. To us, the FOIA-released emails seem nothing but a distraction.

The fact this story is being spread by Buzzfeed, CNN and Washington Post, some of the most controlled media in the age of controlled media, doesn’t seem to be putting off people who should probably know better.

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CNN: Some US hospitals mark first time being Covid-free. Others still see surge of patients | Added June 8

Editor’s Note: It remains to be determined what claimed “covid” patients are sick with. There are many possibilities, but we now know that there is no test for SARS-CoV-2, and if there is no test for the virus, it is then impossible to diagnose a viral infection. Meanwhile, hospitals overrun is nothing new; it happens many years and is of its own not proof of anything, and the claim itself requires close medical and investigative scrutiny. At this stage, nothing can be taken at face value. — efc

From CNN:

Dr. Raul Magadia and his team all gathered in the basement of their Anniston, Alabama, hospital last month for a big announcement he was preparing to make through the intercom system.

That system is usually reserved for emergency codes.

But Magadia, an infectious disease specialist at the Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center, had other plans on May 25.

He was about to share that in a few minutes the hospital would discharge the last Covid-19 patient from their Covid unit. It was a surreal milestone, he later told CNN, for staff who have been on the front lines of the battle against the virus for more than a year.

“We were really aiming for some good news after 13, 14 months of horrible news,” Magadia said. “That moment … that we had zero (patients), it’s an unbelievable feeling.”

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Covid-19 safety measures so ‘effective’ scientists say they may have caused two flu strains to go extinct | Added June 8

Editor’s Note: Here is some evidence that virologists live in a fantasy world. A virus going extinct? Maybe they stopped testing for it. Maybe the “covid test” is picking up the influenzas and calling them “covid” along with a wide range of other false positives, including “all Asian viruses” according to one article written in early 2020. In any event, nothing that was prevalent in one year goes extinct in the next, unless someone wrote it out of the script. — efc

From Gizmodo:

Scientists say that two common strains of the seasonal flu have seemingly vanished from circulation, likely due to public health measures like mask-wearing meant to slow the covid-19 pandemic. Though it will take time to confirm the disappearing act, the unexpected good news could make developing next season’s flu shot all the easier.

Every year, various types of the flu spread across the world, usually following a seasonal pattern of colder and/or drier weather. These flus are divided into two broad categories, A and B viruses, which are further divided into different groups. Both can mutate relatively quickly in a short amount of time, but influenza A viruses are the more dangerous variety, since they originally crossed over from animals like birds and can mutate enough to become the next source of a pandemic.

Scientists globally monitor the evolution of flu viruses by testing samples of confirmed flu cases from people who visit hospitals and doctors’ offices (the flu is always around, but it usually doesn’t cause major outbreaks until the typical season). This allows them to predict the likely batch of common strains that will circulate in the coming year and to then produce vaccines geared to provide immunity to those strains. This prediction process happens twice a year, accounting for the Northern and Southern hemisphere.

But since March 2020, we haven’t detected traces of two common flu strains: influenza B viruses belonging to the Yamagata lineage and a clade of the influenza A H3N2 virus, known as 3c3. So it’s possible, though not certain, that they may have gone extinct.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Cuomo says New York businesses can end most Covid limits after 70% of adults have gotten one injection | Added June 8

Editor’s Note: New York is in dismal economic condition. The streets of the city are empty. I heard about a restaurant in the Plaza Hotel today that pays $70,000 a month rent and served 30 lunches one day this week. The state has known and admitted for nearly a year that its “Covid test” is blowing out 90% false positives, which is totally unacceptable even if you think that SARS-CoV-2 is real. If there was a pandemic, it was over last May, and it’s astonishing that Cuomo and his frenemy, New York City’s mayor Bill di Blasio, have gone this far and this long holding the state economy under water, as if wondering when it will finally drown. It may have already. — efc

New York will lift most of its remaining pandemic-era restrictions on businesses and social settings once 70 percent of the state’s adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Monday.

The governor said that reaching the threshold would signify the end of restrictions on capacity limits, social distancing, disinfection protocols and health screenings. Instead, it would become optional for stores, restaurants, offices, gyms, hair salons and other businesses to impose such health precautions on their premises.

He said, however, that the state would abide by mask guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some restrictions would also continue in schools, public transit, homeless shelters and large venues, as well as correctional and health care facilities.

“When we hit 70 percent we will be back to life as normal,” Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said during a news conference in Manhattan. “Or as normalized as you can be post-Covid.”

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Royal Caribbean rescinds requirement for passengers to have Covid-19 shots, following Florida law that fines companies $5,000 for requesting vax status | Added June 7

From Miami Herald:

Royal Caribbean International will no longer require any of its cruise passengers to be vaccinated for COVID-19 as it had previously planned to.

In a press release Friday announcing cruises for sale on eight of its ships from U.S. ports this summer, starting with Freedom of the Seas from PortMiami on July 2, the company said it will recommend passengers get the COVID-19 vaccine, but not require it. The announcement is a reversal from previous statements and vaccine protocols the company submitted to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month that said it would require all passengers at least 18 years old and older to be vaccinated.

“Guests are strongly recommended to set sail fully vaccinated, if they are eligible,” the company said in a statement. “Those who are unvaccinated or unable to verify vaccination will be required to undergo testing and follow other protocols, which will be announced at a later date.”

The about-face is an apparent submission to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has insisted that there will be no exception made for cruise companies to a newly passed Florida law that fines companies $5,000 each time they ask a patron to provide proof of vaccination. Royal Caribbean International’s sister brand Celebrity Cruises (both owned by Royal Caribbean Group) is still requiring all passengers 16 years old or older be vaccinated on its seven-night Caribbean cruises that are restarting from Port Everglades on June 26.

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Twitter bans Naomi Wolf for expressing her perspective on injections against Covid-19 | Added June 7

From The Guardian:

The author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter after using it to spread myths about the pandemic, vaccines and lockdown.

Wolf, who wrote the influential feminist work The Beauty Myth, holds staunch anti-vaccine views. Last month she told a US congressional committee that vaccine passports would “re-create a situation that is very familiar to me as a student of history. This has been the start of many, many genocides.”

As the pandemic continued, the author variously claimed that vaccines were a “software platform that can receive uploads” and that “the best way to show respect for healthcare workers if you are healthy and under 65 is to socialise sensibly and expose yourself to a low viral load”.

In her most recent post, she argued that “vaccinated people’s urine/feces”(sic) needed to be separated from general sewage supplies/waterways until its impact on unvaccinated people via drinking water was established.

Her suspension was widely applauded on the social media platform. One tweet read: “Thanks, @Twitter, for finally suspending Naomi Wolf for spreading harmful and floridly delusional anti-vax disinformation.” Others observed: “Never forget. Naomi Wolf’s suspension could not have come any sooner.” Another said: “Congratulations to naomi wolf who is i think the first person to be banned from here for being too stupid.”

The award-winning author Steve Silberman, who is a historian of autism, said: “I’ve been reading vile anti-vaccine propaganda for 20 years, and Wolf’s claims were as out-there and delusional as I’ve ever seen.”

Some supporters criticised the ban, claiming it was the result of US government pressure and a blow to free speech, and called for her account to be reinstated. Twitter has said the suspension is permanent and no appeal will be allowed.

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From the Government of Ontario:

Ontario introduces plans for digital ID | Added June 7

Ontario’s digital ID plan

In late 2021 we will begin introducing digital ID (digital identity) – a new, electronic government-issued ID that lets people and businesses prove who they are online.

Learn more about digital ID, our public consultations and what’s next.

Our public consultations for digital ID are now closed.

Digital ID gives you more online options to access government services from anywhere.

Digital ID for individuals

As an individual, your digital ID could be used to prove your identity when you:

check in for virtual medical appointments
get a birth, marriage or death certificate
apply for government assistance (such as disability support) or benefits (such as CERB or EI)
update and show vaccination records
open a bank account

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

The Corbett Report: The Great Convergence | Added June 7

Haven’t heard of The Great Convergence yet? Oh, it’s just the plan to merge biology with digital technology and redefine what it means to be human, that’s all. Today on the podcast James covers the biodigital convergence that is already being rolled out and what it means for the future of homo sapiens.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Australia’s drug regulator considers referring ‘antivax’ Facebook posts to federal police | Added June 5

From The Guardian:

Australia’s drug regulator is considering referring Covid vaccine misinformation posts to the federal police, after anti-vaccine campaigners targeted a Labor MP who posted about getting the jab.

In response to a viral post of Labor backbencher Julian Hill receiving his vaccine, numerous users posted false material purportedly from the Therapeutic Goods Administration wrongly claiming Covid-19 vaccines have caused more than 200 deaths.

The figure they used was in fact the number of people who have died after receiving the vaccine, but apart from one case, none have been linked by the TGA to the vaccine.

The TGA told Guardian Australia the alleged posting of the death counter was “particularly concerning” and it would consider referring it to the federal police.

After being contacted by Guardian Australia, Facebook removed the material on Tuesday. A Facebook company spokesperson said its position on vaccine information “is clear – we remove false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccines, including conspiracy theories, and continue to remove Covid-19 misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm”.

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National Geographic: What happens if the U.S. can’t reach herd immunity? | Added June 5

From National Geographic:

Herd immunity is often seen as the end game of the COVID-19 pandemic. This threshold is reached when the virus cannot easily spread because most people have built up immunity through vaccination or natural infection. Then, “the virus just can’t find anyone to infect,” says Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases expert at the University of California, San Francisco, and the threat fades.

Experts estimate that we’ll reach herd immunity for COVID-19 when 65 to 80 percent of the population is vaccinated—a number that seemed within reach in the U.S. once highly effective vaccines started being administered. But after peaking at a seven-day average of more than three million doses in early April, the rate declined, and the country is now administering an average of a million doses a day.

Amid a swirl of misinformation, distribution issues, and legitimate hesitancy, as of June 3, only 51 percent of Americans have received at least one shot, and just 41 percent are fully vaccinated.

On June 1, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that anyone in America can get a free round of beer from Anheuser-Busch if they get vaccinated. It’s one of the latest government incentives being offered to help meet his administration’s goal of getting 70 percent of adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4, a key milestone in the nation’s bid to reach herd immunity. Some states are also offering big lottery winnings, free iced coffee, or—in West Virginia—trucks and custom hunting rifles.

Still, other experts say it’s possible the U.S. will never reach herd immunity. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 13 percent of U.S. adults said they will “definitely not” get a vaccine. So what happens then? Here’s what scientists have to say about where the U.S. stands now, what that means for the return to life as we once knew it, and why there’s still cause for hope even if we can’t hit the target number for herd immunity.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

WaPo: CDC director urges parents to vaccinate teens, pointing to increase in severe cases | Added June 5

Citing increased hospitalization rates of teenagers with covid-19 in March and April, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky urged parents to vaccinate their teens to protect them from an illness that can be severe even among young people.

“I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the numbers of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation,” Walensky said in a statement that was released Friday alongside a new study looking at trends in hospitalization among adolescents with the disease.

“Much of this suffering can be prevented,” Walensky added, urging “parents, relatives and close friends to join me and talk with teens” about the importance of prevention strategies and to encourage vaccination.

The study showed that nearly one-third of those teenagers hospitalized with covid-19 during a surge of cases early this year required intensive care, and 5 percent required mechanical ventilation.

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CDC Director Robert Redfield says he received death threats over support for lab origin theory | Added June 5

From The Daily Beast:

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield Robert Redfield says he received death threats from other scientists this past spring when he publicly stated that he feels that it’s likely that coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Wuhan lab. In an in-depth Vanity Fair investigation of the tense battle over the origins of COVID-19 currently dividing the U.S. government and scientific community, Redfield lamented the over-the-top “vitriol” he’d received from some of his colleagues.

“I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis. I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science,” he said about the reaction to his comments during a CNN special in March. Noting it was his own personal opinion, Redfield told CNN at the time he felt the virus “escaped” a lab but didn’t think it was intentional, adding that others—such as Dr. Anthony Fauci—felt it developed in nature.

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CNN: Dr. Anthony Fauci says publicly released email about lab leak is being misconstrued | Added June 5

From CNN:

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that an email he received last year from an executive at the US-based EcoHealth Alliance has been misconstrued and offered a hint of regret about a February 2020 email downplaying the need to wear a mask.

Earlier this week, news outlets including CNN, BuzzFeed News and The Washington Post obtained thousands of emails Fauci sent and received since the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases became a household name early last year.

In one email sent to Fauci last April, an executive at EcoHealth Alliance, the global nonprofit that helped fund some research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, thanked Fauci for publicly stating that scientific evidence supports a natural origin for the coronavirus and not a lab release. (The origins of the virus remain unclear.)

“There are some of your critics who say this shows you have too cozy of a relationship with the people behind the Wuhan lab research,” CNN’s John Berman said to Fauci on New Day. “What do you say to that?”

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From Rosemary Frei, MSc:

Rosemary Frei: Three Tips for Checking Whether A Medical Study is Legit or Bulls-it | Added June 4

You’ve just watched a video of a high-profile, Covid-sceptic speaker saying that shedding of the spike protein from vaccinated people endangers those they come in close contact with. You want to find out more, so you look at one or two of the links under the video that provide source material for what the speaker said. (Great those links are there; most videos don’t have them.)

Or a friend who is a believer in the official narrative about Covid has sent you a news item with a scary headline about the Indian ‘triple-mutation new variant.’ You’re pretty sure the article is very misleading, so you want to check out the study it’s based on.

How can you find source material and — if and when you find it – try to quickly figure out whether it’s legit?

Because there’s a huge, hot complicated mess of claims and counter-claims out there. And unfortunately there’s misleading information coming from ‘experts’ on both sides of the Covid divide.

And this isn’t unique to Covid. As Scott Adams — who created the Dilbert cartoon strip and now is a pundit — points out in page 14 of his book Loserthink:

“One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved.”

So I’ve put together three tips to help you quickly discern whether a medical paper is meaningful or meaningless. I’ve distilled the tips from my decades of reading, writing and editing scientific and medical papers.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Biden praises incentives for experimental injections, initiatives many consider ethically questionable | Added June 4

The teetotaling president lauded an announcement by Anheuser-Busch (ABI.BR) to give a free beer to adults over the age of 21 if the goal is reached.

“That’s right: Get a shot, have a beer,” Biden said. “We need everyone across the country to pull together to get us over the finish line,” he said. “I promise you, we can do this.”

Other new initiatives highlighted by the White House include:

* Free childcare from four major childcare providers for parents and caregivers who are getting vaccinated or recovering from the shots.

* Extended Friday night hours at thousands of pharmacies across the country where people can get vaccinated.

* Calls and canvassing in neighborhoods with low vaccination rates.

* A vaccination tour led by Vice President Kamala Harris to encourage people to get the shot.

* An initiative to work with barbershops and beauty salons with Black owners and clientele to encourage vaccination.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

OffGuardian: Transgressing the Logic of the New Tyrannical Normal | Added June 4

“Every man has his price” (Walpole, 1734) — an utterance on the lips of both despots and saints, past and present, eager to embrace or repel tyranny. The observation has the ring both of a universal truth and a hasty generalization.

In Jackson’s story, the price for the old man, intent to guard the prevailing socioeconomic order, was his own humanity. In the present, the saying resonates with those whose minds have been effectively dazzled by the global Pavlovian project observable in state-corporate propaganda which claims that a virus with a 99.8% survival rate spells certain doom for the world. They who demand that every living creature obey, without question, the unscientific irrational contradictory plans of the unfolding state-corporate global medical hegemony.

The competitively compliant masses, armed with faculties of reason effectively effaced, are all too happy to publicly signal their subservience and submit their civil and human rights to a technocratic global lordship consolidating the kind of control and power that will remain, forevermore, impervious to any challenge. How observable facts such as these elude the notice of so many people today is covered, most notably, in a popular university course in propaganda at New York University.

Mark Crispin Miller, world-renowned professor of media, culture and communication, has given Mass Persuasion and Propaganda for decades. In these times, however, of state-sanctioned “woke totalitarianism” enforced by its global big tech guardians, the course and its most famous professor was bound to become a target for cancellation.

Honest, independent journalism about Covid is hard to find. We are sponsored only by our readers. Please support Chiron Return with a one-time or monthly tax deductible contribution.

Uncle Bill is Going Nuclear — Really | Added June 4

Thank you, Loreen Costa.

I guess it’s all part of the plan to make Earth uninhabitable…? Pseudo meat, chemically derived from glyphosate laced soy, might be just the thing served at fashionable bunkers after the reactors fail in Wyoming? But maybe only for those lucky residents who had their AI VaccineBot delivery ports surgically installed..? Because one can never be too careful about contagion when sheltering in place with poisonous food!

From The Guardian:

Power companies run by billionaire friends Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have chosen Wyoming to launch the first Natrium nuclear reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant.

TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said on Wednesday that the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant was expected to be announced by the end of the year.

Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels to traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

“We think Natrium will be a game-changer for the energy industry,” Gates told a media conference to launch the project in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

“This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative,” Wyoming’s governor, Mark Gordon, said. “Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy” in Wyoming, the country’s top coal-producing state.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system’s power output to 500MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1bn.

Late last year the US energy department awarded TerraPower $80m in initial funding to demonstrate Natrium technology, and the department has committed additional funding in coming years subject to congressional appropriations.

Chris Levesque, TerraPower’s president and chief executive, said the demonstration plant would take about seven years to build.

“We need this kind of clean energy on the grid in the 2030s,” he told reporters.

Nuclear power experts have warned that advanced reactors could have higher risks than conventional ones. Fuel for many advanced reactors would have to be enriched at a much higher rate than conventional fuel, meaning the fuel supply chain could be an attractive target for militants looking to create a crude nuclear weapon, a recent report said.

Levesque said that the plants would reduce proliferation risks because they reduce overall nuclear waste.

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Fauci emails from 2020 released through Freedom of Information Act request | Added June 3

From Collective Evolution:

In February of 2020 we published an article about Dr. Francis Boyle, a law professor who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act in the United States. He was quite certain that SARS-CoV2 leaked out of a lab unintentionally, or intentionally, and that it was being used as a biological warfare weapon. He went on to state that many will profit off of this pandemic, both politically and financially, especially the pharmaceutical companies. He is still one of many experts in the field, which include a plethora of scientists, who have been voicing their concerns regarding the idea that COVID could have leaked out of a lab.

In the early stages of the pandemic any article written about Boyle was subjected to the wrath of Facebook “fact-checkers.” In fact, any article suggesting that COVID could have leaked out of a lab was deemed “fake news” and called a “conspiracy theory.” Despite presenting legitimate evidence, or simply sharing the opinions of experts in the field, media outlets like Collective Evolution were punished. As a result of these fake news strikes, we lost revenue, content reach and credibility. But as the world is seeing right now, we were not wrong to report these stories.

Here in June 2021, the lab leak theory gains more traction by the day. It’s no longer subjected to “false news” strikes by Facebook for simply discussing it. Yet neither Facebook, other Big Tech companies or mainstream media have done anything to apologize or compensate those who they wrongfully punished just one year ago. This is a great example of modern day censorship, it’s not about truth, but rather silencing information, evidence or opinion that calls into question an “official” narrative. It’s still happening on a massive scale today and one has to ask: how many other “conspiracy theories” or “fake news” claims are actually unwarranted? When will we know if we stick only to mainstream coverage?

Dr. Anthony Fauci was one of many figures publicly brushing off the lab leak theory as a conspiracy, but his emails from last year, obtained recently from a Freedom of Information Act Request, show that he was informed as early as January 2020 that COVID-19 exhibited viral characteristics which could have potentially been engineered in a lab.

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Currently administered under Emergency Use Authorization, Moderna applies for F.D.A. approval of injection | Added June 3

Moderna on Tuesday became the latest pharmaceutical company to apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for full approval for its Covid-19 vaccine for use in people 18 and older. F.D.A. approval would allow the company to market the shot directly to consumers, and could also help raise public confidence in the vaccine.

Full approval could also make it easier for schools, employers, government agencies and the U.S. military, which has encountered resistance to coronavirus vaccines, to mandate vaccinations.

“We look forward to working with the F.D.A. and will continue to submit data from our Phase 3 study and complete the rolling submission,” Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Last month Pfizer and BioNTech applied to the agency for full approval of their vaccine for use in people 16 and older.

Moderna’s vaccine was authorized for emergency use in December, and as of Sunday, more than 151 million doses had been administered in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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OffGuardian report on deceptive death counts | Added June 3

Four-thousand, nine-hundred and forty one. And rising. This number can only increase or, at best, stay the same. It can never go down.

Of all the innovations that governments and media around the world have come up with, seemingly independently of each other, during the ongoing Covid period, perhaps the most insidious is the daily running total of deaths.

As I write, the number given for Ireland stands at 4,941. And rising.

I have often wondered what the purpose of this number is. At a time when we are frequently told by our betters in the media and in the halls of government to ‘follow the science’, what could be more unscientific than a figure which, even when nobody is dying, looms above us as a warning that danger is ever present and nothing has improved. Bow down before its power, there’s nothing else to be done.

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NYT: Meet the Ohio vaccine lottery’s $1 million winner: A 22-year-old who ‘thought it was a prank.’ | Added June 3

Abbigail Bugenske, 22, had all but forgotten about her long-shot bid to become Ohio’s next millionaire.

As the clock inched toward 7:29 p.m. on Wednesday night, the state was preparing to announce the winner of its first lottery drawing for vaccinated Ohioans live on television. Ms. Bugenske was driving from Cincinnati to her parents’ house near Cleveland when she got a call that left her in hysterics. The governor was on the line. She had just won $1 million.

“I thought it was a prank call initially,” said Ms. Bugenske, who soon saw an explosion of messages on her phone that confirmed the news. She walked into her parents’ house in disbelief.

“I was screaming enough that my parents thought that I was crying and that something was wrong,” she recalled on Thursday. “I started yelling that I won a million dollars and I was going to be a millionaire.”

Ms. Bugenske, who graduated from college last year and recently moved to the Cincinnati area to take a job as an engineer, won the money through Ohio’s new lottery offering $1 million to people who have gotten at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine. The idea, which has drawn both enthusiasm and scrutiny, is gaining traction across the country, as states like Colorado, Maryland and Oregon offer similar incentives in an effort to boost waning vaccinations.

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China — first human case of H10N3 bird flu | Added June 3

A 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with a rare strain of bird flu known as H10N3, Beijing’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday.

Many different strains of bird flu are present in China and some sporadically infect people, usually those working with poultry. There is no indication that H10N3 can spread easily in humans.

The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was hospitalized on April 28 and diagnosed with H10N3 on May 28, the health commission said. It did not give details on how the man was infected.

His condition is now stable and he is ready to be discharged. Investigation of his close contacts found no other cases, the NHC said. No other cases of human infection with H10N3 have been reported globally, it added.

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Japan Times: Organ transplants force patients to amass vaccinations to beat COVID-19 | Added June 3

From The Japan Times:

For Jennifer Woda, two doses of the Moderna Inc. vaccine were not enough protection against COVID-19. Over a month later, she got a third and fourth dose, this time with the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE vaccine.

An opera singer who teaches music to kids, Woda received a kidney transplant in September 2019, one of about 160,000 transplants that have occurred in the U.S. since 2017. Emerging research is now showing that these patients, who suppress their immune system with drugs so their bodies don’t reject donated organs, are dramatically less likely to develop protective antibodies using the authorized vaccine dosage.

That’s spurring some recipients to get extra shots as worries mount over the end of pandemic restrictions and as U.S. vaccine supply outpaces demand. They went to pharmacies and clinics to get their shot on their own without doctor’s notes. Some weren’t asked questions about their vaccination history, and some explained their situation and still got the shot.

“I’m willing to be a guinea pig for my sake, and for everybody’s sake,” Woda said by telephone.

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University of Pennsylvania announces staff, faculty, and doctoral trainees will be required to get full dosage of Covid-19 injections | Added June 2

Here is the official announcement from the University of Pennsylvania.

Thank you, Ro Dann.

The university should look up the word “confidential.” That word is almost as misused as “safe.”

From WHYY.org:

The University of Pennsylvania announced Tuesday that all faculty, staff, and doctoral trainees must be fully vaccinated by Aug. 1.

The university had already mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for all students ahead of the fall semester, with certain religious or medical exemptions.

“We recognize that some individuals will choose not to obtain vaccines for medical and religious reasons, and some may choose not to disclose their vaccine status,” the release read. “Faculty, staff, and postdoctoral trainees who are not fully vaccinated will be required to continue to participate in daily symptom checks on PennOpen Pass and weekly Penn Cares screening testing, as well as to continue to wear masks indoors.”

The announcement comes ahead of the city’s planned June 2 lifting of all capacity restrictions.

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Coronavirus variants to be given names from Greek alphabet, according to WHO | Added June 2

The four coronavirus variants considered of concern by the U.N. agency and known generally by the public as the UK, South Africa, Brazil and India variants have now been assigned the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, respectively, according to the order of their detection.

Other variants of interest continue down the alphabet.

“While they have their advantages, these scientific names can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting,” said the WHO, explaining the decision.

The choice of the Greek alphabet came after months of deliberations in which other possibilities such as Greek gods and invented, pseudo-classical names were considered, according to bacteriologist Mark Pallen, who was involved in the talks.

AND

Historically, viruses have often been associated with the locations from which they are thought to have emerged, such as the Ebola virus, which is named after a Congolese river.

But this can be damaging and inaccurate such as with the “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918 whose origins are unknown, although the earliest cases are now believed to have emerged in the U.S. state of Kansas.

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Dr. Bryam Bridle discusses potential peril of injecting people with the spike protein ostensibly from Covid-19 | Added June 2

Alex talks with Dr. Byram Bridle, an Associate Professor on Viral Immunology at the University of Guelph about new peer-reviewed studies that suggests there may be terrifying reasons side effects such as heart inflammation, VITT, and other serious issues may occur in those who have been vaccinated.

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US to share 80 million doses of injections against Covid-19 with countries requesting supplies | Added June 2