Tag: covid

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national politics & policies too much government

One Against the Mandate?

Daily Wire, law suit, Covid, vaccines, mandates

“President Biden, the federal government, social media, and the establishment media have conspired to rob Americans of their freedoms in the name of public health,” declares Jeremy Boreing, co-​CEO of The Daily Wire. “They have broken faith with the American people through conflicting messaging, false information, and by suppressing data and perspectives with which they disagree.”

Quoted by Alex Swoyer in The Washington Examiner, Boreing is explaining why his company — best known for its platforming (as we say these days) of commentators Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh, but also for its burgeoning news service and mini-​entertainment empire — will not comply with “the Biden administration’s COVID-​19 vaccine mandate for private employers.”

It is “suing in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, the company announced Thursday,” Swoyer reports.

Though we’ve been hearing about these “requirements” for over a month, they were published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) just yesterday. Folks at The Daily Wire had been talking up their challenge ever since Biden first dropped his bomb, and had their legal response ready.

OSHA’s mandate, Swoyer explains, “directs large companies to require employees to get vaccinated by Jan. 4, or else pay for them to get tested weekly,” and also requires those tested-​but-​unvaccinated employees “to wear a face mask.”

Note that the tests for the coronavirus are not reliable, tests for antibodies are not even mentioned (and also not reliable), and face mask utility has not been demonstrated to anything approaching certainty, as I’ve discussed.

Grounds for challenge are legion.

Other affected companies should join The Daily Wire with parallel lawsuits, or at least amicus briefs.

The president’s mandate must not stand. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption Regulating Protest

De-​Licensing the Opposition

Scott Jensen

Scott Jensen is a family physician and a candidate for governor of Minnesota who opposes counterproductive lockdown measures.

His medical license is being officially investigated — for the fifth time — because of complaints about . . . well, what, exactly?

He has produced a video on the theme of “if it can happen to me, it can happen to you.” Here’s the kind of complaints that instigated the latest fake investigation:

  • Dr. Jensen challenged the validity of President Biden’s national vaccine mandate. Guilty as charged, he says.
  • Dr. Jensen is not vaccinated. “I’m not. I have a plethora of antibodies, because I have recovered from COVID.”
  • Dr. Jensen has opposed mandatory masks for school children. “Last I checked, school boards are making those decisions. I have my opinion, and I’m entitled to it.”
  • Dr. Jensen has promoted the use of ivermectin. “That’s a decision between a patient and a doctor.”
  • Dr. Jensen has “inappropriately” promoted the benefits of natural immunity. “I can run for office if I so choose.”

On the other hand, all this is pretty damning, isn’t it? Dr. Jensen has done perhaps the worst thing that any American can do: uttered opinions. 

Publicly.

I hope, Gentle Reader, that you yourself have never articulated an opinion in mixed company while also being licensed to do whatever it is you do to earn a living. Apparently, in the eyes of some people, these two things don’t mix.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Settled Science

Rand Paul, Anthony Fauci, covid, gain of function

Remember the blow-​up last summer between Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) and Dr. Anthony Fauci over gain-​of-​function research? 

Paul charged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had supported such research in China. “Senator Paul,” Fauci fired back, “you don’t know what you are talking about, quite frankly.”

“Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared to be channeling the frustration of millions of Americans when he spoke those words during an invective-​laden, made-​for-​Twitter Senate hearing on July 20,” imagined Katherine Eban recently in Vanity Fair. “You didn’t have to be a Democrat to be fed up with all the xenophobic finger-​pointing and outright disinformation, coming mainly from the right.…”*

Nevertheless, Ms. Eban added, “Paul might have been onto something.”

Might? 

Last week, the NIH sent a letter to Congress admitting that its grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, laundered through the infamous EcoHealth Alliance, resulted in research that even the NIH acknowledges was gain-of-function. 

Sen. Paul knew what he was talking about; Dr. Fauci did not.

NIH was quick to defend Fauci, arguing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President was in the dark last summer about the controversial research because EcoHealth Alliance was two years late in reporting. For its part, EcoHealth Alliance “appeared to contradict that claim,” telling Vanity Fair, “These data were reported … in April 2018.”

“Given all of the sensitivity about this work,” Stanford University microbiologist Dr. David Relman remarked to Vanity Fair, “it’s difficult to understand why NIH and EcoHealth have still not explained a number of irregularities with the reporting on this grant.”

Is it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Eban concluded her sentence with this clause: “up to and including the claim that COVID-​19 was a bioweapon cooked up in a lab.” Her assertion that “the right” was calling COVID a “bioweapon” is a canard designed to prematurely halt any inquiry into even the possibility. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R‑Ark.) simply said there needed to be an investigation of the Wuhan lab, he was fiercely attacked by big media and the lab leak theory was suppressed on Facebook and Google. 

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national politics & policies social media

Low Fares. Something to Hide.

Southwest Airlines, Covid, vaccination, labor

“Southwest Airlines crews are walking out and so are FAA air traffic controllers,” Buzz Patterson tweeted on Sunday. “This is just the beginning.” 

Buzz’s running for a House seat in California’s Seventh District. But I saw the tweet as quoted on Facebook by Erin Leigh, who wrote “Exactly what needs to happen. Over 1800 Southwest flights have been canceled in the last 48 hrs … employees from other airlines are joining as well as Amtrak.” And she concluded with “Mandates have consequences!!”

But what really caught my attention was Facebook’s warning: “Independent fact-​checkers say this information has no basis in fact.”

Really? None?

You see, much of what was tweeted and Facebooked was definitely true: Southwest Airline pilots and other workers have walked out. And though the airline and the union provide the silliest rationales for the mass cancellations as cover — including blaming non-​existent bad weather — it seems pretty obvious this is tied to the vaccine mandates. Tucker Carlson is nearly alone in covering this angle of the story — bemoans The Guardian — while the rest of corporate media relays the “nothing to see here” official spin (or “media blackout”).

Meanwhile, Facebook promotes its guardian of truth, “Lead Stories” — but its “fact-​check” was entirely about the Amtrak shutdowns!!

Candidate Patterson didn’t mention Amtrak. And Ms. Leigh noted Amtrak almost as an afterthought. 

And then, up on my screen, came Facebook’s altered image of the initial tweet, with “Regular Delay” super-imposed.

The Facebook post was mostly about airline business.

And while Amtrak officials and mouthpieces for the Transport Workers Union of America assure us that it’s all very regular . . . the jab mandate is in place, and labor . . . dislocations . . . are one consequence.

Our regularly scheduled re-​scheduling will be re-​explained by history.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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education and schooling First Amendment rights social media

Our Authoritarian Moment

Youtube, censorship

Was it something I said?

Yesterday, YouTube removed the video of my latest episode of This Week in Common Sense. Why? The platform claims I violated its “terms of service” and “community standards” by providing “medical misinformation.”

Funny, YouTube did not specify which statement in the video was incorrect, much less provide any citation to back up its “misinformation” claim.

This sort of authoritarianism is quite common these days. We’re just supposed to take the Authority’s word that It Possesses the Whole Truth.

No debate. No dissent.

There is not even a reference or consult.

Which is what Dr. Byram W. Bridle, PhD, Associate Professor of Viral Immunology Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph discovered.

He refused to provide evidence of vaccination. So his Canadian university “banned” him “from campus for at least a year.” And sat by while colleagues and students abused him for being “anti-​science.”

Thing is, as he points out in his Open Letter to the academic institution, not one of the tenured immunologists of the University of Guelph thinks there should be mandatory vaccination. All are very concerned about the goal of universal vaccination. Since not one of the available vaccines appears effective enough to produce sufficient immunity in recipients “herd immunity,” the goal must be mere “herd vaccination.” 

Dr. Bridle is especially annoyed that the university does not allow him to demonstrate his natural immunity to the disease, which simply does not interest the pro-​vaccination bureaucrats.

Worse yet, at no point in the university’s deliberations over the vaccine mandate did administrators consult their own immunology department!

That’s not “following the science.”

Like at YouTube, it’s a political campaign: science not required.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: I first heard about both stories from my podcasting sparring partner, who produced two stories on his website regarding Dr. Bridle and tipped the hat to historian Tom Woods.

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general freedom too much government

No Transplants for the Unvaxxed

organ transplant, socialized medicine, Covid

Because of a rare but dangerous side effect, heart inflammation, Scandinavian countries are now discouraging the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger people.

We’ve seen other reports of severe illness and even death because of, or at least soon after, COVID-​19 vaccinations. But we’re assured that serious side effects are so rare and the vaccines so effective that the wisdom of getting vaccinated is self-evident.

But what’s more evident? They’re forcing you. 

If you’re “vaccine-​hesitant” for any reason — even if you’ve already got immunity because of a COVID-​19 infection — too bad. A public-​private partnership to mandate vaccination is already costing many people their jobs.

Now it’s costing people a chance for a kidney.

So ordains University of Colorado Hospital, whose Kidney Transplant Coordinator, Katie Harmann, tells Leilani Lutali that she “will be removed from the kidney transplant list” until she is vaccinated.

Note that the opportunity is not being withdrawn because the prospective recipient is sick with COVID-​19 and therefore is about to kick the bucket anyway. The hospital is treating the patient’s assessment of her own risk as irrelevant.

Lutali says, “I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see [whether the vaccine is the right thing to do], and that I have to take the shot if I want this life-​saving transplant.”

This is the reality of rationed care in a largely socialist medical system.

And this is what Democrats lust for, even demand; and it is what they are working mightily to ensure — that our current messy, mixed healthcare system will soon become even more bureaucratic and restrictive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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