RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/30/60-billion-in-covid-fraud-try-4-trillion/

As auditors and congressional investigators try to figure out just how much federal COVID relief went to fraudsters, they are missing the trillions of dollars in fraud committed by the federal government itself in a war that we had no chance of winning.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office reported that fraudsters took in about $60 billion in unemployment checks. That’s on top of the tens of billions in fraudulent claims made through the Paycheck Protection Program, the tens of billions handed out through a Small Business Administration program, and on and on.

This Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold a hearing “to investigate rampant waste of taxpayer dollars in COVID relief programs.”

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chairman of the committee, said “we owe it to Americans to identify how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent under the guise of pandemic relief were lost to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”

That’s all well and good. But what we really need is an investigation into how the war against COVID wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars, imposed massive disruptions, handicapped millions of students, and probably didn’t save many, if any, lives.

That sort of investigation, if done honestly, would likely conclude that we would have been better off if we’d done nothing at all beyond asking people to wash their hands and stay home if they’re sick.

Shocking? Impossible to believe? Let’s review the evidence.

Start with the fact that since COVID-19 first landed on U.S. shores three years ago, 1.1 million have died from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Even now, deaths are averaging around 4,000 per week.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/medical-schools-bail-on-academic-merit-and-intellectual-rigor-us-news-rankings-diversity-equity-inclusion-race-students-11675005330?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

To see how the diversity, equity and inclusion mania is colliding with meritocracy in American higher education, pay attention to the flap over graduate schools pulling out of the U.S. News rankings. Readers who aren’t applying to medical school may have missed the controversy. But anyone who plans on seeing a doctor or benefiting from research or treatment at an academic medical center has an interest in the outcome.

So far, U.S. News has resisted demands from the graduate schools to base the rankings on equity rather than on the grades and test scores of incoming students. U.S. News has been transparent about the method it uses for its rankings, including factors such as a reputation survey, MCAT scores and grade point averages of incoming students.

The medical schools have been similarly clear about why they disagree with the U.S. News method and will stop participating. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in a Jan. 24 statement, said the U.S. News rankings undermine the school’s “commitment to anti-racism” and “outreach to diverse communities.”

“Diversity, equity and inclusion are important factors in our decision,” the school’s deans, Dennis Charney and David Muller, said. “We believe that the quality of medical students and future physicians is reflected in their lived experiences, intersecting identities, research accomplishments, commitment to social and racial justice, and a set of core values that are aligned with those of our school.”

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/anti-lockdown-great-barrington-declaration-vindicated-but-much-too-late

Though little noted by the public, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022, was an enormously important day in the history of the pandemic. Prior to that day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommended that anyone who came in contact with a covid positive patient quarantine for a time. For unvaccinated exposed kids, the old guidance counselled either quarantine or negative tests to return to school.  

The new guidance eliminated the recommendation for testing people with no symptoms and eliminated the distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in testing recommendations. The reasoning for the CDC’s shift was explicit. In describing that rationale, Greta Massetti of the CDC said, “this guidance … helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives. We know that COVID-19 is here to stay.”

The CDC’s shift represented a fundamental change in the underlying philosophy of pandemic management. Ever since March 2020 and the infamous “two weeks to slow the spread,” the CDC’s goal — not achieved — had been to reduce or eliminate the spread of the virus. The new guidance accepted the obvious fact that the containment strategy had imposed enormous collateral harm to children, small business owners, and the working class and had not protected the vulnerable against the virus. After years of zoom school, close-contact quarantines, and missed assignments, the lockdown on American kids’ education essentially ended on Aug. 11.

In its place, the CDC adopted a more pragmatic approach more in line with how it had managed the 2009 swine flu pandemic. There is a more than thousand fold higher risk of severe disease outcomes from COVID-19 for infected elderly patients than there is for children who are very rarely hospitalized or die if infected. So not unreasonably, the CDC maintained recommendations aimed at reducing disease spread in nursing homes, such as good ventilation and vigilant testing.  

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-great-resignation-collapsing-health-system/

In an increasing number of countries all over the world chaos and despair is rising. People are more frequently ill and dying at higher rates than the past 50 years. At the same time health systems are deteriorating. We need to rethink humanness of health systems versus cold technological solutions.  

More than a seasonal problem

The pandemic measures have accelerated public health systems to the brink of collapse. In many Western countries these systems are facing severe problems, an inferno of pressures, including staff shortages from pandemic burnout, underpaid salaries, discrimination and a cost-of-living crisis, with many health professionals leaving the workforce while the demand for care from the community is rising. 

The often-used explanation for the current situation in healthcare, a tripledemic after two lockdowns resulting from a surge in winter viruses (RSV, Flu and Covid-19), does not hold. Current data do not represent an outlier season. 

Political ideology and catastrophic leadership costs healthy years of lives 

The health system in the UK is collapsing because of a decade or more of underinvestment in the National Health Service and other public services. The indicators for the health service are all red. Increased ambulance times and people waiting for a hospital bed, stranded outside overflowing hospitals, have spiked since December 2022. The overstretched system, with the longest delays on record for millions of treatments for cancer and operations, has left patients in pain, people enduring unnecessary suffering, and has led to 300-500 people a week dying avoidably because of the unsolved current crisis. The roots lie in political choices made, not cold weather or a seasonal flu.

https://johnhabelesmd.substack.com/p/why-arent-worldwide-excess-deaths?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The Pfizer-Gate Scandal: Mortality Rates reveal a Shocking Truth as 2 Million Excess Deaths are recorded across USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & Europe

It is a true scandal that the the indubitably large excess deaths figures – most likely due to the acute and chronic toxicities of the vaccines – are not being seriously investigated by they authorities that allowed their introduction

The true cause must be revealed by determined officials analysis of all possible factors – the independent analyses all converge on the vaccines as the main plausible cause so far …

https://expose-news.com/2023/01/22/pfizergate-2million-excess-deaths/

https://expose-news.com/2023/01/22/pfizergate-2million-excess-deaths/

https://www.frontpagemag.com/covid-mess-something-very-dark-is-happening/

A co-worker of mine here in California told me about a friend of his, Dave, who never got the COVID shot but, in late December 2021, got COVID. In his early 50s, remarkably fit, with no comorbidities, and with Christmas just a couple of days away, he figured he could ride out the virus at home.

But he only got worse, ending up with symptoms so severe that his wife, fearful for his health, insisted that he go to the hospital after Christmas. With his lungs failing, Dave was put on a ventilator. But once the machine took over his lung function, his lungs atrophied to a point where, without a major medical intervention, he was in big trouble.   

Doctors recommended extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a procedure that temporarily removes the blood from the body, oxygenates it, removes the carbon dioxide, then pumps the blood back through the body.  

But there was one caveat. To get the procedure, both he and his wife would have to get COVID shots – no exceptions. With what the couple was learning about vaccine injuries and the low efficacy of shots and boosters, they felt the risks far outweighed the benefits. Besides, he already had COVID. Natural immunity. Right?   

The hospital didn’t budge. No shot, no procedure. With his life in their hands, this quickly morphed into a nightmare. But the couple didn’t budge, either. At first.  

With time running out, they searched for the rare hospital that had an expensive ECMO machine that would perform the procedure without forcing them to get the shot. No luck. The best they could find was one that only required him, not her, to get it.  

So after months of avoiding it, Dave reluctantly, grudgingly, frustratingly agreed to get the shot. That’s when the nightmare plunged into medical hell. 

ps://www.wsj.com/articles/the-deceptive-campaign-for-bivalent-covid-boosters-cdc-fda-biden-vaccines-moderna-pfizer-wuhan-imprinting-11674400955?mod=opinion

You might have heard a radio advertisement warning that if you’ve had Covid, you could get it again and experience even worse symptoms. The message, sponsored by the Health and Human Services Department, claims that updated bivalent vaccines will improve your protection.

This is deceptive advertising. But the public-health establishment’s praise for the bivalent shots shouldn’t come as a surprise. Federal agencies took the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.

The idea of updating mRNA Covid shots every season originally held promise. One advantage of mRNA technology is that manufacturers can tweak the genetic sequence and rapidly produce new vaccines targeting new variants. Hence the bivalent boosters targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants along with the original Wuhan strain.

But three scientific problems have arisen. First, the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated. Second, vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines. Third, antibodies rapidly wane after a few months.

Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this month showed that bivalent boosters increase neutralizing antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but not significantly more than the original boosters. In one study, antibody levels after the bivalent boosters were 11 times as high against the Wuhan variant as BA.5.

https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covid-vaccines-censorship/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a direct role in policing permissible speech on social media throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Confidential emails obtained by Reason show that Facebook moderators were in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines.

For a broader analysis of the federal government’s pandemic-era efforts to suppress free speech—and whether they violated the First Amendment—see Reason’s March 2023 cover story on the ramifications of these emails. This article provides screenshots of the emails themselves.

After Elon Musk took control of Twitter, he permitted several independent journalists to peruse the company’s previous communications with the FBI, the CDC, the White House, and government officials elsewhere. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, reveal that government bureaucrats put substantial pressure on Twitter to restrict alleged misinformation relating to elections, Hunter Biden, and COVID-19.

The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri’s lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta’s moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/britains-healthcare-meltdown-national-health-service-single-payer-medicare-for-all-rishi-sunak-jeremy-hunt-11673648911?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The American left can’t seem to quit its desire for single-payer Medicare for All. So it’s worth noting that the United Kingdom, which already has a system resembling that socialist dream, is rethinking it amid another winter of healthcare misery.

The National Health Service’s winter crisis has become an annual tradition, but this year’s troubles for the free-at-point-of-service system are significantly worse. The NHS never recovered from the Covid pandemic. That means the normal winter wave of flu, Covid and other respiratory ailments is swamping hospitals and doctors’ offices already coping with a backlog of patients awaiting tests and treatments deferred by lockdowns.

Meanwhile, unions representing nurses and ambulance drivers have gone on strike for days at a time to demand higher pay from their government employer. Perhaps sensing the political weakness of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, the unions are resisting calls for work-rule changes to boost efficiency. They claim strikes don’t affect critical care, but work stoppages inevitably mean more treatment delays.

The effects of all this on patient care can be lethal. Waiting times for ambulances for the most serious calls are getting longer, with the average response time reaching 10 minutes 57 seconds in December, compared to a target of seven. Once patients reach the emergency room, 35% now face waits above four hours between a decision to admit and transfer to an appropriate bed for treatment, the worst performance since 2010.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/01/14/the-damar-hamlin-story-continues-n1661818

It’s encouraging to see that Buffalo Bill’s safety Damar Hamlin is on the road to recovery. One wonders if he will be cleared to resume his career. And if so, one can imagine in a lightsome way a scenario in which he intercepts a pass and rambles for a touchdown while opposing players dive out of the way, desperate to avoid tackling or even touching him. Seriously, though, one wishes only the best for him as he contemplates his future.

His collapse on the field was the most significant and harrowing event of the current NFL season, eclipsing every partisan concern regarding the rivalry of playoff-bound teams vying for an appearance in the Super Bowl. Injuries are expected in so violent a sport, but not the imminent death of a player. I suspect that events of this nature are bound to happen again. As J.D. Rucker writes in The Liberty Daily, “Unfortunately, this isn’t the first and it’s not going to be the last. People suddenly collapsing, especially athletes and others who are engaged in physical activity, are becoming more common than they were just a couple of months ago, and it was really bad back then.”

There has been much controversy regarding the cause of Hamlin’s sudden seizure. Some commentators put it down to commotio cardis, which occurs when a blow to the chest disrupts the heart’s electrical activity — the favored explanation of those who are determined to avoid the elephant in the room. The fact that the blow is usually extremely hard and precisely targeted is dismissed from consideration. Others see the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, the presumably invisible elephant, as the source of cardiac arrest, especially as patently vaccinated young athletes are succumbing in disturbing numbers to myocarditis — in baseball and in rugby, as well as in football — and even in non-contact sports like soccer. The phenomenon is not in doubt.