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Syringe

Are vaccines really 'safe and effective'?

J.B. Handley
jbhandleyblog.com
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 06:25 UTC
woman with baby
Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

— George Sarton, founder, History of Science Society
The message that vaccines are safe and effective made perfect sense to my wife Lisa and me. Our beautiful boys would be fully vaccinated. I'd been vaccinated, and my wife had been vaccinated. It was the easiest decision two parents could make. You even get to kill two birds with one stone: protect your babies from infectious disease and contribute to herd immunity, and so protect others. What was the risk of something bad happening from a vaccine? The number thrown around — and still in wide use today — was "one in a million."

Losing faith in my pediatrician and ultimately the entire medical establishment triggered a massive case of cognitive dissonance for me, as it does for so many parents who trusted their pediatricians with their children's lives. Could my pediatrician be leading me astray? Could these vaccines really be harming my son? Are those crazy parents actually right? It's an alienating, disturbing, troubling path that many autism parents must walk. In many cases the parents of children with autism were the most compliant when it came to mainstream medical care — our children typically received every vaccine and medical intervention recommended to us by our trusted doctors. We're not "anti-vaxxers"; we're mostly "ex-vaxxers," the compliant parents who learned the hard way.
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Beaker

Lab tests show risks of using CRISPR gene editing on embryos

Marilynn Marchione
Yahoo News/AP
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 16:10 UTC
lab dish containing embryos
© AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File
In this Oct. 9, 2018, file photo, a lab dish containing embryos that have been injected with Cas9 protein and PCSK9 sgRNA is seen in a laboratory in Shenzhen in southern China's Guangdong province. A lab experiment aimed at fixing defective DNA in human embryos gives a frightening look at what can go wrong with this type of “gene editing” and why leading scientists say it’s too unsafe to try. Researchers reported Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2020, that in more than half of the cases, the editing caused unintended changes, such as loss of an entire chromosome or big chunks of it.
A lab experiment aimed at fixing defective DNA in human embryos shows what can go wrong with this type of gene editing and why leading scientists say it's too unsafe to try. In more than half of the cases, the editing caused unintended changes, such as loss of an entire chromosome or big chunks of it.

Columbia University researchers describe their work Thursday in the journal Cell. They used CRISPR-cas9, the same chemical tool that a Chinese scientist used on embryos in 2018 to help make the world's first gene-edited babies, which landed him in prison and drew international scorn.

The tool lets scientists cut DNA in a precise spot and has profound potential for good — it's already used to raise better crops and livestock, holds promise for treating diseases and earned its discoverers a Nobel Prize earlier this month.

But using it on embryos, sperm or eggs makes changes that can pass to future generations. Several international panels of scientists and ethicists have said it's too soon to know whether that can be done safely, and the new Columbia work shows the possible harm.

"If our results had been known two years ago, I doubt that anyone would have gone ahead" and tried it on embryos intended for pregnancy, said biologist Dieter Egli, who led the study.

Comment: See also:

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People 2

Mutated coronavirus strain recorded first in June causing most new infections in Europe

Grace Dean
Business Insider
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC
mask london
© PA
The UK went into lockdown for the first time in March.
The majority of new COVID-19 cases in Europe stem from a mutated strain of the coronavirus that has been traced back to Spain and was spread across the continent over the summer by tourists, scientists said in a report Thursday.

The variant most likely originated in farm workers in northeastern Spain, where it was first recorded in June, they said.

The team of scientists from the University of Basel, ETH Zürich in Basel, and SeqCOVID in Spain said a suspected "superspreader" event accounted for early proliferation of the virus, which was then spread abroad by tourists and other travelers.

Comment: See also: Brain scans of Covid-19 patients show whole spectrum of strange, inexplicable neurological effects

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Sherlock

Brain scans of Covid-19 patients show whole spectrum of strange, inexplicable neurological effects

Clare Watson
Science Alert
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC
brain
© (Alina Grubnyak/Unsplash)
Among the many serious symptoms of COVID-19, the strange neurological effects experienced by many patients count as perhaps the most mysterious.

A sudden loss of smell and taste was one of the first unusual symptoms reported by COVID-19 patients, but stroke, seizures, and swelling of the brain (called encephalitis) have all been described.

Some patients diagnosed with COVID-19 also experience confusion, delirium, dizziness, and have difficulty concentrating, according to case reports and reviews.

For several months, doctors have been relentlessly trying to understand this disease, and its many manifestations that seem to affect the brain in ways we can't fully explain.

Comment: For insight into why this may be, check out: Compelling Evidence That SARS-CoV-2 Was Man-Made

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Bacon n Eggs

The Darwinian diet: You are what you eat


Phys.org
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:01 UTC
leafcutter ants
© Adrian Pingstone / Public Domain
Leaf cutter ants Atta cephalotes (Bug World, Bristol Zoo, England).
Imagine millions of leafcutter ants on parade through a tropical forest. Driven by a craving mysterious to humans, they suddenly stream up a towering tree trunk. How do they know exactly which species of leaves to cut for their underground fungus garden? The ants do not eat the leaves; they eat the fungus. Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) in Denmark think that the choices the ants make about what to bring back to the nest may be driven by the nutritional needs of their fungus crop. They present new evidence in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution showing that fungi become more dependent on the ants to fulfill ever more specific nutritional needs as the partnerships develop. When the pilgrims landed in America, they learned from indigenous groups to plant corn with dead fish as fertilizer. Compare that system to a huge, industrial cornfield where liquid fertilizer is applied. The modern cornfield produces more corn, but it also requires industrial-scale use of specific nutrients.

"This is what we see as these ant farmers evolved," said Jonathan Shik, former post-doctoral fellow in staff scientist's Bill Wcislo's lab at STRI and now an assistant professor at UCPH. "Atta ants evolved huge agro-industrial farms. They have giant colonies with millions of workers. But they have miniscule brains and no detectable culture, so the big question is 'How do they know exactly what their crop needs?'"
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Attention

The head of Operation Warp Speed & the Gates Foundation are pushing bioelectronics & vaccine patches

Derrick Broze
The Last American Vagabond
Thu, 22 Oct 2020 07:19 UTC
To understand the goals of Operation Warp Speed we must understand Dr. Moncef Slaoui and his connections to Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation.

bioelectronics
In mid-May, Donald Trump announced he was appointing Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a former executive with vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, to lead Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership launched by the Trump administration to rapidly develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Slaoui was a Professor of Immunology at the University of Mons, Belgium. Slaoui earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Immunology from the University Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School and Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston.

Following his education, Slaoui joined the pharmaceutical industry, serving on the board of Directors of GlaxoSmithKline between 2006 through 2015. Slaoui served in several senior research & development (R&D) roles with GlaxoSmithKline during his time with the company, including Chairman of Global Vaccines.

More recently, Slaoui sits on the boards of several pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology organizations. In 2016, Slaoui was appointed to the Board of Directors of Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company that is leading the way for messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines. Moderna is also developing one of the COVID-19 vaccines which might be administered to the public.

When Slaoui was appointed to head Operation Warp Speed critics noted the conflicts of interest related to him leading the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine while holding stock in two of the leading vaccine manufacturers. Slaoui said he would sell his Moderna stock worth a reported $12 million and resign from the board of directors. However, in a recent interview Slaoui said he was keeping around $10 million of stock in his former company, GlaxoSmithKline, calling the shares his "retirement."

Comment: See also:

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Eye 2

Anthony Fauci: 40 years of lies from AZT to remdesivir

Torsten Engelbrecht & Konstantin Demeter
OffGuardian
Tue, 27 Oct 2020 07:39 UTC
dr anthony fauci
Last week, US president Donald Trump committed a kind of blasphemy by attacking Anthony Fauci, his pandemic consultant and practically the spokesperson for the White House regarding COVID-19, saying that:
"People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots. He's been here for 500 years. Fauci is a disaster. If I listened to him, we'd have 500,000 deaths."
A remarkable statement of historical dimension, since Trump is the first American head of state to cast doubt on Fauci, who has acted as the virus tsar for no less than six presidencies: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Trump.

To make it clear, the logic behind Trump's attack is scientifically unfounded. He refers to a statement of Fauci he made some months ago, according to which people should "not wear face masks.". But even if all Americans had followed this advice, it would not have lead to a single extra death.

The simple reason is that the COVID-19 death rate data show unambiguously that a viral cause for the excess mortality seen in some countries, including the US, is virtually impossible — and that instead the massive experimental use of highly toxic drugs is the key factor in this context, as I recently outlined together with Claus Köhnlein MD, in an in-depth analysis for Real News Australia.

But on one point Trump hits the nail on the head: Fauci is simply a disaster, because he has been telling the world one lie after another for decades, while his presence actually feels almost as if he has been there for 500 years. And tragically, the mass media sell them to their audience of billions as a kind of gospel.

Comment: See also:

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Sun

Study finds over 80 percent of COVID-19 patients vitamin D deficient

Jackie Salo
New York Post
Wed, 28 Oct 2020 18:22 UTC
COVID-19, vitamin D
© Shutterstock
More than 80 percent of 200 patients hospitalized in Spain with COVID-19 had low levels of vitamin D, a new study found.

The study, which was published Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, found that the majority of patients being treated for COVID-19 at a hospital in the northern city of Santander suffered from a deficiency of vitamin D.

Researchers at the University of Cantabria determined that just 82 percent of the 216 patients had inadequate levels — compared to around 47 percent of people in a control group who didn't have the virus.

The vitamin, which promotes healthy bones and supports immune system function, is produced by the body naturally when it's exposed to sunlight, though it can also be obtained from eating foods such as fatty fish, egg yolks, mushrooms and cheese.

Patients with deficiencies of the sunlight vitamin in the study were also more likely to have hypertension and heart disease, as well as experience longer hospital stays.

Comment: See previous studies on the link between vitamin D and Covid-19:

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Heart

High fat or 'ketogenic' diets could prevent, reverse heart failure

Maggie Rotermund, Saint Louis University
Medical Xpress
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:00 UTC
bacon eggs
Research from Saint Louis University finds that high fat or "ketogenic" diets could completely prevent, or even reverse heart failure caused by a metabolic process.

The research team, led by Kyle S. McCommis, Ph.D., assistant professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at SLU, looked at a metabolic process that seems to be turned down in failing human hearts.

In an animal model, drastic heart failure in mice was bypassed by switching to high fat or "ketogenic" diets, which could completely prevent, or even reverse the heart failure.

Comment: In recent years studies coming at the issue of diet from numerous different angles are showing how 'paleolithic' and ketogenic diets can help heal a variety of disease, as well as being the optimal diet for the vast majority of people: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Question

Flu away: Scientists baffled at disappearance of influenza...but is it really gone or just masked by Covid-19?

Peter Andrews
RT
Mon, 26 Oct 2020 20:29 UTC
Glove/Syringe
© Reuters
There has been a 98% plummet in flu infections this year, dispelling fears of a Covid and flu 'twin-demic' about which many had warned. Experts say we can thank masks and social distancing. But does this really add up?

Although there is no mass testing for flu as there is for Covid, the WHO says that surveillance of data from around the world shows flu rates collapsing everywhere. Australia essentially 'skipped' their flu season this year, with not a single case reported since July (their peak). In fact, flu has more or less vanished throughout the Southern Hemisphere, and early indicators suggest it will follow suit north of the equator. What can explain this unprecedented decline?

Where did it go?

To my mind there are three possibilities.
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