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It Was the Mandates, Not the Fine Print: Fact Checkers Miss Point in Rush to Defend Pfizer
Fact-checkers swung into action after a Pfizer executive acknowledged this week that the company never tested its COVID vaccine against transmission, but they seem to have missed the critics’ point in their rush to defend the pharmaceutical giant.
Janine Small, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, answered no Monday when asked by European Union Member of Parliament Rob Roos if the company tested its mRNA vaccine on stopping transmission before rolling it out. The Dutch lawmaker later called it “scandalous” given that vaccine passports and mandates were pushed globally on the implication that they would stop transmission.
The “scandalous” parties Roos referred to were global governments, not Pfizer. While there is no evidence Pfizer ever claimed its vaccine was tested for transmission, the notion that the vaccines offered such protection against the spread of COVID was seized upon by governments to compel people to get vaccinated. The distinction between individuals contracting and transmitting COVID was lost as governments sought to stop the virus from spreading.
“You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” President Joe Biden said in July 2021. Two months earlier, White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said that vaccinated people become “dead ends” for the virus, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in March 2021 that data from the CDC suggested that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
Roos said that his point after Monday’s testimony was that compelling young, healthy people who were not afraid of contracting the virus themselves to nonetheless get the jab in order to ensure they did not spread it was built on a myth.
PayPal and America’s Pending Social Credit System
Do Americans wish to live in a world where dissenters from prevailing elite orthodoxy face discrimination in every public domain? The recent fracas over PayPal’s user policy raises the specter of such a dystopia: a de-banked future — driven by de facto social credit scoring — that is quickly becoming our present.
The payment processing company, one of the largest nonbank lenders in the world with some $75 billion in assets, recently modified its user agreement, threatening to fine those who use PayPal “for activities that…involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion…promote misinformation” up to $2,500 per violation.
The backlash was large and swift — and rightly so. PayPal patrons canceled their accounts en masse or at least threatened to do so as hashtags indicating it trended across social media. The stock tanked. Then PayPal backtracked. A spokesman said the updated policy had gone “out in error that included incorrect information. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy.”
But no one should be confused. While the company might have accidentally released the policy, it still drafted it. That means it considered transforming itself from a financial services company to an arbiter of truth — policing Wrongthink and punishing the perps by pilfering their accounts.
Biden Administration Touts ‘Big Update’ to COVID Vaccines in New Ads for Boosters
The Biden administration is launching a new ad campaign to promote the updated bivalent COVID-19 vaccines, in hopes of accelerating a booster campaign that has begun to stall nationwide.
“It’s a new day because COVID vaccines just got a big update,” a narrator says at the start of one of the spots, titled “Just in Time.” Federal health authorities have shelled out to air the ads on television, starting with commercial breaks during the ABC shows “Good Morning America” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” A radio spot on the “Big Update” will also air starting Oct. 17.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not respond to a request for comment on how much the television spots would cost. Dr. Cameron Webb, a White House COVID-19 official, said HHS had been able to “shuffle around some dollars” to put together a campaign for the fall.
Print ads targeted to Native American and rural communities will also be appearing in newspapers in 18 cities, ranging from Albuquerque in New Mexico to Bangor in Maine.
Students, Staffers and Parents Protest Fordham University COVID Vaccine Mandate
A protest was held Friday at Fordham University over the school’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. All students and staff must be up to date on their boosters by Nov. 1 in order to be allowed on campus.
There were honks of support for the demonstrators standing outside the main entrance to the Bronx campus. Dozens of students, staffers and parents made their voices heard against the school’s vaccine mandate.
“I have read some reports about myocarditis and other side effects and it seems like there’s a lot of conflicting data,” senior Kyle Sofhauser said. “It should be an individual choice.”
Political science professor Nicholas Tampio is just one staffer pushing back. “For me, it’s just, if the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission, there’s no justification to mandate it for other people,” Tampio said.
Biden Admin Still Pushing COVID Vaccine Mandate for Military: It’s Unlawful and Hurts National Security
On national television, Biden administration spokesperson John Kirby mounted a feeble attempt to explain the president’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the military. Kirby, a retired Navy admiral, had no acceptable answers when pressed about the administration’s “folly” and the perilous impact the mandate is already having on our national security.
Remarkably, Kirby perpetuated the narrative that the military’s mandate must remain in place while admitting with a straight face that he was quarantined for 10 days due to his current bout with COVID-19, despite being vaccinated and double boosted.
The unrelenting push to remove thousands of religious service members from the military for their sincerely held objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine should be classified as a clear dereliction of duty by the Biden administration. The president himself declared “the pandemic is over.”
While service members of faith are being denied accommodations and are presently prevented from doing their jobs and maintaining their careers, the Air Force willingly accommodates service members who are unvaccinated for COVID-19 for medical reasons. To any reasonable person, the hypocrisy and unlawfulness are clear.
Uganda Locks Down 2 Districts in Bid to Stem Spread of Ebola
Ugandan authorities on Saturday imposed a travel lockdown on two Ebola-hit districts as part of efforts to stop the spread of the contagious disease.
The measures announced by President Yoweri Museveni mean residents of the central Ugandan districts of Mubende and Kassanda can’t travel into or out of those areas by private or public means. Cargo vehicles and others transiting from Kampala, the capital, to southwestern Uganda are still allowed to operate, he said.
All entertainment places, including bars, as well as places of worship, are ordered closed, and all burials in those districts must be supervised by health officials, he said. A nighttime curfew also has been imposed. The restrictions will last at least 21 days.
South Australia Court Sets Date for Deni Varnhagen’s Appeal of COVID Vaccine Mandate Challenge Dismissal
Inactive AFLW player and nurse Deni Varnhagen has had a small win in her legal challenge against South Australia’s healthcare worker vaccine mandate, with the Court of Appeal granting her request for an urgent appeal.
Last month, the Supreme Court dismissed her case on the basis it “ceased to have utility” given the emergency declarations she was challenging had been removed and replaced by legislation.
Her legal team is appealing that ruling and last week asked for an urgent, expedited hearing as the directions are due to expire on Nov. 23.
Today, the Court of Appeal said it could hear the appeal on Nov. 11 — 12 days before the expiry date. It is unclear whether the state government will extend the mandate.
The Quarantine of Healthy Populations
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya turned his attention to the epidemiology of the virus and the effects of lockdown policies. He was one of three co-authors — along with Martin Kulldorff of Stanford and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford — of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Many more lives would have been saved, and much misery avoided, had we followed the time-tested public health principles laid out in this document. Jay is a professor of health policy at Stanford and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in economics at Stanford.
From the lepers in the Old Testament to the Plague of Justinian in Ancient Rome to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, COVID represents the first time ever in the history of managing pandemics that we quarantined healthy populations.
While the ancients did not understand the mechanisms of infectious disease — they knew nothing of viruses and bacteria — they nevertheless figured out many ways to mitigate the spread of contagion during epidemics. These time-tested measures ranged from isolating the symptomatic to enlisting those with natural immunity, who had recovered from the illness, to care for the sick.
I Fear My Children Are Overexposed to Technology. Experts Say I’m Right to Worry
Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services granted $10 million to the American Academy of Pediatrics to establish a National Center of Excellence on Social Media and Mental Wellness. It is part of the Biden administration’s strategy to address an alarming national mental health crisis and has a mandate, according to the press release, to “develop and disseminate information, guidance and training on the impact — including risk and benefits — that social media use has on children and young people, especially the risks to their mental health.”
We adults, responding to soaring inflation and the collective trauma of years of COVID, have been driven to a breaking point. So, too, have our children, with over 40% of teenagers saying, heartbreakingly, that they have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.
In 2021, in the midst of a roiling pandemic, the U.S. surgeon general’s office issued a 53-page advisory calling out tech platforms as being particularly culpable when it came to our children’s weakening mental health, in effect replacing one public health crisis with another.
The Hunt for Wikipedia’s Disinformation Moles
As social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have struggled with the onslaught of fake news, disinformation and bots, Wikipedia has transformed itself into a source of trusted information — not just for its readers but also for other tech platforms. The challenge now is to keep it that way.
Some researchers believe that Wikipedia could be an overlooked venue for information warfare, and they have been developing technologies and methods similar to the ones used on Facebook and Twitter to uncover it.
A team from the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (IDS) and the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) published a paper today exploring how to uncover disinformation on Wikipedia. They also believe that the data mapping may have uncovered a strategy that states could use to introduce disinformation. The trick, they say, is playing the long and subtle game.
Governments have good reasons to influence Wikipedia: 1.8 billion unique devices are used to visit Wikimedia Foundation sites each month, and its pages are regularly among the top results for Google searches. Rising distrust in institutions and mainstream media has made sources of reliable information all the more coveted.
Apple XR Headset Might Have ‘Face ID’ Tech for Paying With Your Eyes
Apple is reportedly one-upping Meta in the mixed reality competition by offering iris-scanning technology.
According to a report from The Information, the tech giant‘s forthcoming XR device will include sensors that work like Face ID in iPhones and iPads. The technology, called “Iris ID,” would enable users to log in to their accounts and make payments biometrically. The headset also reportedly has more than 10 cameras and might have the same M2 chip as the one powering the latest MacBook Air. Apple’s XR headset has been highly-anticipated for years and is expected to be released sometime in 2023.
But all of this innovation won’t come cheap. It’s rumored that it will cost between $2,000 and $3,000, which is significantly more than the Quest Pro, the most premium version of Meta‘s VR headset lineup to date. Your move, Meta.
