CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Here’s the interview where Geert Vander Bossche predicts that Covid will break out in a very bad way and a very deadly way especially amongst the vaccinated within a month or two. Heads up and get your antivirals now.

View: https://youtu.be/N5SQrg8bY9g


Thank you. That's the same video I posted here, but I didn't have the youtube link to embed it. I posted the link to Rumble. I'm glad you were able to embed it into the thread.

Geert Vanden Bossche Warns the Vaccinated of Immune Escape Variants
drsyedhaider
Published May 9, 2022
1 hr 20 min 14 sec

Vaccine expert Geert Van Den Bossche, who has worked for GAVI and the Gates Foundation, has been a vocal critic of vaccinating into a pandemic, warning consistently of creating a pandemic of variants and has tried to warn governments around the world of the tragic missteps they have taken with their pandemic programs. He has especially warned against the danger of injecting our children.

In his latest work he is warning of the two step immune evasion of the virus. The first step was increased infectivity, which has occurred, the second step will be increased virulence and he estimates this will take place in the coming months and will only affect those who have been primed by the injections.

See the warning here:

Geert Vanden Bossche Predictions on evolution Covid 19 pandemic [UPDATE May 2022] | Voice for Science and Solidarity

Find me online at: Dr. Syed Haider and Dr. Syed Haider where you can register for free medical chat with my team if you have any questions on medical matters and also request pandemic prescriptions.

This is a second interview Geert did, this is not the one with Del Bigtree. I haven't finished watching it yet but the questions asked are different because this interview is with a medical doctor so it has some discussion that's not in the Del interview, which is also a must watch because Del stops every few minutes and rephrases what Geert says for the layperson watching. I recommend watching this one too as well as the one with Del. Very important and sobering head's up from Geert.
 
Last edited:

Zoner

Veteran Member
Thank you. That's the same video I posted here, but I didn't have the youtube link to embed it. I posted the link to Rumble. I'm glad you were able to embed it into the thread.
This is a second interview Geert did, this is not the one with Del Bigtree. I haven't finished watching it yet but the questions asked are different because this interview is with a medical doctor so it has some discussion that's not in the Del interview, which is also a must watch because Del stops every few minutes and rephrases what Geert says for the layperson watching. I recommend watching this one too as well as the one with Del. Very important and sobering head's up from Geert.
YVW. I think you need to watch both. My eyes glaze over with science I've never heard before but watching both helps to understand it better.
In the Bigtree interview Geert said it will begin to manifest in a month or two but gives no timing in this interview. It really is shocking to think that this virus is going to mutate to its deadliest wave.
Geert said that those of us who caught omnicron are in a way vaccinated naturally. This could get ugly if the vaxed are the major targets and the unvaxed are blamed.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

COVID Vaccines for Kids Under 6 Won’t Have to Meet 50% Efficacy Standard, FDA Official Says
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official told a congressional committee on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 will not have to meet the agency's 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain Emergency Use Authorization.
By Megan Redshaw
05/10/22

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine official told a congressional committee on Friday that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

The FDA is reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for infants and toddlers 6 months to 2 years old, and for children 2 to 6 years old.

The agency is awaiting data on Pfizer and BioNTech’s three-dose regimen for children under age 5 after two doses of its pediatric vaccine failed to trigger an immune response in 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds comparable to the response generated in teens and adults.

According to Endpoints News, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis the agency would not withhold authorization of a pediatric vaccine if it fails to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold for blocking symptomatic infections.

COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.

“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.

The FDA on June 30, 2020, issued guidance that in order for an experimental COVID-19 vaccine to obtain EUA, it must “prevent disease or decrease its severity in at least 50 percent of people who are vaccinated.”

The guidelines were issued during a briefing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, during which senators sought assurances from former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top health officials that the expedited speed of development of COVID-19 vaccines wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the final product.

All previously authorized COVID-19 vaccines and boosters for all age groups were required to meet the FDA’s 50% requirement prior to obtaining EUA.

Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco posted a video responding to the news the FDA would bypass its own standard to authorize pediatric COVID-19 vaccines for kids.

Prasad said:

“Peter Marks from the FDA — he’s the defacto regulator-in-chief when it comes to vaccines — is saying that kids’ vaccines don’t need to hit the target. They don’t need to hit the 50% vaccine efficacy against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 target. That was the target that the FDA themselves came up with in the original pandemic.

“They came up with this target 50% point estimate above, and the lower bound to the 95% confidence interval has to be above 30%. That was their minimum efficacy standard for vaccination. That was the standard they themselves set and that was the standard initial vaccine trials did clear for adults.

“But the pediatric vaccine trials — both the Pfizer and Moderna — appear not to have cleared that bar, and Peter Marks is talking to congressional officials and he is saying that it’s okay, we’ll probably authorize it anyway.”

US FDA drops Kids Vax 50% Efficacy Requirement
— Vinay Prasad, MD MPH (@VPrasadMDMPH) May 10, 2022

Prasad said it was “incredible” that Marks would sign off on a pediatric vaccine if it seems to be mirroring efficacy in adults but is less effective against Omicron.

“We have standards for a reason,” Prasad said. The standard chosen by the FDA was “arbitrary and if anything I’d argue it was on the low side — 50% isn’t as good as what we wanted,” Prasad said.

“Fifty percent is quite low, and if you have a very low vaccine efficacy […] you can have compensatory behavior that actually leads to a lot more viral spread,” he added.

Prasad said when it comes to kids, it’s “kind of a moot point” because estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a few months ago showed 75% of children had seroprevalence — and it’s “probably higher now.”

“Taking a child under the age of 5 who already had and recovered from COVID and trying to make them better off with a vaccine against the original Wuhan ancestral strain — that’s an uphill battle,” Prasad said.

“The absolute upper bound, absolute risk reduction, has got to be super super low because once kids have it and recover from it they generally do pretty well. If they get it again they do even better than the first time.”

Lowering the regulatory standards for vaccine products is not the direction FDA should go, Prasad said. “They need to be upholding the standards they’ve set and raising the standards.”

Prasadd raised concerns over what the standard will be moving forward if the agency doesn’t abide by its own minimum requirement.

“At what point will vaccine efficacy arrive at something the agency doesn’t accept?” He asked.

Prasad said once the FDA does away with EUA, many preschools will immediately mandate COVID-19 vaccines, and they won’t make exceptions for natural immunity or provide any exceptions at all.

“And so what he’s talking about is authorizing a vaccine in a setting where you have 75% minimum seroprevalence and the vaccine efficacy could be less than 50%,” Prasad said. “How much less?”

Pointing to a Moderna press release stating one arm of its trial showed its pediatric vaccines were only 37% and 23% effective, Prasad asked, “How much lower can it go — 10%? How low before Peter Marks says that’s too low?”

Prasad said if the adult vaccine becomes less effective over time, “tell me why that means you should accept the less effective kids’ vaccine?”

Prasad explained:

“If a therapy loses efficacy over time, why does that mean the bar to be a therapy is lower? It should mean that we need new therapies. We need a new mRNA construct.

“You need to kind of aim at the thing that’s actually out there now and not the original thing from two years ago. Maybe you want to rejigger your process. Try something new but it doesn’t mean we keep lowering the bar. This is ridiculous.”

Moderna reports concerning efficacy data for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines

As The Defender reported, Moderna on April 28 asked the FDA to approve its COVID-19 mRNA-1273 vaccine for children 6 months to 6 years old, citing different efficacy numbers than it disclosed in March.

The company conducted separate trials for two versions of the vaccine, one for infants and toddlers aged 6 months to 2 years, and one for children 2 to 6 years, and claimed data showed “a robust neutralizing antibody response” and “a favorable safety profile.”

Yet, Moderna’s KidCOVE study showed the company’s COVID-19 vaccine failed to meet the FDA’s minimum efficacy requirements for EUA in the 2- to under-6 age group, and barely surpassed the agency’s 50% efficacy requirement in the 6-month to 2-year age group — even after the vaccine maker changed its analysis of the study to meet the threshold.
Moderna also did not follow trial participants beyond 28 days, so vaccine effectiveness after that time is unknown. Data from New York state show vaccine effectiveness for the 5-to-11 age group plummets within seven weeks to 12%.

“Here, we’re looking only at the first four weeks,” Dr. Madhava Setty told The Defender. “Although data from New York were in a different age group using a different mRNA vaccine, the effectiveness was remarkably similar after four weeks. Why wouldn’t we expect that the same thing is going to happen?”

The House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Crisis on April 26 asked the FDA for a status update on COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5.

The agency said it was considering holding off on reviewing Moderna’s request to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5 until it has data from Pfizer and BioNTech on their vaccine for children, pushing the earliest possible authorization of a vaccine from May to June.

When asked on Friday whether the FDA’s vaccine advisors would slow-roll Moderna’s applications and wait to review Pfizer’s and Moderna’s applications together, Marks said the meetings set for next month could move up if necessary.
“Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said.

According to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) account of the meeting, Marks said the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee has reserved earlier dates, enabling the agency to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.”

“At the end of the day, we want people to have confidence in getting vaccinated,” Marks said. “We need to get more kids vaccinated, not just in the younger than 5 age range, but also older than 5.”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Beijing Ratchets Up COVID-19 Curbs, Sparking Fears of Citywide Lockdown
By Dorothy Li
May 12, 2022

After gradually tightening COVID-19 curbs over the past few weeks, Beijing officials on May 12 said they “recommend” that residents stay at home while new mass testing is underway.

Panic buying gripped the capital amid rising concern of a citywide lockdown, though authorities have dismissed lockdown speculation as “rumors.”

Xu Hejian, a spokesperson for city officials, said at a briefing that Beijing will conduct three rounds of testing in 11 of the city’s 16 districts and an economic zone for three days, beginning May 13. He urged people to reduce their movements during the period.

With gradually escalating restrictions in China’s capital—most recently the suspension of taxi services in some virus-hit districts—many are nervous that the city is heading toward a Shanghai-style lockdown. The ongoing lockdown in the financial hub started in late March when officials asked its 25 million residents to stay at home so that health workers could complete two rounds of mass screening.

Before announcing the snap lockdown on March 28, Shanghai officials also had rejected lockdown speculation as “rumors.”

Beijing officials, however, said the order doesn’t mean lockdown, calling on people to stop panic buying.

“The so-called lockdown and ‘silent period’ are all rumors,” said Xu, referring to a new term used by officials announcing a lockdown.

“It is unnecessary to hoard food,” Xu said at the press conference. “Residents don’t need to worry, the city’s operations won’t be affected.”

Nevertheless, long lines reappeared outside supermarkets and shops late on May 12. Residents scrambled to stockpile food and other daily necessities, while anxiously listening to Beijing’s daily COVID-19 news conference on their phones.

“This is quite unhealthy because people are in a very nervous mood,” said Grace Zhao, who stood in a 160-foot line outside one supermarket in Chaoyang, Beijing’s most populous district and the epicenter of its current outbreak.

The order comes after Beijing recorded 36 new cases in the previous 24 hours, pushing total infections to nearly 1,000 since April 22. But the official count has increasingly come into question by residents and experts, given the Chinese regime’s history of downplaying and covering up information about outbreaks across the country.

Officials on May 12 placed more residential buildings under lockdown, where new infections were recorded. Beijing has already closed schools, some shopping malls, entertainment, and tourist venues, banned dine-in services at restaurants, and suspended sections of its bus and subway systems since the capital city kicked off mass testing on April 25.

The new order means nearly all of the city’s 22 million residents will take three PCR tests. Residents in the 10 main districts are recommended to work remotely on May 13 and stay home over the weekend. The other five districts in suburban areas will see hotels and scenic spots closed.

The Chinese regime holds tight to its “zero-COVID” policy, aimed at eliminating every infection among communities by restricting movement and placing anyone at risk into mandatory quarantine.

The heavy-handed curbs, which have confined millions in Shanghai to their homes for more than six weeks, is wreaking havoc on the country’s economy and global supply chains. With factory workers and consumers stuck at home and many businesses forced to suspend operations, China’s export growth is at a two-year low and unemployment is at near two-year highs.

On May 12, the yuan hit a new 19-month low, having tumbled almost 6 percent in less than a month.

Criticism of Beijing’s strategy has also grown among residents and experts. The head of the World Health Organization, who had repeatedly praised the regime’s outbreak response earlier in the pandemic, expressed rare concerns about the zero-COVID policy on May 10; his remarks were quickly taken down from China’s tightly controlled internet. The regime has doubled down on censorship as more residents take to social media to share their struggles and report conditions experienced during lockdown or in forced quarantine.

Beijing officials said the results of the mass screening will determine their next move.

Beijing, the country’s political center, has never gone through a full-scale citywide lockdown since the regime launched its zero-COVID playbook at the onset of the pandemic in early 2020.

Reuters contributed to the report.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

NIH Director Says Error Was Made When Chinese Sequencing Data Was Pulled Offline
By Zachary Stieber
May 12, 2022

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) made an error when it took COVID-19 sequencing data offline, the agency’s head said on May 11.

“In the way it was originally eliminated from public view, it was ‘withdrawn.’ And that’s the most difficult for people to access. The error that was made—and we found this out after a review of all of our processes—is, it should have been ‘suppressed,'” Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the acting NIH director, told members of Congress during a hearing in Washington.

Sequences that are withdrawn are kept, but only on a tape drive. In contrast, information that is suppressed can still be accessed by its identifying number, “and so researchers are still able to access that information,” Tabak said.

The doctor did not share more details about the error and the NIH did not respond to a request for comment.

The sequencing data was submitted to the Sequence Read Archive, a database managed by the NIH, in early 2020. The data showed sequences of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.

About three months after it was posted, the same researcher who submitted the data asked for it to be “retracted,” according to emails obtained by a nonprofit called Empower Oversight. The NIH agreed to take the information offline.

The action was first disclosed by Jesse Bloom, an American researcher, in June 2021.

The agency “has no plans to change the policy that recognizes submitters rights to their own data and the right to petition that their data be withdrawn,” an NIH spokesperson said in a previous statement in response to Bloom’s paper.

Both Bloom and Dr. Francis Collins, the NIH’s director until late 2021, described what happened as the deletion of data. The NIH has since contested that description.

On Wednesday, Tabak was questioned by Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) as he appeared before the House Appropriations Committee.

Beutler said she’d been tracking reports of the deletions since 2021 and asserted there were “rational concerns that the Chinese Communist Party had something to do” with the sequencing being taken offline and asked what the NIH was doing to secure the archive from such efforts.

“There’s no question that the communication that we had about the sequence archive could have been improved. I freely admit that,” Tabak said. “If I may, the archive never deleted the sequence. It just did not make it available for interrogation. We have the information.”

“Anybody who submits to the Sequence Read Archive is allowed to ask for it to be removed, and that investigator did do that. But we never erase it,” he said.

When the information was withdrawn, it could not be accessed by researchers or other members of the public. When it was changed to a suppressed status at a later time, researchers who knew its identifying number could view it.

Empower Oversight President Jason Foster told The Epoch Times that the way the data was handled effectively deleted it.
“NIH documents released with Empower Oversight’s report demonstrate that the sequencing data was deleted from public view by the NIH at the request of the Wuhan researcher,” he said.

In giving out the emails to the nonprofit and other organizations, the NIH redacted the name of the Chinese researcher who submitted and requested the retraction. Internal emails suggest it was Ming Wang, who works at the Hospital of Wuhan University and later included some of the data in a paper published by Small.

Chinese officials said that the retraction was requested because the researchers found it “unnecessary” to keep their data in the NIH database when it was being published elsewhere.

The emails show Bloom gave top NIH officials, including Collins and Tabak, notice of his forthcoming paper, with Collins calling what Bloom did “clever sleuthing” that discovered sequences “that were deposited (and then deleted)” from the archive.

After Bloom sent the version of his paper to a preprint website, a conference call was held on the subject that included Dr. Anthony Fauci, Collins, Tabak, and Bloom, among others. Bloom alleged that Dr. Kristian Anderson, a critic of the theory that the virus came from a Chinese lab, said he was a screener at the website and could delete the submitted paper or revise it, according to notes from the call (pdf). Andersen told Vanity Fair the allegations were false.

The Epoch Times has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for information pertaining to the call and for the review of the archive processes.

Mark Tapscott contributed to this report.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Top US Scientist Tried to Help Wuhan Lab Counter Virus Leak Concerns
Efforts coincide with push to deepen collaboration with China
By Eva Fu
May 12, 2022

As the pandemic engulfed the world in 2020, a top U.S. scientist that had for years worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) actively tried to help Chinese researchers at the lab counter concerns that the virus might have originated from the facility, newly released emails show.

These efforts include alerting Chinese scientists of U.S. investigations into the lab and providing them with a list of questions to answer to help respond to outside concerns.

Meanwhile, the U.S. scientist James LeDuc, the then-director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), and his colleagues, engaged in a concerted effort to strengthen their partnership with the Wuhan institute, even as scrutiny over the lab as a potential source of the outbreak mounted as the pandemic progressed, the emails revealed.

On April 16, 2020, as Beijing was facing rising scrutiny over how it had handled the COVID-19 pandemic and whether it had a role in starting the outbreak, an email titled “Rubio” landed in the LeDuc’s inbox.

“I heard from someone in government this evening that Senator Rubio is starting to push for AN investigation regarding Wuhan lab,” the email read. “Just found it on the web at Forbes by Kenneth Repoza. Title of article is ‘eight senators call for investigation into coronavirus origins.'”

The email was from David Franz, a former commander with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and retired colonel. Both scientists had years of contact with the WIV, the facility at the center of speculation over whether the virus may have been leaked from it. LeDuc’s Galveston National Laboratory, in particular, had been working with the WIV and other Chinese virology centers for years on training and collaborative projects.

“Thanks for the heads up. Clearly the topic of the day. Time to pile on and find a scapegoat,” LeDuc wrote back.

In no time, LeDuc forwarded the email to Shi Zhengli, a top scientist at the WIV nicknamed “bat woman” for her research related to bat coronaviruses, to warn her about the investigation. Shi is the head of the facility’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and deputy director of WIV’s Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, the country’s first biosafety-level-4 (P4) laboratory that opened for operation in 2018.

LeDuc wrote that he hoped that Shi had been “surviving all the COVID19 drama” and requested a phone call “sometime soon.”

Shi replied on April 18 rejecting the offer for a call, writing: “Due to the complicated situation, I don’t think it’s a right time to communicate by the call. What I can tell you is that this virus is not a leaky [sic] from our lab or any other labs. It’s a shame to make this scientific question so complicated.”

The message string was part of an email trove recently released under the Texas Public Information Act requests made by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit focusing on food and public health issues, as well as Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog.

Together, the emails paint a picture of how prominent U.S. scientists publicly and privately came to the defense of their colleagues at the WIV and China’s health agencies during the early stages of the pandemic as Beijing faced growing questions about its handling of the pandemic and the virus origins.

“These startling documents show that China had partners here in the United States willing to go to bat for them on the Wuhan lab controversy,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a May 9 statement.

UTMB has disputed this claim. “The GNL has never collaborated with WIV on SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 research—and as the documents themselves demonstrate, Chinese scientists were disappointingly unwilling to collaborate in fighting the disease,” Chris Smith, a director of media relations for the university, told The Epoch Times in an email.

In response to a query from The Epoch Times, Franz said that he “didn’t express an opinion regarding that possible move by the senate” in his email of April 16, 2020. Even if he had, that would have been an opinion held at that time, but “[t]hings have changed a lot since then.”

Helping Out a Friend

As reports first emerged questioning the potential role of the WIV in causing the pandemic, LeDuc reached out to Yuan Zhiming, director of the WIV’s P4 lab, in early February 2020 offering suggestions to counter “misinformation.”

LeDuc urged Yuan to “conduct a thorough review of the laboratory activities associated with research on coronaviruses” so that he would be “fully prepared to answer questions dealing with the origin of the virus.”

“I have the utmost respect and admiration for Dr Shi and I am in no way casting doubt on her or her colleagues. I just think that we need to aggressively address these rumors and presumably false accusations quickly and provide definitive, honest information to counter misinformation. If there are weaknesses in your program, now is the time to admit them and get them corrected,” he wrote. “I trust that you will take my suggestions in the spirit of one friend trying to help another during a very difficult time.”

The email attached a two-page document containing questions about the lab’s activities from October 2019 for Yuan’s consideration. Some of the questions read:

“Is there any evidence to suggest a mechanical failure in biocontainment during the time in question?

“What are the coronaviruses in your possession that are most closely related to nCoV based on genetic sequences and are able to replicate in culture?

“Is anyone on your team conducting gain of function studies, recombination studies or any other studies that may have resulted in the creation of the nCoV?

“How many people have access to the coronavirus stocks and laboratory?

“Have any of individuals working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (main campus or BSL4 campus) been infected with the nCoV? Family members of employees?”

Yuan never answered that email. LeDuc later shared this email with Franz in April 2020, writing, “Please do not forward.”

“Good note … and timely on your part,” replied Franz. “I just hate for our friends to have to deal with all this, as you note … particularly in their world.”

LeDuc seemed to understand the evasiveness from the Chinese side, as he would note in an email to Franz a week later.
“I think they are under pretty strict orders to keep quite [sic],” he wrote.

The UTMB scientists appeared to welcome the news when WIV’s Yuan appeared in a Chinese state media interview on April 18, 2020, defending the facility.

“I’m glad Zhiming is speaking up. I have been encouraging him and Zhengli Shi to speak up. Their direct engagement is essential. Otherwise, all we do is secondary,” wrote senior molecular biologist UTMB Shi Pei-yong.

When reached by The Epoch Times about the February 2020 note and subsequent emails, Franz said he “would have been surprised if [Yuan] Zhiming answered or responded fully, because of the quite different world in which they live and work.”

“I did ‘hate’ [that] the colleagues we had been working with have to deal with media and the bureaucracy above them,” he said in an email, noting that “we were leaning toward a wet market origin in April 2020.”

“We had obviously had good working relationships with some of our Chinese colleagues as they were very interested in operating the new WIV BSL-4 lab safely,” he told The Epoch Times. “These labs are VERY complex; a lab director would, by definition, have some serious concerns not having the experienced and expert staff that I inherited when I was asked to command USAMRIID those many years ago.”

USAMRIID refers to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Franz served as a commander from 1995 to 1998.

LeDuc’s support for the WIV and its researchers in early 2020 came at a time when scrutiny over the lab as a culprit in leaking the virus was a taboo topic among discussion among many mainstream scientific, political, and media channels.

While Shi and other scientists at WIV have denied that the virus leaked from the lab, the Chinese regime has not allowed outside investigators to inspect records and data from the facility to properly probe the matter.

It wasn’t until mid-2021 when the theory became a focus of public discussion after mounting reports about the lab’s gain-of-function research activities, its collaboration with the Chinese military, its suppression of information, and that staff were hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019. This culminated in President Joe Biden instructing the intelligence community to provide a report on the source of the pandemic, including the lab leak theory, a report that ultimately was inconclusive about how the outbreak emerged.

[continued next post]
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
[continued from above]


Two Labs in Partnership

The Galveston National Laboratory is a federally-funded P4)facility that has trained staff from the WIV and conducted joint research projects with them since 2013. LeDuc and other senior UTMB staff also maintained close contact with WIV scientists, including Shi.

The U.S. national lab in 2017 signed a memorandum of understanding with the WIV that would entitle the latter to request the destruction of “secret files,” which under the document’s broad definition applied to potentially all documents and details arising from their collaboration.

In a draft statement made on the Galveston letterhead dated April 20, 2020, LeDuc said Shi had described her studies of bat-associated coronaviruses in a September 2015 meeting, where she “concluded that there was significant potential risk of transmission of some of these viruses to humans.”

He then noted that Shi was the scientist who discovered the link between bats and the SARS virus that spread across the world from China in 2002 to 2003.

“She has participated in each of our dialogues; in every session, she has been fully engaged, very open and transparent about her work, and eager to collaborate,” wrote LeDuc.

“There is convincing evidence that the new virus was not the result of intentional genetic engineering and that it almost certainly originated from nature given its high similarity to other known bat-associated coronaviruses,” he continued.

The director added that he had toured the WIV P4 facility in 2017 before it began operations, and considered it to be “of comparable quality and safety measures as any currently in operation in the US or Europe.”

The statement, which was not publicly released, appeared to have been prepared by LeDuc to address the history of the two labs’ joint work to be submitted to university leadership and Congressional committees being formed to probe the virus origins, April 2020 emails sent by LeDuc indicate.

In one email from LeDuc to Shi on April 16, 2020, LeDuc appears to have attached the statement, while asking Shi to review its contents. Because the statement appeared later in the tranche of documents released under the freedom of information request, it is unclear if this version was attached to the email.

“Please review carefully and make any changes that you would like. I want this to be as accurate as possible and I certainly do not want to misrepresent any of your valuable contributions,” LeDuc said. “I need to submit this on Monday, 20 April, so your prompt reply would be very much appreciated.”

Shi responded by sending some reference materials and provided a document with her revisions to the statement. The document, which was an email attachment, was not included in the email tranche disclosure.

LeDuc told his colleagues two days later that he had more than one hour teleconference with five to six people from the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations to discuss the possible lab leak.

‘Our Friends in China’

LeDuc also publicly defended the Chinese regime’s initial response to the pandemic, even as he and some colleagues privately expressed some frustration at the lack of response from the Chinese scientists they had been working with when they sought data about the new virus.

In mid-January 2020, about two weeks after the first report of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Chinese city Wuhan, LeDuc penned an op-ed article for local media, the draft of which he shared with several senior Chinese health officials soliciting their opinion. Among the recipients were George Gao, director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Yuan, director of the WIV’s P4 lab.

With the working title “Chinese Response to New Virus Shows Promise,” the draft article praised how China “quickly isolated the patients, and instituted an impressive set of interventions to limit the spread of disease and characterize the new pathogen.”

“Importantly, they have been transparent in sharing their findings with the world, thus allowing other nations to be on the lookout for the new disease,” LeDuc added.

The article appeared to overlook the fact that the Chinese regime took weeks to confirm that the virus could spread among people, despite there being ample evidence on the ground of transmission occurring in hospitals and elsewhere, and its suppression of COVID-19 information and data.

Despite the upbeat tone expressed in the op-ed, LeDuc in an email revealed some reservations to a close acquaintance.

“I hope I’m not overstating their competence in responding…,” he wrote to Franz on Jan. 17, 2020, before the article’s publication. To another Chinese scientist, LeDuc acknowledged that he didn’t have the “specific examples to note if asked” about China’s “impressive” measures referenced in the article, and asked if his colleague could provide any.

Minutes after the article’s publication online on Jan. 21, Franz would send a note to LeDuc congratulating him, copying Gao of China’s CDC and WIV’s Yuan.

“Well done, Jim … and our friends in China,” he wrote.

Yuan later replied and thanked LeDuc for his “positive attitu[d]e to Chinese public health response system and the practice.”

Franz told The Epoch Times that the contentions in LeDuc’s op-ed were appropriate given it was written based on events prior to Jan. 21, 2020.

“On that date, I still believe the oped was appropriate. And I might say the same thing in response,” Franz said in an email.

“I would not necessarily write the same thing 6 months later … nor would he.”

“I’m sure Chinese scientists and clinicians knew that had a problem on 21 Jan and well before, but probably just not how big a problem,” he added.

The op-ed’s publication occurred at a time when UTMB’s repeated efforts to get original viral samples from China were hitting a brick wall.

“With cases occurring outside China, others will soon have their own isolates and China will have lost the opportunity for leadership,” LeDuc wrote to Yuan on Jan. 22, 2020, urging for more openness on virus data.

“And if scientific publications start appearing from Chinese investigators without the world having independent access to a strain, China will likely be heavily criticized.”

Yuan replied that he would “try [his] best to promote the sharing of viral strains,” and LeDuc days later would coordinate a formal letter to push the matter forward.

But the Galveston lab never ended up receiving virus samples from China. Three weeks later, though, it was able to source samples from an infected patient in Washington who traveled to China.

UTMB told The Epoch Times that WIV had denied their request for samples. “UTMB scientists were forced to obtain samples for research from U.S. patients who had been infected with COVID-19 and used these in its important work to combat COVID-19. The lack of cooperation and transparency from Chinese institutions remains troubling,” Smith, the university spokesperson, said in an email.

Dismissing the Lab Leak Theory

On April 15, 2020, Frederick Murphy, a professor emeritus of UTMB who while working at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) helped discover the Ebola virus, wrote to LeDuc and two other UTMB faculty members asking for advice about what he called the virus “conspiracy” that “the CoV came from the Wuhan lab.”

“I need some advice / fodder to deal with this, as the stuff spreads around here—several retired ambassadors live here (stuffy, arrogant types),” he said before asking if the UTMB or the Galveston Lab have put out public statements countering these allegations.

The request brought a prompt reply from LeDuc and Thomas Ksiazek, a UTMB professor specializing in pathology, microbiology, and immunology, who had coordinated U.S. outbreak response to Ebola and SARS as the head of the special pathogens branch at the CDC in Atlanta.

“As you know there have been no end to the stories on the origin of the virus,” wrote Ksiazek. While a prominently-cited article in the science journal Nature by scientist Kristian Andersen and others “pretty much puts an end to the stories that the virus was cooked up in the lab,” he said, other theories are emerging that the virus might have been a lab leak and that lab researchers became “patient 0” after getting infected in the field.

“I don’t know, but don’t think they were working with live bats,” Ksiazek wrote in the email, adding that based on a colleague’s “discussions with the ‘bat lady,’ Dr. Shi, I don’t believe that they had this virus in the lab before this started.”

Declassified emails would later reveal that Andersen had said some of the features of the virus “look engineered” weeks before publishing the March 2020 study.

Video footage from 2017, featured on the website of the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences that administers the WIV, as well as in Chinese media reports, also showed live bats being held in cages inside the facility. In one, a researcher feeds a bat held in his hands protected by blue surgical gloves.

“I’m a lot more worried about the US status as a leader in world public health and science than Chinamen hiding behind every tree,” Ksiazek wrote. “Not that there isn’t some level of industrial espionage occurring, but we’re killing ourselves in terms of how we’re seen by others.”

“I agree with Tom’s assessments (of course!),” was LeDuc’s response before he went on to detail the joint meetings he participated in annually with Chinese researchers at WIV since 2015. LeDuc added he never heard about any safety concerns from the Wuhan lab until coming across an April 14 Washington Post opinion article on leaked State Department cables. That report stated that a 2018 cable expressed concerns about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV, and warned that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses posed a pandemic risk.

Push to Deepen Ties

The emails reveal that the U.S. officials and scientists maintained an interest in collaborating with the Chinese as the pandemic raged on and despite growing attention on the possible role of the WIV in spreading the initial outbreak.

On Feb. 3, 2020, as the UTMB was still scrambling for access to Chinese virus data, LeDuc wrote that he got “strong encouragement” from a Department of Health and Human Services official to “try to initiate real collaborative studies between our lab and Wuhan.”

“Folks are recognizing the value of the engagement we have developed—hopefully this will translate into some sustained funding,” he wrote to Franz.

In an April 2020 email with the subject “China bio grants and project plan,” Benjamin Rusek, a senior program officer with the National Academy of Science (NAS) informed the UTMB researchers that NAS was unable to extend the two grants for their “bio activities with China” that were soon to expire. He then suggested holding bilateral meetings on how they utilize the remaining funds, including on “gene editing technology to combat SARS-CoV-2.”

“Pei-yong, do you think that our Chinese friends would be willing to participate?” Rusek wrote, noting that “all discussion would be off the record.”

The scientists received his proposal with enthusiasm. “If you believe the press, it looks like they have been successful in their control efforts and perhaps we could learn from them,” wrote LeDuc later that month as they organized the meeting.

The email records suggest that two virtual conferences between Chinese and American health officials and scientists took place in mid-May 2020. Rusek also told a corresponding officer from China’s CDC not to issue a press release or inform the media for the moment.

Last June, when the lab leak theory gained mainstream attention, LeDuc again floated the idea of engaging with China.

“The politics are probably too intense now to really do anything,” he said, adding that they could try to kickstart discussions with their Chinese counterparts by drawing upon a 2018 joint editorial published in Science announcing the two labs’ partnership.

“[T]he editorial is tangible evidence of our work together and would perhaps offer China an opportunity to engage in an activity that may have wide global support,” LeDuc wrote.

‘Sincere Thanks’

LeDuc and others meanwhile had sought to keep the engagement going at a personal level.

In July 2020, LeDuc forwarded headlines of several recently-published papers on American scientific journals to Shi and Yuan of WIV, writing: “You May find the first two papers of special interest.”

One of them read: “Keep Politics out of Funding Decisions for Medical Research and Public Health.”

“Thank you for the information,” Shi wrote back. “I appreciated very much the spirit support from scientis [sic] in USA.”
LeDuc received an invitation in January 2021 to join the editorial board for the Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity co-edited by Yuan. Although there’s no sign he replied to it.

A month later, Yuan responded to a “Happy New Year” note from LeDuc to express his “sincere thanks” to LeDuc and his colleagues’ “assistance for the safety and secure operation of the lab” in Wuhan.

“During the last year, we all experienced the hardest time, fighting against the virus, fighting against the rumors. The lab operated smoothly [and] efficiently, providing a crucial platform for pathogen identifiication, animal modeling, antiviral drug screening and vaccine development, and we are very proud of the role and achievements of the laboratory,” he wrote. “I really hope you could come back here after the epidemic and we could share our understanding on lab management and infectious disease control.”

In response to an inquiry by The Epoch Times about the email exchanges between LeDuc and others, UTMB said that the university and Galveston National Lab “firmly believe academic research and the exchange of best practices in biosafety and lab operations must be a global pursuit.”

“As scientists, we collaborate with colleagues around the world to develop countermeasures to safeguard the public health and national security of the United States,” a spokesperson said in an email.

Murphy, Ksiazek, Rusek, Shi of UTMB, and Shi and Yuan of WIV didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ inquiries by press time.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

North Korea Confirms ‘1st’ Cases of COVID-19, Enters ‘Severe Emergency’ Lockdown
By Katabella Roberts
May 12, 2022

North Korea has entered a “severe emergency” after confirming its first official cases of COVID-19, with leader Kim Jong Un ordering a nationwide lockdown on May 12.

According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a number of people in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, had contracted the Omicron coronavirus variant, also known as BA.2, although no further details were provided as to the exact number of people who have tested positive or possible sources of infection.

The samples of the infected people were collected on May 8, the news agency stated.

North Korea’s confirmed infections come more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic. The country has claimed to have kept the virus at bay, despite it spreading rapidly across the globe.

The nation was one of the first countries to shut down its borders in January 2020 in an effort to prevent the virus from spreading via foreign countries.

However, experts have widely disputed North Korea’s claims regarding having zero cases of COVID-19.

“There has been the biggest emergency incident in the country, with a hole in our emergency quarantine front, that has been kept safely over the past two years and three months since February 2020,” the state-run KCNA news agency said in reference to the new cases.

KCNA stated that Kim ordered the nation to “strictly lock down” across all regions to prevent the highly-transmissible virus from spreading and vowed to eradicate the outbreak.

He also said emergency reserve medical supplies would be mobilized, according to KCNA.

“The state epidemic prevention work shall be switched over to the maximum emergency epidemic prevention system,” the news agency reported.

This isn’t the first time that Kim has ordered a lockdown in his country, albeit not on such a large scale.

In July 2020, the North Korean leader declared a “maximum emergency” and ordered Kaesong, which is located near the border with South Korea, to be placed on lockdown for three weeks after a suspected COVID-19 case was reported.

Research and advocacy organization Human Rights Watch warned earlier this year that North Korea’s strict pandemic measures, including shutting down its borders to foreign visitors and trade, have further strengthened the government’s already strict control over its people while simultaneously creating a humanitarian crisis.

“North Korea used COVID-19 restrictions to further oppress the North Korean people while igniting a crisis over access to food, medicine, and other essential goods,” said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“Governments and international institutions should press the North Korean government to accept monitored international assistance like food, vaccines, and medicine and to be transparent and non-discriminatory in addressing the pandemic.”

According to the latest data from the World Health Organization, 64,207 North Koreans have received COVID-19 testing and all tests had been found negative as of March 31.

However, it’s unclear if or how many of North Korea’s population of 26 million people have been vaccinated, given that the nation rejected shipments of vaccines from the COVAX global COVID-19 vaccine-sharing program and the Sinovac Biotech vaccine from China, which would require international monitoring.

South Korea’s government said on May 11 that it had issued renewed offers of humanitarian assistance to North Korea following news of the outbreak, but that Pyongyang has yet to respond.

Reuters contributed to this report.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Biden Handing Over U.S. Sovereignty to WHO
by Peter Breggin MD and Ginger Ross Breggin
Originally posted to America Out Loud May 4, 2022

Please take seriously the severity of this existential threat to everything free people hold dear. Do everything in your power to pass this report on to others and to find ways to communicate with and to influence people to stop empowering WHO to take over our national sovereignty and freedom.

On May 22-28, 2022, ultimate control over America’s healthcare system, and hence its national sovereignty, will be delivered for a vote to the World Health Organization’s governing legislative body, the World Health Assembly (WHA).

This threat is contained in new amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations, proposed by the Biden administration, that are scheduled as “Provisional agenda item 16.2” at the upcoming conference on May 22-28, 2022.1

These amendments will empower WHO’s Director-General to declare health emergencies or crises in any nation and to do so unilaterally and against the opposition of the target nation. The Director-General will be able to declare these health crises based merely on his personal opinion or consideration that there is a potential or possible threat to other nations.

If passed, the Biden Administration’s proposed amendments will, by their very existence and their intention, drastically compromise the independence and the sovereignty of the United States. The same threat looms over all the U.N.’s 193 member nations, all of whom belong to WHO and represent 99.44% of the world population.2

These regulations are a “binding instrument of international law entered into force on 15 June 2007.”3 U.N. members states can be required by law to obey or acquiesce to them.

How It Became Official

On January 18, 2022, with no public awareness, officials from the Biden Administration sent the World Health Organization these extensive amendments to strengthen WHO’s ability to unilaterally intervene into the affairs of nations merely suspected of having a “health emergency” of possible concern to other nations.4 The U.S. amendments cross out a critical existing restriction in the regulations: “WHO shall consult with and attempt to obtain verification from the State Party in whose territory the event is allegedly occurring…”5 By eliminating that, and other clauses (see below), all the shackles will be removed from the Director-General of WHO, enabling him to declare health emergencies at will.

The amendments would give WHO the right to take important steps to collaborate with other nations and other organizations worldwide to deal with any nation’s alleged health crisis, even against its stated wishes. The power to declare health emergencies is a potential tool to shame, intimidate, and dominate nations. It can be used to justify ostracism and economic or financial actions against the targeted nation by other nations aligned with WHO or who wish to harm and control the accused nation.

Although sponsored by an American administration, WHO’s most significant use of this arbitrary authority to declare national emergencies will be used against the United States if our government ever again dares to take anti-globalist stands as it did under the Trump administration.

How Much Time Do We Have to Stop the Amendments?

The contents of the proposed amendments were not made public until April 12, 2022,6 leaving little time to protest before the scheduled vote. As noted, the amendments are scheduled and almost certainly will be enacted May 22-28, 2022.

The existing WHO regulations then provide for an 18-month grace period during which a nation may withdraw its “yes” vote for amendments, but the current proposed amendments would reduce that opportunity to six months. If the U.S.-sponsored amendments are passed, a majority of the nations could, in the next six months, change their individual votes and reverse the approval. But this is a much more difficult proposition than stopping the whole process now.

We must act now to prevent the passage of the amendments, including putting sufficient pressure on the United States to withdraw them from consideration. If that fails, and the amendments are approved at the May meeting of the WHO governing body, we must then make the effort to influence a majority of the nations to change their votes to “no.”

Without Organized Resistance, the Amendments Will Definitely Pass

On January 26, 2022, the same U. S. Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva sent a one-page memo to WHO confirming that the amendments had been sent. It also contained a brief report by the same Loyce Pace, Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs HHS.7 Most importantly, the memo listed all the nations backing the U.S. amendments. The size and power of the group guarantee that the amendments will be passed if unopposed by significant outside pressure.

Here are the 20 nations, plus the European Union, listed by the U.S. as supporting the amendments:

Albania, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, India, Jamaica, Japan, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Peru, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, Uruguay, Member States of the European Union (EU).

The European Union, a globalist organization, has been among the biggest backers of increasing WHO’s global power. The EU includes the following 27 Western nations:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.

That’s a total of 47 nations supporting the U.S.-authored amendments. All of them have endorsed empowering WHO to declare a possible or potential health emergency or crisis within any nation despite its objections and refusal to cooperate. To repeat, these amendments will pass unless American citizens, as well as citizens worldwide, mount a very strong opposition.

Defining “Health” and WHO’s Domain of Authority

According to the Foreward to WHO’s regulations, there is no specific limit to what constitutes a health emergency, and it is certainly not limited to pandemics. WHO’s domain includes:8

a scope not limited to any specific disease or manner of transmission, but covering “illness or medical condition, irrespective of origin or source, that presents or could present significant harm to humans…

WHO’s powerful reach is also defined by the number of other organizations it is authorized to cooperate with once it has declared an emergency or health crisis: “other competent intergovernmental organizations or international bodies with which WHO is expected to cooperate and coordinate its activities, as appropriate, include the following: United Nations, International Labor Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Maritime Organization, International Committee of the Red Cross, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, International Air Transport Association, International Shipping Federation, and Office International des Epizooties.”9

The Preamble to the WHO Constitution (separate from the International Health Regulations) summarizes WHO’s concept of what is included under its mandate of improving, guiding, and organizing world health:10

WHO remains firmly committed to the principles set out in the preamble to the Constitution

  • Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
  • The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.
  • The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent on the fullest cooperation of individuals and States.
  • The achievement of any State in the promotion and protection of health is of value to all.
  • Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of diseases, especially communicable diseases, is a common danger.
  • Healthy development of the child is of basic importance; the ability to live harmoniously in a changing total environment is essential to such development.
  • The extension to all peoples of the benefits of medical, psychological, and related knowledge is essential to the fullest attainment of health.
  • Informed opinion and active co-operation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people.
  • Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.
Given WHO’s assessment of the breadth of its health concerns, mandates, and goals — almost any kind of problematic situation that affects the people of a nation could be considered a health problem. Indeed, under WHO’s approach, it would be difficult to find any important national issue that was not a potential health problem. With the imminent passage of the American-sponsored amendments to the International Health Regulations, WHO will have free reign for using these expansive definitions of health to call a crisis over anything it wishes in any nation it desires.

WHO’s Sweeping New Powers

The sweeping new powers will be invested in the Director-General of WHO to act on his own. The Director-General is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, commonly known as Tedros. Tedros, the first non-physician director-general of WHO, is an extremely controversial Marxist activist and politician from Ethiopia installed by the Chinese Communist Party. Despite the fact that his role as the cover-up apologist for the Chinese Communists at the onset of COVID-19, this “dear friend of Anthony Fauci” was re-elected without opposition in 2022 to a second five-year term.11 His original election in 2017, followed by his re-election without opposition in 2022, is an ominous display of Chinese Communist influence over WHO,12 which makes further empowering the U.N. agency extremely dangerous.

Under the new regulations, WHO will not be required to consult with the identified nation beforehand to “verify” the event before taking action. This requirement is stricken by the U.S. amendments (Article 9.1). The amendments require a response in 24 hours from the identified nation, or WHO will identify it as “rejection” and act independently (Article 10.3). If the identified nation “does not accept the offer of collaboration within 48 hours, WHO shall … immediately share with the other State Parties the information available to it…” (Article 10.4).

Indicating the breadth of WHO’s scope of power, the agency will be given the right to involve multiple other U.N. agencies, including those related to food and agriculture, animal health, environmental programs, “or other relevant entities” (Article 6.1). This, too will not require the permission of the identified nation. The targeted nation is also required to send to WHO any relevant genetic sequence data. And as we have seen, the Foreward to these regulations presents a much larger array of potential collaborating agencies

Under the proposed regulations, WHO itself would develop and update “early warning criteria for assessing and progressively updating the national, regional, or global risk posed by an event of unknown causes or sources…” (New article 5). Notice that the health-endangering event may be so nonspecific as to have “unknown causes or sources.” Thus, Tedros and any future Director-Generals of WHO will be given unrestricted powers to define and then implement their interventions.

The proposed regulations, in combination with existing ones, allow action to be taken by WHO, “If the Director-General considers, based on an assessment under these Regulations, that a potential or actual public health emergency of international concern is occurring…” (Article 12.2). That is, Tedros need only “consider” that a “potential or actual” risk is occurring.

Global Supporters of WHO

WHO is not a global powerhouse by itself. Early in the pandemic, it acted as a front group for the international exploiters of humanity, whom we describe in our new book COVID-19 and the Global Predators. In particular, it made certain the Chinese Communists could hide the seriousness of the pandemic while spreading to the world on passenger airplanes from its major cities, including Wuhan itself. We have already noted and documented that the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping have enormous influence over WHO.

Even after Donald Trump slashed the U.S. contribution to WHO in February 2020, the U.S. remained the largest donor to WHO. On March 31, 2020, the U.S. contribution was $115.8 million, followed by China at approximately one-half that amount, followed by Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Brazil.13

Then in early July 2020, Trump notified Congress and the U.N. that it was formally withdrawing from WHO. Bill Gates quickly announced he was increasing his contribution from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to $250 million.14

After the Communist Chinese Party, Bill Gates probably has the most influence over WHO. In our book, COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey, we describe in Chapter 15 how Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and the giant medical foundation Wellcome Trust created CEPI — The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. This became the center of global predatory activities in preparation for the anticipated pandemic. It brought together key U.S. agencies, including the FDA, CDC, NIAID, NIH, the U.N., WHO, giant pharmaceutical companies, banks, and multiple other sources of wealth and power.

In 2017, or earlier, CEPI made an agreement called a memorandum of understanding with WHO. CEPI then presented a PowerPoint presentation to WHO in July 2017, in effect dividing up the world between the Gates’ CEPI and WHO in the coming pandemic. Gates would handle the financing, supply, and distribution of the vaccines, and WHO would control and monitor the scientific and medical community. Among the stipulations of the PowerPoint, which the Gates-created foundation presented, was that the pharmaceutical companies would be reimbursed for all direct and indirect costs by the government for developing their high-speed manufacturing platforms.

WHO was highly effective during COVID-19 in implementing the aims of the global predators, led by the groups around Bill Gates and the Chinese Communist Party, in their organized assault and terror campaign against the Western democracies. This purposely resulted in the vast weakening of any potentially anti-globalist, freedom-oriented, patriotic nations, including the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and others. That success may explain why the global predators chose WHO to now deliver a major and potentially lethal death blow to the sovereignty of the world’s nations.

[continued next post]
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
[continued from above]

Europeans Call for Additional Further Increases in WHO’s Power

There is a growing debate over further increasing the power of WHO to punish uncooperative or dissident nations.15 Some “have sounded the alarm about giving the WHO too much power at the expense of national sovereignty.” Some have voiced concern about China’s influence on WHO: “Not only has it increased its payment to the WHO in recent years, but it also enjoys a special relationship with its leader.”

But others are calling for increasing WHO’s ability to sanction non-compliant nations. Echoing recent plans publicized by the Biden administration, some nations are calling for “national and global coordinated actions to address the misinformation, disinformation, and stigmatization that undermine public health.” German Health Minister Jens Spahn has proposed “that countries that fail to follow up on their commitments to the WHO should face sanctions.” Tedros has said, “maybe exploring the sanctions may be important.”

Treaties with WHO: Another Enormous Threat to Sovereignty — With a Longer Timeline

Before we learned about this current and more immediate threat to U.S. sovereignty, we were focusing on WHO’s plans to begin making treaties with individual nations to take over their general healthcare structures, making WHO the guiding and central authority for the world’s healthcare. In addition to many radio, TV, and public appearances giving the details about this threat, we have written a column on America Out Loud, dated February 18, 2022, “Tedros Introduces Globalist Plan to Take Over World’s Health Systems.”16

If implemented, the treaties become an even greater threat than the amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations, but we have more time to deal with the treaties than with the amendments.

We need to face that these American-sponsored amendments are a great step toward America voluntarily forfeiting its sovereignty to the New World Order or Great Reset — and that without strong opposition, the ratification of the amendments is a foregone conclusion. Our success or failure in stopping the ratification of these amendments will establish the pattern for the future, including WHO’s ongoing effort to make legally-binding treaties that rob nations of their sovereignty.

Why Would the U.S. Government Surrender Its Sovereignty

Why would the U.S. give away its sovereignty to other nations? In reality, that process has been going on at least since President Wilson’s failed attempt to get the Senate to approve U.S. membership in the League of Nations. It has escalated since World War II, often under the umbrella and authority of the United Nations, with which many global predators are enamored and use as the cover story for their predations. As documented in our book, COVID-19 and the Global Predators, Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab have both worked out cooperative agreements for their versions of the New World Order with the U.N.

President Biden has recently told the Business Round Table — the presidents and CEOs of the wealthiest 200 corporations in America — that they must lead the growing New World Order:17

“And now is a time when things are shifting. We’re going to — there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”

John Kerry, the President’s climate czar, had announced that when Americans elected Biden, they voted for the Great Reset, whether they knew it or not.18

Discussion and Conclusions

The planning for these devastating U.S.-sponsored amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations has been so stealthy that it might have escaped attention except for the efforts of one individual, James Roguski. He was the first to recognize this threat, and on March 31, 2022, he published a report headlined, “WAKE UP and Smell the Burning of Our Constitution.”19 He also helped us by reviewing the material and this report with us. Fortunately, our courageous medical colleague Robert Yoho originally alerted us to Roguski’s work and its importance.20

We are facing an imminent threat to U.S. sovereignty by these legally-binding amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations that — without stiff opposition — will almost certainly be passed during the upcoming meeting of WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly, May 22-28, 2022. As noted earlier, there is a six-month grace period following approval of amendments during which countries may withdraw their approval, but a majority doing so seems highly unlikely. Right now, we must focus on preventing the WHA from approving the amendments.

We must immediately mount an international campaign, especially focused within America, to force the U.S. to withdraw these amendments before they come to a vote. Otherwise, America and the nations of the world will take a giant stride toward forfeiting national sovereignty to WHO and the U.N. In reality; they will be forfeiting their sovereign powers to the global predators who rule the U.N. and WHO, including the Chinese Communist Party and supporters of the Great Reset, like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and giant foundations and corporations — all of whom benefit from weakening or destroying the sovereignty of the Western nations. Western civilization, and mainly the United States, is all that stands in strong opposition to the globalist takeover of the world, called the New World Order or the Great Reset.

Primary Author Peter R Breggin MD

References:

1 /WHO/U.S.-proposed-amendments-to-WHO-International-Health-Regulations-with-cover-materials_1.pdf Top lefthand corner provides the date and proposal ID.

2 Members of the UN - United Nations

3 International Health Regulations (2005) (who. int) These are the original WHO International Health Regulations before the proposed amendments by the U.S.A. The Overview on this page (before going to the link to the Regulations) in the second sentence contains the statement about their legally binding nature.

4 /WHO/U.S.-proposed-amendments-to-WHO-International-Health-Regulations-with-cover-materials_1.pdf The document dated January 18, 2022, is found on pages 3-4, From the “Permanent Mission of the United States of America to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva.” It lists the Amendments as an enclosure, along with a “Letter from HHS Assistant Secretary Loyce Pace.”

5 /WHO/U.S.-proposed-amendments-to-WHO-International-Health-Regulations-with-cover-materials_1.pdf See p. 6 of the amendments, Article 9 (1.).

6 /WHO/U.S.-proposed-amendments-to-WHO-International-Health-Regulations-with-cover-materials_1.pdf The date is in the upper righthand corner.

7 Strengthening WHO Preparedness for and Response to Health Emergencies This is a One-page statement from U.S. to WHO about amendments. Lists supporting nations and DHHS support.

8 International Health Regulations (2005) (who.int). Download the Regulations and go to the Foreward.

9 International Health Regulations (2005) (who.int). International Health Regulations, Section on Revision Of The International Health Regulations, pp. 3-4.

10 Constitution of the World Health Organization

11 Controversial World Health Organization chief Tedros unopposed for second term. Even The New York Times had serious reservations about Tedros’ initial nomination, citing allegations of his covering up epidemics in his home country of Ethiopia: Candidate to Lead the W.H.O. Accused of Covering Up Epidemics (Published 2017)

12 https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/

13 Infographic: The Biggest Financial Contributors To The WHO

14 https://www.usnews.com/news/article...-to-who-nearly-match-those-from-us-government

15 Swab, Petr. Proposal to Sanction Countries Disobeying WHO Pandemic Response Rules is Concerning: Author. The Epoch Times, April 14, Updated April 19, 2022. Swab’s report is the source for all the quotes in this section. is Proposal to Sanction Countries Disobeying WHO Pandemic Response Rules Is Concerning: Author

16 https://www.americaoutloud.com/tedros-introduces-globalist-plan-to-take-over-worlds-health-systems/

17 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...e-business-roundtables-ceo-quarterly-meeting/

18 https://redstate.com/heartlandinstitute/2020/11/30/john-kerry-great-reset-will-happen-n286949 We have also checked a video of Kerry’s remarks.

19 https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/wake-up-and-smell-the-burning-of?s=r

20 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1718994/...nization-who-is-trying-to-take-over-the-world
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve42PHy7O00
Mass natural immunity
24 min 43 sec
Dr. John Campbell

May 12, 2022

Report of woman's health education, Link to Wefwafwa’s channel https://www.youtube.com/c/WefwafwaAndrew (if you subscribe to this channel this will help our work in Uganda) Link to original video on woman’s health https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80qyC... Other videos with sufferers from vaccine injury ONS https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati... Percentage of people testing positive Week ending 30th April 2022 2.91% in England (1 in 35 people) 4.33% in Wales (1 in 25 people) 2.45% in Northern Ireland (1 in 40 people) 3.55% in Scotland (1 in 30 people) Evidence of natural immune protection People were more likely to test positive, if they: had not previously been infected with COVID-19 (people previously infected were protected against infection) travelled abroad in the last 28 days (air travel increases risk of infection) reported being of White ethnicity (non-white ethnicity protects against infection) had not had contact with hospitals (contact with hospitals protects against infection) lived in less deprived areas (Living deprived areas protects against infection) had not been living with a child aged 16 years or under (Living with an under 16 year old, decreases risk of infection) (Not living with an under 16 year old increases risk of infection) Deaths, week ending 29 April 2022 1,247 deaths involving COVID-19 registered in the UK This is an increase from 1,247 deaths in the previous week (ending 22 April 2022). The risk of death involving COVID-19 was higher for disabled people Risk was greater for more-disabled people than less-disabled people. Between 24 January 2020 and 9 March 2022 Risk of death in the disabled Women Times 1.6 higher for more-disabled women than for non-disabled women Men Times 1.4 higher for more-disabled men than for non-disabled men Less-disabled men and less-disabled women Times 1.3 higher compared with non-disabled men and non-disabled women This risk for the disabled was largely unchanged across each wave of the pandemic Proportion of death certificates where the death was due to COVID-19 that had a pre-existing condition, January to March 2022, England and Wales ill-defined conditions, 23.2% (This was the first time Diabetes was not the most common pre-existing condition since October to December 2020) Dementia and Alzheimer’s, 18.2% Chronic lower respiratory diseases,15.8% Diabetes, 15.7% Urinary system Ischaemic heart disease Hypertension Heart failure Cardiac arrythmias Cardiovascular disease Proportion of COVID-19 deaths with no pre-existing conditions, 13.9% (October to December 2021, this had been16.8%)
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcvNRXmlrA

Different symptoms between Omicron BA1 and BA2?
12 min 14 sec
ZOE
May 12, 2022

This week, Tim looks at how cases have finally stopped dropping in the UK, as well as some brand new research from the ZOE Health Study on the differences between symptom severity and frequency in cases of Omicron BA.1 compared to the now dominant BA.2. For the website visit: https://covid.joinzoe.com/ For more information on Wider Studies visit: covid.joinzoe.com/wider-health-studies For more localised data visit: https://covid.joinzoe.com/data For vaccine data map please visit: https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#vaccin... The app is available to download from: https://api.covidradar.org/launch/ Join our newsletter to get the latest updates on ZOE's discoveries, from COVID to gut health, direct to your inbox by signing up here: http://eepurl.com/hlUh-L If you need subtitles, please click the option for subtitles at the bottom right of the video
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Here's another interview with Geert Vanden Bossche.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=civCxuXvYiA

Chatter #254 - Dr Geert Vanden Bossche: Predictions on the Evolution of Covid 19, Omicron & Vaccines
1 hour 6 min 52 sec
The Jist
Streamed live on May 10, 2022

Geert Vanden Bossche received his DVM from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He held adjunct faculty appointments at universities in Belgium and Germany. After his career in Academia, Geert joined several vaccine companies (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals) to serve various roles in vaccine R&D as well as in late vaccine development. Geert then moved on to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle (USA) as Senior Program Officer; he then worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in Geneva as Senior Ebola Program Manager. At GAVI he tracked efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. He also represented GAVI in fora with other partners, including WHO, to review progress on the fight against Ebola and to build plans for global pandemic preparedness. Back in 2015, Geert scrutinized and questioned the safety of the Ebola vaccine that was used in ring vaccination trials conducted by WHO in Guinea. His critical scientific analysis and report on the data published by WHO in the Lancet in 2015 was sent to all international health and regulatory authorities involved in the Ebola vaccination program. After working for GAVI, Geert joined the German Center for Infection Research in Cologne as Head of the Vaccine Development Office. He is at present primarily serving as a Biotech / Vaccine consultant while also conducting his own research on Natural Killer cell-based vaccines. https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidar... https://twitter.com/GVDBossche
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Copper Eliminates the COVID-19 Virus on Surfaces – Silver Does Not
By Ruhr-University Bochum
May 12, 2022


Copper and silver are known for their antibacterial properties. Researchers from Bochum have explored their effectiveness against viruses.

Many pathogens are destroyed by silver and copper ions. As a result, these metals are often used to coat implants and medical instruments. Researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUBMolecular )’s and Medical Virology and Materials Research departments, in collaboration with Surgical Research at the Bergmannsheil University Hospital in Bochum, investigated whether these metals could also help contain the Covid-19 pandemic by rendering the Sars-Cov-2 virus harmless. They demonstrated that a copper coating eliminates the virus. The same cannot be said for silver. On May 3, 2022, the team published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

Base material sacrifices itself

As a result of corrosion, copper and silver release positively charged ions into their environment, which are harmful to bacteria in multiple ways and prevent their growth or kill them completely. This effect has long been exploited, for example by coating implants with these metals to prevent bacterial infections.

There are some tricks that can be used to release even more ions and intensify this effect. For example, the team headed by materials researcher Professor Alfred Ludwig uses a so-called sputtering system with which the thinnest layers or tiny nanopatches of the metals can be applied to a carrier material. Depending on the sequence or quantity in which the individual metals are applied, different surface textures are created. If a precious metal such as platinum is also applied, silver corrodes even faster and releases more antibacterial ions.

“In the presence of a more noble metal, the baser metal sacrifices itself, so to speak,” as Ludwig outlines the principle of the sacrificial anode. The effectiveness of such sacrificial anode systems against bacteria has already been demonstrated and published several times by the surgical research team headed by Professor Manfred Köller and Dr. Marina Breisch.

However, whether viruses can also be rendered harmless in this way has not yet been investigated in detail. “This is why we analyzed the antiviral properties of surfaces coated with copper or silver as well as various silver-based sacrificial anodes, and also examined combinations of copper and silver with regard to possible synergistic effects,” says virologist Professor Stephanie Pfänder. The team compared the effectiveness of these surfaces against bacteria with the effectiveness against viruses.

Silver nanopatches leave the virus unimpressed

Marina Breisch describes the effect of the surfaces on the Staphylococcus aureus as follows: “Surfaces with sacrificial anode effect, especially nanopatches consisting of silver and platinum as well as the combination of silver and copper, efficiently stopped bacterial growth.”

A different picture emerged with Sars-Cov-2: thin copper layers significantly reduced the viral load after only one hour. Sputtered silver surfaces, on the other hand, had only a marginal effect, and silver nanopatches did not impress the virus either.

“In conclusion: we demonstrated a clear antiviral effect of copper-coated surfaces against Sars-Cov-2 within one hour, while silver-coated surfaces had no effect on viral infectivity,” says Stephanie Pfänder.

The successful interdisciplinary cooperation between materials research, clinical microbiology and virology is going to be deepened in future studies, in order to identify other materials with the broadest possible antimicrobial effect.

Reference: “Nanoscale copper and silver thin film systems display differences in antiviral and antibacterial properties” by Toni Luise Meister, Jill Fortmann, Marina Breisch, Christina Sengstock, Eike Steinmann, Manfred Köller, Stephanie Pfaender and Alfred Ludwig, 3 May 2022, Scientific Reports.

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-11212-w
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Laboratory-generated mini-kidneys help uncover the link between diabetes and COVID-19 disease
by Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC)
May 12, 2022

For two years, thousands of scientists and doctors around the world have been working to understand how COVID-19 develops and what relationship it has with other types of diseases. Various studies indicate that people with diabetes are more likely to develop severe COVID-19, as well as that more than 20% of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 suffer acute kidney damage. However, to date, it was unknown what was the factor that caused this to happen.

Now, an international team led by Nuria Montserrat, ICREA research professor at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and international collaborators have used bioengineering to develop mini-kidneys that simulate the kidney of a person in the early stages of diabetes.

In this international collaboration the researchers have provided, for the first time, the use of kidney organoids to understand the early stages of diabetes in this organ. In order to demonstrate that the ACE2 receptor plays an essential role in SARS-CoV-2 infection in the kidney, the team has also used genetic engineering to generate defective organoids for other receptors described to date as gateways for the virus. Using patient kidney cells, this study also reveals the role of energy metabolism in SARS-CoV-2 infection, opening the door to the identification of new therapeutic interventions to treat COVID-19. This groundbreaking study has just been published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Diabetic mini-kidneys have more portals of entry for SARS-CoV-2

Mini-kidneys have been developed in the laboratory from pluripotent human stem cells. To reproduce the diabetic environment, the researchers have subjected the mini-kidneys to culture conditions that result in the generation of mini-kidneys with the same cellular characteristics and metabolic alterations as those found in the kidneys of a person with early-stage diabetes.

Using different molecular biology techniques, such as gene editing, the researchers have observed that, in diabetic mini-kidneys, it is the abundance of the ACE2 receptor that determines susceptibility to viral infection, establishing a causal relationship between diabetes and the presence of one of the receptors described so far as determinant in SARS-CoV-2 infection.

"Our diabetic renal organoid model has allowed us to observe that diabetic mini-kidneys, with a greater number of ACE2 receptors, have a greater susceptibility to viral infection," says Elena Garreta, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and first co-author of the study.

"It is absolutely imperative to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie more severe COVID-19 in patients with diabetes and other metabolic comorbidities. The development of a diabetic kidney organoid is a great step towards experimentally dissecting how metabolic changes can impact SARS-CoV-2 infections. The data again demonstrate that ACE2 is the essential receptor for SARS-CoV-2 even under conditions of comorbidity," says Josef Penninger, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology.

Furthermore, using state-of-the-art techniques such as RNA sequencing, the researchers identified that diabetic mini-kidneys have a metabolic signature that could explain why diabetic mini-kidneys become more infected.

Diabetes increases susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection in patient cells.

To verify whether the results obtained with the mini-kidneys are also observed in the native organ, the researchers analyzed kidney cells from patients with diabetes and individuals without diabetes. The data show that kidney cells from diabetic patients, in the same way as what happens in mini-kidneys, have more ACE2 receptors and suffer a higher rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection. To delve into the mechanisms that may explain such observations, the researchers used a compound that modulates the metabolic state of cells and found that the treatment reduced viral infection.

"This finding sheds a light on a potential mechanism behind more severe cases of diabetic patients. This technology will improve our capability to investigate how the virus interacts with different organs in the human body," says Ali Mirazimi, adjunct professor at Karolinska Institutet and one of the study's corresponding authors.

"We have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is capable of directly infecting proximal tubule cells isolated from the human kidney and that diabetes makes these cells more prone to infection," says Megan Stanifer, first co-author of the study.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Study finds the SARS-CoV-2 virus is not viable on cash banknotes
by Todd Hollingshead, Brigham Young University
May 12, 2022

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many businesses stopped accepting cash payments in an effort to reduce the spread of the virus. While neither the CDC nor WHO ever banned the use of paper money, many businesses still only accept payment by card more than two years later.

Turns out that this decision, though well-intentioned, was misguided.

A new study published in PLOS ONE from BYU scientists finds that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is almost immediately nonviable if deposited on a cash banknote. The virus actually shows greater stability on plastic money cards, with the live virus still being detected 48 hours after initial deposition, but no viable virus was detected on either cash or card that was randomly sampled in the study.

"Early in the pandemic, we had this massive outcry for businesses to stop using cash; all these businesses just followed this advice and said OK we are credit card only," said study author Richard Robison, a BYU professor of microbiology and molecular biology. "I thought, 'Wait a minute, where are the data to support that?' And there simply wasn't any. We decided to see if it was rational or not, and turns out it was not."

The research team, which included BYU professor Julianne Grose and a cadre of undergraduate BYU students, rounded up a bunch of $1 bills, quarters, pennies and credit cards and inoculated the money with SARS-CoV-2. The cash, coins and cards were then sampled and tested for virus detection at four time points afterwards: at 30 minutes, four hours, 24 hours and 48 hours.

The researchers found that SARS-CoV-2 was difficult to detect on the dollar bills even just 30 minutes after being placed there. The study find the virus was reduced by 99.9993% at the 30 minute mark. They tested again after 24 and 48 hours and found no live virus on the banknotes.

In contrast, the virus only reduced 90% on money cards at the 30-minute mark. While this reduction rate increased to 99.6% by four hours, and 99.96% by 24 hours, the live virus was still detectable on the money cards 48 hours later. The coins performed similarly to the plastic cards, with a strong initial reduction in virus presence, yet still testing positive for the live virus after 24 and 48 hours.

Researchers were surprised by the instability of the paper banknotes (which in the U.S. are a blend of ~75% cotton and 25% linen)—after putting 1 million viable virus particles on the bills, they couldn't find any virus at all after 24 hours.

The research team also obtained fresh samples of $1 cash bills, quarters and pennies from around BYU's campus and local restaurants to test them for the presence of the virus. Within an hour of obtaining the money, the researchers systematically swabbed the surfaces and edges of the cash/coins with a sterile cotton swab. They also swabbed a collection of money cards. They detected no SARS-CoV-2 RNA on the banknotes or the coins and only a low level of the virus on the money cards.

"This pandemic has been infamous for people making decisions with no data," Robison said. "We have these people just saying things and massive numbers of organizations just follow it blindly without any data. It turns out in this case, they went precisely the wrong direction."

The study authors—Robison, Grose and students Colleen Newey, Abigail Olaussson, Alyssa Applegate and Ann-Aubrey Reid—conclude that the use of credit and debit cards over cash as a COVID-19 prevention measure is not advisable.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Distinct cellular receptor mutations influence COVID-19 disease severity
by Johannes Angerer, Medical University of Vienna
May 12, 2022

1652433714077.jpeg
FcγRIIIa-158-V/F variant distribution. A. Distribution of FcγRIIIa-158-V/F variants between control persons (n = 99), nonhospitalized (n = 46), and hospitalized (N = 151) patients with COVID-19. B. Distribution of FcγRIIIa-158-V/F variants between hospitalized survivors (N = 117) and hospitalized deceased (N =34) patients with COVID-19. Bars represent the relative frequency of FcγRIIIa-158-V/V, FcγRIIIa-158-V/F, and FcγRIIIa-158-F/F genotypes. χ2 test was used for statistical comparison between variants. FcγR, Fcγ-receptor. Credit: Genetics in Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.gim.2022.04.005

Distinct genetic variants significantly influence an individual's immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may influence the COVID-19 disease severity. A research group led by MedUni Vienna was able to demonstrate that distinct genetic variants of the CD16a antibody receptor are associated with the risk of severe COVID-19. This affects about 15% of the population. The results are now published in the journal Genetics in Medicine.

Natural killer cells (NK cells) play a significant role in combating the viral replication in the initial stages of viral infections. NK cells have specialized receptors on their surface that bind to antibodies that are specifically produced against viruses. This enables the antibody-dependent activation of killer cells (ADCC), which leads to the destruction of virus-infected cells and triggers the release of pro-inflammatory factors.

This interaction between antibodies and the NK cell surface receptor is influenced by certain genetic factors, resulting in either strongly (high-affinity) or weakly (low-affinity) binding genetic receptor variants. Working in collaboration with Alexander Zoufaly from the Favoriten hospital, a research group led by Hannes Vietzen and Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl from the Center for Virology of the Medical University of Vienna has now shown that certain genetic variants of the CD16a antibody receptor are associated with the risk of severe COVID-19.

In their study, recently published in the journal Genetics in Medicine, the authors show that people who had to be hospitalized with severe COVID-19 were significantly more likely to have the high-affinity variant of the CD16a receptor. This high-affinity variant only occurs in around 15% of the population, and carriers of this variant have a significantly higher risk of developing severe COVID-19. This high-affinity variant was particularly common in COVID-19 patients who had to be treated in intensive care units or who died from COVID-19.

In subsequent cell culture experiments, the research team was able to show that this high-affinity variant of the antibody receptor results in a significantly elevated antibody-dependent activation of NK cells and in a particularly strong release of pro-inflammatory factors.

Hannes Vietzen explains: "The antibody-dependent activation of NK cells is a delayed immune response. It now appears that this particular immune response no longer helps to control the SARS-CoV-2 viral replication but aggravates the course of COVID-19 disease by triggering an exaggerated immune response."

The tests involved are special scientific assays. Routine laboratory testing for these parameters is not being considered, since there are currently no therapeutic or preventive options targeting this genetic predisposition to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19. Genetic predisposition is further only one of several factors that influence the severity of the disease.
 

psychgirl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
(fair use applies)

Copper Eliminates the COVID-19 Virus on Surfaces – Silver Does Not
By Ruhr-University Bochum
May 12, 2022


Copper and silver are known for their antibacterial properties. Researchers from Bochum have explored their effectiveness against viruses.

Many pathogens are destroyed by silver and copper ions. As a result, these metals are often used to coat implants and medical instruments. Researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUBMolecular )’s and Medical Virology and Materials Research departments, in collaboration with Surgical Research at the Bergmannsheil University Hospital in Bochum, investigated whether these metals could also help contain the Covid-19 pandemic by rendering the Sars-Cov-2 virus harmless. They demonstrated that a copper coating eliminates the virus. The same cannot be said for silver. On May 3, 2022, the team published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

Base material sacrifices itself

As a result of corrosion, copper and silver release positively charged ions into their environment, which are harmful to bacteria in multiple ways and prevent their growth or kill them completely. This effect has long been exploited, for example by coating implants with these metals to prevent bacterial infections.

There are some tricks that can be used to release even more ions and intensify this effect. For example, the team headed by materials researcher Professor Alfred Ludwig uses a so-called sputtering system with which the thinnest layers or tiny nanopatches of the metals can be applied to a carrier material. Depending on the sequence or quantity in which the individual metals are applied, different surface textures are created. If a precious metal such as platinum is also applied, silver corrodes even faster and releases more antibacterial ions.

“In the presence of a more noble metal, the baser metal sacrifices itself, so to speak,” as Ludwig outlines the principle of the sacrificial anode. The effectiveness of such sacrificial anode systems against bacteria has already been demonstrated and published several times by the surgical research team headed by Professor Manfred Köller and Dr. Marina Breisch.

However, whether viruses can also be rendered harmless in this way has not yet been investigated in detail. “This is why we analyzed the antiviral properties of surfaces coated with copper or silver as well as various silver-based sacrificial anodes, and also examined combinations of copper and silver with regard to possible synergistic effects,” says virologist Professor Stephanie Pfänder. The team compared the effectiveness of these surfaces against bacteria with the effectiveness against viruses.

Silver nanopatches leave the virus unimpressed

Marina Breisch describes the effect of the surfaces on the Staphylococcus aureus as follows: “Surfaces with sacrificial anode effect, especially nanopatches consisting of silver and platinum as well as the combination of silver and copper, efficiently stopped bacterial growth.”

A different picture emerged with Sars-Cov-2: thin copper layers significantly reduced the viral load after only one hour. Sputtered silver surfaces, on the other hand, had only a marginal effect, and silver nanopatches did not impress the virus either.

“In conclusion: we demonstrated a clear antiviral effect of copper-coated surfaces against Sars-Cov-2 within one hour, while silver-coated surfaces had no effect on viral infectivity,” says Stephanie Pfänder.

The successful interdisciplinary cooperation between materials research, clinical microbiology and virology is going to be deepened in future studies, in order to identify other materials with the broadest possible antimicrobial effect.

Reference: “Nanoscale copper and silver thin film systems display differences in antiviral and antibacterial properties” by Toni Luise Meister, Jill Fortmann, Marina Breisch, Christina Sengstock, Eike Steinmann, Manfred Köller, Stephanie Pfaender and Alfred Ludwig, 3 May 2022, Scientific Reports.

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-11212-w
You can also buy colloidal copper, same way as colloidal silver!
Hmmmm… should we add that to our arsenal??
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
If you are talking about the video by ZOE, yes, he does some graphs. He also mentioned that he's hearing that those who had Omicron earlier are now getting the newer variant of Omicron and that it's spreading rapidly. BA4 and BA5.

Thank you!

Did you catch that Geert reference? Having now watched 3 interview videos done with him in the last few days, I can't help but view things through Geert lenses. And it's pretty frightening.

HD
 

psychgirl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Did you catch that Geert reference? Having now watched 3 interview videos done with him in the last few days, I can't help but view things through Geert lenses. And it's pretty frightening.

HD
No, I’m at work we won’t be able to watch this one until late tonight.
And yes, I agree with the new “eyesight seen through Geert’s lens”!
 

psychgirl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
You’re right; the article isn’t too clear on that and it sounds like neither is NK, that clear what this “fever explosion” is all about,

My phone is not letting me paste the article. I'm not confident from the information given that this is regular covid or something else.
 

Zoner

Veteran Member
No, I’m at work we won’t be able to watch this one until late tonight.
And yes, I agree with the new “eyesight seen through Geert’s lens”!
It's already happening. Drudge reporting covid deaths are up. Everybody is looking to the Fall when flu season usually occurs but this is a pandemic and seasons don't matter. What Geert is saying is making me feel like I did when the Wuhan virus was first being revealed thru the Chinese on twitter and I knew something big was coming. Something very big is coming and is here imho.
Maybe it'll get so bad the war will be put on hold because the soldiers are getting sick and dying etc.
Shortages will occur by the Fall imho.
Many that we now know that got vaccinated are going to get severely ill and die.
Martin Armstrong said his Socrates computer program predicted in 2020 that the most deadly wave of the pandemic would occur in 2022. His computer Socrates is always right.
What's getting ready to hit this world is scary and no joke.
I doubt few read this thread anymore, like me, because we thought the virus was dying. Soon this thread will be highly visited again.

Let us watch and pray.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic

My phone is not letting me paste the article. I'm not confident from the information given that this is regular covid or something else.

Thank you for this head's up. It sounds like it could be Covid. They aren't vaccinated in NK so if it is covid, this is not/can not be the variant Geert is worrying about. It's just them being exposed to a very contagious Omicron without having any natural antibodies and probably an immunocompromised population so more vulnerable in general.

But because it's NK, you have to wonder.... is this a lab leak of some other pathogen that NK was working on in its own biologocial WMD labs? Or is it a testing of a new variant of Covid on the NK population by China or another country? You never know when it's NK. I hope to post some articles about NK later when I post the news articles.

HD
 
Last edited:

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic

Watching through those 'geert glasses' and this looks really really bad. He did say in one of the interviews I watched that he sent his research to everyone he thought should see it - I wonder if 'they' are reading it and finally understanding and starting to get the word out to their mouthpieces in the MSM.

HD
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Headline on Drudg
US cases surging including reinfections



Posting the whole article because it is so important for everyone who is reading this thread to read this. Please if you haven't done so, watch at least one of the Geert interviews. This IS your head's up. The news is following everything he is warning about. Right now we are in the phase where the virus is becoming more contagious and is evading vaccine immunity. It's the next stage, where it becomes more virulent, that he's most concerned about warning people about now.


(fair use applies)

Had COVID at Christmas? You could get it again now
May 13, 2022 at 5:09 am Updated May 13, 2022 at 5:10 am
By Madison Muller Bloomberg

As a stealth wave of COVID-19 makes its way across the U.S., those who have so far evaded the virus are now falling ill — while others are catching COVID-19 for a second, third or even fourth time.

Several factors have conspired to make the state of the pandemic harder than ever to track. The rise of at-home tests, which rarely make it into official case numbers, have made keeping accurate count of positive cases impossible.

Additionally, many U.S. states and jurisdictions are now reporting COVID-19 data only sporadically to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Earlier this week, Washington, D.C., reported case data to the agency for the first time since April.

This has happened just as new, more contagious subvariants of omicron are making their way through the U.S. population, leading not only to rising first-time COVID-19 cases but also frequent reinfections.

The latest versions of the virus appear particularly adept at evading the body’s immune response from both past COVID-19 infections and vaccines. Studies suggest most reinfection cases aren’t even being reported, giving little insight into how often they occur.

All this makes it especially difficult to gauge what percentage of the population is presently vulnerable to COVID-19 — and how the pandemic might evolve.

“The reality is that things are really not going well at the moment
,” said Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, speaking at a Harvard Medical School COVID-19 briefing on Tuesday. “We all thought that we were in for a reprieve after the devastating omicron wave. And that was clearly the case until a few weeks ago.”

The result is that co-workers are calling in sick, friends are posting snapshots of positive COVID-19 tests on social media and school contact tracing programs are blasting out exposure alerts, even as official COVID-19 case counts suggest the numbers are only creeping back up slowly.

On Tuesday, the CDC reported more than 98,000 new cases. The true number is almost certainly higher. “There’s so much less visibility about what’s happening,” said Rick Bright, a virologist and CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute.

Experts say that it’s difficult to know what the next few months will bring. While vaccines are still doing a good job at keeping most people out of the hospital, the virus is not behaving the same way it has in the past and the majority of the country is living like the pandemic is over.

In December and January, during the first wave of omicron infections, case levels skyrocketed before dropping almost as quickly. That’s because widespread infections at the start of the outbreak soon gave the virus fewer people to infect. Public health measures, like masking, also helped reduce the spread.

That may not be what happens this time.

“It’s likely that we won’t see the same fast downturn of cases we’ve seen in other surges,” said Bob Wachter, chief of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Early evidence suggests omicron has not only made COVID-19 reinfection more likely, but also shortened the window in which a past infection provides protection against the virus.

There was hope that the hundreds of thousands of omicron infections this past winter would help bolster population immunity and protect against future surges in coming months. According to CDC data, about a third of the country had caught COVID-19 before the omicron wave, a figure that has since increased to more than half. But how effective those antibodies are is now dependent on what variant a person gets.

Delta immunity, for example, doesn’t hold up well against other variants, according to a study recently published in Nature. And there is now evidence that some omicron subvariants can even evade the immune defenses imparted by omicron variants that came before them. One recent study published as a preprint by researchers in Beijing found that several omicron subvariants — BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 — could get past the defenses of immunity from infection with another version of omicron, BA.1.

All of these factors mean that huge swaths of the population once protected from infection may now be vulnerable.
It’s unclear how frequently reinfections are occurring or which variants people are getting reinfected with. The CDC’s last update on reinfections was in January. The agency has not indicated whether it is tracking the cases and does not make such data available to the public.

A handful of state health departments, though, have taken to diligently monitoring the repeat cases. That data suggests reinfections are now happening more frequently.

The Colorado State Health Department, for example, has recorded more than 44,000 reinfections throughout the pandemic — 82% of which have occurred since omicron became the dominant variant in December. Reinfections are more common among the unvaccinated, but more than a third have happened to people who have completed their initial two-dose vaccine series, according to the data. Over 16% of reinfections in Colorado have been in people with at least one booster dose.

Data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services show reinfections in the state have been increasing since late March. Reinfections currently make up 8% of the state’s total infections for the week ending April 30.
Repeat infections have been on the rise in Indiana, too, according to data, where they account for more than 12% of total cases, and in Idaho where they accounted for 18.5% of cases in the first quarter of 2022.

A report from Washington state published Wednesday shows that some reinfections are also leading to hospitalization. The age group most likely to get reinfected is 18 to 34-year-olds, but people 65 and older are the most likely to get hospitalized after reinfection, the data show.

“It feels like the first time in two years that no matter if someone is really careful and does everything right, it won’t be surprising if they end up getting COVID-19,” said Wachter, at University of California, San Francisco. “We’re unquestionably in a surge.”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
It's already happening. Drudge reporting covid deaths are up. Everybody is looking to the Fall when flu season usually occurs but this is a pandemic and seasons don't matter. What Geert is saying is making me feel like I did when the Wuhan virus was first being revealed thru the Chinese on twitter and I knew something big was coming. Something very big is coming and is here imho.
Maybe it'll get so bad the war will be put on hold because the soldiers are getting sick and dying etc.
Shortages will occur by the Fall imho.
Many that we now know that got vaccinated are going to get severely ill and die.
Martin Armstrong said his Socrates computer program predicted in 2020 that the most deadly wave of the pandemic would occur in 2022. His computer Socrates is always right.
What's getting ready to hit this world is scary and no joke.
I doubt few read this thread anymore, like me, because we thought the virus was dying. Soon this thread will be highly visited again.

Let us watch and pray.

I agree. Back in March 2020 I posted that I felt like I was standing on the shore watching the water recede before a tsunami wave came onshore trying to warn everyone to get out of the water and seek higher ground. I haven't felt that way since then about Covid because very quickly everyone saw the wave roll in for themselves. Until now. I feel like it's been two years and everyone has comfortably has gone back into the water. And now the water is receding again, as the next tsunami is about to come in - only this time it will be worse. This is going to make the wuhan, Delta, omicron variants pale in comparison. And because everyone has covid fatigue, no one is interested in warnings. They're 'done' with covid. But if Geert is right, and I believe he is, covid isn't done with us. And it's coming back with a vengeance.

HD
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
I'll start the news reporting with the news from NK.

(fair use applies)

North Korea reports first-ever COVID-19 outbreak
State media announces ‘maximum’ quarantine procedures to fight Omicron infections in the country
Chaewon Chung | Jeongmin Kim May 12, 2022

Updated at 6:15 p.m. May 12 KST to include Kim Jong Un’s remarks and more expert comments

North Korea says it’s battling its first COVID-19 outbreak, nearly two-and-a-half years after the worldwide pandemic began.

Kim Jong Un led a politburo meeting the same day to discuss ‘maximum’ anti-COVID-19 response measures after the Omicron variant was detected on May 8 in the country’s capital, state media reported Thursday.

Kim appeared with a mask on for the first time in public in a video of the meeting that the Korean Central Television (KCTV) aired later in the day.

No North Koreans are known to be vaccinated in the country. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently said that the DPRK is one of only two countries that hasn’t yet administered vaccines to its people, and no vaccines are known to have been sent to the country.

“A most serious emergency case of the state occurred,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. “The state emergency epidemic prevention command and relevant units made deliberation of the result of strict gene arrangement analysis on the specimen from persons with fever of an organization in the capital city on May 8, and concluded that it coincided with Omicron BA.2 variant which is recently spreading worldwide rapidly.”

Another article on KCNA also referred to the virus as a “stealth Omicron variant.”

The Rodong Sinmun newspaper also carried the KCNA story on its front page on Thursday. It said the Politburo of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) “recognized” that there had been a “break” in North Korea’s anti-COVID-19 measures in place since 2020. Kim reportedly adopted a resolution to transition to a “maximum” emergency anti-epidemic system in the country.

The meeting reportedly discussed the latest update on how much the virus has spread throughout the country, but did not clarify if there were any confirmed or suspected cases outside the country’s capital.

North Korea “apparently re-tested those whose results turned out to be BA.2,” said Martin Weiser, an independent researcher on North Korea and NK PRO contributor. “Second or other tests were likely not out before May 10 morning to fully confirm.”

Sources earlier told NK News about a “nationwide lockdown” or “national problem” on May 10 that led to lockdown orders in Pyongyang. Multiple sources in Pyongyang have reported panic buying and supply shortages surrounding uncertainty about when the lockdown might end.

According to Thursday’s state media report, Kim Jong Un ordered all cities and counties across the country to “thoroughly lock down” their regions and shut down contacts between different work, life and production units so the country can block further spread.

Kim also reportedly ordered officials to strengthen guard duty at the borders, at sea and in the air so there is no “security vacuum” created in national defense amid the pandemic.

“For a short full lockdown, they probably can use just police or military,” Weiser said, explaining that the four-day gap between the positive COVID test results and the May 12 politburo meeting is not surprising, as it was held to approve measures “already decided” by lower-level authorities.

What is surprising, Weiser told NK News, is how long it took North Korea to initiate a full lockdown. “It took two days after they had the first positive results … If they had really planned for this scenario they could have been a lot quicker in issuing the lockdown,” he argued.

“They might have run a lot more tests to confirm or they took a lot of time to eventually decided on the maximum lockdown,” Weiser said. “Either way it looks a little unprepared.”

POINTING THE FINGER

According to Thursday’s report, the politburo also criticized the country’s anti-epidemic sector’s “carelessness, relaxation, irresponsibility and inefficiency” in “failing” to respond promptly to an increased risk of infections and variants around the world “including surrounding regions of our country.”

COVID cases have surged in Chinese provinces that border North Korea recently, leading to a re-suspension of overland trade last month between the two countries.

Kim Jong Un noted the core goal of the new “maximum” anti-COVID system is to “stably contain and control” the spread of the virus and “quickly cure” the infected patience to “eradicate the source of the virus spread at an early date,” according to state media.

The North Korean leader, however, reportedly stressed that “unscientific fear, lack of faith and weak will” are more “dangerous enemies” even more than the COVID-19 virus.”

Measures have been made to ensure that the country’s party, administration, economic, security and defense sectors can readjust their work plan “in line with the operation of maximum emergency anti-epidemic system,” KCNA stated.

NO VACCINES

This is the first known COVID-19 outbreak in the country since North Korea closed its borders to all incoming travel in early 2020.

Thursday’s state media report said that Kim ordered officials to “mobilize reserve medical supplies that have been stored up” for emergencies, but did not mention the possibility of administering vaccines.

The WHO told NK News on Thursday that it had given North Korea the opportunity to receive vaccines and by helping the country develop a COVID-19 vaccine deployment plan, “making the DPR Korea eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX.”

WHO representative to North Korea Edwin Salvador added that the WHO had not received any reports about confirmed cases from North Korea’s Ministry of Health as of Thursday.

Meanwhile, KCTV on Thursday afternoon ran a new program on Omicron variants framing vaccines as not entirely effective.

“By putting the news out of the confirmed case of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, North Korea is conceding that the zero-COVID strategy, while it has been very effective, is not perfect,” said Kee Park, director of the Korea Health Policy Project and lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

“In the short-term, we can expect an all-out effort to contain the virus including widespread lockdowns. Moving forward, they may double down on stricter prevention measures – but at the same time, they may want to reconsider the benefits of a nationwide vaccination program,” he told NK News.

Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), told NK News that North Korea’s state media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak is primarily aimed at alerting residents about the ‘maximum’ control efforts. However, he also noted that the report may partly be an appeal “for international support and cooperation” necessary to combat the virus effectively.

ECONOMIC IMPACTS

In July 2020, a North Korean defector that crossed the inter-Korean border back into North Korea prompted a “complete lockdown” in the city of Kaesong, but the lockdown was lifted after the individual did not return a positive test, according to state media and the WHO.

The extent of North Korea’s lockdown measures across the country are not entirely clear. Kim Jong Un stressed Thursday that the “harsh” COVID-19 situation must not get in the way of economic and construction work, emphasizing that projects such as the construction of 10,000 houses in the Hwasong area and the Ryonpho Greenhouse Farm must be completed within their original deadlines and that factories and companies should continue producing.

But the North Korean people will struggle to meet their leader’s demands during a COVID outbreak, said Peter Ward, an expert on the DPRK economy and a contributor to NK PRO.

He said that it would be difficult for North Koreans to work from home like others around the world did during the pandemic. “But I guess they would focus on some core projects and try to allow key activities to continue in the urban and rural state sector.”

Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Seong Institute, told NK News that Kim Jong Un’s orders on Thursday suggest North Korea will not take as extreme an approach to COVID-19 as observed in China, where they are “completely suspending the economic work and production of the residents in the COVID-19 infected region and nearly imprisoning them to their homes.”

“But realistically, blocking the movement of personnel and goods between regions and production units will lead to the lack of materials needed for producing goods – so eventually they will be suspended at one point,” Cheong said.

“As time goes by, it will be highly likely that North Korea will face a serious food crisis and chaos,” he added.

Chad O’Carroll and Seungyeon Chung contributed to this story. Edited by Arius Derr.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

North Korea says 6 people dead, 187,800 in quarantine due to ‘fever’
Figures come a day after North Korea confirmed its first outbreak of COVID-19
Chaewon Chung May 13, 2022
Updated at 7:49 p.m. May 13 KST

At least one North Korean confirmed to have COVID-19 has died and 187,800 are under quarantine due to “fever,” North Korea’s state media reported on Friday, a day after confirming the country’s first outbreak.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also reported that approximately 18,000 people experienced fevers on May 12 alone and that six had died. Of those six, only one person tested positive for the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron.

“A fever whose cause couldn’t be identified explosively spread nationwide from late April and more than 350,000 people got fever in a short span of time,” according to KCNA.

The state-run outlet added that the country has locked down all provinces, cities and counties and that working, production, and residential units are taking steps to isolate themselves without interrupting normal work operations.

While the cause of the outbreak inside the country is unclear, Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Seong Institute, told NK News that North Korea’s military parade on April 25 was a likely superspreader event that triggered the current outbreak.

“North Korea was overconfident of its quarantine capabilities to hold such a large military parade with crowds in attendance while Omicron raged in neighboring China,” he said.

Tens of thousands of maskless people participated in the parade, held to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Korean People’s Army.

According to state media, DPRK leader Kim Jong Un visited the country’s emergency epidemic prevention headquarters on Thursday with top party officials Jo Yong Won and Pak Jong Chon, where they were briefed on the situation.

Kim said that the spread of fever in Pyongyang exposes a “vulnerable point” in the country’s anti-epidemic measures. No North Koreans inside the country are known to be vaccinated.

KCNA also reported that at least 162,000 people with fevers had recovered completely.

On Thursday, Kim Jong Un led a politburo meeting to discuss “maximum” anti-epidemic response measures after the Omicron variant was detected in the nation’s capital on May 8, according to KCNA. Kim appeared with a mask on for the first time in public in a video of the meeting.

According to Friday’s report, Kim Jong Un during his visit to the headquarters stressed the importance of blocking COVID-19 transmission by “actively locking down areas” and “isolating and treating” people with fever in a “responsible manner.”

Kim reportedly added that the outbreak is “a most serious emergency case” and the “supreme” task facing the ruling party.

Seungyeon Chung contributed to this report. Edited by Arius Derr


~~~~~~~~~~~~

This story was updated but apparently I've reached my limit of pages I can see on the site. I'll post what I can, if anyone can bring the entire article over that would be great.


(fair use applies)

North Korea reports 21 more deaths due to ‘fever’ amid nationwide COVID outbreak
State media says over half a million people affected by fever symptoms since April as DPRK battles COVID-19 outbreak
Ifang Bremer May 14, 2022

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the country faces “great upheaval” as state media reported another 21 deaths and some 174,000 new cases of “fever” on Saturday.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim led an emergency meeting on Saturday, where it was revealed that over half a million North Koreans have suffered “fever symptoms” since an “explosive” spread began in Pyongyang in late April.

[that's all I can see on the page]
 
Last edited:

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

Over 187,000 North Koreans Placed Under Isolation as Fever Spreads ‘Explosively’: Report
By Aldgra Fredly
May 13, 2022


North Korean state-run media said Friday that about 187,800 people were being “isolated and treated” for fever that has spread “explosively” nationwide since late April.

This comes a day after Pyongyang confirmed its first official cases of COVID-19 and moved into a “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system.”

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported six deaths from fevers for which “the cause couldn’t be identified,” including one death that tested positive for the Omicron coronavirus variant.

More than 350,000 people were infected with the fever “in a short span of time,” of which 162,000 have fully recovered, according to the news agency. About 18,000 people were identified as having fever symptoms as of Thursday.

KCNA said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters on Thursday and blamed authorities for the spread of fever, citing “a vulnerable point in the epidemic prevention system.”

Kim urged to isolate all work, production, and residential units while providing inhabitants with amenities to curb the spread of the “malicious virus,” the report stated.

“It is the most important challenge and supreme tasks facing our party to reverse the immediate public health crisis situation at an early date,” Kim was quoted saying by KCNA.

KCNA said Thursday that a number of people in Pyongyang had contracted the Omicron variant, but did not provide the specific number of people who tested positive or possible sources of infection. The samples of the infected people were collected on May 8.

Kim ordered a nationwide lockdown to prevent the highly-transmissible virus from spreading and vowed to eradicate the outbreak. He added that emergency reserve medical supplies would also be mobilized.

The hermit nation’s confirmed infections come more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic. Pyongyang has claimed to have kept the virus at bay, despite it spreading rapidly across the globe.

North Korea was one of the first countries to close borders and impose severe travel bans, despite reporting zero COVID-19 cases at the time, a claim that was widely questioned by the international community.

According to the latest data from the World Health Organization, 64,207 North Koreans have received COVID-19 testing, and all tests had been found negative as of March 31.

However, it’s unclear if or how many of North Korea’s population of 26 million people have been vaccinated, given that the nation rejected shipments of vaccines from the COVAX global COVID-19 vaccine-sharing program and the Sinovac Biotech vaccine from China, which would require international monitoring.

Katabella Roberts and Reuters contributed to this report.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)

HIGHLIGHTING MINE

CDC: No Documents Supporting Claim Vaccines Don’t Cause Variants
By Zachary Stieber
May 13, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it does not have documents backing its claim that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.

The CDC’s website calls it a myth that the vaccines cause variants.


“FACT: COVID-19 vaccines do not create or cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19. Instead, COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent new variants from emerging,” the website states.

“New variants of a virus happen because the virus that causes COVID-19 constantly changes through a natural ongoing process of mutation (change). As the virus spreads, it has more opportunities to change. High vaccination coverage in a population reduces the spread of the virus and helps prevent new variants from emerging,” it also says.

The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit, asked the CDC in Freedom of Information Act requests for documentation supporting the claim.

In one request, the group asked for “All documents sufficient to support that COVID-19 vaccines do not create or cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.”


Another requested “All documents sufficient to support that the immunity conferred by COVID-19 vaccines does not contribute to virus evolution and the emergence of variants.”

The CDC has now responded to both requests, saying a search “found no records responsive” to them.

The first response came in January (pdf); the second came on May 4 (pdf).

If the CDC is making declaratory statements, the agency should have documents supporting them, Aaron Siri, an attorney representing ICAN, told The Epoch Times.

The responses are “very troubling,” Siri said. “I thought the CDC was a data-driven organization, that they made their decisions based on the studies and the science and the data.”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

ICAN has been one of the more prolific requesters of information from the CDC during the pandemic. Many requests have yielded information. Others have not.

In this case, the CDC should act to ensure continued public trust, Siri says.

“Remove the language or provide the evidence,” he said. “There obviously are going to be instances where recommendations from the CDC might prove helpful or useful. And I think they do a disservice to everybody by hurting their own credibility by making statements that they either don’t have support or won’t produce the support for.”

Scientists outside the CDC have also said that vaccines can help prevent new variants.

“As more people get vaccinated, we expect virus circulation to decrease, which will then lead to fewer mutations,” the World Health Organization says on its site.

But many of the claims relied on the vaccines being able to stop infection from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19. The vaccines are increasingly unable to do so, particularly against the newest dominant strain, Omicron.

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a virologist, is among those who say that the vaccines themselves are behind new variants.

“All COVID-19 vaccines fail in blocking viral transmission, especially transmission of more infectious variants. This is a huge problem as viral transmission is now increasingly taking place among healthy people in general and vaccinees in particular (as their S-specific Abs do not sufficiently neutralize S variants),” Vanden Bossche says on his website. “The resulting suboptimal S-directed immune pressure serves as a breeding ground for even more infectious variants.”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
Dr. Robert Malone seemingly not agreeing with Geert, yet look at the part I bolded, he's hedging his comments.....


(fair use applies)
HIGHLIGHTING MINE

Dr. Robert Malone: COVID-19 ‘No Longer a Global Health Crisis’
By Zachary Stieber and Steve Lance
May 13, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic is over, according to Dr. Robert Malone.

“We’re through the acute phase,” Malone, a scientist who helped invent the messenger RNA technology, said on NTD’s “Capitol Report.” “This is no longer a global health crisis or even a national health crisis.”


Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in April that “we are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” noting how COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have plunged since hitting highs in January.

Fauci, who also emphasized that he believes the pandemic was still ongoing globally, soon walked back his comments, telling news outlets that the United States is still in the pandemic phase but is on its way to an endemic one.

Malone, though, believes Fauci’s original comments were accurate.

“It was fascinating that Dr. Fauci acknowledged that we’re through this acute phase and then walked it back the following day. I could speculate about the politics. Dr. Fauci doesn’t brief me on a regular basis. But it’s our opinion that we’re through that,” Malone said, referring to colleagues with the Global COVID Summit and the International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists.

The caveat, according to the doctor, is a potentially more pathogenic version of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, in the months ahead.

Malone and some other scientists say the COVID-19 vaccines, because they don’t protect well against infection, can actually lead to virus strains that cause more severe disease than earlier variants.


“And so we’re all cautious, cautiously hopeful,” Malone said.

Malone commented as the United States recorded upticks in COVID-19 cases—hitting 146,374 cases on May 11, up from tens of thousands per day in March—and hospitalizations—with hospital admissions with confirmed COVID-19 increasing 17 percent in the week ending May 11 from the week prior.

The Biden administration has warned of a potential wave in the fall and urged people to get a vaccine or booster shots if they have not, at the same time as officials eye authorizing strain-specific shots. But Malone said that based on his research, the reason surges of viruses happen at certain times in the year stem from vitamin D deficiencies.

There’s “virtually no deaths attributable to COVID in people who have adequate levels of vitamin D,” Malone said.

“If the White House was really concerned about mitigating the risks for coronavirus surge this fall … is to make a major campaign, which I would strongly support and so would my colleagues, a major campaign to get Americans tested for their vitamin D levels.” Then, those who don’t have adequate levels can take supplements or otherwise work to improve them.

“The easiest solution is not yet another genetic vaccine, or low doses of a genetic vaccine. But ‘hey, let’s get everybody’s vitamin D levels up.’ It’s pennies. It’s cheap. It’s off patent. Sorry, pharma doesn’t make any money at it, but that’s where we see it.”
 
Top