John P. A. Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Professor Jay Bhattacharya, a founding signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, and other colleagues at Stanford University, have published a new, fully peer-reviewed study. Their objective was to assess the impact of the non-pharmaceutical interventions adopted by many countries in response to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The spread of COVID-19 has led to multiple policy responses that aim to reduce the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2. The principal goal of these so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) is to reduce transmission in the absence of pharmaceutical options in order to reduce resultant death, disease, and health system overload. Some of the most restrictive NPI policies include mandatory stay-at-home and business closure orders ("lockdowns"). The early adoption of these more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (mrNPIs) in early 2020 was justified because of the rapid spread of the disease, overwhelmed health systems in some hard-hit places, and substantial uncertainty about the virus's morbidity and mortality.

Because of the potential harmful health effects of mrNPI, including hunger, opioid-related overdoses, missed vaccinations, increase in non-COVID-19 diseases from missed health services, domestic abuse, mental health and suicidality as well as a host of economic consequences with health implications, it is increasingly recognized that their postulated benefits deserve careful study... We propose an approach that balances the strengths of empirical analyses while taking into consideration underlying epidemic dynamics. We compare epidemic spread in places that implemented mrNPIs to counterfactuals that implemented only less-restrictive NPIs (lrNPIs). In this way, it may be possible to isolate the role of mrNPIs, net of lrNPIs and epidemic dynamics. Here, we use Sweden and South Korea as the counterfactuals to isolate the effects of mrNPIs in countries that implemented mrNPIs as well as lrNPIs. Unlike most of its neighbors that implemented mandatory stay-at-home and business closures, Sweden's approach in the early stages of the pandemic relied entirely on lrNPIs, including social distancing guidelines, discouraging of international and domestic travel, and a ban on large gatherings. South Korea also did not implement mrNPIs. Its strategy relied on intensive investments in testing, contact tracing, and isolation of infected cases and close contacts.

I've been asked a million times for a short introduction to Critical Race Theory that hits the high points in a quick, straightforward way. Most people will have heard of Critical Race Theory by now, but in case you haven't, it's a particular way of thinking about race and racism that developed first at Harvard Law School from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Its stated objective is to question whether the Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Acts legislation improved the racial situation in Western nations, especially the United States. Its true objective is to re-organize the social, cultural, and legal playing field in a way that claims to reverse "historical injustices" around the issue of race, allegedly without reproducing them.

To keep this short and simple, I'll provide you with two quotes from the book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (third edition) by Critical Race Theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. These quotes summarize everything that Critical Race Theory is really about in its own words.

First, Critical Race Theory views race and racism this way: race is a political construction that was invented by white people to give themselves power while excluding all other races from it, and racism is the ordinary state of affairs in society, present in all interactions, institutions, and phenomena, and effectively permanent in society (short of a full sociocultural revolution that puts them in charge). That is, Critical Race Theory assumes that racism is present in everything under a doctrine known as "systemic racism." Quoting from Delgado and Stefancic,

What do critical race theorists believe? Probably not every member would subscribe to every tenet set out in this book, but many would agree on the following propositions. First, that racism is ordinary, not aberrational — "normal science," the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Second, most would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material. The first feature, ordinariness, means that racism is difficult to cure or address. ... The second feature, sometimes called "interest convergence" or material determinism, adds a further dimension. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class people (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it.

Spain has just experienced a number of its coldest ever days recorded in history.

On Thursday (7 Jan), a record breaking temperature of -35.8C was registered at the Vega de Liordes weather station, situated at an altitude of 1,874 metres in the northwestern province of Leon.

The temperature was confirmed by AEMET weather agency, and just narrowly beat out the record breaking temperature recorded the day before in the eastern Pyrenees.

Record breaking temperatures

On Wednesday (6 Jan), a meteorological station in the Catalan Pyrenees recorded a temperature of -34.1C.

It's not just Twitter.

The U.S. Capitol riots provoked an avalanche of online backlash against President Donald Trump on Thursday and Friday, causing numerous online services to sever ties with Trump or his associated political activities.

Twitter, of course, permanently banned Trump from the platform late Friday, citing "risk of further incitement of violence."

Who else is banning/suspending Trump?

Financial Times reporter Dave Lee noted Friday that Trump's campaign has not been sending emails to its supporters since Wednesday, an indication that its email service providers are severing ties.

In fact, one service provider — Campaign Monitor — confirmed it had suspended the Trump campaign's access to its service.

Viruses do not disappear. When a novel virus is introduced to a naive population there will be an epidemic. Spread will be exponential, some susceptible people will die but eventually we will reach a point where there is sufficient population immunity that spread is slowed and the virus stops spreading in an epidemic fashion. Thereafter, localised outbreaks can still occur and susceptible people can still die but there is no longer a risk of epidemic spread because every outbreak is contained by population immunity.

Coronaviruses are seasonal, so it is only now that we have had some winter weather that we can assess what endemic Covid will be like.

Figure 1 shows the sharp spike in excess deaths seen with epidemic Covid in spring. These deaths were in excess of the usual winter hump. Compared with previous years, this year's winter excess deaths started earlier but the shape of the curve is consistent with previous years. However, we have now reached the bizarre situation where so many deaths are being labelled as caused by Covid that, for the first time ever, this winter there are fewer non-Covid deaths in winter weeks than there were in summer.

Doctors have noticed that unlike in previous years, their patients have low white blood cell and platelet counts, sudden hypoxias and bilateral atypical pneumonias. These features can be seen in other pneumonias but are characteristic of Covid and are being seen in large numbers currently.

Mozilla, developer of the Firefox internet browser, has argued that more must be done to keep Donald Trump and other "bad actors" out of cyberspace, prompting many to vow to never use the group's services again.

In a blog post titled 'We need more than deplatforming', the open-source software community said that Twitter's decision to permanently ban Trump from its platform didn't go far enough in weeding out "hate" on the internet. While blaming Trump for the "siege and take-over" of the US Capitol on January 6, the non-profit tech group argued that "white supremacy is about more than any one personality."

"We need solutions that don't start after untold damage has been done. Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms," Mozilla wrote.

The mainstream narrative of the shooting of Ashli Babbitt is a horrifying stream of lies

Words cannot express the shock and disbelief I felt after witnessing the immediate aftermath of the Capitol Hill Shooting. But that didn't compare at all to the horror of turning on the news and seeing brazen, flagrant lies about what I'd just witnessed.

There was no "riot" at the United States Capitol Building. There was no "massive armed assault".

There were hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters blanketing downtown D.C. while maybe a few dozen troublemakers engaged in trespassing and petty vandalism at the Capitol Building.

The Establishment has imposed a color revolution on the American people. Ekaterina Blinova is a journalist who reognized that a color revolution has occurred in America under the guise of a presidential election.

The Establishment used the Democrats for their purpose, because Trump was in office under the Republican banner. Trump, of course, is a populist, but there is no party that represents the people, so Trump ran as a Republican.

The leftwing, or the fraud that passes for one, thinks it is now in the money. This is a naive expectation. The Establishment is in charge, and there will be no leftist agendas unless they serve the Establishment. If Antifa and BLM cut up, their funding will be cut off, and the presstitutes will be sicced on them.

West Virginia state lawmaker Derrick Evans has been charged with entering a restricted area of the U.S. Capitol after he livestreamed himself with rioters, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Ken Kohl, a top deputy federal prosecutor in Washington, announced the charge against Derrick Evans on a call in which he presented dozens of new charges against members of a mob that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.

It wasn't immediately announced if Evans is in custody. Several other state lawmakers across the country traveled to Washington, D.C., for demonstrations this week but it's unknown if any other elected official joined the mob of Donald Trump supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol.

A growing number of Republicans and Democrats said they want to expel Evans from the legislature if he does not resign. His attorney, John Bryan, said late Thursday that the delegate didn't commit a crime and doesn't plan to resign.

It may be weeks before we fully understand the fallout from the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol building. The prevailing consensus from conservative talk radio hosts and editors is that this event provided ammunition to Trump's enemies and gave squishy Republicans an excuse to abandon their objections to the certification of Biden's electors. They may be true, but based on what I saw experienced first-hand, I am conflicted on what to say about those who entered the building.

According to the website "wildprotest.com," the original plan was to gather at the Whitehouse Ellipse from 9am to 12pm, then gather at the North lawn of the Capitol building at 1 pm. As you may well know, not only did it not happen this way, but the aforementioned website went blank. Did they take it down to make it harder for Trump supporters to show that storming the building was never part of the initial plan?

My group boarded a D.C. Metro train at 10:30am. Upon arrival to the next station, I saw three young white men board the train with dark clothes and skeleton face masks. My immediate concern was that these were Antifa thugs who would give us trouble as soon as they saw us get off the train with our signs. As I watched them from the corner of my eye, I noticed that one of them wore a cape with the American Revolution snake "Join or die." Were these Trump supporters? Something did not seem quite right. As the train approached our destination, other rally participants started to fill our coach and we arrived at the Ellipse with no incident.