Risk calculus is a funny thing. According to a new poll, the Canadians most cautious about the risk of catching Covid-19 are also the most likely to support open war between Russia and the United States.
It wasn’t a big sample, but the results were stark. Ekos Politics polled a random sample of around 1000 Canadians, and stratified the results by vaccination status. This revealed that whereas 56% of unvaccinated Canadians oppose the idea of NATO imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, an even greater number of the triple-vaccinated — 59% — support doing so.
Serco has won a £212m ($278m) contract for disease testing and contract tracing from the UK Health Security Agency, the organisations set up to replace the controversial NHS Test & Trace and doomed Public Health England.
In a contract initially set to last two years, the tech and public sector outsourcing provider will be expected to support services in the country including positive case tracing, contact tracing, isolation follow-up, test enquiries, and test bookings.
So what should we expect from the sanctions? Western pundits and commentators have little doubt: the sanctions will hamstring the Russian economy, sow discontent among the Russian people and elites alike, and possibly even cause the downfall of the Putin regime. At the very least, we’re told, they will hinder Russia’s war efforts. But history suggests otherwise: see Iraq, or more recently Iran. Far more likely is that this turns out to be the latest Western strategic miscalculation in a long list of strategic blunders, of which the United States’ inglorious withdrawal from Afghanistan is just the most recent example.
After all, Russia has been preparing for this moment for quite some time. Following the first wave of Western sanctions, in 2014, and partly in retaliation against them, Putin embarked on what analysts have dubbed a “Fortress Russia” strategy, building up the country’s international reserves and diversifying them away from US dollars and British pounds, reducing its foreign exposure, boosting its economic cooperation with China, and pursuing import substitution strategies in several industries, including food, medicine and technology, in an effort to insulate Russia as much as possible from external shocks.
UK health and statistics authorities allegedly used 14 inconsistent ways to define fatalities.
Many who died early in the pandemic were never actually tested for the virus while others may have died from something else entirely, according to experts.
…The Oxford study, from 800 freedom of information requests, found some deaths were attributed to Covid just because a care home provider said so and coronavirus was rife.
The report stated: “At the beginning of the pandemic, Public Health England linked data on positive cases to the NHS central register of patients who died.
“This definition meant that a patient who tested positive would be counted as a Covid death even if they were run over by a bus several months later.”
Catherine Austin Fitts speaks with Karel van Wolferen Dutch journalist, writer and professor, about the war in Ukraine and how it ties into the economic reset.
Did official figures overestimate Britain’s grim Covid death toll?
It’s a question that has been asked persistently by medics and members of the public alike almost since the start of the pandemic.
…Last week, in the first of a series of special reports probing the science that has underpinned our pandemic response, The Mail on Sunday set about tackling the ongoing concerns that tests used to diagnose Covid were picking up people who were not actually infected.
The conclusion of some scientists was, yes, they did. And there were those who maintained that despite shortcomings, PCR swabs – used by millions – were accurate enough.
The shocking moments that were experienced when escaping the horror of the war were described by ethnic Greeks originally from Sartana on the outskirts of Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine.
The refugees from Sartana have been in hosting facilities of the Municipality of Zografou in Athens for a week now and their children have already started school.
In speaking about their escape from Mariupol through a corridor, one refugee speaking in Greek with a distinguishable Ukrainian accent said to OPEN TV: “I remember when leaving Mariupol, Ukrainian soldiers stopped us and threatened us.”
“Russian soldiers in tanks were trying to calm us down after all of that,” she added.
Juan Sinmiedo on Twitter has compiled videos of witness testimony from Ukraine regarding the Azov Batallion.
A detailed analysis of where almost £5bn of Covid business funding went is not possible due to gaps in data, a spending watchdog has found.
The Scottish government provided £4.4bn in grants and business rates relief between the start of the pandemic and October last year.
A further £375m was announced following the emergence of Omicron last winter.
The government said the speed and scale of the roll out helped to safeguard thousands of job and businesses.
But Audit Scotland was unable to determine where all the money ended up.
…Scottish Conservative finance spokeswoman Liz Smith acknowledged the speed with which the money had to be released but said the report highlighted a “shocking lack of data” meant “enormous sums of public money were paid out” but “we don’t properly know where it went”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220317095443/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-60770729
Evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialisation of academia, argue these authors
The advent of evidence based medicine was a paradigm shift intended to provide a solid scientific foundation for medicine. The validity of this new paradigm, however, depends on reliable data from clinical trials, most of which are conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics. The release into the public domain of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented. Until this problem is corrected, evidence based medicine will remain an illusion.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220316191824/https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702
Ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 may not be realistic because the electric vehicle charging network isn’t close to being ready, a government advisory report has warned.
Sir John Armitt, head of the National Infrastructure Commission, said there was a “real risk” to the deadline because of the slow progress of installing new electric chargers.
Drivers will not switch away from fossil fuel cars quickly enough if they are not confident of being able to charge electric vehicles, the commission warned in a report published on Wednesday.
The electric vehicle charging network is “significantly behind where it needs to be” and without more chargers drivers “will not have the confidence to make the switch to electric vehicles”, the report warns.
It has been one of the most enduring Covid conspiracy theories: that the ‘gold standard’ PCR tests used to diagnose the virus were picking up people who weren’t actually infected.
…But could they have been right all along?
It has been one of the most enduring Covid conspiracy theories: that the ‘gold standard’ PCR tests used to diagnose the virus were picking up people who weren’t actually infected.
Some even suggested the swabs, which have been carried out more than 200 million times in the UK alone, may mistake common colds and flu for corona.
If either, or both, were true, it would mean many of these cases should never have been counted in the daily tally – that the ominous and all-too-familiar figure, which was used to inform decisions on lockdowns and other pandemic measures, was an over-count.
And many of those who were ‘pinged’ and forced to isolate as a contact of someone who tested positive – causing a huge strain on the economy – did so unnecessarily.
Such statements, it must be said, have been roundly dismissed by top experts. And those scientists willing to give credence such concerns have been shouted down on social media, accused of being ‘Covid-deniers’, and even sidelined by colleagues.
But could they have been right all along?
THE PFIZER-BIONTECH vaccine, which relies on technology known as messenger RNA, has been instrumental in the war on Covid. But there are important questions about its side effects. Particularly since a new report has outlined 42,086 case reports, detailing lesser-known adverse events after inoculation with the jab.
The NHS spent billions on Covid tests, but is there any truth behind the claims that the ‘gold standard’ PCRs who too sensitive, and ended up diagnosing cases who were never infectious? Were the pandemic infection figures deliberately ‘sexed up’ to scare people in complying with lockdown rules? And was it really worth spending £37billion plus on testing? The Medical Minefield team investigate with science journalist Jo Macfarlane, public health consultant Dr Allyson Pollock and Dr Al Richards, Associate Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Reading.
http://archive.today/2022.06.21-103256/https://www.mailplus.co.uk/radio/medical-minefield/162080/were-millions-diagnosed-with-covid-when-they-didnt-really-have-it
Britain’s Covid pandemic death rate is much better than previously thought compared with the rest of the world, a Lancet study has shown.
Research by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the US calculated the excess death rates for 191 countries and territories and found that the UK is now roughly in the middle at 102.
Previously, countries have been judged by death rates alone, which would place Britain at 168 – the 24th worst in the world. Critics of the Government’s pandemic response have often cited this figure as justification for calling for tougher Covid restrictions.
But Britain was found to have an excess death rate of 126.8 per 100,000, very close to France – which had 124.4 per 100,000 – and Germany, with 120.5 per 100,000.
Sweden, which did not lock down, was found to have one of the best excess death rates in Europe, with 91.2 per 100,000. Only Finland, Luxembourg and Iceland fared better.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220310190243/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/10/uk-covid-death-rate-compared-rest-world-isnot-bad-feared/
Thailand’s National Health Security Office (NHSO) has so far paid 1.509 billion baht ($45.65 million) as compensation to 12,714 people who developed side-effects after they received Covid-19 vaccines.
The NHSO on March 9 reported that from May 19, 2021 to March 8 this year, a total of 15,933 people had filed complaints of negative reactions to Covid-19 vaccines.
The NHSO said 2,328 complaints were rejected after it ruled that the side-effects were not related to the vaccinations.
Of the rejected cases, 875 complainants are appealing against the earlier decision of the NHSO.
It added that 891 cases were pending consideration.
Categories
The Pfizer documents – Dr. John Campbell
“This is quite alarming…”
Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, Pfizer / FDA FOI https://phmpt.org
Adverse event reports
01 December 2020 through 28 February 2021
Cumulatively, through 28 February 2021, a total of 42,086 case reports (25,379 medically confirmed and 16,707 non-medically confirmed) containing 158,893 events. Most cases (34,762) were received from United States (13,739), United Kingdom (13,404) Italy (2,578), Germany (1,913), France (1,506), Portugal (866) and Spain (756) the remaining 7,324 were distributed among 56 other countries. Fatal, 1,223 Since Dec. 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under EUA https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press… (Approval, 21st August 2021) Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated. Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S. System Organ Classes (SOCs) that contained the greatest number (≥2%) of events, in the overall dataset, were General disorders and administration site conditions (51,335 AEs), Nervous system disorders (25,957), Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders (17,283), Gastrointestinal disorders (14,096), Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders (8,476), Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders (8,848), Infections and infestations (4,610), Injury, poisoning and procedural complications (5,590), and Investigations (3,693). Cardiovascular AESIs Number of cases: 1403 (3.3% of the total PM dataset), of which 241 are medically confirmed and 1162 are non-medically confirmed; 5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Review of the available data for this cumulative PM experience, confirms a favorable benefit: risk balance for BNT162b2. Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research “Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty’s safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities,” “….. the public is counting on safe and effective vaccines. The public and medical community can be confident that although we approved this vaccine expeditiously, it was fully in keeping with our existing high standards for vaccines in the U.S.” https://childrenshealthdefense.org/de… Austria https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/… Karoline Edtstadler the law, passed in January, in force since early February, not proportionate, relatively mild symptoms experienced by most people who contract Omicron
PFIZER side effects have included the common gastrointestinal symptoms, fatigue and brain fog. According to new documents which have been released after a federal judge ordered the data to be made public, these side effects are just the tip of the iceberg.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220309103903/https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1577745/Pfizer-vaccine-side-effects-adverse-effects
A senior epidemiologist who advised the government during the coronavirus pandemic claims he was told to “correct” his views after he criticised what he thought was an “implausible” graph shown at an official briefing.
Professor Mark Woolhouse has also apologised to his daughter, whose generation “has been so badly served by mine”, and believes that closing schools was “morally wrong”.
The Edinburgh University academic is deeply critical of the use of lockdown measures and says “plain common sense” was a “casualty of the crisis”.
Speaking to Sky News, Prof Woolhouse seemed concerned about a possible “big-brother” approach to the control of information about COVID.He says he was told to watch what he was saying following a briefing given by Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) Sir Patrick Vallance on 21 September 2020.