This post follows last weeks The Evidence that Counts for FDA. The image of dog or bear in a burning house with an untested fire extinguisher is one that many medical managers have used when referring to the Covid crisis and vaccines – the vaccines may not be perfect but we are in a burning house and even if untested they are better than nothing.
Thanks to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for this idea, who told me an image showing this was circulating widely on the internet – this was 5 months ago. If anyone can find the original image please send – it might be apocryphal or an urban myth.
Rules of Evidence
In 1962, when the current regulatory system for medicines was put in place, every one knew the regulators were bureaucrats, primarily concerned with establishing a paper trail to support the licensing of a drug. A license permits a medicine to be prescribed and certain claims to be made.
The role of a regulator is to ensure that drugs, just like butter or other foodstuffs, and words like organic or artisanal, meet certain criteria. Regulators do not offer views on whether drugs or butter are good for us or whether this vaccine or that chocolate is a good vaccine or good chocolate, or the use of the word organic meets general understandings of what that word means. [The mRNA agents did not meet dictionary definitions of vaccines; the dictionaries were updated].
Regulators are not scientists, clinicians, investigators, or public health officials. It is not their role to think, other than to think about whether something conforms to a previously established template.
Regulators or Doctors?
Around 1962 and for three decades afterwards, while regulators licensed medicines, physicians, not regulators, evaluated them in practice and established what other effects these medicines might have. Physicians were viewed as the most important part of a broader regulatory apparatus for these unique products that were available on prescription-only.
Regulators followed a developing consensus among clinicians in respect of evaluative methods or harms, embodying them in rules. Clinicians, for instance, told them RCTs were a good idea – not the other way around. Regulators did not tell clinicians how to do their job.
A medicine has two parts, one chemical and the other information on how to use that chemical. The chemicals are mostly inorganic and unsafe. All medical and regulatory systems explicitly view the chemicals used in medical practice as inherently and unavoidably hazardous.
The dominant medical wisdom was that giving these chemicals necessarily entailed risks. Even if the intention is to bring good out of the use of a chemical, giving such chemicals is an act of therapeutic poisoning and the patient might well end up poisoned. The information component of a medicine aims at managing those risks as best as possible.
Anesthetics, for instance, regularly kill people going for surgery. We give them in the hope that while using them we can bring about other changes that will be of benefit – and we tell the patient there is a risk they won’t wake up.
The Art of Medicine
Two hundred years ago, Philippe Pinel said that it is a great art to be able to use medicines to good effect, but an even greater art lies in knowing when not to use them.
Phrases like the art of medicine now conjure up a contrast between soft clinical interviews and a hard science which for many means randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
RCTs hinge on quantification and algorithmic processes. These can give an appearance of objectivity in contrast to which a clinical interview with someone reporting an adverse event on treatment might appear subjective. Good interviews are all too likely to be seen as an art rather than a science.
After interviewing people and investigating their report of a harm, up to 1990 clinicians routinely wrote up their observations and conclusions in articles which were published in medical journals in the form of case reports. These came with the names of the clinicians attached and today may often have the patient’s name also.
In 1991, a crisis blew up about SSRIs causing suicide. The company response to compelling case reports that these drugs could cause suicide was that these unfortunate cases were anecdotes (today’s misinformation) not science. See Where Does the Misinformation Come From,
In response, companies produced the appearances of analysing their RCTs and on this basis claimed that the science showed there was no problem. Companies challenged the public, politicians and the legal system to decide whether they were Going to Believe the Science or the Misinformation. See Vampire Medicines
Fraud or Judgement?
This 1991 clash was not between Hard Science in the form of RCTs and a Soft Art in the form of Good Interviews, that gave rise to Misinformation. It was a clash between Fraud and what I am calling here a Judicial Process. This choice of words is explained below.
As outlined above company RCTs are close to fraudulent. The fraud is not readily checked as there is no easy way to establish what actually happened to people in these trials. When the records are accessed, it turns out that there were people in the RCTs to whom exactly the same hazards such as suicidal events or sexual dysfunction happened as doctors later reported in the Case Reports. More trial subjects had these events than were prevented from having such events by treatment.
The scale of the problem happening in these RCTs was obscured by egregious company manoeuvres, several of which breached FDA regulations. FDA noted but turned a blind eye to these breaches.
Words like fraud are emotive. The key point is that RCTs are not ipso facto science and case reports are not ipso facto non-science or misinformation.
Company RCTs are better viewed as Assay Systems – a set of maneuvers designed to get their drug or vaccine approved. These are not exercises aimed at exploring the effects of or best use of a vaccine or drug.
A lot of Science, and even more so Assay Systems, comes bedecked with the appearances of quantification and algorithmic processes which the laity see as untouched by potentially biased human hands. But quantification and algorithms are not the hallmarks of science.
Science has rules of evidence and requires judgements, verdicts, diagnoses. These judgements are ordinarily provisional and come with a requirement to be reviewed should new evidence emerge.
When it began around 1660, science distinguished itself from philosophy and theology on the basis of a requirement to explain observable events in front of individuals, without appealing to matters that could not be settled by experiment. The beliefs or biases of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Atheists had to be left outside and there was no leaving the room until a consensus was reached – other than to do further experiments.
Forty years before these ground rules laid the basis for the Royal Society and science, the British legal system reached a similar conclusion as regards Rules of Evidence for legal trials following the execution of Walter Raleigh. Raleigh had been convicted on the basis of hearsay. After his execution, the new Rules meant that cases could only be decided on the basis of the testimony of witnesses who came into the court to be examined and cross-examined. A verdict as to what the observable testimony supported required unanimity among 12 people with differing backgrounds.
This approach to Rules of Evidence is shared by Science and Judicial Systems. It better characterizes Science than any adherence to quantification and algorithms.
The term judicial process here means a process of interrogating observable data that culminates in a judgement. The processes of science are judicial in this sense.
When done properly the construction of a case report about a hazard or other novel effect revealed by the use of a medicine is similarly judicial (in the sense of weighing evidence and coming to a verdict/diagnosis) in its approach and as rigorously Evidence based as anything in medicine’s ancillary sciences.
In judicial settings (whether legal or clinical), a rigorous approach to Rules of Evidence shape the observables that jurors, judges and clinicians face. This does not mean that the right answer is supposed to arise magically from the observable data. Clearly there is a need for insights that grasp the possible relations between the observables and judgements as to which of the possible relations is the most probable. These judgements are called verdicts in legal settings and diagnoses in medical settings.
In both legal and clinical settings, verdicts can be shaped by the credibility of experts and witnesses. This might appear problematic from a scientific point of view, but this potential bias is as nothing compared to the systematic bias that stems from abandoning judgement altogether, which has led to an effectively fraudulent medical literature.
Abandoning Verdicts
Without verdicts and diagnoses, we know nothing. Algorithmic processes, ratings scales for behaviour that preclude judgement calls as to whether a disease or its treatment has led to suicidality, and statistical processes are inherently meaningless.
The crisis with the SSRIs and suicide however led to an abandonment of verdicts. Lilly appeared to prevail in the case of Prozac and suicide in 1991, and while the company’s success on the issue of Prozac and suicide has been completely overturned, its legacy is a widespread belief that the only form of knowledge in medicine that counts comes from controlled trials. In legal settings, this is the central plank of company presentations to Daubert hearings in cases involving treatment induced injury or death.
After 1991, medical journals became scared to publish case reports of treatment induced hazards. With the changed landscape, they worried about being sued by pharmaceutical companies for publishing something companies could claim was misinformation. In addition, journals made far more money from publishing RCTs and analyses of these trials, which were bought by companies for marketing purposes, than they did from case reports.
Given the difficulties in getting published, the only place for doctors to report was to regulators. This made no sense in that regulators have no experience in or training in determining whether a drug or vaccine might have caused a problem. The regulators of drugs are concerned with the wording of adverts only. They turn a blind eye to fraudulent scientific publications but quibble over claims made in adverts.
In respect of harms reported to them, regulators do three things.
- Regulators remove any identifying details. This converts the reports into hearsay. Regulators generate the phenomenon of misinformation, as these reports then accumulate without anyone even trying to connect a drug and a problem creating the impression that there are a lot of fake reports.
- Regulators file these reports. Reporting that there are 5000 or 10,000 reports of deaths immediately after taking a vaccine that are on file is labelled as misinformation by mainstream media and social media fact checkers.
- Regulators devote considerable resources and time to telling politicians and others that they spend considerable resources and time working out if there is a needle in the haystack of reports. Faced with a needle-stack, they are unable to spot the needle. Without interviewing the patient and tracking events that might be related to treatment, no-one can come to a verdict.
This is striking in the case of Covid-vaccine related death reports which outnumber reports of deaths from all other vaccines over several decades twenty-fold. These deaths congregate in the first two weeks after a vaccine is administered, many in very healthy people.
If a wife shoots a husband, it is possible that in one case out of a hundred he died from a heart attack just beforehand. An autopsy might help us with this. But we feel pretty comfortable coming to a verdict as to what happened even without the autopsy. Doctors however have reached a point where they seem inhibited in making a diagnosis in a case like this that even a 12-year-old could diagnose.
Given their diagnostic faculties in respect of harms have remained unused for three decades, doctors may have lost this ability, but in failing to make diagnoses and make them public, doctors have abandoned their birth right, as much as any judge or lawyer would were they to advocate abandoning jury trials in favour of algorithmic processes.
The vaccine or drug-related harms that doctors witness in their clinics can be investigated in a scientifically appropriate manner. A doctor’s investigation and diagnosis, especially when replicated by others, is better evidence about how best to practice than anything that comes from trials run by Contract Research Organizations (CROs) whose data is concealed by force majeure and a selected proportion of which appears in ghostwritten publications that hype the benefits and conceal the harms of treatments.
This latter material, that today parades under the banner of Evidence Based Medicine, should not get in the way of a doctor being a scientist and following the only evidence they or anyone else can follow.
While doctors continue to fail in their duty to establish the harms of treatment and communicate information about these hazards, they further compromise the ability of any of us to give informed consent to treatment. They have lost their salt as doctors and the profession risks going out of business unless this changes – See Can Doctors Save the World – and Their Jobs.
A medicine is a chemical that comes with information. Drugs and vaccines are chemicals and, as that word connotes, they are hazardous to put into the human body. The information that comes with these chemicals is what makes them medicines. The chemicals will always be hazardous. In recent decades the information has been degraded and now poses an increasing threat to any of us who take any on-patent medicine.
This degradation has underpinned a pandemic of overtreatment that has led to falls in life expectancy in Western countries even before Covid struck.
It is important for the common good, even more than for individual liberties, to question vaccine mandates, which risk entrenching the very factors, the fraud, that has led to this pandemic of overtreatment.
We might board a spacecraft and leave earth to escape a deadly virus if we were confident it would take off and land safely. In this case, the Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca vaccines have a track-record of blowing up on lift-off and we still don’t know if they can land. In these circumstances many reasonable people might prefer their chances with the virus.
A Miscarriage of Judicial Process
Patients with a problem that might have stemmed from a vaccine or drug come to a doctor for help. The first step in helping is a diagnosis/verdict.
The ability of a patient to get a fair hearing has been severely compromised since 1991. For instance, although the commonest effect of SSRIs is on genitals and sexual function, and even before these drugs were launched companies had healthy volunteer and other evidence that sexual dysfunction might endure after treatment stopped, the RCTs that brought these drugs to market indicated that enduring problems were non-existent and other problems were rare and would clear when treatment stopped.
As a result, 30 years later clinicians dismiss patients who bring them problems of enduring post SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD). It took close to two decades before reports of these problems reached the medical literature and this only happened because some clinicians reported their own PSSD, albeit without making this clear.
If a problem, like PSSD, does not appear in the supposed Evidence Base, patients are told their difficulties are in their mind rather than stemming from a prior medicine – how could a drug that has been out of your body for months still be causing this? Ridiculed and dismissed like this, some people have committed suicide. This blatant miscarriage of the clinical process strongly suggests to them that nobody is doing any research on PSSD or possible cures for it.
These miscarriages of justice continue to happen even though PSSD has now been written into the label of these drugs. The ‘recognition’ appears in a part of the drug label that nudges most clinicians to translate this mention as ‘we have also had reports from flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers – make of them what you will’.
What pretty well no doctors know is that mentions like this only happen when companies have cases that even they can only explain in terms of the effect of their drug – or when they hope to phase out their drug in favour of another more lucrative product.
It is little exaggeration to say that a Nobel Prize awaits someone who can establish how SSRIs bring about PSSD. A cure would both save lives and open up ways to engineer new treatments which taken in short courses could have enduring beneficial effects – rather like the effects of mRNA agents.
PSSD is a dramatic example of what is now the norm. Death and disability from medical treatments is now our commonest cause of death and disability. This stems in part from a failure to recognise that treatment can harm, a failure to recognise that having people on multiple treatments is even more likely to harm, and a failure to appreciate that this is an inevitable consequence of tolerating a ghostwritten literature with lack of access to trial data and entrusting bureaucrats to keep us safe rather than doctors.
For this to change, doctors need to realise that the judicial processes they conduct, and the verdicts they come to, are more important to justice for their patients than any steer from a government or regulatory apparatus – See They Used to Call it Medicine.
In the case of vaccines, it is very clear that healthy people, many of them enthusiastically pro-vaccine, as well as others driven by fear of the virus or losing a job, are being killed and seriously injured by these mRNA agents. When injured they meet medical systems and personnel who ridicule them and tell them their problems are in their mind or the pain in their chest is a sign that the vaccine is working.
Doctors and nurses have lost jobs for linking injuries and vaccines. This inhibits others from doing so and blocks the possibility of early diagnoses that might encourage research on these injuries and lead to treatments that might minimize disability and prevent deaths.
It now appears to be the norm for doctors facing a patient with thrombosis, myocarditis, peripheral neuropathy or other problems following a first dose of a Covid vaccine to refuse to endorse an application for a medical exemption from the second dose. In this case, the doctor is de facto denying a causal link to treatment. Its a bizarre abrogation of the role of a physician.
If a doctor writes a letter supporting an exemption, this will ordinarily be turned down by another person in the system, commonly working in public health, who has never met and will never meet the injured person and will almost certainly have less medical expertise in managing that injury than the person supporting the exemption.
Over the past three decades, the encroachment of a fake literature paraded as gold standard evidence has produced soft mandates that have eroded the likelihood that patients will get justice in clinical settings for injuries stemming from SSRIs, statins for cholesterol, bisphosphonates for osteoporosis, other drugs used to manage risks, and the mRNA agents now designated as vaccines.
The addition of hard mandates for these mRNA agents can only make things worse.
The argument outlined here is not based on the rights of individuals to bodily autonomy. It speaks to the wider rights of all of us to the benefits that stem from all of us co-operating in accordance with the jointly held values that are embodied in what we call science and justice.
| HIDING HARMS | ||
|---|---|---|
| SSRI | mRNA | |
| Ghostwritten Articles | Yes | Yes |
| Trial Data Inaccessible | Yes | Yes |
| Surrogate Outcomes | Yes | Yes |
| Regulators Approve on Basis of Negative Trials | Yes | Possibly |
| Harms Hidden under Misleading Codes | Yes | Yes |
| Harms Hidden under Patient Exposure Years | Yes | Yes |
| Harms not Collected | Yes | Yes |
| Harms Hidden using Simpson's Paradox | Yes | Yes |
| Harms not Collected as Autopsies not Done | Yes | Yes |
| Harms labeled Misinformation | Yes | Yes |
| Blame the Disease Strategy | Yes | Yes |
| Treatment linked Death & Injury added to Placebo | Yes | Yes |
| Post Treatment linked Death and Injury Added to Placebo | Yes | Apparently |
| Placebo Patients given Active Treatment | Yes | Yes |
| Real World Evidence to counter Negative Trials | Yes | Yes |
| Dependence producing | Yes | Yes |
| Lose Job if Stop Treatment | Yes | Yes |
| Life Expectancy Falling | Yes | Yes |
| Rebranded From | Anxiolytics | Gene Therapy |
| Rebranded To | Antidepressants | Vaccines |
| Harms vilified in Progressive Media | Yes | Yes |
| Efficacy glorified in Progressive Media | Yes | Yes |
| Stigmatization of the Untreated | Yes | Yes |
| Harms vilified as | Scientology Inspired | Anti-Vax Inspired |
These two posts will hopefully be supplemented by another next week – Who’s Afraid of Science.
Thank you for this excellent analysis. I haven’t trusted the modern medical system since I was twenty and I’m in my 60’s now.
“the vaccines may not be perfect but we are in a burning house and even if untested they are better than nothing. ”
How would we know whether we are pouring chemicals that extinguish fires or fire accelerants on the fire? Maybe the fire extinguisher is filled with gasoline. We would have to pay attention to data and have to have a method to discover whether the fire increases spread when sprayed with the fire extinguisher, wouldn’t we?
In the context of covid vaccines, we would need a method to investigate vaccines as a possible cause of death (or as a cause of other possible adverse events). We would have to proactively plan to investigate and gather data using some method. But this method to gather data to determine risk from covid vaccines is sadly lacking from official guidelines. Instead, it looks like data about risk is being hidden by hospitals using the binary categories of “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” where some of the vaccinated are counted as “unvaccinated.”
So, not only are the bureaucrats hiding data, but hospitals are as well. But why would hospitals go along with a strategy to benefit pharma? Hospitals are being given additional stipends per patient by CMS if the patient receives certain drugs, like remdesivir and certain “approved” mabs. About $19,000. (This is in addition to a 20% bonus for covid patients and a bonus for ventilating covid patients.) It’s government-mediated hospital handouts that benefit pharma by incentivizing hospitals to include certain treatments in their protocol for covid patients. The government-medical-industrial complex at work. Racketeering, Influence, and Corrupt Organizations.
This is Fine…
The comic originally comes from K.C. Green’s Gunshow comic #648, actually titled “The Pills Are Working” or “On Fire”, originally posted January 9th, 2013
KC Green said he was ‘taking antidepressants at the time’ in his video.
He posts the original ideas and cartoons for ‘This is Fine’
Then on the early morning of July 26th, political cartoon website The Nib[14] responded to @GOP’s tweet with a custom rendition of the original cartoon featuring the Republican elephant in place of the cartoon dog (shown below), illustrated by K.C. Green himself and commissioned by the website for exhibition at an art gallery in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-fine
Christopher Lane, PhD
@christophlane
NEW: Multiple studies conclude SSRI antidepressants “may cause sexual dysfunction in 40 to 65%” of those prescribed them. How can physicians provide the best prospects for recovery? My latest for @PsychToday
Diagnosing Long-Term Sexual Dysfunction from SSRIs
More than half of all patients taking SSRIs may be affected
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/side-effects/202201/diagnosing-long-term-sexual-dysfunction-ssris
The proposed criteria—led by psychiatrist David Healy and involving senior researchers across Europe, North America, and India—provided badly needed clarity on a medical condition that poses unique challenges, in that symptoms can present or persist long after the causative drug treatment has ended and which themselves are often mistaken for relapse in depression, as reduced or lost libido is a shared characteristic.
Leonie
@leoniefen
Consultant says he was ‘sidelined’ after highlighting issues with prescriptions at mental health service
EXCLUSIVE Consultant says he was ‘sidelined’ after highlighting issues with prescriptions at mental health service
Dr Ankur Sharma claims he was asked to take time off, stripped of his role as clinical lead and reassigned to administration
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/consultant-says-he-was-sidelined-after-highlighting-issues-with-prescriptions-at-mental-health-service-41274673.html
The Irish Independent revealed yesterday how locum consultant psychiatrist Dr Ankur Sharma (40) had highlighted the alleged inappropriate prescription of multiple medications to young mental health patients over a four-year period by a junior doctor at the service. Dr Sharma alleged the doctor diagnosed children with ADHD without doing proper assessments.
https://holeousia.com/2022/01/26/deleted-not-read/
KC Green – Pink Elephants…
Since the covid ‘vaccines’ more and more people are being switched on to this information and now have awareness and growing interest.
The rights of individuals should be encompassed by the notion of the common good which many are working consciously working towards despite the kick back ,not only for their own sakes but actually for the common good by exposing harms lies and corruption and shabby science, at the same time as being stigmatised marginalised and bullied by those to claim they have the answers or even the best possible answers to the unknown and the power to impose them. Most know people have lived because of the vaccines but it tool a long time for the harms to be admitted and the consequent silencing o f those who should be able to speak honestly about the limits of the science .
Those who do on the media usually qualify their support for a no to vaccines by saying they are vaccinated themselves, It is still hardly possible to give alternative views without bullying.There is no common good in this behaviour .Without people using their individual experience of both harms from vaccines and SSRIs to challenge and inform others the truth would be kept even more secret, fewer people would realise they need to investigate the information which is available from different sources and crucially investigate the system and those individuals who run them . It is unlikely we could trust any one group to publish ‘cases’ we could rely on . Self interests would still skew and corrupt. Individual freedom to do the reporting with and without practioners and to publish their knowledge to honestly inform collective decisions is even more limited than those of clinicians ,prescribers, regulators, pharma companies and so on . I don’t know what level of involvement individuals would have in the publication of their histories more widely in forms the public could access themselves. Historically they have been written up with token consent but not with verification by the individual . Hopefully one day the need for so many activist groups will lead to more respectful cooperation towards developing answers .
Monday I attended the panel discussion “COVID-19: A Second Opinion” sponsored by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. We heard from Aaron Kheriarty, who was fired from his position at UC Irvine for refusing the shot. He told us that is virtually impossible to obtain a vaccine exemption in the state of California, even for people who were harmed by their first dose.
“There is no clearer contraindication to a medicine than to have already been harmed by that medicine,” Dr. Kheriarty told us, adding angrily “A four-year-old could have figured that out.”
I often hear that mRNA vaccines are the first ones ever created that do not reliably produce immunity – and do not stop disease transmission. But is that really true?
A few years ago Boostrix, a compound tetanus-diptheria-pertussis vaccine, was heavily marketed to older Americans by GSK. Serious cases of pertussis or “whooping cough” are extremely rare in adults, but the disease can kill babies and toddlers. So GSK’s sales pitch focused on the need to protect our grandchildren.
However, Boostrix did not do that, it turned out. It reliably protected you from getting sick yourself, but it didn’t prevent asymptomatic infections (or ones so mild the average person wouldn’t spot them). And those infections could still be passed along to infants. Just like the current crop of Covid-19 vaccines.
Pertussis vaccines had this weakness ever since the 1980’s, when a high level of adverse effects forced drug companies to reformulate them. Recently I’ve heard that influenza and rotavirus vaccines share the same problem. (It’s not well-known because we fear those diseases a lot less, so we don’t do much testing. Whoever heard of getting “tested for flu-virus” when you didn’t feel sick?)
The Covid vaccines DO seem to cause a lot more problems. (They’re the first ones I recall that make MOST people sick for a couple days post-vax.) But the *types* of harm – complex nerve ailments like Guillain-Barre, myocarditis, scary clotting disorders – are not new to docs who specialize in vaccines. Maybe just more common.
Could all these effects be caused by disturbances in the immune system? That would explain why vaccines and viruses can cause similar problems. All vaccines work by triggering your immune system—just like the virus they’re aimed at, but hopefully in a much safer way. The mRNA vaccines, of course, have a brand-new way of doing so. They’re also unusual in being “for all ages”; most vaccines are made primarily for one age group, such as young kids or seniors. And they seem to cause injury in teens and healthy younger adults much more often than older folks.
This is not a reassuring picture at all! But it makes more sense to me than the idea that these are actually “gene therapy” products (like CRISPR) rather than vaccines.
Pfizer Moves to Intervene in High-Profile Case Dealing With COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Data
By Zachary Stieber
https://www.theepochtimes.com/pfizer-moves-to-intervene-in-high-profile-case-dealing-with-covid-19-vaccine-safety-data_4238676.html
Pfizer has asked a federal court to let it intervene in a high-profile case that has seen U.S. drug regulators try to slow-walk disclosure of data on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Pfizer says it supports disclosing the data but wants to ensure that information exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is not “disclosed inappropriately.”
Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year after the agency, responding to a FOIA request, claiming it would take 20 years to produce the data on the vaccine.
The FDA later asked a judge to give it 75 years, but the judge rejected the request and ordered the regulator to produce 55,000 pages a month, which would give it about eight months to fully disclose the records.
About two weeks after the order, on Jan. 21, lawyers representing Pfizer asked U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump nominee overseeing the case, to allow the company to intervene.
Pfizer was not aware of the case until executives read news reports about it last month and now wants to help FDA staffers review the documents in question to ensure proper redactions are made, according to the new filing.
In light of the FDA’s objections to the sped-up timeframe, Pfizer “seeks leave to intervene in this action for the limited purpose of ensuring that information exempt from disclosure under FOIA is adequately protected as FDA complies with this Court’s order,” the memorandum supporting the motion for leave to intervene stated.
Government officials told the court that they want Pfizer’s help “due to the unprecedented speed with which the Court has ordered FDA to process the records at issue.”
“FDA anticipates that coordination with Pfizer to obtain the company’s views as to which portions of the records are subject to Exemption 4, the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1905, or other statutory protections will be a necessary component of the agency’s endeavors to meet the extraordinary exigencies of this case,” Department of Justice lawyers said in a response to Pfizer’s motion.
Plaintiffs, though, asked Pittman to reject Pfizer’s bid.
“Even though the FDA has more than sufficient resources to expeditiously produce the requested documents, and the agency has repeatedly stated its commitment to protecting Pfizer’s interests, Pfizer could still assist the FDA with expediting release of the requested documents. Pfizer, however, provides no reason why it needs to intervene in this matter to render that purported assistance. Nor can Plaintiff discern why Pfizer needs to intervene in this matter to assist the FDA with expediting release of the requested documents—it can render this assistance without intervening,” Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency said in a brief.
The judge, the group said, should ask Pfizer to clarify how intervening would help quicken the document production.
Additionally, Pfizer lawyers told plaintiffs that while the company does not at present plan to challenge the court’s production order, they would not rule out challenging the order at a later time.
“Pfizer does not presently intend to move the Court to reconsider its January 6, 2022 order, but Pfizer is not in a position at this time to waive its ability to do so if circumstances change such that there is good cause at a later time to do so,” Daniel Tobey, one of Pfizer’s lawyers, said in a statement to the court.
Plaintiffs are concerned that Pfizer’s involvement will lead to the FDA renewing effort to delay production of the vaccine data.
Pittman is due to hear arguments for and against Pfizer’s proposed intervention on Jan. 28 in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas.
Regulators granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer’s vaccine in December 2020, alleging at the time that it was highly effective in preventing infection and severe disease.
The vaccine has since proven to provide little protection against infection and its effectiveness against severe illness has dropped, and some side effects linked to the vaccine were detected post-authorization, including heart inflammation and severe allergic reactions.
FDA and other U.S. officials continue to recommend virtually all Americans should get the jab and recently cleared booster doses for individuals 12 and older, while children as young as 5 can get Pfizer’s primary series.
Panic-button for Pfizer…
NHS workers are lauching a legal action /judicial review to axe the mandate. Steve J who is a critical care consultant says ‘the science isn’t good enough’ and that coercion is against his and many health workers’ values.
GB
0:21 / 2:24
EXCLUSIVE: End the NHS jab mandate. On Youtube
16,189 views27 Jan 2022 S J is working with Solicitor Stephen Jackson to challenge legality
Nigel Farage
298K subscribers
EXCLUSIVE
Steve James, the doctor who challenged Sajid Javid over the NHS mandate, is launching a judicial review against the government with a number of health professionals.
He will do an exclusive broadcast interview with me on GB News at 7pm. Make sure you get it on their YouTube after.
Dr Steve James explains his legal challenge against Government over NHS vaccine mandate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVZ6eAvpxpE
Hand in hand with the forcing inadequately tested “vaccines” on the public is the torrent of vituperation poured out on doctors who have the temerity to treat covid patients before they end up in hospital. It’s a measure of the garbage pit into which our culture has descended that early treatment is now considered heresy — at least when it involves COVID-19.
Here’s my take on the meeting of the expert panel:
https://patrickdhahn.medium.com/covid-19-a-second-opinion-918daaf6f69d
Paul Marik also gave the date NEJ published the Ebola trial on Remdesivir – December 12 2019 which was also the day Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party got into power in the UK. Now the BBC and UK MSM are obsessed with an never ending Johnson – breaking Covid rules – party pantomime, just proving the puppet nature of all this.
Remdesivir was pulled from the trial due to harm but is now given to almost all covid patients in USA hospitals
“A total of 681 patients were enrolled from November 20, 2018, to August 9, 2019, at which time the data and safety monitoring board recommended that patients be assigned only to the MAb114 and REGN-EB3 groups for the remainder of the trial”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1910993
It seems that this is the way forward for trials:
https://www.panoramictrial.org/
Take a look at who can join the study
https://www.panoramictrial.org/participant-information
‘or aged 18 or over with a listed preexisting condition’
‘If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom’: Elon Musk heaps praise on Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ of 50,000 truckers protesting vaccine mandate as rigs stretch for 45 MILES: Trudeau calls protesters a ‘small fringe minority’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10449587/American-truckers-join-Canadas-Freedom-Convoy-protesting-vax-mandate-rigs-stretch-45-MILES.html
The Canadian federal government instituted vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers throughout the country. But as many as 32,000, or 20 percent, of the 160,000 Canadian and American cross-border truck drivers may be taken off the roads due to the mandate, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has characterized the protesters as a ‘small fringe minority who are on the way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSMEa2Ox2LE
Annie some Great signs sign on trucks eg “Don’t Bite The Hand That Feeds You” and “Truck Fudeau!”
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Defeat the Mandates – A Day for the History Books!
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Children’s Health Defense Unsubscribe
2:19 PM (3 hours ago)
40,000 attendees gathered from all over the country to attend the “Defeat the Mandates” event.
Dear Susanne,
The “Defeat the Mandates: An American Homecoming” event this past Sunday in Washington, DC was truly historic! The day was energizing, peaceful and full of hope and optimism.
If you couldn’t attend and missed our livestream coverage watch this highlight video to see a preview of this amazing day! For those who want to catch up on the entire event, you can playback the livestream.
Children’s Health Defense, along with co-organizers and sponsors Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, Global Covid Summit, World Council for Health and JP Sears want to thank everyone who attended on Sunday and the millions who tuned in online.
Freedom-lovers United!
“Defeat the Mandates” was a peaceful and beautiful gathering of approximately 40,000 freedom-lovers who descended upon the nation’s capital to reclaim our civil liberties and say NO to mandates. People traveled from all over the country to attend and braved the cold, representing a diverse and peaceful crowd from all walks of life. Attendees represented differing political affiliations, race, ideologies and vaccination status.
Marching Against Mandates
The crowds began to gather early Sunday morning around 10:30 a.m. at the Washington Monument where colorful signs and flags could be seen along with people exchanging hugs, smiles and cheerful greetings.
The march kicked off at 11:30 a.m. as the massive crowd walked towards the Lincoln Memorial. Loud chants and drums could be heard from many people throughout the crowds. Banners, signs and bullhorns punctuated the atmosphere.
The Operation Freedom Fighters and Bravest for Choice firefighters carried an American flag and stood at the foot of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where they sang “God Bless America” followed by the pledge allegiance.
The event officially began when performing artists Jimmy Levy and Hi-Rez the Rapper sang their top billboard hits “This is War” and “Welcome to the Revolution”, along with their latest hit “God Over the Government” followed by Jimmy Levy’s solo of a soulful acapella version of “God Bless America.”
All-Star Lineup of Speakers
Kevin Jenkins opened as the first guest speaker, reflecting back on Dr. Martin Luther King’s appearance on these same steps in 1963 and reclaiming the American dream.
Keynote speaker Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. educated the crowd with a powerful and impactful speech that informed the crowd about the scientific data and explained the manipulation around the COVID-19 vaccine trial data. Kennedy also spoke to the corruption of the pharmaceutical industries and government overreach.
The medical community was represented as a united front as they took to the stage together with speeches from Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Ryan Cole, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Steve Kirsch, Dr. Christina Parks, Dr. Paul Alexander, Dr. Richard Urso and more.
Religious leaders Rev. Aaron Lewis, and Rabbi Zev Epstein spoke powerful words, as did a large group of firefighters from Bravest for Choice and Operation Freedom of Choice who represent the backbone of our country of those who serve.
We also heard from Dr. Joel Wallskog, surgeon and Kyle Warner, professional mountain bike racer both tragically injured from the COVID-19 vaccine. They represented a large group of people injured from the COVID-19 injection. A large group of them were present at the rally and Dr. Wallskog and Warner shared their own stories and those of others they’ve met along their journey. Their stories were gut wrenching and tragic to hear and a stark reminder of the reality of what is happening to thousands, and even, millions of people.
Dr. Wallskog reminded everyone:
“We hear you, we see you, we are you.”
He pleaded with the crowd asking that everyone breaks free of the silence and share their stories of injuries and also asked people to consider donating to reAct19, a patient advocate group that supports the treatment and recovery of those injured from COVID-19 injections.
As of mid-December, 2020 through January 21, 2022 there have been 1,071,856 injuries including 22,607 deaths following COVID vaccination as reported to the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
The event was closed with a fiery speech from Del Bigtree who quoted Abraham Lincoln but channeled William Wallace as he demanded accountability and invited everyone to claim what is already theirs by becoming “superspreaders of truth.”
Bigtree said:
“The truth always prevails. We are victorious in truth because we are endowed with one great power: the power of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ not given to us by this capital or this government, but by God himself.”
Worldwide Impact: A Gathering In Europe
Earlier that day started with “A Call to Europe” press conference in Belgium, Brussels. People from all over Europe assembled in Brussels, home to the EU Parliament, to demonstrate against coercive COVID countermeasures including lockdowns, vaccine passports and vaccine mandates.
According to news reports, the crowd numbered somewhere between about 50,000 up to 600,000, according to organizers and participants.
Unfortunately, the event organizers called off their rally after police — using tear gas, water cannons, dogs and the threat of mounted police — ordered them to disperse.
Read more about the events that unfolded in Brussels in this article and see key highlights of speeches from CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland and other speakers including Catherine Austin Fitts, president of Solari, Inc., Vera Sherav, holocaust survivor and president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, AHRP as they regrouped in an alternative location later that day.
In her speech, Holland said:
“We are at a crossroads. We can either follow the path to tyranny that’s before us, or we can set ourselves free. The official narrative of the global coup d’état is over.”
Holland also said, “We have not fully won, here or in the United States, but we can with education, advocacy and litigation.”
View the replay of the “Call to Europe” event in Brussels.
We are Growing, We Are Winning!
After Sunday’s events in both Brussels and Washington, DC, it’s clear we’re no longer fringe groups that can be marginalized. Freedom-lovers all over the world are rising up and coming together to unite in one mission: to defeat the mandates and maintain choice when it comes to vaccines.
Thank you again for those who joined us on Sunday in both Washington, DC and Brussels, Belgium!
Be sure to tune in today, Friday, January 28th from 2:30pm ET/1:30pm CT/11:30am PT for our “Defeat the Mandates Special” a one-hour recap of highlights from both events.
Thank you,
The Children’s Health Defense Team
Great article as usual. With Covid, there’s been a very dangerous shift of mindset among the “laity” as well, who now seems to have embraced this sort of unquestionable “medical theology”. At least there’s one person in the medical community who’s speaking up for all the victims of this corrupt system. I’ll keep reading everything you write.
Greetings from a loyal supporter
Don’t bother clicking on the link I provided. My Medium account was just deleted for “promotion of controversial, suspect, or extreme content.”
Presumably this was because my my latest post, in which I factually reported what was said at the expert panel convened by Senator Johnson.
The medical dictatorship is coming.
Bastards.
I was just able to access your medium website.
Loads have had stuff removed here is one on twitter
https://twitter.com/PhilsandJenn/status/1467538611054776329
what did this RN say –
“I am 5 hours into my 12 hour shift and have already treated 3 vax injuries. Heart attack, 36y/O Stroke, 44y/O and a lower leg blood clot 29y/O. All recently vaccinated. Heart attack and stroke patients are critical. I don’t know which vax they had”
I’ve switched my base of operations to Substack. Here’s the post that got me canceled from Medium. Read it while you can!
https://patrickdhahn.substack.com/p/covid-19-a-second-opinion?justPublished=true
“meet the threshold for removal”
Podcaster Joe Rogan vows to ‘balance things out’ after music legends flee Spotify: Streaming giant’s boss bows to pressure and says Covid podcasts will now come with ‘warnings’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10458939/Podcaster-Joe-Rogan-responds-podcast-controversy.html
Spotify meanwhile said it plans to add an advisory content warning to any episodes concerning Covid.
Ek said that the advisories will link to Spotify’s fact-based Covid-19 hub in what he described as a ‘new effort to combat misinformation.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/arts/music/spotify-joe-rogan-covid-misinformation-statement.html
Ek said that Spotify would add a “content advisory” notice to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about the coronavirus, directing listeners to a “Covid-19 hub” with facts and information.
That hub includes links to health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as podcasts from news sources like the BBC, CNN and ABC News.
A Second Opinion?
Justin Trudeau Ducks the Great Trucker Revolt
https://www.theepochtimes.com/justin-trudeau-ducks-the-great-trucker-revolt_4243377.html
Yes, I know that we have all come to expect that the corporate media will not cover what actually matters, and much of what it does cover it does only with a strong bias toward narratives crafted by ruling elites. Even so, it seems to stretch credulity beyond any plausible extent for the major media to pretend that this isn’t happening. It is and it has massive implications for the present and the future.
Canadian Trucker Convoy Descends on Ottawa to Protest Vaccine Mandates
The “Freedom Convoy” began as a response to Covid vaccine requirements for some truckers, but its political aims have since broadened.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/world/canada-trucker-protest.html
“This thing has really taken on a life of its own,” said Mr. Hill, a former Conservative member of Parliament from Alberta. “The vast majority of the people that have either come on board to participate in the truck convoy or those donating to support it financially have just reached a point of frustration and exasperation with these lockdowns and continuation of restrictions that they want someone to speak up and say ‘enough’ to the federal government.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBp6KkHsZXs
At last they’ve got the message – thousands of people people aren’t just hesitant, needing more persuation, coercion , threats or ‘educating’ . We all will possibly benfit now from healthworkers being in such a strong position to stick to their decision not to be vaccinated – if a group on the front line in one of the most precarious positions say ‘no’ why should others not refuse further coercion. Thousands who are not considered as precious have been sacrificed . It is laughable to suggest they have been saved from unemployment because the virus is less virilent – this is saving face when the battle has been lost . The rest in the population who lost work and ended up on meagre ‘benefits’ should be compensated . Many are now being made to take any kind of employment if something in the line they prefer isn;t found within 4 weeks. Nothing can be done about the anger which will be felt by those who acceptd the vaccine to save a job . It Will be intesting to see how much persuation will be put on ‘care workers’ to go back to a situation where they were treated with such disrespect.
U-turn on mandatory Covid vaccinations for NHS and social care workers
Sajid Javid set to scrap requirements after warnings that jabs policy could lead to shortage of 80.000 workers
By
Gabriella Swerling,
Ben Riley-Smith,
30 January 2022 • 10:00pm
The jab requirement for NHS workers was meant to come into force in April CREDIT: Henry Nicholls/Reuters
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, will on Monday meet fellow ministers on the Covid-Operations Cabinet committee to rubber stamp the decision on the about-turn.
Multiple government sources said ministers are expected to end the requirement because the omicron Covid variant, now dominant in the UK, is milder than previous strains.
The move comes after warnings that almost 80,000 healthcare workers would be forced out of their jobs because they had declined to take two doses of a Covid vaccine.
The jab requirement for NHS workers was meant to come into force in April – making this Thursday, Feb 3, the last day on which staff could get their first jab in order to be fully vaccinated in time.
The legal requirement for care home staff to be fully vaccinated came into effect in November. An estimated 40,000 people lost their jobs over the policy. Under the new rules, they are expected to be able to return to work in the sector.
On Sunday night, care home representatives expressed fury at the handling of the issue, saying the flip-flopping had “devastated our workforce and brought providers to their knees”.
“Omicron has changed things. When we first introduced the policy, it was delta that was the dominant variant. That was very high risk in terms of how severe it was,” the source said.
“For omicron, while it is more transmissible, all the studies have shown it is less severe. That has changed the conversation about whether mandatory jabs are still proportionate.”
Changing the law to force scores of workers to get Covid jabs sparked controversy when The Telegraph revealed the plans last March. A legal expert at the time said that the only comparable UK laws dated from the 1800s, when newborns had to be given smallpox jabs.
It is unclear when the policy change, once signed off, will be announced. It is expected to be made public before the Feb 3 cut-off for unvaccinated NHS workers to get jabbed.
NHS guidance to employers said all front line staff who had not been vaccinated should start being called into formal meetings from Feb 4 and warned that they faced dismissal.
Last week, the Health Secretary said around 77,000 NHS workers remain unvaccinated against the virus. Ministers are expected to point to the fact that tens of thousands of healthcare workers were vaccinated after the original policy was announced.
Responding to The Telegraph’s revelation that plans for mandatory vaccines in both the NHS and social care sector will be scrapped, Nadra Ahmed OBE, who chairs the National Care Association, said: “This decision epitomises the lack of foresight by ministers in choosing to drive the implementation of this policy without producing impact assessment prior to taking it to the vote.
“Every parliamentarian who voted for it in social care needs to take responsibility for the loss of staff our sector have suffered because of an ill-thought out policy. Social care has been used as a pilot which has devastated our workforce and brought providers to their knees.”
Mike Padgham, the chairman of the Independent Care Group for York and North Yorkshire and the owner of Saint Cecilia’s Care Services, which operates four care businesses, said: “It feels like a bit of a slap in the face.
“I like to think that all those staff that lost their jobs would get them back again, because we need them. It’s what we argued in the beginning – the vaccine was a good thing, but it shouldn’t be mandatory.
“Common sense seems to have prevailed now, but there’s been a lot of heartache and sleepless nights for people – unnecessarily – in the midst of a pandemic, when we all said at the beginning that this wasn’t the right approach.
“This just shows that they don’t understand the difference between the NHS and social care sectors and both need to be strong to support each other. ”
It is understood that the Government is anticipating backlash from carers who lost their jobs as a result of the policy.
In October, the courts rejected an initial judicial review application that challenged the Government’s vaccine mandate for workers in CQC-regulated care homes. However, it is now anticipated that if those who want their jobs back struggle to get them back, will seek legal action and a renewed application.
I see the Covid Cult now is dancing on Meat Loaf’s grave. The guy was morbidly obese and had ingested a whole pharmacopeia of illegal drugs. It’s pretty obvious that maximizing lifespan was not his top priority.
And he made it to seventy-four, for crying out loud.
https://conservativebrief.com/meat-loaf-58360/?fbclid=IwAR2ic95ekP8pLrmVpNVjHBTlffvP9H-LLfXQnisnqqQuO9v-M20-MiLgRIE
Obesity is strongly correlated with low 25OHD levels.
“I think it’s a disgrace, I think it’s borderline criminal”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Y-hpihmJM
Justin Trudeau
@JustinTrudeau
For nearly two years, Canadians have shown strength, generosity, and respect. That is the story of this pandemic. https://bit.ly/3g9G63c
https://twitter.com/justintrudeau
The Reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0pl74d5NJo&t=1s
Many of us were as afraid, even more afraid, than of catching the virus as it’s height, than of what ‘they’ might do to us next, especially if refusing the vaccinations. All over Europe the fear ramped up has had terrible consequences .The word ‘scum’ was used by an MP maybe about another matter – but with apologies for any offence felt about the word – it is applicable to this lot.
Government accused of using Covid fear tactics to inflate anxiety levels of British public
THE government has been accused of using covert strategies to keep people in a perpetual state of heightened fear to make them obey Covid-19 restrictions.
By LUCY JOHNSTON
13:42, Sun, Jan 24,
Boris Johnson: New variant may have ‘higher degree of mortality’
A group of 47 psychologists has claimed this amounts to a strategic decision “to inflate the fear levels of the British public”, which it states is “ethically murky” and has left people too afraid to leave their homes for medical appointments. Led by former NHS consultant psychologist Dr Gary Sidley, the experts have written to the British Psychological Society (BPS) claiming the strategy is “morally questionable.”
It has admitted to communicating public information campaigns 17 per week on average during the peak of the pandemic in order to reach an estimated 95 per cent of adults.
The criticism follows evidence from minutes of the government advisory group Sage of 22 March 2020 which stated: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent,” by “using hard hitting emotional messaging.”
Dr Sidley said: “It is clear from the methods that are now being used that the government has taken on this advice. Just because the government is explicit in its messaging, however, it does not mean this is not having an impact covertly. It is the way this is communicated that we are concerned about. Psychologists know that while the content of messaging might be factual, the way in which it is delivered will determine its impact and we believe the biggest impact is at a subconscious level which we do not think is ethical or healthy for people. We believe inflating fear levels to achieve compliance may be doing more harm than good.
“For example stating 500 people died after a positive PCR test will inflate fear level – and therefore compliance – more than if it was put in context of the fact that, on average, 1,600 people die every day.”
The letter from the psychologists, which the ethics committee of the BPS has acknowledged and will respond by February 18, states the strategy being used is morally questionable and influences an entire nation “below the level of conscious thought and reason” without informed consent. It also alleges this has caused heightened panic, adding that the effect on the nation’s mental health “is likely to be substantial”.
Dr Sidley and colleagues say in their letter: “The strategic decision to inflate fear levels has had unintended consequences, resulting in many people being too scared to leave their houses or to let anybody in, thereby exacerbating loneliness and isolation which – in turn – have detrimental impacts on physical and mental health.
“Persistent fear compromises the immune system and works against the objective of keeping us safe and healthy.”
The Government has vehemently denied using covert techniques (
It came as Graham Medley, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, yesterday (SAT) disputed a statement by Boris Johnson that the new variant coronavirus may have “a higher degree of mortality”.
The professor said it is still an “open question” whether the new variant is more deadly.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said: ”We do not use covert techniques to tell people about the pandemic – we are transparent about our decisions and advice.
“We communicate with them through public information campaigns which reached an estimated 95 per cent of adults on average 17 times per week at their peak.
“Throughout this crisis we have set out clear instructions to the public about what they need to do in order to delay the spread of the disease.”
2 FEBRUARY 2021
It’s not covert, it’s blatant! The SAGE sub-group SP1-B has published reports detailing how to apply psychology to “nudge” the population and have said ” the level of fear is not high enough”. It details how coersion should be used and uses Neuralistic Linguistic Programming (NLP) as a tool to manipulate us.
In common terms, it’s called “Gaslighting”, If you do it within an abusive relationship it is a criminal act so how can it be legal to do to the whole population?
GB News
@GBNEWS
·
23m
‘What we’re asking for is transparency’
Dr Gary Sidley joins Dan Wootton on GB News to explain his call for an investigation into the government’s Covid adverts.
Television Freeview 236, Sky 515, Virgin 626.
0:00 / 1:17
The Twilight of Covid Mandates in Europe
The U.K. ditches a diktat for health staff as other leaders rethink how to live with the virus.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twilight-of-covid-mandates-in-europe-uk-vaccines-sajid-javid-11643749177
The Biden Administration isn’t the only government rethinking Covid vaccine mandates.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration quietly dropped its mandate after a rebuke from the Supreme Court, and some leaders in Europe are also finally getting serious about learning to live with the virus.
United Kingdom Health Secretary Sajid Javid on Monday scrapped a requirement for employees of the National Health Service (NHS) to be vaccinated by April. Doctors, nurses and other staff would have had to receive their first shots this week to be fully vaccinated in time and it became clear tens of thousands were holding out, amounting to more than 5% of the NHS work force. This amid chronic staff shortages.
A separate mandate for nursing-home staff took effect in November and the havoc it wreaked no doubt contributed to Mr. Javid’s decision to avoid the same chaos in the NHS.
Estimates vary, but thousands of staff seem to have left their jobs owing to the mandate as a staffing shortage sets into that industry. A major concern is that those workers will have found other jobs in Britain’s tight labor market and might never return to their old posts.
Denmark’s government Tuesday lifted all remaining Covid-related restrictions, and officials suggested they’ll now focus more on hospitalizations from Covid rather than total cases. Norway and Ireland also have lifted many restrictions.
This enlightenment isn’t universal, but other governments seem to be paying a political price for tougher pandemic measures. Italy recently imposed a vaccine mandate for people over age 50, but the move stirred vigorous opposition within Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s fragile coalition government. Austria has imposed the Continent’s most stringent mandate, applying to all adults, while also lifting lockdown rules that had applied to the unvaccinated. Street protests are becoming a regular occurrence.
Vaccines can be life-saving and millions of people have concluded it makes good sense to receive the shots. But governments in Europe increasingly must decide if Covid remains a big enough danger to warrant its dominating role in policy debates.
Britain’s government determined that a staffing shortage in hospitals would be a bigger emergency than Covid. Other governments might come to ask whether the social division stoked by vaccine mandates is worth the marginal health benefit. That kind of tradeoff is what “learning to live with Covid” will mean for politics.
Canadian Truckers, Justin Trudeau, Joe Rogan, Malone and McCollough, Spotify and Facebook.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/robert-malone-peter-mccullough-a-litany-of-untruths/id1531266667?i=1000547774859
Signs of ‘Twilight’ …
Are people with incompetent immune systems likely to derive much benefit from covid vaccines (or any vaccine)?
Will giving covid vaccines to people with incompetent immune systems possibly cause the covid vaccine data to trend towards harm?
What conditions are likely to reduce immune competence?
What can be done to improve immune competence?
Will improving immune competence cause covid vaccines to provide more benefit and less harm?
Why aren’t the public health authorities discussing how to improve immune competence?