Tag: covid

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment too much government

Stop Causing the Next Pandemic

Covid, virus, research

A lab in Wuhan, China was fiddling with the coronavirus that causes COVID-​19 when that virus was accidentally or intentionally released into the world.

I would like such a thing not to happen again. I adhere to the radical political doctrine that the world should not be repeatedly ravaged by avoidable pandemics. I especially don’t want to see a pandemic considerably worse than the COVID-​19 pandemic.

But politicians and scientists continue to make pandemics more likely by permitting, paying for (with our money), and even defending the gain-​of-​function research that weaponizes viruses. 

Why, oh why? I hear you ask. The reason, they say, is so they can learn how to better combat these more virulent forms.

And if somebody happens to unleash a lab-​enhanced virus capable of killing a third of the human race, will words like “sorry” and “oops” and “now we know how to stop it better the next time” undo the damage?

This danger is one theme of a talk given by U.S. Senator Rand Paul last November. As Paul, author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-​Up, puts it, “To think that we can prevent future pandemics even as we continue to seek, catalog, and manipulate dangerous viruses is the height of hubris.… We must reform government and rein in out-​of-​control scientists and their enablers.”

Senator Paul echoes MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, who says “Please stop.” 

Let us have no more experiments “likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.”

Policymakers and investigators have no inalienable right to threaten the well-​being of us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability government transparency ideological culture

Pandemic Politics … or Poltroonery?

Covid, vaccine, government, mandates, freedom

Fear was a major theme — and ploy — during the pandemic. But it’s looking now like the people we have been told to rely upon for our safety are themselves moved by fear. They’re cowards, poltroons.

The Centers for Disease Control wrote an alert in the thick of 2021’s “vaccine” rollout, warning of the dangers of the Moderna and Pfizer jabs.

It was never sent out.

“In the May 25, 2021, email, exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, a CDC official revealed why some officials were against sending the alert,” explains Zachary Stieber. You see, while an alert to health care professionals using the official Health Area Network system made complete sense, one CDC official gave a clue to her colleagues’ hesitance: “people don’t want to appear alarmist,” you see.

What did we who took the jab risk? Heart inflammation, or myocarditis. The CDC knew this early on.

But did not warn us.

Now, from listening to Dr. John Campbell on YouTube and Rumble, we have learned a lot more (if not in time in 2021) about the myocarditis threat. The takers of the modRNA treatment who are most at risk are those who engage in strenuous exercise soon after inoculation (which explains why the bulk of the afflicted have been boys and young men in the prime of life). Or so I last heard. I am certainly no doctor; I merely rely upon doctors to advise me.

And those doctors, in turn, rely upon official sources of information like the CDC. 

Who did not advise them properly.

Who worry too much about “appearing alarmist” and not enough about relaying the best information.

Poltroons!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment international affairs

Stuck With It?

Poland, Pfizer, vaccine, European Union

Poland told Pfizer to stick it elsewhere. Now Pfizer’s suing for failure to pay for all the jabs … that Poland didn’t use. Or take. Or even allow in the country.

Pfizer’s a big company, of course, but you know we’re not talking about Celebrex or Fentanyl Citrate or Sonata here. We’re talking about The Jab. The one developed with BioNTech and contracted for by governments around the world.

As near as I can make out, it’s a breach of contract case.

But with a wrinkle.

Poland put a halt to pushing Pfizer’s COVID vaccine in April of 2022, and the people generally seem just fine with it, seeing as how they have a much, much lower rate of excess deaths now than does, say, Sweden, which pushed the vax for far longer. 

But why couldn’t Poland simply stop usage of the jab? 

After all, a customer shouldn’t be forced to take a medication, right? 

Well, the contract was not between Pfizer and Poles individually — this is the modern, statist world, after all — or even collectively, corporately, through the state. The contract was between Pfizer and the European Union!

And elements were secret. 

The Polish government, placed on the hook for the drug, was not allowed to see the whole contract.

Think of this as just one of the many ways that politicians who bash Big Pharma bent over backwards to give Big Pharma cushy, cushy deals.

But in court, how will those secret clauses play? I suspect that Pfizer’s prognosis may be negative.

Which would be a healthy outcome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PickFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability folly national politics & policies

Will We Comply?

Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci, covid, masks

“To every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words,” intoned Donald J. Trump, eleven days ago, “we will not comply.”

The former president did not stop there: “So don’t even think about it. We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates. And we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.”

While Trump still boasts about his vaccine heroism, his supporters range from iffy to hostile on the subject. So Trump positions himself against mandates and for “freedom,” while in the past he was for masks and for lockdowns, as well as pushing the novel vaccines that cleverly (and perhaps dangerously) leveraged the spiked protein protuberances on SARS-​CoV‑2.

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom Trump brought into the world conversation about the pandemic in 2020, is similarly trying to position himself with some trickiness and … care. 

Fauci foresees mask recommendations, but no mandates — but note that he focuses on what federal bureaucrats say and do, not on what governors in the states do under federal bureaucrats’ advisement. 

CNN’s Michael Smerconish interrogated Fauci about the many studies showing that masks are ineffective against respiratory diseases like COVID. 

Fauci’s reply? Against the big study cited here in February, Fauci mentioned “other studies,” lamely and unconvincingly. He admitted that, overall — as affecting the course of the pandemic — “the data” about mask efficacy have been “less strong.” But “on an individual basis of someone protecting themselves, or protecting themselves from spreading to others,” Fauci still insists “there’s no doubt that there are many studies” showing “an advantage.”

If you buy that, you’ll wear masks forever — or comply with anything.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders

De- and Re-certified

doctor, medicine, association, group think, censorship

“Around the country, a slew of doctors had board certifications removed and licensure threatened for sharing their COVID-​related opinions,” explains The Epoch Times, in an article devoted to one of those persecuted, Dr. John Littell of Florida.

Early in the pandemic, “Dr. Littell, a longtime family physician in Ocala and a medical school professor, began posting videos sharing his thoughts about COVID-​19 testing, treatments, and vaccines early in the pandemic,” Natasha Holt’s Epoch Times article narrates. “He was frustrated to find his content often was pulled down from his YouTube channel.” 

But the establishment’s efforts didn’t stop there. “[I]n January 2022 and again five months later, he received warning letters from the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), the organization that issued his certification for his medical specialty.”

His videos on YouTube and then the safe, free-​speech haven Rumble, spread “medical misinformation,” the board charged, warning that he could lose certification. But these were warnings. The board got a bit more serious and physical when they removed Littell from a public meeting, giving him the bum’s rush.

And then the board de-​certified him.

It’s a long story, but appears to have a happy ending, with Littell re-​certified and organizing a support group for medical professionals’ free speech rights, and the basic need to practice independent, patient-​centered medicine, and to disagree with the gimcrack “consensus” policies that establishment organizations impose.

While there are multiple medical certification boards in America, these are not free-​market concerns competing for customers. The government is heavily involved at every level. And the policies and “science” that Dr. Littell and others ran up against were not only political, but wrong — medically and morally. 

As we are increasingly discovering.

Which makes medical freedom more important than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
education and schooling folly ideological culture

Expulsion of the Sick

covid, college, quarantine, masks, lock down, hysteria

Due to the nature of a respiratory disease like COVID, mass quarantine efforts were doomed to failure. 

We’ve got to breathe; we are social creatures — so locking everyone down, as started in the Spring of 2020, didn’t appear to “slow the spread” (the original aim) and it certainly did not decrease the overall infected or death counts (something the policy did not originally pretend to do). Yet that policy, enacted as an emergency protocol in many states by many governors and mayors extended lockdowns far beyond Trump’s original call for “fifteen days.” 

The extensions were never squared with the initial rationale. 

Never. 

Quarantining the sick, or those who “test positive” for the virus, makes more sense. But only in context of options and human behavior.

“Students who test positive for COVID-​19 at the University of Michigan this fall will be forced in many cases to leave campus,” explains Robby Soave at Reason, “an extreme measure that may well encourage sick people to avoid seeking medical attention at all.” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya dubs it a “cruel policy” seemingly “designed to spread covid from the university into the wild.” 

That is, this quarantine effort “won’t stop [COVID] from spreading,” the doctor summarizes.

“Instead of creating a police state to punish students for contracting COVID-​19 — something that is, let’s face it, wholly unavoidable,” Mr. Soave speculates, “perhaps university health officials could work harder to provide accommodations for students who get sick and voluntarily agree to quarantine.”

But administrators rule that out: they don’t have the accommodations.

So the policy will inevitably cause hardship while not promoting public health, much less the health of individual students.

Doesn’t make sense. 

I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts