Johan Giesecke, an advisor to the Director General of the WHO, former Chief Scientist of the EU Centre for Disease Control, and former state epidemiologist of Sweden, returned to UnHerd yesterday to resume his discussion with editor Freddie Sayers, adjourned a year ago. He was one of the first major figures to come out against lockdowns last spring, saying they are not evidence-based, the correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only, and the Imperial College modelling was "not very good".

While he admits he made some mistakes, he believes that history will judge him kindly, and says: "I think I got most of the things right, actually."

He gives a solid defence of the outcome in Sweden, ably batting away the "neighbour argument" that says Sweden failed because Norway and Finland did better.

The diapers most of us are wearing on our face most of the time apparently have no effect at stopping Covid-19. This explains a lot.

Did you hear about the peer-reviewed study done by Stanford University that demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that face masks have absolutely zero chance of preventing the spread of Covid-19? No? It was posted on the the National Center for Biological Information government website. The NCBI is a branch of the National Institute for Health, so one would think such a study would be widely reported by mainstream media and embraced by the "science-loving" folks in Big Tech.

Instead, a DuckDuckGo search reveals it was picked up by ZERO mainstream media outlets and Big Tech tyrants will suspend people who post it, as political strategist Steve Cortes learned the hard way when he posted a Tweet that went against the face mask narrative. The Tweet itself featured a quote and a link that prompted Twitter to suspend his account, potentially indefinitely.

He was quoting directly from the NCBI publication of the study. The government website he linked to features a peer-reviewed study by Stanford University's Baruch Vainshelboim. In it, he cited 67 scholars, doctors, scientists, and other studies to support his conclusions.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it will not require expert advice from its advisory committee that evaluates and reviews vaccine efficacy and safety to amend Pfizer-BioNTech's emergency use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine to include adolescents aged 12 to 15, according to an FDA spokesperson. That decision will be made by the agency after reviewing the relevant data.

"As Pfizer has announced, the FDA has received the company's request to amend its emergency use authorization (EUA) in order to expand the age range for its COVID-19 vaccine to include individuals 12-15 years of age," a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

"Based on an initial evaluation of the information submitted, at this time, the agency does not plan to hold a meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on this request to amend the EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, which was discussed and recommended for authorization at a VRBPAC meeting in December 2020," she added.

A few friends have asked my thoughts on the covid jab(s) so I thought it was time to write an article on the topic.

All my friends had not heard most of the details I shared, so I figured you might appreciate hearing some of what I told them.

Knowing how contentious this issue is, part of me would rather just write about something else, but I feel like the discussion/news is so one-sided that I should speak up.

As I always strive to do, I promise to do my best to be level-headed and non-hysterical.

I'm not here to pick a fight with anyone, just to walk you through some of what I've read, my lingering questions, and explain why I can't make sense of these covid vaccines.

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers have shown that psilocybin — the active chemical in 'magic mushrooms' — still works its antidepressant-like actions, at least in mice, even when the psychedelic experience is blocked. The new findings suggest that psychedelic drugs work in multiple ways in the brain and it may be possible to deliver the fast-acting antidepressant therapeutic benefit without requiring daylong guided therapy sessions. A version of the drug without, or with less of, the psychedelic effects could loosen restrictions on who could receive the therapy, and lower costs, making the benefits of psilocybin more available to more people in need.

In all clinical trials performed to date, the person treated with psilocybin remains under the care of a guide, who keeps the person calm and reassures them during their daylong experience. This can include hallucinations, altered perception of time and space, and intense emotional and spiritual encounters.

Only a few years ago, back when I was in medical school, I was taught that the goal of oxygen therapy should be to push saturation above 95%, and that anyone who comes in to hospital with a saturation below that should receive oxygen therapy (with the exception of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, whose bodies have adjusted to lower oxygen levels). For those who aren't used to the terminology, the definition of oxygen saturation is the proportion of haemoglobin molecules in the arteries that are "saturated" with oxygen. A normal level for a healthy person is usually 97% or higher.

In the last few years, however, there's been a bit of a shift in thinking. It started with the realization that people with heart attacks who were treated oxygen didn't do any better than those who weren't. This is a good example of a medical reversal - it seemed logical to give oxygen to people with heart attacks, because a heart attack is a blockage in one of the arteries that supply the heart, which means that the heart muscle isn't getting enough oxygen. By increasing the oxygen level in the blood stream, even if only a small amount of that oxygen is able to get past the blockage, it should do some good. At least that was the thinking.

Unfortunately, logic often turns out be wrong, at least in medicine. As it turns out, oxygen isn't the utterly benign substance it's often made out to be. First, oxygen causes blood vessels to constrict, so by pushing up the oxygen saturation you could actually be worsening the blockage. Second, oxygen has an unfortunate tendency to form reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can wreak all kinds of havoc in our cells. We've evolved mechanisms to deal with these, but when a part of the body is depleted of oxygen for a while, many of our defences to deal with ROS are diminished. If you then push up the oxygen arriving in an area enormously, say an area of heart muscle that's been deprived of oxygen for a while but that now once again has good flow thanks to an intervention to remove the blockage, you might actually increase the damage to that area.

Long story short, it turned out that oxygen wasn't good to give to people with heart attacks. It might even be bad. Thankfully, that practice has now stopped in most places. The realization that oxygen might actually be harmful in certain situations has led to a change in thinking about oxygen therapy. No longer is it viewed uncritically as a universal panacea that can be doled out generously to everyone who comes in through the doors of the hospital. At least that's the case in theory. In practice, lots of patients still get oxygen who don't need it.

People vaccinated against COVID-19 may require booster shots within nine to 12 months of their initial vaccination, Reuters reported.

Evidence suggests that the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna offer at least six months of robust protection from COVID-19 infection. But even if this protection lasts for longer, several highly-transmissible viral variants are now circulating; that means people may need a regular booster shots to bolster immunity to the virus, Dr. David Kessler, chief science officer for President Joe Biden's COVID-19 response task force, said at a congressional committee meeting on Thursday (April 15).

"The current thinking is those who are more vulnerable will have to go first," in terms of getting their booster shots, Kessler said.

From early on in the pandemic, experts predicted that officials may need to roll out multiple generations of COVID-19 vaccines and that regular booster shots may be necessary, since experts couldn't know then how long vaccine-generated immunity would last, Live Science previously reported. And there's always the potential for new virus variants to emerge and thwart the current vaccines, raising the risk of so-called breakthrough infections, meaning infections among fully vaccinated people.

Breakthrough infections are completely expected, as none of the COVID-19 vaccines are 100% protective against the coronavirus. The CDC has been monitoring for such infections since the vaccine rollout began, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, told the House subcommittee hearing, according to Reuters.

The CDC announced today that deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines, following experimental COVID injections, have now surpassed 3000 deaths since December of 2020, when the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID shots were given emergency use authorization (EUA) by the FDA.

This was reported on the CDC website today, on their "Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination" page.

They report that 3,005 people have now died following COVID-19 experimental "vaccines." (Note: not all of these deaths they are reporting have been entered into the VAERS database yet. Additional data is entered into VAERS every Friday.)

Scientists at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney have discovered a critical new gene that it is hoped could help human hearts repair damaged heart muscle after a heart attack.

Researchers have identified a genetic switch in zebrafish that turns on cells allowing them to divide and multiply after a heart attack, resulting in the complete regeneration and healing of damaged heart muscle in these fish.

It's already known that zebrafish can heal their own hearts, but how they performed this incredible feat remained unknown, until now. In research recently published in the prestigious journal, Science, the team at the Institute drilled down into a critical gene known as Klf1 that previously had only been identified in red blood cells. For the first time they discovered it plays a vital role in healing damaged hearts.

Dr. Kazu Kikuchi, who led this world first research, said he was astonished by the findings.

"Our research has identified a secret switch that allows heart muscle cells to divide and multiply after the heart is injured. It kicks in when needed and turns off when the heart is fully healed. In humans where damaged and scarred heart muscle cannot replace itself, this could be a game-changer," Dr. Kikuchi explains.

Cloth face masks during exercise limit performance and physical capacity, study finds

Heart rate peaks lower and oxygen intake drops, according to sports science research

Cloth face coverings limit performance and physical capacity during exercise, a new study has found.

Masked joggers said they felt claustrophobic during higher-intensity exercise and their oxygen intake was reduced, according to research.

Heart rate was found to have a lower peak while exercising with a mask and participants could not keep up a jog for as long as when unmasked.