Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.

Fauci, Paul Clash on Virus Origins, Trade Charges of Lying

Associated Press reported:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, angrily confronted Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday in testimony on Capitol Hill, rejecting Paul’s insinuation that the U.S. helped fund research at a Chinese lab that could have sparked the COVID-19 outbreak.

Paul suggested that Fauci had lied before Congress when in May he denied that the National Institutes of Health funded so-called “gain of function” research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world — at a Wuhan virology lab. U.S. intelligence agencies are currently exploring theories that an accidental leak from that lab could have led to the global pandemic.

Scientist Sounds Alarm: COVID Vaccines Producing Symptoms of Parkinson’s, Other Neurodegenerative Disorders

The Defender reported:

As cases pile up (445 as of July 9) of the reportedly “rare” neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome in people who received a COVID vaccine — forcing the sluggish U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add a warning label to the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shot — scientists are issuing urgent warnings about a possible tsunami of other types of neurological injuries.

Immunologist J. Bart Classen, one-time National Institutes of Health (NIH) contract scientist and proprietor of Classen Immunotherapies, a Maryland biotechnology firm, published a paper in February outlining the potential for messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID vaccines to trigger development of prion diseases as well as other chronic diseases.

Do the Vaccinated Become a Breeding Ground for COVID Mutations?

Dr. Mercola reported:

Will COVID shots drive the mutation of SARS-CoV-2, creating ever more variants? Or are the mutations primarily occurring in unvaccinated people? In the video report above, The Last American Vagabond host dives into the scientific research to find out.

As noted by The Vagabond, unvaccinated Americans are actually in the majority, still, despite what you’re hearing on the news. Those saying “no” to participating in a medical gene modification experiment are not a small fringe group.

‘This Week’ With Mary + Polly: ‘Every Solution Except the Vaccine Has Been Suppressed’

The Defender reported:

This week, Mary Holland, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) president, and Polly Tommey, co-producer of “Vaxxed,” cover the latest COVID headlines including the U.S. Surgeon General’s pushfor Big Tech to crack down on so-called vaccine “misinformation,” the Rockefeller Foundation’s pledge to spend $13.5 million to fight vaccine disinformation and the White House’s plan to ask SMS carriers to monitor private texts for vaccine misinformation.

Also on tap this week is a viral Twitter thread shared by mRNA vaccine inventor Dr. Robert Malone showing the most-vaccinated countries in the world are experiencing a surge in COVID cases, while the least-vaccinated countries are not.

Johnson & Johnson Projects $2.5 Billion From Vaccine Sales Globally

The Hill reported:

Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday said that it anticipates $2.5 billion in annual sales of its COVID-19 vaccine, even as the company faces questions about the vaccine’s effectiveness with the delta variant.

The forecasted sales are a small fraction of the sales expected from the other two authorized vaccines; Pfizer and Moderna have forecast $26 billion and $19.2 billion in annual sales of their vaccines, respectively.

CDC Investigating Deaths of Immunized Nursing Home Residents: Report

The Hill reported:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reportedly investigating the deaths of fully vaccinated nursing home patients in a Colorado county which has been hit especially hard by a recent surge in COVID-19.

The Associated Press reported that a person involved in internal CDC deliberations, who requested anonymity to speak on the matter, said that federal investigators conducted a probe into delta variant outbreaks in nursing home facilities in Mesa County, Colo., in May and June.

A CDC presentation slide provided to the AP revealed that in the Grand Junction area of the county, 16 fully vaccinated residents at a memory care facility were infected and four had died.

Risk of Long COVID in Children Could Be Overestimated, Expert Says

Evening Standard reported:

Most children are unaware they have COVID-19, which is leading to an overestimation of the long-term effects of the illness in youngsters, a leading expert has said.

Dr Shamez Ladhani, a consultant paediatrician in infectious diseases and a Public Health England (PHE) epidemiologist, said most children either do not have any symptoms when they have coronavirus, or the illness is so mild their parents do not link it with COVID.

He tweeted: “In our primary schools study, although small numbers, parents reported no symptoms in 85% of kids who didn’t have (COVID)  antibodies at start of the study & then developed antibodies during the study (ie. got infected) compared to 47% of staff.

Dr. Vin Gupta Encourages J&J Vaccine Recipients to Get a Pfizer or Moderna Booster

CNBC reported:

Intensive-care unit and lung doctor Dr. Vin Gupta told CNBC that he’s already encouraging patients who received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine to get a Pfizer or Moderna booster shot amid the dramatic increase in delta variant cases across the U.S.

Gupta, a professor at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told “The News with Shepard Smith” that “AstraZeneca, when combined with a Pfizer or Moderna booster, is showing tremendous levels of protection against delta, in terms of the antibody levels that are generated in patients.”

COVID Plus Overdose Deaths Drove Down Life Expectancy in 2020

NBC News reported:

Life expectancy in the U.S. plunged last year in the largest one-year drop since World War II, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday, further widening the longevity gap between the U.S. and comparable countries.

Deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses fueled the decline — wiping out any improvements the country made in decreasing deaths from cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases — leading to a 1.5-year drop and bringing the life expectancy at birth down to 77.3 years. (Life expectancy at birth refers to how long a person born in the year being studied — in this case, 2020 — is expected to live.)

Psaki Confirms Multiple Breakthrough COVID Cases in White House

Axios reported:

Press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday confirmed that there have been multiple breakthrough coronavirus cases among White House staffers.

Driving the news: Her comments come after Axios first reported that a White House official and a staff member for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the same reception last week.

CDC Director: Delta Variant Accounts for 83 Percent of All COVID Cases in U.S.

The Hill reported:

The delta variant of the novel coronavirus is now responsible for 83 percent of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in the United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday.

That estimate is a major increase from just over two weeks ago. For cases tallied during the week of July 3, the CDC estimated the delta variant accounted for about 50 percent of new infections.